Food Miles Oversimplify Local Food

There's an interesting article over at TreeHugger this week on how (and why) the notion of "Food Miles" oversimplifies local food.

This article raises many of the points I wanted to address in a very popular article I wrote after watching a disappointing report on BBC television's Countryfile.

Local food is a good idea. It is likely to be fresher, which quite likely means more tasty. It's almost certainly going to be seasonal. And it's going to require less fuel to transport (which, ultimately, means less carbon - good news if that's your measurement of choice). Besides which, the money for the food is more likely to go straight back into the local economy. All of which, I'm sure, are very good things, and important to me.

But locally-produced food doesn't automatically guarantee decent welfare for animals; local food won't always be produced without pesticides or fertilisers. And for some people, local food might mean genetically modified food - it's got to be grown somewhere, right?

As for food miles, they are one (vastly over-simplified) measure of the environmental impact of food production and consumption - largely a measure of carbon impact (which, it could be said, is yet another oversimplification). They're certainly not the only consideration.

As ever, the choices come down to what's right for you; what's important according to your own personal principles.

Related articles:

• Why Countryfile Missed the Point
  
• My Personal Principles

Local, Seasonal Fruit and Vegetables

I like tomatoes, I really do. I love their sharp sweetness, the way those little cherry tomatoes burst under the roof of my mouth. I love beef tomatoes, sliced thickly and layered with mozzarella or onion. I can't understand that people don't enjoy them. It's something to do with the texture, apparently.

For me, there's something about the deep red (or orange, or tiger-stripe) of tomato fruits that evoke summer; I can see the colour of the sky as I think about eating tomatoes outside. And there's something about the smell of tomatoes that transports me to my father's greenhouse in my childhood house, green fruit swelling on the plants; and to my own greenhouse, where the thick dark-green stalks with their downy covering exude that intense aroma.

But I can't and won't eat tomatoes when they're watery and tasteless. I asked my wife, not so long ago, if she remembered eating the last tomato she'd had, if she had tasted it. When she remembered eating one that she tasted.

She couldn't.

After that, we agreed not to buy tomatoes out of season, from foreign shores. We've made the same agreement for asparagus and strawberries and all those other vegetables that it's possible to get year-round,  but which taste best of all when they're in season, and grown locally (meaning they're picked and sold in short order, still fresh).

So last week I was pleased and surprised to find the local supermarket had tomatoes ostensibly grown in Britain. And they were tasty enough, even if they're doubtless grown with the help of lots of heated greenhouses rather than in the heat of the sun. A guilty pleasure at this time of year.

This week, they did not. Oh, they had tomatoes, from Spain and Holland, from Morocco and the Canary Islands. Too far afield. Too well-travelled. No tomatoes for me this week.

But they did also have Cox's apples and Conference pears, both from the UK. So this week I have no tomatoes, but I am knee-deep in apples and pears. The break from tomatoes will make them more special when they're available again. If I can wait for asparagus, I can wait for tomatoes. Especially when I've got apples and pears to console me.

Why Countryfile Missed the Point

This week, I was going to write about my definition of pragmatic environmentalism, and what it means to be a pragmatic environmentalist. That'll feature next week, now, as on Sunday 29th August 2010, the BBC's episode of Countryfile featured a segment about seasonal food that got me thinking (and spluttering).

The blurb from the particular segment of the programme is:

Back in the Spring, John Craven investigated what it really means to eat seasonally and looked at the environmental cost of eating un-seasonally. He asked the question "is it better to eat British food grown in heated greenhouses or to eat food flown in from abroad?" One of the UK's leading experts on ‘carbon cost’ gave John some of the answers.

This question is one that has troubled me in the past, and I was interested to see how the programme dealt with it. Especially as they mentioned some research from Bangor University, and had Prof Gareth Edwards-Jones lending credence to the programme with some "answers".

In fact, the segment touched depressingly lightly on a complex topic, was wafer-thin on facts, and drew no conclusions. Indeed, at first glance, the message seemed to be that it's better to buy tomatoes shipped in from Spain than those grown in Britain, and that it's okay to eat beans flown in from Kenya (but only if you've driven to the shops to buy them).

The segment did, I think, successfully make the point that carbon emissions are only one, rather simplistic measure of the environmental cost of food miles. Although Professor Edwards-Jones made a point about the usage (and lack) of water in Spain, it was not taken anywhere.

There then followed a short sequence of John Craven meandering through a few minutes of "climate change as opportunity for home-grown exotic fruit and veg" which was utterly ridiculous.

(I was a bit surprised by the comment on walnuts that "didn't grow in the south of France or Turkey or China". I mean, there's a walnut tree just outside my GP's surgery, here in rural North Wiltshire. Hardly the heart of the Mediterranean climate).

The piece finished with the following words of wisdom:

"But for now, it's a choice between sticking to genuinely seasonal British food, or paying the environmental price for the alternatives."

Which seems like a pretty straightforward choice.

Genuinely seasonal British food will always get my vote, every damn time.

For me, it's a trivially simple decision to buy food from the farm around the corner in preference to food of British-but-unknown-provenance. Or to buy from my local butcher, who can tell me which farm the meat is from, rather than to buy from the supermarket counter.

And I will never, but never, buy beans from Kenya - or produce from abroad that I can buy from Britain (like Canadian cherries, perhaps).

Related articles:

• My definition of pragmatic environmentalism
  
• What it means to be a pragmatic environmentalist
  

How to Make Sloe Gin (and Damson Gin too)

It's that time of year where the beautiful berries of the blackthorn can be seen cheekily gleaming from the hedgerows, and I sally forth to harvest a few to make my habitual ode to seasonality: sloe gin.

The fruit has been peeking from the hedgerows for the last couple of weeks in varying states of ripeness, and although I normally try and wait until September 1st, this week the temptation (and fear of losing a good crop to another picker!) was too much. As it happened, the first wild harvest was not sloes, but damsons; about the size of grapes, but heavier due to the weight of that big stone inside, and sporting that distinctive bluish blush.

The heavy work done, I sat down to make the first damson gin of 2010. Here's the trivially simple process so you can try it yourself.

What you'll need

• Gin, as much as you fancy. It generally comes in bottles
• Sloes, about equal in volume to your gin
• A decent whack of sugar
• A tight-sealable jar about twice the volume of your gin
• A pointy thing, such as a cocktail stick (I use a wooden one).

How to do make sloe gin

• Pick
• Prick
• Pour
• Pause
• Partake

Having picked and washed a quantity of sloes broadly equal in volume to a litre bottle of gin, I took a two-litre Kilner jar. Using the cocktail stick, I pricked each sloe a number of times and dumped them into the jar. This helps the juicy berry goodness to infuse in the gin, which is the whole point of the exercise.

When the jar was about half full of sloes, I poured in the sugar until the berries were pretty much covered, shaking the jar from time to time so that the sugar filled all the gaps between the berries. I used Fairtrade Golden Granulated sugar, but you'll doubtless choose sugar appropriate to your personal ethics and tastes. Or whatever is in the cupboard.

After a final shake, of the sugar and berries, I added the gin and gave it yet another good shake. The whole gin-berry-sugar concoction is now sitting in a dark cupboard. I'll give the jar a bit of a shake once a week or so to help the sugar dissolve. After a while, it'll have magically vanished into the by-then deep-purple liquid.

It'll take a fair while for the flavours to infuse properly, and you should expect to leave it three, four, or even six months before you strain off the fruit and begin sampling. The advantage of making sloe gin so early in the year is that it might just be ready in time for a Christmas tipple. Slurp!