The best way to cut down on food miles is to grow your own (GYO), I think that in the coming years those that can (have a garden or access to an allotment) will be doing just this. It will make sense to do so in terms of reducing food miles, which we know can harm the environment, and also as transportation costs increase with rising enery prices it will be cheaper to GYO than purchase from your local supermarket. For those that dont have access to a garden or allotment consider the local producer option, farmers markets, local wholesale markets and locally produced delivery schemes, such as organic veg box’s.

The biggest problem at the moment is that carbon footprinting and energy cosumption auditing is at a very early stage of development, in cosequence many figures produced to support one method of food production and delivery over another are very difficult to authenticate and until there is a global standard which is adopted by food suppliers worldwide this will remain the case.

My advice at the moment is to make your own judgement, if you feel shipping beans by air from Kenya is damaging the environment and eating locally produced seasonal veg is better then go with that, however remember that there is usually a flip side to all issues, in the case of beans it is the support of third world farmers whos country generates hard currency income from those exports and provides an income for the farmers.

Its not always clear cut when judging food miles as a criteria for food purchasing or non purchase. Once again the advice is use your own judgement and take all the figures that are presented with a large pinch of salt.

You might like to watch this video that highlights the issues.

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