The White Hat Guide to Food Miles

Recently there has been some focus on food miles – the number of miles travelled by the food to the consumer. The issue has received some prominence with large sales of an American book called ‘The 100 Mile Diet’. In Melbourne there is a restaurant in the Melbourne Central complex called ‘The 100 Mile Café’ which sources its ingredients within a hundred mile radius. The LOCAL component of SOLE food refers to the same issues as food miles.

Why do people get excited about food miles? One set of reasons that have generated copious discussion is tied up with ‘how societies ought to operate’, resistance to globalisation, support of small (and nominally inefficient) farms against broadacre (and nominally efficient) farms and so on. As all of these things are tied up with your socio-political view of the world they are areas in which it is unlikely that widespread consensus across the community is likely to be achieved.

However one area where people are much more in agreement is the issue of the greenhouse gases created by shipping bulky foodstuffs around the country and across the world. That’s good. We’re all agreed then. We’ll only buy and eat things that are produced locally. Unfortunately, like most of life, things don’t turn out as simply as that and we often have to weigh up competing priorities.

Should we buy rice produced in the Murray-Darling Basin because it is local rather than ship it in from water rich countries in South East Asia? Should mainlanders refuse to eat food from Tasmania? . .etc. Decisions aren’t always straightforward.

However the simplest thing that many of us can do if we want to reduce food miles is to grow our own. Now I know some of you have had some success with hydroponics in the roof cavity, but we are talking about growing food.

A century ago it was decided in Australia that a quarter acre block was the minimum size on which a family could be self sufficient – grow vegetables, run chooks, keep a goat (or on larger blocks maybe a cow) and so on. This would then need only minor supplementing from outside sources particularly as neighbours swapped certain goods for others. Scraps went out to the chooks who turned most of it into fertiliser for the garden so there was little waste to be carted away. Over time many of these blocks dispensed with the vegie garden and replaced them with water hungry lawns. Some local councils banned water tanks, and others even banned nature’s great recycler – the chook. Some councils allowed chooks but not if used in a self sustaining way – they banned the rooster!

Even under water restrictions it is possible to have a productive vegie garden so in future newsletters we will have a look at the options for the standard suburban house, the housing estate with limited outdoor space, the student house and the city apartment.

In future White Hat Food Guide Newsletters we will be examining considerations of food miles and this page will grow  so return again soon.

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