11 January 2009
The Luscious Logic of Local
14/01/09 09:02
A truly effective local food economy may be many years away and yet the concept is gaining popular appeal. Slowly but surely consumers are beginning to think Local and, if they cannot actually grow their own food, they want to buy Local. This is an article that I wrote for the January 09 Chichester Organic Gardening Society newsletter. COGS meet on the last Monday of the month from September until April at 19:30 at the Basil Shippam Centre, Tozer Way, ST Pancras, Chichester. PO19 4LG. All are welcome.
Local food makes sense to me - delicious, varied and seasonal sense. Whether living in the City or surrounding villages we are never far from some beautiful and productive countryside in the Chichester district. Not that all the countryside boasts particularly good soil - much of it is only grade 3 out of 5 - and growing conditions are very different north and south of the Downs.
Mr Upton’s annual display of pumpkins may not be organic but it is one of the best local food tourist attractions in the area
Eating with the seasons gives a chance to enjoy a wide variety of foods and, whilst we might all be bored to tears with swedes and cabbages by the end of March, we will welcome them again in the autumn. I am happy to eat apples only when the local fruits are available and to gorge on rhubarb and berries for the rest of the year. Eating local keeps our money in the local economy too - we tend to buy from local shops or directly from producers, and it stops the homogenisation of the High Street. As we face a time of reduced finances it is up to us all to decide how we spend what money we have and I, for one, would like to plough my pennies into Local. Of course we must trade and have always done so, but when we want to buy bananas, citrus, spices, tea, coffee and cocoa and sugar, we should strive to buy fairly traded produce - Chichester is, after all, a Fairtrade City.
I now have to make a major confession. Until I became involved in Transition Chichester I was utterly On The Fence about organics. Having consulted to Waitrose for 11 years I am a great fan of LEAF, a scheme they champion. It is a marque promoting integrated farm management with minimum interventions into crops, i.e. restricted use of inputs, fertilisers and pesticides. It is the best way of producing fruits and vegetables for the mass market - i.e. the supermarkets.
Many saddleback pigs are reared organically in the Chichester area - this one is part of a private pig co-operative at the Aldingbourne Country Centre
Producing for the mass market inevitably leads to waste, as does the perceived need to offer imported exotics, often picked with no chance of ripening into the delicious treats that they are in their native settings. Until people stop buying out of season fare we will continue to be offered it by multiple retailers, keen to improve their results year on year. Food waste and the environmental costs of bringing produce to Chichester from depots up and down the country, yet alone from half way around the world, will continue to mount.
In terms of spreading the Organic Word, many shoppers are put off by the premium that organic food commands because of lower yields and higher labour costs owing to hand weeding, etc. We will fail to see the real value of local, organic food until the true cost of the indiscriminate use of oil-derived interventions for mass production is appreciated, both financially, as cheap food cannot be sustained for very much longer, and environmentally, as we see how non-productive over-used land becomes without added synthetic fertilisers.
Even if we have to import some foods like almonds and cranberries, most of our food can be produced locally
Yes, I just said Local, Organic food. I have become convinced that the ultimate goal of a responsible food society is to produce local food by organic methods. I think it would also be possible for communities to succeed in producing a fair proportion of the food that they need in this way. It will require a huge change of culinary expectation but local, seasonal food is far from boring and offers an ever-changing menu (except when those swedes and cabbages seem to endlessly be the only veg available!).
It will take many years for us to reach such a goal and the biggest challenge will be to start to change the mindset of those who regularly jump into their cars to shop at a one-stop supermarket. Until the majority start to think about buying local - and the costs of not doing so - we will make little significant change. Local will be the first step for most, and organic local food may be many years hence for the majority of consumers. You, as organic gardeners, have the upper hand here and are at the cutting edge of this ‘Back to the Future’ way of life. But incremental changes will start to mount up and, who knows, perhaps the speed of change will amaze us all?
Local food makes sense to me - delicious, varied and seasonal sense. Whether living in the City or surrounding villages we are never far from some beautiful and productive countryside in the Chichester district. Not that all the countryside boasts particularly good soil - much of it is only grade 3 out of 5 - and growing conditions are very different north and south of the Downs.
Mr Upton’s annual display of pumpkins may not be organic but it is one of the best local food tourist attractions in the area
Eating with the seasons gives a chance to enjoy a wide variety of foods and, whilst we might all be bored to tears with swedes and cabbages by the end of March, we will welcome them again in the autumn. I am happy to eat apples only when the local fruits are available and to gorge on rhubarb and berries for the rest of the year. Eating local keeps our money in the local economy too - we tend to buy from local shops or directly from producers, and it stops the homogenisation of the High Street. As we face a time of reduced finances it is up to us all to decide how we spend what money we have and I, for one, would like to plough my pennies into Local. Of course we must trade and have always done so, but when we want to buy bananas, citrus, spices, tea, coffee and cocoa and sugar, we should strive to buy fairly traded produce - Chichester is, after all, a Fairtrade City.
