I am glad to follow this thread on the 'carbon footprint' and all the angles
being discussed.  These discussions are helpful to me.  

I am not aware of research that has addressed the issues being addressed
regarding greenhouse gases and apiculture.  I am aware that this kind of
research has been done for other cropping systems and I have tried to follow
the progress of work in this field in the Journal of Sustainable
Agriculture.  A general trend emerging is that fossil fuel greenhouse gas
emissions from agriculture are relatively small in comparison to on-farm
sources of nitrous oxide and ruminant methane emissions.  I suspect, by
comparison, the metabolism of bee colonies does not even register, nor does
the carbon tied up in their bodies or surplus honey. 

I think this really comes into focus when you make the 'leap' to discount
the emissions resulting from the cultivation of bee forages.  I think this
discounting is supportable because the nectar secetion is merely a byproduct
which would otherwise be wasted (the crops would be grown regardless if
there were bees there or not)... when it is considered that in harvesting
this nectar 'byproduct' honey bees increase agricultural yields, thus
increase agricultural efficiency, then any footprint bees leave potentially
disappears.  It is my understanding, that by contrast, the major sweetener
crops are all heavy feeders and require considerable amounts of nitrogen to
maintain yields.  In addition to the potential release nitrous oxide there
is the problem associated with nitrogen-rich run-off is a problem. Neither
problem plague the production of honey. 

Nonetheless, I agree with Bill, greenhouse gas production is a complicated
issue.  The fact that we are not likely contributing to the problem helps me
sleep at night, but I agree that its not a fruitful area of inquiry.

The arguement I have been making for eating honey over other sweeteners does
not involve the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but rather to
conserve energy.  

In developed countries between 10-20% of the total amount of energy we use
is in the production, distribution and preparation of food.  I have seen
some nice work where 'cradle to grave' energy use (energy use from the point
of the a crop being seeded to the point it is eaten) is calculated for major
dietary components.  They show that by altering food choices we can reduce
our 'cradle to grave' energy use by half without reducing our intake of
calories.   One study noted that sweets and snacks contribute to up to a
third of total energy inputs in a Swedish diet.  In their analysis of 150
items in a Swedish diet, they included imported (5.6 MJ/kg) and domestic
honey (1.3 MJ/kg) and domestic beet sugar (9.8 MJ/kg).  Apparently honey
takes less energy to produce than sugar.

There is also a 1981 study by Edward Southwick "Energy efficiency of honey
production by bees" (Bioscience 31 (10): 730-732) where the authors
calculate that while a 1 kg of cane and beet sugar take 4600 and 6900 kcal
to produce (ie 1.7-2.1 times the energy to produce than we gain in
consumption), the production and processing of commercial honey took only
2700 kcal of energy (ie 0.89 kcal per kcal food value).  Thus, cane and beet
sugar require 2-2.5 times more energy to produce than honey.  Although corn
syrup was not included in the report, you have to remember that wet-milling
is one of the most energy intensive processing steps in US agriculture -
where ADM needs a lot of natural gas to process corn to HFCS, bees do this
processing naturally, which is ultimately powered by photsynthesis.

Two studies are not enough.  I think this should be looked at more closely,
using a more representative dataset and comparing domestic and imported
honey.   Honey use to be the sweetener of the whole-foods explosing of the
1970s.  I have heard this phenomenon explained as the 'granola effect'.  We
have lost a lot of ground in this market.  Go to a health food store and see
how little honey is used.  The sustainable sweetener today is organic cane
syrup.   I think there is a good case to be made for honey being more
sustainable than organic cane syrup.   I think the case is honest and
supportable... I would feel good about advocating for honey on these
grounds.  I curious how many other people share Bill's feeling that this
approach would come back to haunt us?

Adony

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