To be or not to be… Local?

Over the last few years there has been a lot of talk of local food. Farm shops have opened up selling produce from within a 30 miles radius. Farmers’ Markets have multiplied where only those within a few miles of the market are allowed to participate. Even the supermarkets have jumped on the local bandwagon and have regional buyers looking for regional products. Clearly there is a good trend here, and to ship vegetables from the other side of the world purely on price when there are better (if slightly more expensive) products available on our doorstep is ridiculous. But may I be slightly controversial by suggesting that local isn’t necessarily everything?

• Over the years I have seen some shops fail because they have been too restrictive in what they have stocked in their shop. Mrs Bloggin’s pate may be the most local pate available, but if it simply is not very good, or possibly far too expensive, then consumers will vote with their feet and shop elsewhere. This means that the very good local products that are available in the shop aren’t sold either.
• It is important that there is a whole offering to the customers of speciality food shops to encourage consumers to shop with you, otherwise they will have to go to another shop to complete their shopping and if short of time may go there for everything. So if there isn’t a local version of a particular product or range of product, don’t let that be a reason for not stocking it.
• Food miles aren’t everything! If a local supplier is making a round-trip journey of 50 miles to deliver his or her products to your shop in an old diesel-billowing van, this is a far less green way of getting the goods than via a distribution network or wholesaler. The latter have vans in the area anyway and aren’t making an extra journey to deliver to you. Indeed, there are probably delivering lots of other goods at the same time and are therefore, over a year, saving 1000s of food miles.
• Local environment. What is better for the environment? A food producer from the other side of the country, who has a manufacturing process with a carbon-neutral footprint, or a local producer with a large carbon footprint? I’ll leave you to decide, but either way, local isn’t everything!