Why buy local
The food that we choose to buy and eat has an enormous influence on our culture,
landscape and health. Unfortunately, we currently have a food system that
serves the best interests of a centralised industry: major supermarkets control
88% of the market, a far greater concentration of retail power than in the
rest of the EU or even in the USA. Recent research has shown that the interests
of communities, the environment and our health are much better served by diverse
local food and farming systems.
Although 70% of people say that they would prefer to shop locally it's not
always easy to source local food. The Scarborough Local Food Group has produced
a local food guide to make it easier for us to enjoy
and thrive on local food.
Buying local food is good for our purses, our health, our landscape, our
community and our local economy.
Buy local food and enjoy . . .
- fresh food that tastes better because it has travelled less distance
- boosting the local economy - £10 spent with a local food business
generates £25 for the local area, compared with only £14 for the
same amount spent in a supermarket
- good value for money - local vegetables and meat bought at markets are on
average 30% cheaper than those from supermarkets
- spending less on packaging
- reducing the number of lorries on our roads - food is responsible for more
lorries on our roads than any other commodity
- creating more jobs for local people
You can make a difference
If the population of Scarborough and Filey
spent £1 a week on local food, it would save £190,000 a year on
the environmental costs of intensive farming practices and the transport of
food over long distances. If we spent a £1 a week on local organic
food, it would save £356,000 a year on those environmental costs.
Lots of reasons to buy local food
Buy local – eat fresher food
Food that is transported long distances may be weeks old. Fruit and vegetables
are treated with chemicals and stored in artificially controlled conditions
just to stop them going rotten.
Buy local – reduce CO2 emissions
Transport of food by air causes the highest CO2 emissions per tonne. Its
use more than doubled between 1992 and 2002.
Buy local – improve animal welfare
Animals reared and slaughtered locally will not have travelled long distances
in lorries. This is kinder to them.
Buy local – reduce landfill
At least a quarter of household waste is packaging, two thirds of which
is from food. Buy local and reduce the amount of packaging going into landfills
or being incinerated and producing pollutants.
Buy local – reduce the spread of diseases
Reducing the distances that animals travel hinders the development of national
and international disease epidemics such as foot-and-mouth disease.
Buy local – save local jobs
Every time a large supermarket opens, there is a net average loss of 276
retailing jobs within a 10-mile radius.
Buy local – spend less on packaging
The average British household spends £470 per year on packaging --
almost a sixth of food expenditure. Fresh local foods require less packaging,
processing and refrigeration. Buy local and spend your money on food rather
than packaging.
Buy local – save money
Price comparison studies during the last year have shown that supermarkets
are up to 52% more expensive than local independent shops for fresh ingredients,
such as meat, delicatessen items and fruit and vegetables.
Buy local – reduce food miles
A traditional Sunday lunch could easily have travelled 25,000 miles before
reaching your plate.
Chicken from Thailand 10,691 miles by ship
Runner beans from Zambia 4,912 miles by plane
Carrots from Spain 1,000 miles by lorry
Mangetout from Zimbabwe 5,130 miles by plane
Potatoes from Italy 1,521 miles by lorry
Sprouts from Britain 125 miles by lorry
Transport of imported goods from port of entry to distribution centre: 625
miles. Transport from distribution centres to supermarket: 360 miles. TOTAL
26,234 miles
Choosing and buying local seasonal foods, at a farmers' market for instance,
could reduce the total distance to 376 miles, 1/66th of the distance needed
for the above meal.
Buy local – eat tastier food
Fruit and vegetable varieties are being bred with characteristics which
maximise the profits of big companies at the expense of nutrition and taste.
Transnational food companies and supermarkets value hardiness under monocultural
growing conditions, the ability to travel long distances and a long shelf-life
more highly than nutritional content and taste.
Buy local – eat naturally ripened food
Tomatoes are often picked green and hard so that they can survive mechanical
harvesting and long-distance transport, and then artificially ripened in rooms
pumped full of ethylene gas. As we all know, these tomatoes are much less
tasty and nutritious than ripe, locally grown tomatoes.
Buy local – for better value
Supermarkets use “loss leaders” to entice customers into the store by giving
the impression that everything there is cheap. Bread and milk are “known value
items”, so they are priced low, but less familiar products can often be obtained
more cheaply from local independent shops. This is especially true of fresh
fruit and vegetables.
Buy local – support local producers
Today, just 9p in every £1 spent on food and drink goes back to primary
producers, whereas 50 years ago, 50--60p in every £1 spent on food and
drink went to farmers.
Buy local – save money
A typical out-of-town superstore causes £25,000 worth of congestion,
pollution and associated damage to the local community every week.
Buy local – reduce food miles
Food miles increased by 15% in the 10 years to 2002. In the same period,
the use of air freight to transport food more than doubled.
Buy local – reduce traffic congestion
The use of heavy goods vehicles to transport food has doubled since 1974.
Food transport accounts for 25% of all the miles driven by HGVs on our roads.
Buy local – enjoy variety
Two thirds of farmers say supermarket demands for conformity have led them
to give up otherwise productive varieties of fruit. There are 550 varieties
of pears native to Britain, yet 94% of eating pears grown on British farms
consist of just three varieties. Seek out variety -- buy local.
Buy local – avoid waste
Supermarkets impose such extreme cosmetic standards -- such as shape and
uniformity -- on food that lots of perfectly edible food is wasted. Between
40% and 50% of raw vegetables and salads are rejected at some stage of the
production line before reaching the supermarket shopper.
Buy local – keep our land productive
Britain is becoming more dependent on imported food. Between 1990 and 2000,
British fruit and vegetable production fell by 37%. Food imports have risen
by almost 25% since the early 1990s.
Buy local – reduce CO2 emissions
The transport of food is responsible for more lorries on our roads than
any other single commodity. The amount of food being transported increased
by 20% between 1978 and 1998. Road transport is one of the fastest-growing
sources of CO2 and accounts for around 20% of total emissions. Buy local and
reduce CO2 emmissions.
Each year 105,000 tonnes of English butter are exported from the UK whilst
230,000 tonnes of butter are imported. Buy local and reduce this madness.
In 1997, 126 million litres of liquid milk was imported into the UK at the
same time as 270 million litres was exported out of the UK
Buy local – reduce packaging
Fresh local foods require less packaging, processing and refrigeration.
For example, frozen peas require 250% as much energy as do fresh peas, whilst
aluminium tinned peas require 450% of that for fresh peas.
Buy local – for good value genuine food
Although processed foods are often made with waste products from the food
industry, such as maize starch and sugar beet fibre, the costs of marketing,
packaging and transportation mean that they are more expensive than the pure
food that they are mimicking. For example Northern Foods’ Dalepak lamb grills
cost £8.45 a kilo; almost twice the price of genuine lamb chops from
a local butcher.
Buy local – support local farms
Farmers' incomes have fallen by over 60% between 1995 and 1999, and the
number of farms has fallen from 233,000 to 168,000 in the last ten years.
Buy local and support your local farms.
Buy local – reduce food miles
Food is travelling further than ever before. Within the UK, a tonne of food
now travels an average distance of 76 miles, whereas the distance was 51 miles
in 1978. Buy local and reduce food miles.
