Here's a food-biased summary of a document called An Ecological Footprint Analysis of Essex, commissioned by ECC in 2004 (link here). It's a shame the same document specifically for Colchester doesn't exist, but it's a good starting point. My added comments are in blue.

Food consumption data for Essex was not available. Instead data for the East of England was used as an alternative.

Food type             Per capita consumption (kg/yr)

Domestic food                  928

of which…

Animal-based                    339

Plant-based                      589

Sources: DEFRA 2000 and Eurostat 2001

What this means: We eat, on average in Essex, 928kg of food each per year. 37% is animal-based, 63% plant-based.

Essex’s domestic food ecological footprint

Food category         Total footprint (gha)         Per capita footprint (gha)

Food                            2,045,836                          1.56

of which…

Animal-based            1,566,088                           1.19

Plant-based                  479,748                             0.37

What this means: The food we currently eat has an ecological footprint of 1.56 global hectares per person per year. To live within our share of the World's resources (ie total World resources divided by total World population) we need to have a footprint of 1.9gha per capita - and that's for everything, not just food!

Although it makes up only 37% of the food we eat, the meat and dairy industry creates 77% of the Essex population's food-based ecological footprint.

Essex’s land use, by type

Accurate land use data broken down by agricultural land classification (ALC) grades was available for Essex, covering a region of 3,477 km2 (Essex County Council, 2002).

Land type       (%)            Land area in km2

Arable             29                     1,023

Pasture           60                     2,095

Built land          7                      234

Woodland        4                     125

Total land       100                   3,477

Source: Pers. Comm., 2003

But diesel is only one of the uses for oil and gas. Another, possibly more important use, is petrochemicals.

Nitrogen is one of the most important elements in fertilisers. In the most common method, the Haber-Bosch process, hydrogen is combined with nitrogen to form ammonia. It requires high temperatures and strong atmospheric pressure, therefore a great deal of energy. The nitrogen is taken from the atmosphere while the hydrogen is obtained from natural gas. The process became economical in the 1920s and since then, fertilisers have become indispensable. Worldwide use of commercial fertiliser more than doubled between the late 1960s and early 1980s.

The use of fertilisers allows farmers to grow the same crops each year, rather than rotating (previously farmers planted fields with legumes that restored nitrogen to the soil.)

Oil and gas are also used in the production of many herbicides and pesticides.