Why is local food so important?
The benefits of local food are numerous. For the consumer local food is an ideal way to link plate back to plough. Mechanisation, test-tube foods and a largely import-based food economy have mean that the gap between consumers and the food they eat has widened to an unprecedented extent. This has lead to mistrust, safety concerns and a feeling of powerlessness for many consumers. Local food can help to close this gap, allowing consumers to see where their food is from, who has made it and often containing reassuringly fewer chemicals. Importantly for FPD, knowing food is produced in the local area can help instill a pride in the farmed landscape.
Who benefits?
For the farmer, recent times have been hard, some have even been forced to sell to big retail outlets at a loss. For some this has meant closure and for others struggling on. Buying local offers a fair price to farmers, keeps more money is the local economy and as a knock-on effect creates higher demand for local services and benefits local businesses.
For the citizen one of the greatest benefits of local food is a reduction in ‘food miles’: the distance that food travels before reaching your plate. As retailers increasingly supply foods from long distances the fuel required for distribution is one of the greatest contributors to global warming. Not only is this unsustainable in the long-term but in the short-term, ‘shopping around’ for cheap foods abroad, especially when they could be produced in the UK, means that there is no market for the English farmer whilst farmers in other countries are exploited, working for wages and in conditions that are unacceptable.
What you can do
Change your shopping habits – visit Farmers Markets for the opportunity to taste and purchase great produce direct from the producer. (Visit www.peakdistrictfoods.co.uk for a list of Peak District markets and fairs)
Eat local – look out for Peak District Cuisine establishments who specialise in using local ingredients from producers.
Support the rural environmentp - look out for the Environmental Quality Mark, a charter mark for products and services using the high quality environment of the Peak District as a business asset. Research shows that money spent in local businesses stays longer and works harder for the local community, developing a stronger sense of place.
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SUE PRINCE ARTICLE:
Way back in 2001 a project started to try and connect food produced in the Peak District landscape with some of the people making 45 million visits to the greater Peak District every year. The idea being to keep the landscape in good condition, the owners need to be profitable. No farmer is going to spend money, mending walls if he can’t afford to feed his cows. We needed to make ‘Eat the view’ actually happen and get tourism money into farmers’ pockets.
New Environmental Economy Programme
The Peak District National Park Authority, consistently, has given strong leadership in this area. Its New Environmental Economy programme gives grants to people pursuing business ideas that are innovative and environmentally enhancing. In this atmosphere the food project blossomed, a local food group was started, Peak District Foods now has over 35 members who have all signed up to quality, cultural, environmental and sustainable principles. They are proud to put Peak District foods on to Peak District plates.
'Eat the View'
Peak District Cuisine, an additional scheme for eating establishments from restaurants to snack wagons and B&Bs to top hotels, promotes businesses who always have locally produced foods on the menu. The fourth edition of the definitive ‘Savour the Flavour of the Peak District’ has just been published. (Visit www.peakdistrictfoods.co.uk to discover more and order a copy of this free guide.) The Peak District has been well placed to ride the wave of enthusiasm about locally produced food.
We have been able to provide the right conditions for sparky entrepreneurs to pursue their obsessions and respond to opportunities; Ruth Dennett of Peak District Fine Foods appeared out of the blue saying ‘I want to run a food delivery business’, just when we were investigating distribution.
Ruth doggedly pursued her goal, through reams of regulation, insurance difficulties, licences, and bureaucracy and is now delivering high quality foods from local producers, bringing the farmer's market to the customers' doorsteps.
There are still lots of challenges; how to support these tiny businesses in planning their growth, how to protect the Peak District brand, how to engage conventional farmers and get a premium for food produced through good environmental practise.
The conditions have to be right, but we are dependant on real people willing to take risks, work their fingers to the bone and invest everything, obsessively to produce delicious, scrumptious local food for us to eat!
Look out for:
