Here is my map of my 10 mile diet, please click on the image in order to go to the interactive map. You could move around the mouse onto the sport which located those farm within my 10miles distance and you could find the pop up images of the farm or farm shop or farmers market location. Once you double click on the spot that will link up with their official website. The colours are indicated the relationship between some of the places and the bigger size is represent the place you can get hold with the produces. (Let say the orange sports, the bigger one is the Bromley farmers market, and the little one is the producer).
This map is just based in my living area and I will expand it in the future so that everyone could use it. This is only one method of showing where the farm is, you could find your local farm, shop and market on localfoodadvisor.com Base on the 1oomilediet.org you could get your started guide easily.
100 mile diet is an experience to help people rise the awareness about the energy which spend on transporting foods/ food miles and encourage people think deeply and consider to make some changes in the eating habits. It is not a diet to force you to give up on your food and become vegetarian as they are most easily to find on local farms. Also the mile number isn't a number to make you to think of eating locally and not a strict diet. You can start slow by cutting your food miles from internationally to 500 to 400 to 100 etc.
This diet is not as difficult as you think and it do good for you health and for the environment. It would be fun and you will know better in your local area and community. You just need to spend sometime to find where is your local resources from others and on web. You may improve your cooking skill and as you know more resources you could have try out more ingredients and you could save even more on buying the seasonal foods. Talking with the farmers and people around the local farm, they will introduce you some foods and cooking methods which you may never think of. Also it could be a fun family outing and a easier way to communicate with other by sharing experience.
As running a farm shop seem difficult for space and inconvenience for some of us, why not having a mobile farm shop? which could run to some area or delivery their farm produces within a distance. Also it could be a promotion for the farm as well just like a movable poster, pop up store which will attract more people.
As Hewitts Farm is using a recycle cargo shipping container as the "shop" which lead me to think of a mobile farm shop.
The container could be open up so it could attract people in all direction and people could interact with it more than a shop. The image is just to show the concept of how it may work.
Eating locally isn't that far away from us. There is a restaurant serving Local Food, running by Oliver Rowe. "We have covered the 100 mile diet, where Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon are spending a year eating food from within a hundred miles of their home. Restaurateur Oliver Rowe is taking the concept to a whole new level- he is opening up a restaurant where every ingredient comes from within the M25, a ring road around London. He is making his own oil from local rapeseed (canola) as an olive oil substitute; has found a local sparking wine, , flour ground in Ponders End and honey produced in Tower Hill. "I have found a mushroom farm in East Ham, fish from the Thames, a fantastic farm with lamb and pigs at Amersham and an ostrich farm in south-west London." He cheats a bit- coffee, tea and pepper; Salt is from Essex. Currently Oliver runs a popular pub called Konstam (in picture)- Konstam at the Prince Albert opens next month. Evening Standard"
This website is a to promote 100 miles diet and they have some videos to watch. People are sharing how they do their 100 miles diet with low CO2 emission.
This diet won't be able to do it on your own and it coordinating and would be involving in with lots of people, your family, farmers, producers, friends, neighbors etc. as it would be a community thing more then a personal diet if you think deeply.
Food Import and Export You could find out more statistic about in ukagriculture. I think the statistic is similar to everywhere to the world as there are huge percentage of food importation.
Transporting Food The quantity of food moved by truck has doubled since 1974 and the DEFRA reports that 25% of all miles covered by heavy goods traffic was to move food. There is an average 898 miles a year produce by transporting food. In 2002, food transport produced 19 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, of which 10 Million tonnes were emitted in the UK and 9 million tonnes were generated by food imports.
I go further then Farmer's Market and yesterday my friend and I went to Hewitts Farm in Orpington as they stated "pick you own" on their website. Also so because it was sunny and feel like Spring.
We walked and took train to the farm which we had 1.2kg CO2 emission in total. We arrived in Knockholt rail station and our adventure journey begin.
I drawn the map from google map but I was so surprise that we need to walk in the high way where they don't have any public foot path and we went though the highway round about which is quite dangerous if you are walking alone. Those drivers on the cars look at me strangely as they don't expect anyone will walk around in highway and we got lose somehow.
On one side of the highway it stated low emission zone which is quite funny to me. As normally the high way is so busy especially in rush hours and what do they mean by low emission zone?
