The Archbishop of Canterbury has called for “unsustainable” air-freighted food to be replaced gradually by homegrown produce from thousands of new allotments.
In an interview with The Times, Dr Rowan Williams said that families needed to respond to the threat of climate change by changing their shopping habits and adjusting their diets to the seasons, eating fruit and vegetables that could be grown in Britain.
He said that the carbon footprint of peas from Kenya and other airfreighted food was too high and families should not assume that all types of food would be available through the year. Dr Williams called for more land to be made available for allotments, saying that they would help people to reconnect with nature and wean them off a consumerist lifestyle.
The Archbishop was accused, however, of threatening the livelihoods of a million families in sub-Saharan Africa, who depended on exports of fresh produce to Europe.
There is a serious point here, because DEFRA is advocating that our farmers grow GM crops and they have ignored the effect of allotments.
ReplyDeleteI agree, the big US agri-firms are trying to bully us all into their GM world, where everybody pays them fees to grow anything.
ReplyDeleteThis sad Government has got itself tangled up with them and can't find a neat way to back-track. So, it continues going down this route. When in a hole... stop digging!