Food miles or food light years?
Wallace Currie of Bridge Farm in Shiskine has launched a Facebook page called Rural2Kitchen where followers can learn more about where food comes from.
After studying agriculture at Scotland’s Rural College, Ayr, from 2014 to 2018, Wallace completed a masters degree in food security in 2019 with a dissertation ‘In a pre-Brexit world, is global food security a consideration for Scottish farmers?’ Here he gives his view on our present situation.
In a world of minimal travel and minimal workforce, the limitations of some of the world’s practices have been made clear.
Globalisation is proving detrimental and the incentive of branching a business out further afield may be forgotten and community empowerment may begin.
The power of local is unparalleled and for the most part unknown. This is also the case with food consumption.
The food on your plate has probably travelled further in the past day than you have in a lifetime.
The energy expenditure of transport and handling is higher than that gained in food consumption. Let that sink in.
The main problem in that system is the reliance on foreign goods.
The UK is 60-70 per cent self-sufficient and all the food we produce is subsidised to keep prices down for you and me, the consumer. Production in the UK comes with the strictest animal welfare regulations, one of the highestrated required environmental compliance systems on earth, as well as creating jobs for four million people.
When we lost the abattoir on Arran, I remember thinking how far the product was going to travel to get into the food chain. The 106-mile single trip shocked me. We import from Brazil, 6,000 miles away. If we as a country could support local, be that shops, British supporting supermarkets or at the farm gate and buy solely British, our carbon footprint would plummet.
Our animals, especially in Scotland, are fed on pasture-based systems with high carbon sequestration potential. The only trend the UK animal system needs to curb is the import of animal feeds to assist with winter nutrition. Maybe that’s why we need GMO, but that can of worms can stay shut for now.
Brexit could prove threatening to what food we are used to having.
Our desire for off-season goods is another major contributor to food miles. We aren’t supposed to have strawberries in December. Why do you think they hold Wimbledon in late June? So we can have strawberries and cream. If Brexit comes with high import costs, we could well see less off-season stock on the shelves.
Don’t wait for policy to drive you. You might end up in Durham.
Try yourselves, look online for what you can grow indoors. There is so much you can grow from cress to potatoes and you don’t need much more than light, a bin and compost. If you’re lucky enough to have a garden or greenhouse, have a look to see what is best for growing there.
Remember, with a lot of fruit crops you have to try and not eat them the first year. Instead, cut back the stems and wait for the next year’s better and tastier yield.