There was a sign about the "boot sale this Sunday" then we though the farm is near by but actually not and we got lose..
Anyway after 40mins, we finally arrived in the farm shop. I find that kind of disappointed somehow. It is because there are leak of sign and I expect it to be a bit better then it should be if you look at the website.The farm shop is not big as you can see but they have most of the ingredient from the seasonal vegetables. All the products in the farm shop is not necessary come from their farm but the farm next to them and in the same regions. Every farm have their limitation of farming, one farm may only product a few of the vegetables.
After had a chat with the woman who is working in the farms shop she told me that, they are under pressure by government, supermarket and the weather. As it is winter, specially this year have been snowing quite a lots, so the quality and quantity of the produces become worst. The government is not helping as they putting restriction on the amount of weed killer and fertilizer. Also they are putting restriction of Hewitt's Farm to put any sign up on the highway, the lady told me that they had a few penalty in the past year for putting sign up. The only way to advertise is on web or by their network. They had try to promote their vegetables to supermarket but they have rejected as supermarket are trying to low down the farm profit to be compete with others supermarket price. Therefore some of the farm shops are shutting down.
While we are there, few customers came and shop in the farm shop. They normally come around twice a week and they are live up the road about few minutes drive. They shop frequently in the farm shop because they can get the freshest products and normally spend average 50pounds per shopping. Most of the people will drive their own car for the farm shop shopping and when I told them we actually walked from station to there they were so amazed and surprise.
Walking in the round about in high way. The products (jam, vegs, fruits, sauce) that I bought in the farm shop which cost around 10pounds.
After I talked to the farm lady I feel so sorry for the farm as they can't get many help from the government. Even though government have been promoting agricultural for these years, as the climate change.
Why the government can't help farmer to run their farm shop? and not putting public sign for them as a local attraction? and how can they allowing farm shop to shut down?
I been to a "small farm" (as it only growing one kind of vegetable and you can pick you own in there) in Hong Kong before as I joined my mum who really enjoy going hiking in the winter. That farm is not public in anywhere on web or on book its just passing through by the community.
The farmer who is picking vegetable for the customers as the vegetable is growing in the wet field. Me kneeing on the pathway and picking the vegetable on the side.30mins later only half bag filled. The vegetable that growth in people garden.
The vegetable that I pick is so fresh with lots of little insects and I think that should be organic. That little field is running by a family who own the land and surprisingly the farmer son was there for help even though I can see from his face he is so not willing to. I can understand he point of view as HK there are not many young people is willing to work as farmer or go down to the field. That trip was really enjoyable as I always been away from HK away from my mum that was a great activity for us to doing something together. To me it will be easier for me to do the diet in HK as it is a small place and it is easier to travel to other places, also I know HK and the food better than in London. We have lots of local market in every town and my house in HK is near to the fruit market which all fruits will come to there before go out to the market.
I think if government could move forward to making some new rules and encourage more young people to doing agriculture or farming or gardening in their living area and helping farmer to holding farmer's market more frequently, also encourage supermarket to take in more local farm produces and food for promoting the eating local habit. As our nature is "lazy" or when it come with money that is the most quickest and most reaction from the public.
It is hard for farmer to run their business with limited customers. People want to improve the environment with better agricultural system but that is not farmer job only. UK supermarkets competition regulations and mess up the terms of trade of their suppliers with farmers, an ‘ideal’ supermarket would commit of practice, in the training and management of buyers, and in its selection and monitoring of first tier suppliers—to integrity in trading relations and fair pricing for produce, covering cost of production and a reasonable return on producers’ capital and labor. This should apply across the global supply base and fair trade.
I have been doing a project relate to "100-mile Diet" and this have been running for few weeks already. Here is what I am doing and what have done so far.
As starting the sustainability “toolkit” project, I come across a web site which has lots of different links about sustainability solutions in different catalogs and theories around the world.
The one I am interested in is the “100 mile diet”. Diet is the most basic thing that we need everyday and it’s the easiest thing that people will fall into the trance of unsustainable. “100 mile diet” is introducing the local eating habit which just eating food grown and raised within 100 miles of where you live.
Normal supermarket mainly state their food is made in Britain but where exactly do they come from? Fish normally state it’s from Scotland and actually it burn quite a lots of fossil fuel for that product to travel from North to South of the UK but that won’t be as worst as importing foods from New Zealand which will produce 4.18tonnes CO2.
