Why Local Food Matters | World Localisation Day 2022
Today, Tuesday June 21st, is World Localisation Day, a day to celebrate and elevate the global localisation movement, and all those working to bring the economy back home, back to a human scale and back into relationship to it’s people and the Earth. Formed in 2020 as the global pandemic took hold, World Localisation Day was conceived to be a beacon to unite these initiatives under a common understanding, and provide the resources and inspiration for local economy networks to create change in their own community.
So as we celebrate the third annual World Localisation Day, I wanted to reflect on the role local food networks and supply chains like our community-supported agriculture scheme play in this movement, and why local food matters beyond just the low-hanging fruit of the keeping our food spend in the local economy. I believe passionately that a return to local growing, local food networks and a relationship with where our food comes from can act as a vessel for social, cultural and ecological change.
There are so many other benefits to the localisation of our food systems and a move away from supermarkets - culturally, socially, politically and ecologically - that could help forge stronger communities, foster resilient mutual aid networks and heal our broken agreements with the natural world.
“Economic localization is the key to sustaining biological and cultural diversity - to sustaining life itself. The sooner we shift towards the local, the sooner we will begin healing our planet, our communities and ourselves”
Why Does Local Food Matter So Much?
Here’s a few reasons why local food matters so much….
…For Supporting Small-Scale, Agroecological Farming & Food Production
Localisation is about bringing food production back to the human scale. Hyper-local delivery systems and short-supply chains are far more supportive to family and community food production structures on a small, human-scale. They put every penny in the producers pocket, supporting re-investment in regenerative production practices, responsible packaging and distribution, ethical working practices and a healthy working environment. They also offer security and resilience and value the work that farmers do to feed their communities.
“The only way we’ll see a regenerative, sustainable food system based on agroecological practices - those which build soil, encourage biodiversity, sequester carbon and use resources effectively - in the future is by going local.”
We also hear a lot at the moment about how we need to adopt more sustainable methods of farming and food production. We do. Without question. But that has to happen hand-in-hand with a localisation of our food system. The globalised food system is heavily reliant on chemical inputs, and the cost, economically and ecologically, has gone way beyond what our soils and ecosystems can take. It’s no used trying to ‘green’ the existing food system. The only way we’ll see a regenerative, sustainable food system based on agroecological practices - those which build soil, encourage biodiversity, sequester carbon and use resources effectively - in the future is by going local. A recent report from the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (https://ffcc.co.uk/library/farmingforchangereport), ‘Farming for Change’, revealed that agroecology can produce enough food to feed a healthy UK population whilst also reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture by at least 38% by 2050, but the food must go to feeding the people most local to where it is grown.
Short supply chains and a relationship between growers and consumers creates a much stronger support network for this kind of farming - a stark contrast to trying to compete in a globalised food market. The Community-Supported Agriculture model is the shortest supply chain you can get, and creates a relati0nship between members and their farmers based on trust, transparency, a spirit of mutual aid and a shared concern for the health and vitality of the land. It’s more secure and dependable for us as farmers, and acknowledges and celebrates to seasonal, unpredictable nature of trying to produce good, healthy, regenerative food.
…For The Health of All
Often, it’s the people who work in the food system who face poverty and food insecurity, with a quarter of farmers in the UK living below the poverty line - the victims of the supermarket ‘chase to the bottom’ as they compete to offer the cheapest possible prices. Human exploitation and modern slavery are more of the hidden costs of our cheap food imports. Not to mention, that mass-produced, articifically preserved, chemically grown food has had a huge role in growing rates of diet-related disease and bad health.
Local food systems are higher welfare, for all. Not only are they kinder on the people that work in them, or the animals husbanded to produce food, but local, community farming can play a central role in our collective health and wellbeing. Small-scale, local, agroecological vegetable production, for example, has been proven to produce the most nutrient-dense vegetables. Human-scale food production keeps us fit, healthy and agile, and it’s motivating and positive to be working towards the vital service of feeding our community.
Community-oriented farms can provided provision for mental health, too. We’ve observed through our volunteer programmes that playing a part in growing food, getting our hands dirty, spending time in the outdoors and fresh air and being part of a shared purpose can improve mental health, wellbeing and a sense of purpose dramatically. And to work together to tend and heal the land, take responsibility for growing our food and nourish ourselves physically, nutritionally, emotionally and spiritually, has profound implications for our collective health, too.
“From community gardens to credit unions, from alternative learning spaces to small business alliances and co-ops, local economies create networks of place-based relationships that affirm our human desire for connection to each other and to the earth. It’s the economics of happiness.”