I now have to make a major confession. Until I became involved in Transition Chichester I was utterly On The Fence about organics. Having consulted to Waitrose for 11 years I am a great fan of LEAF, a scheme they champion. It is a marque promoting integrated farm management with minimum interventions into crops, i.e. restricted use of inputs, fertilisers and pesticides. It is the best way of producing fruits and vegetables for the mass market - i.e. the supermarkets.
Many saddleback pigs are reared organically in the Chichester area - this one is part of a private pig co-operative at the Aldingbourne Country Centre
Producing for the mass market inevitably leads to waste, as does the perceived need to offer imported exotics, often picked with no chance of ripening into the delicious treats that they are in their native settings. Until people stop buying out of season fare we will continue to be offered it by multiple retailers, keen to improve their results year on year. Food waste and the environmental costs of bringing produce to Chichester from depots up and down the country, yet alone from half way around the world, will continue to mount.
In terms of spreading the Organic Word, many shoppers are put off by the premium that organic food commands because of lower yields and higher labour costs owing to hand weeding, etc. We will fail to see the real value of local, organic food until the true cost of the indiscriminate use of oil-derived interventions for mass production is appreciated, both financially, as cheap food cannot be sustained for very much longer, and environmentally, as we see how non-productive over-used land becomes without added synthetic fertilisers.
Even if we have to import some foods like almonds and cranberries, most of our food can be produced locally
Yes, I just said Local, Organic food. I have become convinced that the ultimate goal of a responsible food society is to produce local food by organic methods. I think it would also be possible for communities to succeed in producing a fair proportion of the food that they need in this way. It will require a huge change of culinary expectation but local, seasonal food is far from boring and offers an ever-changing menu (except when those swedes and cabbages seem to endlessly be the only veg available!).
It will take many years for us to reach such a goal and the biggest challenge will be to start to change the mindset of those who regularly jump into their cars to shop at a one-stop supermarket. Until the majority start to think about buying local - and the costs of not doing so - we will make little significant change. Local will be the first step for most, and organic local food may be many years hence for the majority of consumers. You, as organic gardeners, have the upper hand here and are at the cutting edge of this ‘Back to the Future’ way of life. But incremental changes will start to mount up and, who knows, perhaps the speed of change will amaze us all?
Ethical eating - a worry too far?
13/01/09 20:42
I was at a lecture recently where the audience was challenged to eat one meal a week at which they knew the provenance of all the ingredients. As a food writer I make it my business to know as much as I can about the food that I cook and yet, in reality, even I don’t know as much as I should.
During 2009 I am going to learn as much as I can about local food, here in Chichester. I also want to find the stories, good and bad, behind the foods on offer in my local shops, including two supermarkets, Waitrose and the Co-op. I have to declare that I was a consultant to Waitrose for eleven years and am well versed in their approach to agricultural practice. The Co-op is new to me and, as they are establishing a very good and convenient chain of convenience stores in my local area, I will try to find out more about their sourcing policy and suppliers. I have chosen the Co-op as, up and down the country in towns and rural areas, food writers and cooks that I respect tell me that they are increasingly using their local Co-ops and that they are more than satisfied with the goods on offer.
Local Cox apples on the grading machine prior to bagging and selling
Many broadsheets and magazines run features on local food, but they are on-offs and do not provide a year-round guide to shopping in one area. Whether you live in Chichester or not, if you follow this blog I hope that it will provide the questions that you will want to ask for the food produced and sold in your area.
Ethical Eating sounds so boring but I feel that my journey towards greater knowledge of what I eat will be empowering and that I shall be even happier with the food that I eat.
Mushroom farms were common in the Chichester area up to a decade ago. Now the nearest one that I know of is at Leckford, near Stockbridge in Hampshire.
I start with these preconceptions:
That there is no such thing as cheap food without someone being expoited
That economical food does not have to be boring food
That I would miss spices, tea, coffee and cocoa more than any other imported foods
That bananas and citrus fruits are the main fresh fruits that I would miss, and that dried vine fruits are also necessary in my store-cupboard. We do need to trade and we should try to buy fairly traded foods when we trade with producers in the Developing World.
I don't know whether my shopping habits will change at the end of this exercise, but my first posting tomorrow will explain my long-term hopes at this stage of my culinary journey.