Buying local food
TheSite.org looks into why buying locally produced food is good for the producers - and good for you.
Because of the ingredients printed on the back of our food packaging most people think they have a good idea what goes into the making of their food. What they don't see however are the hidden costs and materials. For instance ten litres of orange juice may need a litre of diesel fuel for processing and transport, and 220 litres of water for irrigation and washing the fruit. This doesn't take into account the added cost to the environment of the pollution caused by the transportation of the goods.
An end to local fruits
As the production and distribution of the majority of our food falls more and more under the control of a select few multi-national super market chains, food miles are becoming an issue of increasing concern. The cost to third world countries forced to produce cash crops for export instead of food for local consumption is incalculable both in economic and environmental terms. Here in Britain we are also suffering, since 1950 we have lost three quarters of our orchards because we now import far more French and South African apples for sale at cheaper prices on our supermarket shelves. Production of other indigenous fruit such as strawberries and raspberries has also decreased by 60% over the last twenty years.
The power of the supermarket
The problem often lies with the supermarkets constant drive towards cheaper goods, which makes it impossible for many local farmers to sell their produce. "The food market has swung enormously towards the supermarkets," says Seumus Graham, an agricultural spokesman from the House of Lords, "They control a huge proportion of the volume of food and they're in a position where they screw the price down and down and down and anybody who can keep supplying at that price stays in the game and everyone else goes out." One solution that the average consumer can help support, Seumus suggests, is the rise of the farmer's market. "
The subject has been particularly to the fore recently because of Lord Haskin's report on the future of farming, which says that we need to reduce the number of people in the supply chain. Obviously if you're a farmer selling your produce in a farmer's market you've reduced your supply chain to the ultimate. The hope is that the consumer will get fresher produce and they'll get to see the chap who's been involved with it all along. And you can judge from his patter as much as anything else what you're getting to eat."
A local alternative
There are currently over 2,000 farmers markets in Britain, where farmers sell a remarkable variety of their own produce direct to the public, thereby keeping food miles to the barest minimum. Because the supply chain has been reduced the prices of the food are far more competitive than your local supermarket and that's not the only benefit, as Kelly Richardson of the Barleylands Farmer's Market in Basildon explains: "To sell at a farmers market the producers have to either make the food themselves or have some sort of involvement in the process of making of the food, or rearing the food, or growing the food. So they've got a good background knowledge of where the food comes from, how it was produced and what was done with it, which is better than you can read on a packet."
Article produced by the Choose Action Alliance.
