Haddington Communities Day June 21, 2008
Posted by jsquires in : Uncategorized , trackback
For the stall at Haddington Communities Day we made a display showing the food miles of various bits of fruit and veg. It was a strange experience going round Tesco’s deliberately buying things that had come a long way! The potatoes were particularly surprising - there were some from Aberlady, about 5 miles away, some from Jersey (470 miles), and some all the way from Israel (2500 miles). Another surprise were the onions - despite UK onions coming into season, it is still possible to buy ones from Argentina - 7500 miles distant.
Of course it’s not always clear cut - because of methods of production you may be better from a CO2 point of view buying say butter from a long way away that has been made from cows that can stay outside all the time and don’t need to eat anything but grass. But generally speaking, it surely is not a good idea to bring food from the other side of the world when we are surrounded by prime agricultural land here in East Lothian. The idea of the stall was to get people to think - food production and distribution is a large part of our carbon footprint because eating is something you have to do such a lot of. If we are going to move to a sustainable lifestyle, that means aiming for eating local, seasonal, organic produce, as well less meat generally.
Penguins Against Climate Change also put in an appearance at the stall. Their numbers were boosted by Snowmen for a Cool Planet, worried about their long term job security. They said the Berg they floated down on used to be 2 miles across, though it is now a mere half metre or so, and has been moulded by the action of the sea to look remarkably like an upturned bath tub. Nice to see you again, penguins.
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