These days you can buy fresh fruit and vegetables 365 days a year but should you buy them, and if so, which should you choose? Elspeth Waters reports
Picture the scene: it’s a warm summer Saturday afternoon and as a welcome sojourn from the heat, you are wandering through the sub-zero aisles of your local supermarket. You’ve worked your way down the list methodically and all that’s left is bananas.
But when you reach the banana corner your heart sinks a little and your conscience goes into overdrive. Up until last year you lived in blissful ignorance, thinking a banana was a banana, was a banana, right? Then, partly in a bid to actually live the ‘my body is a temple’ spiel of the body beautifuls, and partly because Fresh & Wild produce just looks sooo good, you decided to go organic… that is, of course, except for those certain times of the month when even a bar of Green & Blacks Butterscotch won’t hit the spot quite like a maple-glazed Krispy Kreme.
So, all was fine for a while. Not only did you feel positive about nourishing yourself with beautiful, wholesome food, but you also felt slightly smug now that you could join in the office chat about how intensive farming and agro-chemicals are single-handedly destroying the planet and, almost definitely, leaving us all infertile. But then, last night you happened to catch part of a documentary on the plight of workers in one of the many banana republics (not just an unusually cool name for a slightly preppy, but very chic, chain of clothes stores in the US, you soon discovered). And, all of a sudden, your heart goes out to the banana farmers, who have no guarantee of a fixed price for their fruit. You want to send them all enough money to send their children to school and break the cycle of relentless poverty for good.
So, back to the banana shelf. Do you stick with the organic bananas because no chemicals surely means better quality and better taste or are you swayed by the smile of the Costa Rican banana picker beaming out from the Fairtrade bunch? Or do you, in fact, revert back to the standard fare, remembering that the documentarian said conventional banana farmers need your pennies too?
This is one of modern day’s most frequently experienced dilemmas. For those of us with a conscience, there is a compulsion to do “the right thing” but without all the facts it is really difficult to know what that is. A fruit buyer for Sainsbury’s recently said he thought that organic and Fairtrade offers had distinctly separate followings. But I think he is perhaps misguided. I for one have an inclination towards both and don’t believe I am alone.
For many, the question of organic comes down to health. The conventional fresh produce industry religiously complies with all of the regulations for maximum pesticide residue levels – if this wasn’t so, the UK supermarkets wouldn’t look twice at them – and the designated government department assures us these are safe. But how safe is safe? The Pesticide Action Network (PAN) UK have documented a list of the most residue- contaminated foods, along with a detailed analysis of the biological repercussions of exposure to such levels of toxicity. Is this unnecessary scaremongering given the governmental evaluations? Perhaps, but it is simply too soon to evaluate the lasting effects of growing up on a diet of intensively-farmed produce. Debating the veritable health benefits of eating organically warrants a whole article in itself. But, safety aside, there is no disguising the powdery film that coats some of the conventional produce on offer these days, or its drying effect on the palate. So, even if it is completely innocuous, for some this alone is incentive enough to look elsewhere.
Contrary to popular belief, Fairtrade produce is not necessarily a guarantee of a more eco-friendly practice of farming, but, rather, a more socio-friendly one. As Duncan White, director of Agrofair UK, which was responsible for bringing the first Fairtrade fruit to the UK ten years ago, points out, it is about guaranteeing a level of security. “You’ll hear about schools getting resources and other benefits but the main thing about Fairtrade is the producers involved have greater security over the volumes they are selling and the prices they are getting,” he says. “The producers get to know whom they are selling to so they are not just pawns in some supply chain game.”
Not much to object to there… but what about our farmers over here? Are they seeing the same consideration? Sadly not in many instances. Shiny happy faces of “your local grower” are commonplace among the packs of toms and spuds these days but horticultural production is no picnic anywhere. Margins are tightening almost on a daily basis and supermarket contracts can be conscience-free and have a nasty habit of almost self-combusting just as times get particularly tough.
Then there is the dreaded airmiles issue. You’ve read the headlines and heard the soundbites – one long-haul flight is the equivalent of a year’s worth of car journeys in terms of fuel consumption.... and all those bananas, Thai lychees and Kenyan fine beans have been doing such hauls several times a week for years.
So, should we even be eating lychees, fine beans or bananas – organic, Fairtrade or otherwise? Or in fact anything that cannot be produced in the UK? Perhaps not, but then the UK simply doesn’t have enough of anything to feed its millions alone. Besides, what would become of the smiling Costa Rican banana farmer if we suddenly stopped buying his bananas?
In any case, supermarkets are not just going to terminate all imports so we can return to an idyllic yesteryear where strawberries had a season and when it was over, it was over. It comes back to the double-edged sword of consumerism. Once you make something available, physically but also economically, to the world and his wife, they will snap it up and suddenly there is a pressure to sustain that offer.
So, where does that leave the conscientious shopper? My guess is, with a splitting head and a glazed expression. One temptation must surely be to boycott the money-guzzling supermarkets and sign up for the nearest organic box scheme, or visit the regional farmers’ market, where you know the food is fresh, seasonal and of local provenance. But for most of us, things like time and money often get in the way.
So, is there a way to shop with consideration for the environment, social responsibility, both nationally and internationally, as well as our health and happiness? Unfortunately not, it seems. The simple truth is consumerism is a fact of our 21st century lives and that won’t change whether you buy local, organic, Fairtrade or even Fairtrade organic. Of course it could be argued that if every well-meaning shopper chose Fairtrade and organic produce, the supermarkets would be forced to respond to that and lessen their supplies of conventional lines. However, the multiples’ raison d’etre is to be all things to all people and that means conventionally-grown and, preferably, cheap produce will remain the order of the day for the masses for the foreseeable future. It is of course worth persevering, if only on the basis of “every little helps”. And another point to bear in mind is to only buy enough for your needs and use it all because the energy spent incinerating wasted food is a whole other headache.
www.agrofair.com
www.fairtrade.org.uk
www.organicfood.co.uk
Pesticide Action Network UK
www.soilassociation.org
