Letter

Healthy food? cut out the ‘middle men’

Dear healthmatters— The lack of organic farms in the UK means that a lot of organic food currently has to be imported. We need far more support for farmers in the UK wanting to convert to organic methods. There is an Organic Targets Bill before Parliament. If passed, this would help ensure that UK farmers can supply consumers with most of their organic food.

This would resolve some of the transport issues Sarah Sexton mentions (Organic food for thought, healthmatters 41). However, it would not deal with the fact that supermarkets – where we buy most of our organic food – are wedded to high levels of transport use. Even on the rare occasions that local food is available in a supermarket, there are transport problems: organic milk in a Devon supermarket may come from a Devon farm, but it will have been to a vast, distant distribution centre in the meantime, clocking up hundreds of road miles.

One solution to this is to cut out these ‘middle men’. Farm shops, farmers’ markets, veggie boxes, community supported agriculture and farm co-ops are all examples of where people can buy locally produced food – with a minimum of transport costs, and less packaging too. This is good for farmers, consumers, the environment and the local economy. These initiatives are growing rapidly in the UK: sales at farmers’ markets alone stand at £65m a year, up from nothing in 1997. Local food is also promoted in the Organic Targets Bill. Alongside organic food, this can be a real alternative to the environmental problems caused by buying intensively produced food from supermarkets.

A rough rank of transport damage from food purchases looks like this:

• air freighted food sold in supermarkets;

• imported food sold in supermarkets;

• locally produced food sold in supermarkets;

• locally produced food sold in local shops and markets.