Copyright (c) 2010 Alison Withers

Agreement on solutions for cutting our energy use that are acceptable to all nations seem to be as far away as ever despite preliminary talks in China ahead of the next Climate Change Summit due to be held at the end of November in Cancun, Mexico

As individuals many of us are, it seems, more willing to do what we can to reduce our energy consumption, including all the increasingly common things like using energy-saving lightbulbs, switching electrical gadgets off instead of leaving them on standby and sorting our waste to be able to recycle more.

But what about food? People carrying re-usable bags when they are doing the weekly shopping are an increasingly common sight and, of course, there is the growing "buy local" initiative even though this is not quite as clear-cut an argument as is normally thought when it comes to calculating the carbon footprint and energy consumption of producing food. There are also other ways of being more energy efficient when it comes to food.

Eating less meat is the most obvious example because it is generally acknowledged to be the most energy inefficient form of food production.

A recent economic analysis in the USA of farmers growing genetically modified crops has found that actually the farmers who benfited most economically were not those who used GM seeds but those who didn't.

It focused on a particular pest for growers of maize, the corn borer moth. While farmers growing from GM seed that contained a bacterial gene that caused the plants to excrete a protein toxic to the moths had benefited from a decline in the insect pest, it was the farmers who were not using the GM seed that benefited even more economically.

This was because they not only benefited from the area-wide impact of the pest reduction in the GM crops but also because their production costs were lower as they were not paying the technology fees that are part of the costs of buying the genetically modified seed.

If the farmers pass on some of that cost saving to consumers it could also be a cost benefit to environmentally conscious shoppers, many of whom in Europe and the UK are in any case very suspicious of genetic modification and look for more natural or organic products.

Similarly if farmers used the newer ranges of low-chem biopesticides, biofungicides and yield enhancers being produced by biopesticides developers, which enable them to farm sustainably and economically, in theory consumers should also benefit from lower prices in the supermarkets.

There are also ways that individuals can do their bit for the environment when it comes to cooking in the home.

As well as buying and eating less meat and making sure left-overs are used, cooking with gas is more environmentally friendly than cooking with electricity.

Other ideas are to plan menus that can all be cooked in the oven rather than using several burners plus oven and also cooking more than one meal at once in the oven, which has the added benefit of coming home from work during the week to a ready-cooked meal that only has to be warmed up and as they say, every little helps.