Sir, - A recent report by the British campaign organisation SAFE (Sustainable Agriculture, Food and Environment Alliance) on the distance travelled by food highlighted some bewilderingly illogical practices.
For example, asparagus transported 2,000 miles from Spain to Britain's main asparagus growing region, at the height of the growing season; apples imported 14,000 miles from New Zealand; fresh milk from a dairy near the south coast of England being sold in the north of Scotland. A similar scenario exists in Ireland: onions, carrots, tomatoes, courgettes, celery, cauliflower, potatoes, indeed, every vegetable that can be grown in Ireland is both imported and exported. This is free trade, and we are encouraged to celebrate its most bizarre consequences.
There is a solution, though European bureaucrats and tree traders will oppose it at every turn: local production for consumption locally. Irish owned supermarkets can begin the process by sourcing more of their products locally, in order to cut down the number of food miles travel.led by polluting lorries. The benefits would be multi fold.
Small farmholdings would find a market for their produce; many more small farmers could begin to move away from the inequitable EU subsidy system and regain control of their land and their destiny; organic and bio dynamic farming would flourish within this local market; there would be fewer heavy vehicles on the roads, resulting in less air and noise pollution.
In time, when more and more multiples across Europe had adopted a policy of buying locally, the need for the extensive road building projects currently ploughing their destructive way across Europe, including Ireland, would be reduced.
Local production for consumption locally strengthens the economy of a region by making existing jobs more secure and by increasing the numbers employed there. Such a policy keeps money revolving around the local economy, instead of having it sucked out by the multiples and multinationals, as happens at present. The ultimate reward for the "ordinary" citizen will be a healthier mind, body and spirit, once we have regained control of our lives through the food we produce and consume. - Yours etc.,
Environment spokesperson, Green Party, Upper Fownes Street, Dublin 2.