The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for “unsustainable” air-freighted food to be replaced gradually by homegrown produce from thousands of new allotments.

In an interview with The Times, Dr Rowan Williams said that families needed to respond to the threat of climate change by changing their shopping habits and adjusting their diets to the seasons, eating fruit and vegetables that could be grown in Britain.

He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and other airfreighted food was too high and families should not assume that all types of food would be available through the year. Dr Williams called for more land to be made available for allotments, saying that they would help people to reconnect with nature and wean them off a consumerist lifestyle.

The Archbishop was accused, however, of threatening the livelihoods of a million families in sub-Saharan Africa, who depended on exports of fresh produce to Europe.

Michelle Di Leo, the director of Flying Matters, a lobby group funded by the aviation industry, said: “I’m sure the Archbishop means well but, as he should know, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and perhaps he should leave well alone.”

Dr Williams said he recognised that many jobs in developing countries depended on exports of fresh produce, but it was a mistake to encourage those countries to base their economies on unsustainable practices.

“I don’t want to create an instant crisis in those economies but that’s the direction, a steady move away from it. You want to ask what is it doing long term to a Kenyan economy that becomes dependent on what are effectively cash crops for export.”

He said that Britain had to get back in touch with the “natural rhythms of the seasons ... the fact that the Earth turns, things grow here and not there, now and not then”. He added: “More people ought to have allotments. It’s part of reconnecting — the sense of connectedness to natural processes.”

The Archbishop was playing his part, he said, by consuming vegetables from a plot in Lambeth Palace. His family also received regular deliveries of locally grown produce.

Dr Williams also said that the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions meant looking at attitudes to travel. He had tried to have a “flight-free year” last year, but tight schedules meant that he had had to fly back to London from Paris and make a day-trip with other faith leaders to Auschwitz.

He called on politicians to end their obsession with economic growth and recognise that a sustainable society could not be achieved by the relentless pursuit of material wealth.

“Consumerism treats each person as essentially a hole that you have to keep stuffing things into. But what’s it like to have a life that is balanced, that is at home with its material and human environment? That’s a question that has got to be asked.”

Britain and other rich countries should consider how a “proper regime of carbon taxes can funnel back into positive sustainable investment in poorer economies”, he said.

“I think there is a question of justice here. If you look at where most of the profit has gone and where most of the cost has been paid, there’s not very much difficulty in working out how that looks. Deforestation, desertification, rising water levels and so forth.

“I do think it is part of the moral cost that we should be asking how do we repair some of the damage.”

Dr Williams was speaking on the eve of a lecture that he is giving tonight at Southwark Cathedral, South London, on the Christian response to climate change.

His comments came as President Obama’s top climate change official supported global deployment of technology to capture and store carbon emissions released by burning coal.

Stephen Chu, the US Energy Secretary, called for the technique to be ready within ten years. He is in London for a conference today on the plans. Ministers from 15 countries will meet to attempt to push forward the technology, which aims to store emissions underground.

Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, said: “We are united in the view that carbon capture and storage must be developed rapidly so we make the switch to clean coal.”

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