… For Resilience in a Crisis
“Many people are realising how insecure the food system is, and how disconnected they have become from their food supply”
We are in a time of multiples crises - fuel shortages and price hikes, Brexit and the war in Ukraine are stretching household finances beyond even what the pandemic threw at us, not to mention looming climate change and ecological collapse threatening the very life systems we depend on. We don’t have to look very far back in our history to understand the shaky ground our food system us based on, and how localisation offers a far more tangible sense of security and resilience in times of crisis. Experts have predicted that we are ‘just on shock away from a global food crisis’. Long supply chains are expensive and rely on extensive transport. As the costs of this rises, so does the cost of food.
Research has shown that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed not only the vulnerabilities and risks of the current ‘just-in-time’ supermarket food systems, specifically of the longer supply chains, but also its deep inequalities and injustices. On the one hand, many places around the world have faced empty supermarket shelves while on the other, crops were left to rot on the field due to restriction of movement, causing shortage of seasonal workers.
However, as much as the COVID-19 pandemic exposed how fragile and unsustainable the global food systems are in the event of shock, it also demonstrated the resilience of the local food initiatives and short food supply chains. CSA schemes in many countries saw increased customer numbers while the interest to local box schemes grew dramatically. Local initiatives also created platforms to collaborate with each other, exchange produce and help people in need. We were able to mobilise quickly to create a solidarity veg box scheme, supporting households experiencing financial difficulties or food security with subsidised and free veg boxes through fundraising and a collaboration with the TGrains project at UWE Bristol. We now offer our veg boxes on a sliding scale, and find that our members are more than happy to participate in a solidarity economy to ensure that everyone in the community has access to local, healthy, regenerative food.
… For the Planet
In 2015, greenhouse gas emissions related to our global food system amounted to 18 Gt CO2 equivalent per year globally, representing 34% of total greenhouse gas emissions, according to a report published in Nature Food. The largest contribution came from agriculture and land use/land-use change activities (71%), with the remaining were from supply chain activities: retail, transport, consumption, fuel production, waste management, industrial processes and packaging. The industrialisation of agriculture has also been one of the major contributors to the loss of almost half of our biodiversity in recent centuries.
We have an incredible opportunity to create a localised food system that can be regenerative, life giving, that can breathe new life into our land, draw carbon from the atmosphere, create habitat and reduce waste and plastic pollution. Local supply chains require far less packaging, transport, refrigeration. Our veg box scheme, for example, uses no plastic packaging (inly minimal compostable packaging), no chemicals, minimal refrigeration (we harvest the veg fresh on the day) and a small van to deliver within a very local 10-mile radius and we grow using agroecological principles. We are building healthy soil, full of microbes and insect life, planting trees, creating permanent, sustainable food growing systems, habitat for wildlife and niches for wild plants to thrive. We’re storing water, locking carbon in the ground, reusing waste and minimising our dependence on fossil fuels. And we are very much part of a wide local, national and local networks of small-scale, peasant, community and family farms doing the same.
… For Coming Back to Relationship with the Living World
We’ve become severed at the roots. We’ve relinquished our place in the tangle of nature and cut the ties that bound us to our lands. But food might help us reweave them. Slowly, season, by season, year by year, it can initiate us into a deep and profound relationship with the natural world and that which sustains us.
I’ve learned through growing food for my family and our CSA community, that a lived relationship with where our food comes from opens up new dimensions to a place we thought we knew. It’s a doorway to a life of beauty, abundance and the instinct to care for all life around us. It’s the adventure of scrumping for apples, a smiling surrender to the tumbling seasons, the swelling ‘right-ness’ of a growing community eating together, friendship around a smoking fire. It’s the stories of where the seeds came from, the prayers we whisper into the furrow as we plant them, and the ecstatic joy and grateful bow for the harvest; the wildness of gathering seaweed from a deserted beach, or the kinship with the elder oak whose acorns we squirrel away for winter food. The traditional dishes and seasonal celebrations of our sacred foods. Through a relationship with local food, we can rehydrate our dried up relationship with the landscape, the soil and the ecosystems that we rely one to live.
Sourcing something as ordinary as your daily food locally can actually be a rich, exciting and adventurous path. One of learning to eat and cook with the seasons, making a weekly outing to source your vegetables, milk, eggs and more from over the farm gate from local producers, forging links to the people who grow your food and understanding the realities of the food landscape and producing food where you are. There are so many benefits and so much to harvest from a localised food system. And you can play a part in all of it, simply by making the intention today to source your food locally. To support your local food movement.
“it makes sense on all levels – ecological, nutritional, gastronomic, financial, social and strategic – for almost all countries in the world to become self-reliant in food. Most are perfectly well able to do so. ‘Self-reliance’ simply means that each country should strive to produce all the basic foods that it needs, so that it could feed its own people in a crisis”
