Food ethics are complex but buying local produce is something we can all do easily

Localgrowplanet.org encourages everyone to think about the ethical impact of the food they eat. Food miles (the number of miles or kilometres a food item or ingredient travels) are important, but they are not the only thing we must consider. Carbon impact is important, but so too are factors such as the amount of land and resources needed to grow the food, and how the production of that food affects the communities producing it locally, especially if they are exporting it to richer countries.

Another very important factor to think about is whether the crop or food damages the environment directly or indirectly through things like pesticides, herbicide or fossil fuel fertilizer, or because it’s grown in such a way as to create a monoculture, damaging biodiversity of plants and wildlife. A food may be “healthy” to eat, but is it healthy for the planet? Food injustice affects economically disadvantaged people living in rich countries too, so we need to try to combat that too!

Clearly, there is a lot to consider when making the best ethical choice about food, and not just foods like soy and beef, which often come up in the environmental news. Reducing food waste is certainly a good place to start (over one third of food is wasted, and all of the resources that went into producing it are wasted too, as shown in this handy pdf guide from StopFoodWaste.ie) Another great place to start is to try to eat food that is as local as possible.

It makes sense for communities to be able to eat the food that grows well in their climate and not depend on the vagaries of export markets or possibly to face steep price hikes for their staple food simply because people in richer countries find it fashionable. Local growers should not have to live their lives under the sway of gangster warfare, because people elsewhere want, say, avocadoes to be available on demand, whatever the season. And should North African communities have to suffer water shortages if they depend on exporting year-round strawberries and tomatoes that drain their water supplies, not to mention the question of living conditions for the people working on the farms? People in other countries where strawberries and tomatoes only grow well in the summer could think about growing their own, deciding not to eat these foods all year round, or else freeze, dry or otherwise preserve them when they are in season plentifully locally.

Localgrowplanet.org does not advocate any one way of eating, vegan, vegetarian or otherwise. It is up to each individual to make an ethical choice based on what grows well, and can be produced sustainably, in his or her country, and according to his or her economic and health situation. In some countries, a moderate consumption of local beef or other animal protein may be a better ethical choice than a diet that relies wholly on imported vegetables or grains that are flown in from across the globe and may not provide a decent living wage or way of life for the growers.

The more in-season locally a food is, the less packaging and fewer energy resources for refrigeration and transport it is likely to require. All in all, the best approach may be to eat a mainly plant-based diet (with up to, say, 20 percent animal or sustainably-harvested fish-derived), one that is as local, organic and sustainably produced as possible, and one that keeps fossil-fuel fertilizer, peat-based growing mixes, packaging, transport and before-sale refrigerated storage to a minimum.

Biodiversity can be kept in balance through trying to avoid food from industrial monocultures or food that has been sprayed with herbicides and pesticides (see the Pesticide Action Network for more information on these). A few big Ps to think about here for the Planet are People (People as Producers and People as Purchasers and Partakers), Provenance, Pollution, Pesticides, Pollinators, Plastic and Peat.

So let’s get growing (and purchasing) locally and responsibly to work for a better planet, upcycling old materials and creating happy, fairer communities, by minimizing things like resource-waste, plastic use, land damage and pollution! And let’s make our voice heard to the supermarket buyers and managers, and to the politicians!