100 miles is a diameter from your home and that region is big enough for people to find any kind of local foods with huge variety.
From where I live 100miles can cover the up to 1/3 of the whole Britain also can cover a little part of France.
I am going to investigate the sustainability toolkits as “100 mile diet” but I am going to challenge that as 10mile diet. As I am not living in the heart of city I believe I could find some resources within 10 miles region of my living area.
First I go online and find out where is the nearest and the most convenient Framers Market (which suggested in the web site). Most of the Framer Markets are open in the first weekend of the month or in some selected dates.
Bromley is the most convenient place for me to go as I normally visit there twice a month if I am not going to central. I mainly using bus to travel to there but this time I tried to be green and spend around 45mins on foot to Bromley which is around 2 miles away. There are several Fruits Stores, one sausage/ processed meat, breads and jams store, vegetable store. I didn’t notice those stores are framers market as I can see some Chinese or Indian selling their country goods which is not what I expected to see in “Local Framers Store”.
I have been talking to some store holder they said the “Local” have the variety of meaning as some people bring their goods from their own country and when they landed in UK, in their house, those good will automatically called “Local”. I think that is so unfair to the real Local products.
Britain’s first farmers’ market opened in Bath in 1997. Now UK has reached 550 farmers’ markets 17% of households have visited a farmers’ market, and it looks like there is still lots of room for growth since nine out of ten people say they would shop at a market if they had one locally.
I went to Sainsbury's supermarket some of the products in there stated they are British product, Scottland etc. but exactly where did they growth? They don't even state on the label or they know know where do they come from.
Also I think supermarket do provide or give out wrong information and eating habit to public. From the eat the seasons website we know that what is seasonal what is not. In the supermarket you can find all kind of vegetables in all season. It is a reality of human, as people would get hold with what they want no matter ignore the method. As supermarket is commercial unit they want to use variety of food products to attack people and people do want to get their food in a convenient way and don't consider where does the food comes from or how they are produced etc.People do have confusion about what is farmers market and compare them with supermarkets. As supermarket may have a cheaper price then market price. When people want to buy English produce they will go to market but they do want to have all food in all season so they have no option but to buy and go for supermarket.
Shop/ eat locally: - improves food quality as the products as spending less time in the shipping container.
- saves transportation costs
- contributes to the local economy as you spending locally
- making useful of the farmland as you shop locally you will show the impertinences of the local producer
- healthier diet as you know more what you are eating as you will cook them at home
- more enjoyable time to share time with your beloved one and family as you will spending and it could be become a part of the activities
- improve the communication in the society as you will build up and restore the communication network between farmer and your neighbors and not just picking your own food in the cold environment in supermarket
- build up a sustainable food system, people will being honest, having strong moral principles and respect of what they are eating
- build up a sustainable life as you will help to reduce package waste by shopping in local farm shops
UK farming
There are approximately 300,000 active farms in UK, average around the size of 57 hectares and they are bigger than Europeans' farm which have around 20 hectares.
There are much more farming area in UK but there are only small amount of farmers and only 65% of agricultural area is used. - http://www.ukagriculture.com/
Agricultural crisis
Mid-sized professional farmers are suffering the most in the crisis, they are being tied to the land with no chance of taking off-farm work. The crisis is spread across all sectors—cereals, dairy, egg and poultry, livestock, and horticulture. The knock-on effects of a crisis in farming, on rural employment, landscape, biodiversity, soil health, tourism etc.—especially in marginal areas with high amenity value—are considerable. The NFU has warned (June 02) of growing problems affecting Britain’s farming industry which could force thousands to leave the land, with low incomes, job losses and poor prices leading to a new crisis in agriculture.
Of the 130,000 farm businesses in England recorded in the agricultural census, roughly half (around 64,000) were above the 0.5 Standard Labour Requirement threshold, and half below. Although farms below the Farm Business Survey minimum size threshold are numerous, they account for only 4% of total agricultural production. However, they account for 10% of total agricultural land area and nearly 30% of total farmers and workers. - http://www.racetothetop.org/indicators/module2/
You could move around the mouse onto the sport which located those farm within my 10miles distance and you could find the pop up images of the farm or farm shop or farmers market location. Once you double click on the spot that will link up with their official website.
