Eating local produce to save money and the environment

With environmental concerns constantly mounting, campaigners are calling on the public to make more and more changes to their lifestyle.

One suggestion is to buy locally produced food. Shipping fruit, vegetables or meat from various corners of the world adds air miles to your conscience and digits to your bill.

To highlight this issue, Scottish journalist Stephen Jardine has this year begun a campaign promoting local food, called Eating for Scotland. On a holiday in France, he was dismayed to see Scottish seafood being delivered on the continent whilst back home he found it difficult to find fish or meat from his own country in supermarkets.

Because of this, he set about using his high profile in the media to encourage people to join him in a crusade to eat only food produced in Scotland from Burns Night (25 January) to St Andrew’s Day (30 November). Jardine provided regular updates in a national newspaper column and appearances on Scottish Television’s topical magazine programme, ‘The Five Thirty Show’. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and Secretary of Rural Affairs and Environment Richard Lochhead have given their support to the campaign and both joined in the diet for a short time.

Having a locally produced diet need not be more expensive. Farmers’ markets and farm shops allow people to sell the produce they grow and with little or no delivery expenses, and with no middlemen looking for a share of the profits, prices can often be lower. Some farms also run what they call ‘box schemes’ where they will provide a box full of seasonal goods and deliver it to your home on a regular basis.

Another bonus of shopping with smaller businesses — particularly family run companies — is that they often have friendlier staff and workers. They appreciate how important their customers are and often provide a more helpful service while looking to please you as best they can. Large corporations employ workers with no other link to the company and whilst they employ genuinely good workers few will possess the same level of love for their job as someone who has started their own business, or someone who works for a company that has been in their family for generations.

Nowadays, most businesses, even the smaller ones, now have websites and doing a local search online is a great way to find nearby places to buy food. It will also help give you a feel of the business before you agree to anything and you can see what services they offer, and maybe even what crops they sell.

There are of course drawbacks to eating only local produce. Jardine says that his love of bananas has at times tested his resolve but so far he is yet to crack. His search of a Scottish banana plantation continues in vain.

Paul McIndoe writes for a digital marketing agency. This article has been commissioned by a client of said agency. This article is not designed to promote, but should be considered professional content.