Food Security

I was shopping in a big supermarket yesterday. The mange tout & sugar snap peas came from Peru. The green beans came from Kenya. Why aren't we growing these basic vegetables in the UK? It is the season when they can easily be grown here. My husband grew green beans every year. They are prolific. 

Beans from Kenya come by air freight. Kenya is 4,475 air miles away. Kenya sends out about 350 tonnes of vegetables and cut flowers each night ready to be sold next day in UK supermarkets. Leguminous vegetables (peas, beans, mange tout) constitute the largest proportion of Kenyan imports to the UK. Kenya is on the East coast of Africa.

Peru is on the West coast of South America. Air transit time from Peru to an airport in the UK is approximately 3 days. It is 4,032 air miles away. Transit time by sea from Peru to port in the UK is approximately 28 days. Peru is now the world leader in blueberry exports, growing from 223 metric tonnes in 2021-22 to more than 286MT in 2022-23. It is the UK's largest source of blueberries.

I fail to see the logic of transporting basic foodstuffs half way round the world by ship, never mind by air. The cost, financially & in terms of air pollution, must be huge. Then there is the ethical & human cost. The key to this is money. Agricultural workers in countries like South America & Sub Saharan Africa get minimum wages. The minimum wage in the UK is much higher. We get cheap food because the people who harvest it are not paid as much as we would have to pay workers here.

We routinely buy fruit & veg out of season. I would say we shop quite mindlessly. We just select what we fancy or what we need for a recipe. Much of it is frozen & that impacts on the quality. I'm tired of complaining to supermarkets because apples rot when left at room temperature after being frozen. I spent much of my late teens & twenties in rural Herefordshire, where there were orchards everywhere, log ago grubbed up because there weren't enough people to pick them. I've now reached the point where I'm looking at the origins of all the fruit & veg I buy because so much travels huge distances in refrigerated containers. 

We are an island. We need to be as self sufficient in food as possible. We should have learned that after 2 world wars. Hopefully there won't be a third, but that really isn't the point. In a world disrupted by the climate emergency food production is being adversely affected worldwide. Wars elsewhere impact on food production. Acute hunger remains persistently high in 59 countries with 1 in 5 people assessed in need of critical urgent action.

It isn't just fruit & veg. There is a dark side to the flower trade. There is widespread exploitation of workers. In numerous flower-producing regions, the rights of laborers are trampled underfoot. Workers, predominantly women, are subjected to grueling hours, meagre wages, and rough working conditions. The danger of pesticide exposure is a risk, with many bearing the brunt of health issues due to insufficient protective measures.Then there is the environmental toll taken by the flower trade. From water-intensive farming to the rampant use of fertilizers and pesticides, the industry has carved deep scars into our environment. Even the process of shuttling these blossoms across continents leaves a carbon footprint that feeds into our mounting climate crisis.

Like so many areas of so called civilised life our choices & decisions are coming back to bite us. We really didn't think enough about the long term impact & results of so many consumer choices we made over the years. We became mindless consumers. We didn't think things through or even care what our choices were doing to our world or to people in other countries.

Well we do know now. The evidence is easily accessible & overwhelming. We need to stop, think, & make better choices for everyones sake.