Farmers' market vs supermarket

Many people buy locally produced food in the belief that it will be better for the environment than food flown thousands of miles to supermarkets, but is that really true?

The food will have certainly have travelled fewer miles. The farmers’ market certification scheme run by the Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association rules that produce must come from within a 30-mile radius of the market — or 50 miles for urban and coastal locations. That means the “food miles” are a fraction of the 2,000 miles travelled by Egyptian green beans or nearly 6,000 miles travelled by Chinese apples to reach Sainsbury’s.

It is not only the food and the farmers that travel a smaller distance, so too the buyers. A study of an Edinburgh market reported that a high proportion of visitors lived within a two-mile radius, a “fair proportion” coming on foot.

But local may not necessarily mean greener. Supermarkets pack large amounts of food into a single lorry, while a farmer may carry only a small amount in a 4x4. A Defra report found that the supermarkets’ centralised distrubution systems, with lean supply chains and fully laden lorries, could generate less pollution than a larger number of smaller vehicles travelling locally. It also found, for example, that it was better for the environment to import winter tomatoes from Spain than to grow them here in heated greenhouses.

However, farmers’ markets can claim to be greener in other ways. Hardly any energy is used in processing the fruit and vegetables. “The carrots and potatoes still have mud on them; they are neither washed nor scrubbed,” a spokeswoman for the association said. “There is no packaging involved and many shoppers bring plastic bags.”

Produce does not have to be organic, but often is. Although the champions of organic agriculture often claim it is better for the environment, that is a subject of controversy. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel-prize winning “father of the green revolution” in farming, insists the idea that organic farming is better for the environment is “ridiculous” because it has lower yields, and so requires more land under cultivation.

However, the farmers’ ,arkets association remains convinced that local markets can withstand the criticism. “The markets educate people in eating seasonal produce, which would remove the need for any imports,” the spokeswoman said.

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