Posts
Support Local Produce
Over 50% of vegetables and 90% of fruits consumed in the UK are imported from overseas, the majority by air. Food transport in the United Kingdom produces about 19m tonnes of Co2 per year, (equivalent to the output of all UK power stations) and this figure is increasing. However trying to increase your consumption of local produce is not only difficult, its time consuming. 100 years ago most food did not travel further than 20 miles, now you will be hard pushed to find more than a handful of items in your supermarket which have been locally produced.
Not only is food transport bad for the environment, it is also damaging to our roads, increasing congestion. One in four trucks on UK roads are transporting food, and of those one in three are empty.
So what can you do to reduce food transport;
Not only is food transport bad for the environment, it is also damaging to our roads, increasing congestion. One in four trucks on UK roads are transporting food, and of those one in three are empty.
So what can you do to reduce food transport;
- Buy Local Produce
Purchasing local produce not only reduces food transport it also improves the local economy. Details of farmers markets and farm shops can be found on the following websites;
Farmers Markets
Big Barn
Farm Shops
The Foody - Do Not Buy Imported Products
Food produce imported to the UK often is sent by air, by reducing consumption of imports this will help reduce food transport. Certain foods can only be produced outside the UK, if you can not remove these completely reduction is advised where possible. - Grow Your Own Fruit & Vegetables
Growing fruit and vegetables can be a simple task, and in a relatively small area you can provide copious amounts of fresh produce. Any excess can be given to friends, neighbours and family. Common fruits grown are tomatoes which would otherwise be imported from Spain. - Shop Weekly or Online
Each family in the UK travels 18 miles a week to food shop, by carrying out one weekly shop or by shopping online, this can easily be reduced. Not only will this reduce food transport it will also save you approximately £140 per year on average.
Whilst in Belfast yesterday I visited the infamous St Georges Market. The Variety Market opens at 6.00am every Friday and runs until approximately 1.00pm. A range of products are sold at the market including food, antiques and clothes, and each Friday there is 248 stalls, 23 of which offer fresh fish and holds the reputation for being the leading retail fish market on the island of Ireland.The original building was built between 1890 and 1896, and in 1997 received a £4.5m renovation. The market has won various national accolades;
- one of the top five UK markets in 2006 by the National Association of British Market Authorities
- Most Atmospheric Market in the UK in 2006 by the Observer newspaper.
- third Best Food Market in the UK in the Observer’s Waitrose Food Awards 2004
Whilst a large amount of produce is local, produce from further afield is also sold, you must at any market, question the origin of unless specifically stated.
3 comments:
While many of the steps you suggest are good in theory, they do not practically bear out. The fact is that Britain's population density means it has an inexorable food shortage. If everyone took up your suggestion and avoided imported foods, then demand for local food would go up. To make up on the supply side, UK farmers would have to engage in inefficient, energy wasting farm practices (utilising heating and energy in greenhouses, and fossil fuel fertilisers), because the demand for their products would mean that they could command a significant premium over imported goods. So what you should be doing is identifying the specific foods that are most wasteful, but moreover be encouraging people to reduce their overall consumption. UK farming is not, in fact, a very efficient industry, and unreservedly supporting it against a whole range of exporting nations, many of whom produce and transport food to the UK market more efficiently than UK goods, is unconscionable and unethical. It is very easy, it seems, to make grandiose greeny statements because they are easy to make: catchphrases that people can hold on to. Saying something useful and correct is a bit harder: you should give it a try.
It is true that produce from other countries may be more efficient in their production than that of the UK.
The impact of food transport can be offset to some extent if food imported to an area has been produced more sustainably than the food available locally. For example, a case study showed that it can be more sustainable (at least in energy efficiency terms) to import tomatoes from Spain than to produce them in heated greenhouses in the UK outside the summer months. Hence the suggestion of growing these at home. Another case study showed that it can be more sustainable to import organic food into the UK than to grow non-organic food in the UK. However, this was only true if the food was imported by sea, or for very short distances by road.
The UK does produce enough produce to meet the demands of UK consumers, similar amounts of foods are exported as to those imported. In total imported food accounts for almost 50% of CO2 emissions from food transport. It should be noted that air-freighted food imports account for only around 1.25% of total food imports to the UK, but they are responsible for 11% of CO2 emissions generated by UK food transport.
Buying locally also reduces the environmental, social and economic costs of food transport which are calculated at over £9 billion each year, and are dominated by congestion.
Whilst "Support Local Produce" is a grandiose green statement there is certainly reasoning behind it.
Well if you're into promoting the green lifestyle why don't you say "food imported by sea from New Zealand (sea makes up almost all exported food from new zealand, which is almost exactly antipodean to UK) has a carbon footprint of 40% less than a basket of UK produce". Thats the entire carbon footprint. In other words, your argument doesn't stand up because despite being furthest away from the market, New Zealand's produce has the least ecological impact. If you would like more infromation, New Zealand's Lincoln University has done a study on this. Yes I am a New Zealander, my environmental politics are green, and in this country we continue to battle against ecological mismanagement. But despite this, New Zealand's produce is far superior ecologically to UK produce for the UK market.
Post a Comment