Shoppers realising that local is best

SHOPPERS who routinely frequent supermarkets (and that’s the vast majority of them) will already have noticed it happening: the creation of apparently tempting mountains of food that will in due course enable the country to celebrate Christmas, that annual display of conspicuous over-consumption that once had religious connotations.

Of course, if things run true to form then it will eventually emerge that in their haste to source as much stock as possible for the Christmas rush supermarkets have overbought, and large proportions of these mountains will be unsold and will end up being remaindered on December 27.

In fact between what shops dump and what families throw away as a result, equally, of having overbought, Christmas represents a large spike on the chart plotting the amount of food we waste throughout the year.

But Christmas also represents, we should not forget, an opportunity for stores to bump up the balance sheet by taking advantage of the mood approaching panic-buying that grips many families at this time of the year. They equally know that with the aisles crowded and shoppers under a degree of time pressure that fewer people are going to worry about stopping and checking labels before they buy.

So what better time for slipping quantities of cheap and inferior imports through under the shoppers’ radar? The displays will have all the appearance of providing the ingredients for a ‘traditional’ British Christmas, of course. But will the ‘traditional’ turkey (frozen) come from a British farm or an Eastern European one? Will the ‘traditional’ ham or succulent-looking pork joint have been sourced from a British pig or one speaking with a pronounced Dutch or Danish accent? The ‘tradi- tional’ beef joint British or Polish via Ireland?

And what about the vegetables? Home-grown or imported (fresh or travel-weary, in other words)?

Will people remember the complaints there were last year about turkeys which had turned green and smelly once people had thawed them?

Family Christmases were ruined as a result of shoppers being palmed off with cheap imported birds which had been improperly processed in Poland. Forget the incessant Christmas songs and carols, forget the abundant free samples, forget the staff in fancy dress: in supermarkets Christmas has become one long exercise in cynical manipulation of the consumer.

Happily more and more people are beginning to see through it all, according to a report released last week. Consumers in their droves are turning back to independent greengrocers (the relatively few that have survived, that is) following the mass gravitation back to independent butchers that followed the Horsegate scandal a few years ago.

They are looking for food that is fresh, traceable and – where possible – local. Trade at farmers’ markets is reportedly picking up for exactly the same reasons. British shoppers are finally starting to realise that far from being better big can actually mean worse – and it is up to all farmers to encourage and foster that trend.

‘Family Christmases were ruined by cheap imported birds which had been improperly processed’