David Oglethorpe: Too much to swallow

With some relish, David Oglethorpe remembers the moment he overtook Gordon Ramsay in the final stages of the Great North Run of 2005. "He'd had a head start as well, like all the celebrities," Oglethorpe says, pointedly.

It's fair to say the professor of logistics and supply chain management at Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University is not a great fan of celebrity chefs. Indeed, he's been known to shout at the television when they're making "sweeping generalisations" about where food comes from and how best to acquire ingredients.

"Joe Bloggs can't spend four days, or whatever it is, cooking a perfect chicken like Heston Blumenthal, any more than he can keep two sheep in his back garden, like Ramsay," he grumbles. "What's the point of rearing sheep, pigs or turkeys yourself when you import a load of foie gras to go with them? Sustainable food consumption need not be solely the preserve of Islington or Chelsea."

And while he's on the subject, here's another thing: "How environmentally sound is it to transport boxes full of organic vegetables from Devon or Cornwall to north and west London? The last box to be delivered might travel up to 20 miles on its own."

If Oglethorpe is beginning to sound like a grouchy northerner with a fat, hand-cut chip on his shoulder, then that's a false impression. He comes over, in fact, as an affable man with a beaming smile. And, right now, he has a lot to smile about. On the day we meet for lunch, the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (Defra) has confirmed a two-year, £180,000 contract for his team to look into the economic, social and environmental issues involved in food production.

We're sitting in a Newcastle quayside restaurant that prides itself on its regional and seasonal cuisine. "Perhaps I shouldn't say this in here," says Oglethorpe, lowering his voice, "but there's a misconception that local is always good. Maybe it is when it comes to providing jobs, but not necessarily if you're looking to reduce your carbon footprint. There are a lot of other factors to take into account. How much energy goes into processing the food, for instance? What's the state of the vans carrying it around?"

He uses the example of sausages to elongate his point. "If 20 local sausage-makers could displace one large-scale, centralised, national sausage-maker, the food miles bill would certainly reduce. But each of those 20 small producers would have their own vans, premises, machines and fuel bills. Basic economies of scale tell us that the large producer will be more efficient on those costs, and so will use less energy inputs. Such complexities must be addressed, as businesses throughout the supply chain attempt to reduce carbon emissions and tackle climate change."

He pauses to accept delivery of a starter of warm courgette salad with mozzarella, then resumes: "I had this debate on local radio the other day with a restaurateur who was very keen to stress that he used ingredients from the north-east in all his dishes. But he was driving in to Newcastle city centre from Alnwick, 30 miles away, in a four-by-four, picking up trays of this and that from suppliers on the way.

I like my tangerines

"At the end of the programme, a woman phoned in from Byker and said: 'I don't care what you say. I still like my tangerines.' People have become used to buying exotic items. If you buy a punnet of strawberries from Tesco, at least you know that it's travelled here with 25 tons of other stuff. Believe me, it's difficult to eat seasonally up here in February, unless you're particularly fond of turnips."

Oglethorpe ought to know. Soon after leaving Newcastle University in 1988 with a 2.1 in agricultural economics, he took a job as a farm labourer. "I used to get the mickey taken out of me for listening to Radio 4 while I was on the tractor, but I had to keep my brain going somehow." His father, a headteacher who became a school inspector, and his mother, a teacher, were not best pleased that one of their expensively educated sons was mucking out stables and driving combine harvesters for a living. So they were understandably relieved when he returned to Newcastle to do a PhD on managing agricultural systems for the benefit of the environment.

"With that, I was able to walk straight into a senior lectureship as head of economics at the Scottish Agricultural College in Edinburgh," he says. His son, Callum, still lives in the city. "Like me, he's a guitarist. But, unlike me, he's not rubbish at it." After four years in Scotland, he moved to London with his new partner Antoinette, now his wife. He promoted collaboration between farmers and retailers for English Farming and Food Partnerships.

Like the Marie Celeste

Oglethorpe never ceases to be amazed how many students are at Northumbria's business school. "I have to remember not to step out of my office on the hour, because the corridors are thronged," he says. "My old university seems like the Marie Celeste by comparison." While around 60% of Northumbria's student body comes from the north-east, the business school casts its net much further afield. "I have a dozen masters students and 10 of them are from outside the EU," he says. "It makes the place very vibrant. Lots of ideas come back from the students."

The £180,000 from Defra has enabled him to employ a research assistant and two PhD students. "We're looking at 30 different supply chains for 10 different food items," he explains. "They range from the big national and international players, with centralised distribution, to small-scale producers supplying local retailers and restaurants. We're looking at all the processes, from production to consumption, to test what's going on, what energy is being consumed, what value is being added, what price the product is hitting the market at, and what it's doing for jobs."

But surely all this information can't be relayed to the consumer without making more space on packaging by increasing its volume. "That wouldn't be very environmentally sound," he concedes with a grin. "So we're sending the information out to stakeholders - other academics and those involved in the food industry. We need some kind of composite score for each product on a whole range of issues."

Just as well consumers are being spared this information overload, or they could find themselves pondering over their shopping trolleys for longer than Blumenthal takes to cook a chicken.

Curriculum vitae 

Age: 40

Job: Professor of logistics and supply chain management at Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University

Before that: Director of economics at English Farming and Food Partnerships

Likes: cooking, running half-marathons, Italy, Newcastle United

Dislikes: misguided celebrity chefs, tofu, Sunderland FC

Married with one son

&183; This article was amended on October 24 2007. Northumbria's business school's full title is Newcastle Business School at Northumbria University. This has been corrected.