Most people in the UK live in towns and many have no contact with how and where different foods are produced. The global nature of the supermarket ensures availability year round, and a simple glance around the supermarket shelves makes it impossible to determine the seasonality of our food.
The decline of seasonal food is sad for several reasons. Firstly, when faced with an abundance of foods, there is a strong tendency to take them for granted. Remember how exciting is was when, as a child, strawberry season approached. Now they can be bought in the middle of the darkest winter which leads on to the second point. Taste! Year-round food is often a poor replica of seasonal food in terms of taste. Varieties are used to maximize harvest, to survive a poly-tunnel existence or for increased shelf life. The result means that taste is the sacrificial lamb. Thirdly, food miles. By the time year-round food reaches the plate, it has seen hundreds if not thousands of transport miles. This is one of the leading causes of the environmental damage scientists keep talking about.
So what’s the answer? Well, the first step is to try and source food from local suppliers. It’s not good enough just to purchase food that is ‘British’, it must also be grown locally. If your carrots are grown in south Devon yet you live in northern Scotland, they have to travel hundreds of miles, polluting the environment as they travel.
Seasonal food often has an alliance with local food. The closer to home your food is grown, the more likely it is to be seasonal. Currently environmental costs are enormous. A report published in 2005 calculated the financial savings if all food was sourced from within 20 km from where it is eaten. Environmental and congestion costs would drop by £2.3bn to under £230m per year.
Co-author of the report, Professor Jules Pretty from the University of Essex, UK said, “the most political act we do on a daily basis is to eat, as our actions affect farms, landscapes and food businesses”. “Food miles are more significant than we previously thought, and much now needs to be done to encourage local production and consumption of food.”
http://www.localfoodworks.org/
http://www.rivercottage.net/index.jsp
http://www.foodethicscouncil.org/