Food miles

The concept of "food miles" is a simple test to see what the hidden cost of food production and retailing might be. They try to take into account the cost of growing food, transporting it to the retailer, storage and then us driving it home. Food miles increased by 15% in the ten years to 2002 amd this obviously has an impact on pollution and costs. Lord Bach is the food and farming minister and he pointed out that........

"Internet buying and home delivery can reduce road congestion and vehicle kilometres. Organic and seasonally available food can reduce environmental impacts, but these can be offset by the way they are transported to the consumer's home."

Which, at first reading, looks like a statement of the obvious. It's also not as simple as saying that we should use local produce. As the report points out the energy needed to riped out of season tomatoes in the UK is probably greater than the energy needed to bring in Spanish tomatoes. "Sustain" have a good deal about food miles on their site and so do Friends of the Earth (and if plugging those two, and The Gunadrian, on the blog doesn't boost my "tree-hugging liberal" credentials I really don't know what will!).

Check out some of this stuff though - it's scary that the real price of some of our shopping is so high and getting higher.