Localising our shopping

Even before I read the book I'd been questioning where my foodstuffs came from.

And once we started to question where one thing, e.g. our meat was coming from we were compelled to question where our veg was coming from - fish, other groceries etc?

What supply chain had these things been through, had someone been exploited in producing it?

We questioned everything we bought. Once we started thinking about it in this way it was impossible not to.

Did someone suffer to provide these goods to the supermarket? Did a regional or national farmer get squeezed or forced into a non-negotiable contract that works in the buyer's favour? Did a regional or national farmer get pushed out in favour of an international one that can provide goods cheaper?

The scale of the questioning grew and it was not possible to apply this line to one thing but not another.

So there it was, and there we were - in a supermarket and unable to justify buying anything in there.

We were very lucky to be living in a town where there's a farmer's market twice a month, less than 10 minutes walk away from our house. We started relying on that for our veg - and our meat. This meant that we drastically reduced our consumption of meat.

It was expensive - compared to what you could get in the supermarket. This was around the time of the £5 chicken in Tesco... you could get a packet of 10 chicken thighs for around £3.50.

We were looking at chickens that cost £8 and small joints of beef that cost £7 - £10 and a 200g (roughly) packet of stewing beef that cost £3 or more and beef burgers that were £1.80 for 2 instead of £1.80 for 4 etc etc

This was our 1st experience of seeing meat at its true cost.

We started to get a feeling then, that we needed to shop in local places before there were none left to shop in. Our exercise in not using the large supermarket down the road just showed us how difficult it already is to do that.

And then the large supermarket (Tesco) put in a planning application to expand its store.

Localisation

Last year Geoff and I started doing something different. Well a lot of things really. It sort of germinated in us for a while and then I read a book I'd had on the shelf for some time but wasn't ready for.

Shopped, by Joanna Blythman.

It spurred me into action.

We stopped using our local Tesco supermarket, we stopped using all large supermarkets. In fact, we stopped using a supermarket at all for a time.

This was no small task and not easy.

First we couldn't think where to go to get things from in the first place if we didn't go there. Thoughts like 'well, I know that the butcher would sell meat if we had one in the town, but who traditionally sells bun cases?' were common (we ate cake instead and didn't complain, at least we had the means to make cakes).

There were a lot of questions in this process and I'd like to write about them... but it's late so it'll have to wait until later...

A bit random

I've been toying with the idea of blogging about this stuff for some time. So I'm going to just start saying something and go a bit random.

Peak oil, localisation, climate change, dwindling energy supplies, the end of cheap energy, learning to grow food...

That's what I want to talk about.