What is happening to our seasonal food? Traditionally, our asparagus season
started in late April. Strawberries always used to arrive in June. This year
we got them both in March.
Don't blame climate change. “They're out there with hairdryers and duvets,”
jokes Charlie Hicks, a fifth-generation greengrocer, about the lengths some
growers will go to coax produce out of the ground earlier. It's all about
persuading us to indulge in luxuries, while salving our consciences. Because
they're British, they sound more environmentally friendly.
In defence of the trend towards fast-forwarding our most eagerly anticipated
fruit and veg, Hugh Mowat, of Marks & Spencer, says: “If you can extend
the season by 1 months earlier and later, it's great for the farmers, and
good because we're selling more British produce. It's not unnatural, it's
being clever with how plants grow.”
Conservationists, however, aren't convinced that swathing the landscape in
plastic is clever: every British strawberry sold in Marks & Spencer and
Sainsbury's, for example, although described as “outdoor”, will have been
grown in a polytunnel. But without polytunnels, not only would the season
for strawberries be confined to June, July and August, there might not be
any British strawberries at all.
Even organic producers embrace polythene. Ben Raskin, of the Soil Association,
and a former strawberry grower, says: “You can still get a tasty, ripe
strawberry from a polytunnel. Some years you wouldn't get a strawberry crop
at all if it wasn't covered.” But it takes more than a plastic roof to ripen
the fruit early. They need energy-gobbling central heating, too. This is
where calculating a carbon footprint - the measurement of all the energy
involved in producing food - is so much more complicated but more important
than measuring food miles.
Take tomatoes: research suggests that those grown in the UK in heated
greenhouses outside our old summer season produce more carbon emissions than
sun-ripened tomatoes brought from Spain in lorries. But even the Spanish
tomatoes may have been grown in polytunnels. Does manufacturing the plastic
take more energy than heating our greenhouses? And what if the British
tomato greenhouses are heated with a renewable energy source?
But it's not just the carbon emissions involved in stretching the seasons that
worry some. Whatever happened to anticipating a treat that comes round once
a year? “Isn't it squeezing the joy out of the seasons?” asks Dr Tom
MacMillan, the executive director of the Food Ethics Council, an independent
advisory body. Instead of feeling in January that we're being denied
strawberries, he says, we should look forward to revelling in them in June.
He even half-seriously suggests that we need a campaign to bring back real
seasons.
Thomasina Miers is away
ASPARAGUS
Old season The English asparagus season was once a whirlwind romance
from the first darling buds of May until Midsummer's Day. For asparagus
grower Jax Buse, it still is. Her first spears were harvested just before St
George's Day, on April 23, two weeks later than last year, and she'll carry
on picking from the sandy field beside St Enodoc church on the north coast
of Cornwall for the requisite six weeks. Rick Stein buys from her.
New season We're eating more English asparagus than ever, for longer
than ever. No thanks to the weather, supermarkets are selling the spears
from early March and hope eventually to have it ready for February 14.
Asparagus forced up early is grown under plastic with underground heating.
Purists say this is cheating. Open buds are a giveaway that they've been
brought on too fast and are not as good as those grown outdoors.
Out of season Peruvian asparagus is available most of the year. Spanish
precedes ours and is cheaper, but cool temperatures help to give English
asparagus its unique, intense taste - and it's worth waiting for.
TOMATOES
Old season Outdoor tomatoes used to be grown commercially in Jersey and
in summer small growers supplied greengrocers with British tomatoes from
unheated greenhouses. These, and the sun-warmed summer fruit from grandad's
allotment, colour nostalgic memories of what tomatoes used to taste like,
but they were strictly limited to summer.
New season “It strikes me as very strange that you can buy English
tomatoes in February,” says Charlie Hicks, a fifth-generation greengrocer
with shops in Bristol, Hay-on-Wye and Reigate. Over the years large
producers with heated greenhouses have extended the supply of many and
varied British tomatoes from March and November, and sometimes for longer.
There is an environmental downside. “In the depths of winter to get a crop
of British tomatoes creates a bigger carbon footprint than trucking them in
from Spain,” says Hugh Mowat, of Marks & Spencer.
Out of season Rock-hard and unripe imports have given out-of-season
tomatoes a bad name. Hicks maintains that it's best to buy English only
between June and August when you'd expect to pick them in your greenhouse,
but he rates tomatoes from Spain and Italy.
APPLES
Old season English apples were in the doldrums but there has been a
revival. Supermarkets sold 18 per cent more this winter than last and more
orchards are being planted. The first English apples, Discovery, start in
August. Picking is over by Christmas and, if carefully stored, later
varieties such as Cox's can be kept until March.
New season A generation has grown up on imported apples and developed a
taste for Braeburns and Gala, so that's what British farmers are planting.
Other new varieties, such as Jazz, Cameo and Kanzi can be picked later and
stored - in the latest reduced oxygen, higher carbon dioxide facilities -
for longer, stretching the British season well into spring.
Out of season As British apples make a comeback, imports from France
and Italy are down. Even diehard English-apple advocates admit it doesn't
make much sense to keep the fruit past April. After that, UK apples use more
energy being cold-stored for nine months than fruit brought by ship from New
Zealand.
STRAWBERRIES
Old season Once upon a time strawberries, ripened by the unreliable
English sun, appeared in a scarlet blaze in June. The fruit frenzy lasted
eight or nine weeks until August. Two days of rain could wreck a crop.
New season We can eat British strawberries from March until Christmas
but few ever come into direct contact with sunlight. Marks & Spencer
sells nothing but British from April to September, all grown under plastic.
Some say strawberries ripened under plastic don't taste as good; many of us
never have the chance to find out.
Out of season By Christmas there isn't enough light here for
strawberries to grow and ripen. “English strawberries in January still elude
us,” says one supermarket buyer regretfully. If you're determined to eat
them all year, at least avoid imports when British are available. Israel,
Egypt and Spain supply us in mid-winter. The fruit isn't comparable to ours,
and it's bred to be tough to survive the journey.
CHERRIES
Old season Orchards of Merton Glory and Elton Hearts were some of the
glories of the English landscape. But the season lasted only a month from
mid-June to mid-July - blink and you'd miss it. Now the acreage of British
cherry orchards has more than halved in a decade.
New season The British food champion Henrietta Green has started
CherryAid, a campaign to promote native cherries, to save orchards and plant
new ones. There are hopeful signs, but our native fruit is still vulnerable
to damage by birds, frost, hail and rain.
Out of season Overall, 95 per cent of cherries we buy are imported,
mostly from Turkey, even during our own overlooked season.
NUTRITIONIST'S VERDICT
It is hard as a nutritionist not to say hurray if people can eat asparagus and
berries earlier in the year because they are good for us. Whether growing
techniques that extend seasons affect levels of nutrients is unclear, but if
so, the effect is likely to be small. Asparagus is great for folic acid,
needed for a buoyant mood and for rutin, a supernutrient that, with vitamin
C, found in abundance in strawberries, helps to strengthen the walls of tiny
blood vessels. Cherries are full of antioxidants, especially red anthocyanin
pigments that help to reduce inflammation.
AMANDA URSELL (www.amandaursell.com)
