Buying local

Do you care where your food comes from? Do you go into the supermarket and load up with the cheapest recognisable brand product and head to the till? When buying sausages or burgers does it matter to you whether the meat has been stripped off the bone by power hoses, and all sorts of undesirable body parts minced up? Perhaps you look at the strawberries, see they have been flown in from Morocco when you know that delicious strawberries are grown in Scotland right now.

According to the Office for National Statistics, our weekly food shop, excluding alcohol, falls steadily and is now just over 10 per cent of our average household income. Supermarkets have driven down prices to a level where our farming is barely viable; Britain imports 61 per cent of its food, down from 80 per cent 30 years ago, and security of food supply has shown to be a real concern.

What I am trying to convey is that there is a cost to cheap food, flowers or clothing. You can get bigger and cheaper but someone is paying, perhaps in the almost starvation wages of Leicester garment makers or industrial abattoirs where ‘sub contractors’ make appalling money in terrible conditions. In Kenya your cheap roses might well have been irrigated by water pumped from Lake Naivasha, taking it to unsustainably low levels. It might be that your apples or peas tasted less good than you remember when you were young. What has changed?

During lockdown I sense that with a reluctance to go to supermarkets, people discovered the benefits of buying local. Our village shops did a fantastic job of keeping well stocked and in Scotland we have the launch of supportlocal.scot directory, and it’s clear what an amazing role Food Lochaber and Food from Argyll play.

Scotland’s food and drink industry is world class, with combined sales of £15 billion, of which our whisky and salmon are a significant percentage. We export all over the world, yet here at home do we appreciate our world-class beef, lamb, seafood etc. that is so sought after elsewhere?

Locally the word got out that Lochaber Larder had teamed up with Glen Spean Brewery* and Iain Stewart Fishmonger, and that the most delicious local produce could be delivered to your door while we enjoyed our superlative early summer. The scallop and prawn fishermen didn’t have restaurants or overseas markets to sell to and were more than delighted to sell at the jetty to any local who dropped by, with Tobermory Fish Company and Ethical Shellfish organising deliveries in chilled vans. Many of us discovered the benefits of growing our own vegetables and now have salad that will grow until late September.

Anja Baak from Great Glen Charcuterie (pictured), in Roy Bridge, says: ‘I think a lot of people are feeling more connected to food and really thinking about where it comes from; they like to connect to growers and producers.’

Supplies of flour and yeast soared as families rediscovered baking and at home we enjoyed barbecues of Roshven Hill Farm beef burgers from nearby, which had its cattle butchered at the Mull abattoir. How pleasing to know the lady who reared the calves, to see the animals age on the hillside and know they had been dispatched in the most humane way, with the burgers consisting of ingredients we would be pleased to know about.

Is it a middle-class thing to be able to afford local food? If money is spent on takeaways and ready-to-eat meals, then actually batch cooking with quality ingredients is almost certainly cheaper, as well as higher quality. But buying local is not just about the food or drink, it’s about community, friendship, laughter, knowing you are helping your neighbour and getting a fresher, healthier product in return. The middleman is cut out, you are buying from source.

All over the world there are thriving street markets, yet we only have a sparse one in Fort William at one end of town. We need them up and down the West Coast, a fish stand, butcher, a delicatessen with cheese and cured meats, vegetables picked that morning, delicious baking. It would make the high street buzz, help the other retailers and revive the sense of community.

Will this era of local buying continue? Are we prepared to pay a bit more for the locally sourced, higher quality product from people we know? Do you accept that these micro businesses are the lifeblood of our local society and economy, and if we have decent regular farmers market in our towns will you support them?

*Co-owned by Ian Peter MacDonald.