Sunday 15 July 2012

Buying British

Following a trip to the supermarket today I went for a walk that starts and finishes on National Trust land but the most interesting part, in the middle, is arable farm land.

I do my best thinking when I'm walking and I tend to walk with binoculars around my neck because I'm afraid the day I don't will be the day that a rare and spectacular bird is sitting on the hedge just too far away to make out. You can see already that a simple walk for me is sometimes an extension of my office, it is gentle exercise and also incorporates my love of wildlife.

I hate shopping and I loathe supermarkets and today I was reminded why. Everywhere I looked there was an offer: '3 for 2', 'buy one get one free', '3 selected packs for £5' and so it went on. According to Defra, UK households wasted 7,000,000 tonnes of food in 2009. In 2010 household food waste was valued at £14 billion.

So it begs the question do we really need offers to be enticed to buy products if actually we're just going to throw them away?

Apparently we do. Today I saw a couple pick up several pieces of British meat complaining about the cost and putting it back. I also heard one wily shopper explain to their other half that the milk was cheaper in another supermarket down the road. The milk on the shelf was British, I wonder if it is 'down the road'?

We like a bargain and we think it is our right to have cheap food. And it is our right to throw it in the bin as well - all £14 billion worth.

And we also think the countryside is free. We don't seem to do the joined-up thinking. We want to be able to walk our dogs, exercise our children, enjoy the quiet and brush with nature and we expect it for free. Do we even wonder who trims the hedge, maintains to fence, clears the litter that inevitably gets left, fixes the gate that we didn't mean to break but hey ho....!? Imagine having a bunch of strangers roaming about your offices walking their dogs, letting their children run around and dropping crisp packets as they went?

We're constantly being told by TV Chefs that we've become disassociated with food and where it comes from. I think we've become disassociated from the people and places that generate our food. Do we even associate our demands for cheap food with the crops being grown or livestock we pass in the fields?

I think there are some bad farmers and landowners who are fairly unscrupulous but I also believe there are a lot of people trying their best to make a living and whether we realise it or not these people provide us access to the countryside so maybe we should think about that next time there is a choice between buying British or not.




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