Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["TradingPostPaul" <tradingpost@riseup.net>]

Beat Global Heat With Cool Local Gelati, Farmers Say
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/41537/story.htm
ITALY: April 24, 2007


MILAN - Ice cream lovers can help fight global warming by seeking out ice
creams flavoured with local berries, fruits and nuts, an Italian farmers'
group says.


Papaya ice may be nice, but it takes 5.4 kg of oil -- with the attendant
CO2 that releases into the atmosphere -- to transport one kg (2.2 lb) of
the fruit from Argentina to Rome, Coldiretti said in a statement over the
weekend.

As part of its "zero kilometre" campaign, the farm group urged Italians,
who spend more than 5 billion euros (US$6.78 billion) a year on some 600
flavours of ice-cream, to pick those types made from local produce instead.
It said environment-friendly ice-cream parlours have been opening up across
Italy in a sign of growing demand for fresh, authentic products whose use
helps to trim CO2 emissions, which are widely seen as a main contributor to
global warming.

Every such effort counts in Italy which lags far behind targets set under
the Kyoto Protocol for reducing CO2 output.