Poll: Seasonal Food

As long as the product can be grown locally it should be sourced locally.

As far as I’m concerned it’s not about the little guy vs the big guy.. it’s about reducing food miles and protecting the environment.

As with decadent foods, I believe that fruit and vegetables that cannot be grown locally should only be used for special occasions and sparingly. Even if our purchase of bananas and mangoes, coffee and chocolate help poor farmers and communities in the short term, in the long term, if we continue to ship produce across our not-so-small planet, it will do so much damage that we will be able to farm our own bananas and mangoes here soon – cutting them out anyway.

If you can’t live without this produce that is shipped from different countries, move somewhere that does grow them locally. That way you fly there once and stay there rather than fruit and veg flying half way across the world on a weekly basis for your convenience.

No matter if the produce is grown in an environmentally friendly way, it’s still got to get to whereever you are right? That kinda cancels out the eco-friendly growing conditions.

I’ll quite happily live without that produce if it means the Earth will stop getting warm.

I’m all for local but I’m not going to give up coffee and chocolate. Like much else in my life I strive to do my best and realize that my failures could be worse.

I didn’t mean to start a big controversy, just to say that I mave mixed views on the subject. Bonnie makes a great point, which I hadn’t really thought about. In a post I’ll put up tonight when I get back from college I mention the fact that my fish was sourced from sustainable stocks in Iceland. But I failed to notice that it had to be shipped to the UK. On the other hand, as Brylinn says, I don’t want to retreat to localism and miss out on the great produce that the rest of the world has on offer. What prompted this and what I really don’t like is the globalisation of cuisine as with top restaurants in Australasia, Asia and America all service Modern European Cuisine and not looking at their own produce, spices, etc. I don’t want the world to all be separate, but nor do I want the world to be the same. I just want it to be different and enjoy the differences.

I can’t vote in the poll Scott, because it doesn’t really give me the right choices. I want a “yes, but…” option.

Some friends started the Rusper Vegetable Company 9http://www.ruspervegetables.com/) for this reason. Not necessarily organic produce, but rather seasonal and sourced locally. It certainly cuts down the carbon cost of your veg.

I actually don’t live anywhere near, so I only get my vegetables from them when down there for a meeting, but a lot of it is so much nicer than those from my local sainsbury’s.

There are a number of box schemes like the Rusper Vegetable Company serving different local areas, so people should be encouraged to find and use them.

While I voted “yes, it’s worth it” I think there is room for reasoned debate on the matter. A great resource for information is Peter Singer’s book “The Way We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter”- where he argues that, among other things, sometimes food from far away actually has LESS environmental impact than locally grown food. He talks about the fact that if you drive in your car for 45 minutes to a local market, you’ve used up relatively more fossil fuel than if you bought the same thing that was shipped by boat from thousands of miles away. Even worse is if you are in a cold climate and your local farmer uses fossil fuels to raise local produce (heated greenhouse, etc.)

I don’t think my comment made it through cyberspace.
We try to eat from the local producers. We’re in a small community and everyone sells from the farms. I think seasonal eating adds an overall diversity to a diet and I like the idea of eating foods that haven’t been stored and then ‘flash’ripened.
Great articles and comments.