Eat & Shop Local? Progress Report on the Fife Diet.

As Christmas approaches, a report by business advisers Deloitte & Touche showed that ‘buying local’ at independent stores or markets is set to be a major trend. While the big supermarkets and high street chains spend tens of millions of pounds on lavish Christmas advertising campaigns, shoppers are more interested in food that is not “triple wrapped and vacuum sealed”, according to the study.
It shows the proportion of consumers saying they will do most of their food shopping at local independent stores or markets has risen from 20 per cent last year to 29 per cent. The figure for street or farmers’ markets is 16 per cent, up from nine per cent.
The report says: “While consumers are doing most of their main food shopping at supermarkets, they are seemingly returning to specialist stores, such as delicatessens, and are visiting food markets to widen their tastes and access greater choice and higher perceived quality.”

Mike Small introduced the “Fife Diet” because of his concerns about the effect of food miles on our environment. He was determined to reduce the number of food miles clocked up in Fife, and began a campaign to encourage as many residents as possible to only buy goods sourced from the Kingdom.
He said: “I think we’ve got a failure of political leadership, people aren’t really telling you the full story and the truth is we’re going to have to change the way we live because the way we eat at the moment is unsustainable so this is the start of a grass roots campaign to radically alter people’s food miles.”

The Fife dieters have plenty of produce to choose from. An organic farm and restuarant in Newburgh can provide them with fresh veg, eggs, baking, meat and poultry. Ian Miller from Jamesfield Farm said: “We grow a wide range of vegetables and we’re meat Sorting produce at organic farm
producers and our job here is really to bring together the stock and the crop and create a sustainable type of farming but we’re also very conscious that we want to sell our produce to local people.”

The suppliers are ready to rise to the challenge, but with no local producers of (for example) olive oil, coffee or wine, it will be interesting to see how long the volunteers stick to their diets. So far, nineteen families have signed up for the diet; and reckon to be getting about 95% of their food from local sources.

Links
Deloitte, An Appetite for Change:Food and Beverage 2012.
gug feature: greening Christmas.

grownupgreen - 20/12/07