Something Wrong in our Supermarkets.

[Snadger]

If you decide to eat what you have rather than what you fancy it pays to have as big a variation as possible on your plot............

Supply and demand will always be the driving force at the supermarkets though............

[Bexy]

I went shopping today and in one of the large supermarkets they have a meat deal on 3 for £10 and one of them where breaded chicken Bits that had a nice Farm bred etc label on it leading you to first think oooo wee little farm in the uk..... o no was from tailand ...

[Uber-Uncool]

There's a lot wrong with supermarkets, though they do have their advantages also. I'm becoming increasingly conscientius when i shop, but still, more often than not, fail to notice the origin of the produce i am purchasing. Must try harder!

[RedThorn]

Small point though. Here $25 a kilo for local grown garlic. $0.99 a kilo for china grown. What do you think people will buy?

[donnakebab]

I think it will get worse because of the economic situation at the moment. I know I have had to cut back big time on my food budget which makes my lottie all the more important. I take my 84 year old mother shopping every week and she has a passion for peaches, cherries, grapes and so on all year round and having experienced the war years I guess she thinks it's a good thing that all this stuff is available. I'm not about to start preaching to her so I let her get on with it though she does know my views on out of season foreign produce.

You know when councils and landscaping projects plant trees? Why can't they start planting fruit trees, or walnut and hazel nut, instead of ornamental ones? Local communities could have a fruit gathering day and share the bounty.

Or am I looking at the world through rose tinted glasses?

[Two_Sheds]

Will looking at air miles stop us buying bananas ?

Of course, I do buy what we don't grow over here, eg coffee, tea, Shiraz, but I won't buy stuff from half way round the world that I can grow myself. We're drinking more British ale than wine these days, and only rice/pasta when spuds are out of season.

I like a banana, used to have one (fairtrade) every day, but the air miles were bothering me, so now it's an occasional treat and I don't miss them, tbh.

[Alison]

Am pretty sure that bananas are still shipped in rather than flow so it's boat miles for them and from a few googles it seems that the transportation isn't the issue here eg What's the carbon footprint of

[Hilary B]

When I buy veg in the supermarket, food miles do count. I will buy EU produce when it is 'not quite in season' here (but it is a treat, not a basic), and once something is ridiculously cheap on 'reduced for quick sale' anything goes, but outside of that I try to buy UK produced.
When I go to the market in the high-street, there is no way of telling where it has come from (apart from things like asparagus, which is sometimes labelled).
It's not just supermarkets that sell regardless of food miles, and I can't afford farmshop prices on a regular basis (and even then, some of them are none too fussy about out-of-season stuff).

[Alison]

The problem is bigger than that though, just because something is labelled as UK grown doesn't mean it hasn't travelled a lot and also if it's out of season then the heat and light energy used can be more than the transportation issue for overseas stuff. It's very complicated and one of the many reasons I like to grow my own from seed. There are a few farms round here who sell their own produce very cheaply although the designer type farm shops are well worth avoiding as they hike the prices up.