Gone are the days when we had to hoard olive oil and oregano, wait for watermelons to arrive in summers or forego eating peas and cauliflower in summers. Today, most foods, including fruits and vegetables, are available through the year. As a consumer, I am delighted at the thought of not being deprived of my favourite foods. But as a responsible consumer, I have to exercise restraint.

Foods now travel more than the people who eat them. Shelves in grocery stores and supermarkets are loaded with preserved and processed foods. This often creates an environmental threat such as pollution (carbon emissions) generated by long-distance food transportation and wastage of food during processing and transportation.

There is disruption of local farms, destruction of rainforests, reduced freshness and nutritional content, increased demands for preservation and packaging and even food insecurity as food is coming from regions that are not feeding their own populations.

The purchase of produce from remote, intensive, single-crop industries also leaves local farmland unsupported. And the sheer vastness of the international food supply industry, particularly in poor countries where public health infrastructure support is inadequate, stretches the food inspection and safety system beyond capacity. This leaves consumers vulnerable to large-scale outbreaks of food-borne diseases.
Serving locally and regionally grown foods is a more sustainable and sensible approach. It ensures that food is fresh, more nutritious, has fewer ‘travel miles’, less handling or processing, while helping to support local agriculture and economy and create a healthy food system.

There are other spin-offs. Buying local food helps preserve genetic diversity—local farms tend to grow a variety of crops in order to provide a long harvest season—and it supports the preservation of farmland, keeping the local food supply secure. The crops themselves capture carbon emissions and help combat global warming, and they reduce reliance on fossil fuels needed to transport food over great distances.
According to a recent study, growing just 10 per cent more produce in a regional system would result in an annual savings of 1.2 million to 1.4 million litres of fuel and an annual reduction in carbon dioxide emissions of 3 million to 3.5 million kilos.

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