Slow Food
Closer to Home
So why is the issue of
Sustainability important to the
Arnside/Silverdale AONB?
It is easy to imagine that the
prosperity and good environment
enjoyed by residents and visitors
have always been around and that
they will simply continue
ad infinitum.
- It does take resources to keep the natural beauty of this area intact. It also takes the efforts of farmers, landowners, conservation organisations, local authorities, businesses and residents.
- Almost everyone can have an impact on the future of the AONB, and what is more they can all have both positive and negative impacts. It is mostly down to the choices they make everyday about how they live their lives, run their businesses, apply the rules society has made or how they work their land!
Whilst all of us have noticed the messages about turning the TV off standby, changing our old light bulbs for energy efficient ones, turning down the central heating and such like – Sustainability comes in many more flavours than simply switching off unnecesssary lights!
We can all come up with lots of ways of cutting down on our energy consumption – but there is a less obvious way we can cut down on energy use and thereby reduce our impact on the environment apart from reaching for the off switch.
How and where our food is produced or grown, processed, transported, stored, purchased, cooked and eaten all have impacts on the energy used. That also translates into the volume of carbon emissions generated. It also has impacts on the land it is grown on, the soil, air and water that make the plants grow, the other plants and indeed animals that can exist alongside the food being produced and on the look and feel of the countryside when we visit it for enjoyment!
The concept of food miles is fairly well understood – the distance food has travelled from field to plate – but like many measures of environmental impact, it can only tell us part of the story. By taking account of all the factors affecting the “journey” food makes to reach our plates, we can measure the full Carbon Footprint of what we eat. Pilot schemes are being introduced to label food with information reflecting the full environmental impact of our food, most importantly in terms of CO2 emissions from field to shopping basket.
Natural Beauty?
Whilst I have long loved to look upon a beautiful meadow brimming with wild flowers and a-buzz with insects I can’t confess to going out of my way to look at a silage field. I doubt if my feelings are particularly unique on this issue. Virtually all of Britain’s fields were once such glorious spreads in summer until the 1940s when War brought about a revolution of agricultural production just to keep hunger at bay. The revolution continued to gallop along just fine after the conflict ended – almost with a life of its own, until we were producing food merely to put it into vast freezers and stores.
We have perhaps taken stock just in time to save the day for the hay meadows, which are now rare and mostly treasured, but not always well protected from change. It worries most conservationists that, just as we seem to be dissuading intensive agri-business from “monoculturing” the remaining pastures and meadows, climate change may do the job instead.
When all the consumer wanted was
to eat well and heartily, it didn’t seem
to matter that the natural world was
withering before our eyes – but now
we are beginning to hear a different
tune. The sophisticated connoisseur– i.e. virtually
all of us given the number and breadth of cooking and
celebrity chef TV shows - is starting to
look at food as more than just an
essential requirement of life. We are
realising the quality of both the food
itself and the environment it comes
from are essential to both our
wellbeing and happiness.
- Food produced in traditional ways, with pasture fed animals and slower plant growth is now being recognised as tastier, healthier and better for the environment.
- Do any of us actually want to eat animals that have been grown intensively, fed processed food and travelled hundreds if not thousands of miles?
- The time of slow food has arrived; or rather slow food has made a comeback!
Shopping locally for what is grown and produced locally, in season (and by re-connecting with the wild food available around us) is just about the only way we can ensure our food has done the least possible damage to the countryside we all value, enjoy and want to visit.
minimising food miles - how far has your carrot travelled?
