Food Miles

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When you eat a pineapple, drink a cup of coffee or bite into a bar of chocolate, you are enjoying tropical food grown thousands of miles from Britain. The distance that food travels from the farmer who produced it to the consumer who eats or drinks it is measured in 'food miles'.

Food miles are part of the system of international trade. With advanced transport systems and improved technologies for keeping food fresh, supermarkets are able to offer global produce throughout the year. In 1991, Britain was 75% self-sufficient in food. Today it is just 62% self-sufficient. Its population is growing as are the food miles.

Shops in Britain currently stock organic fruits and vegetables grown by around 60,000 small-scale producers and a similar number of employees on larger farms in Sub-Saharan Africa. The benefits of this trade are felt both by consumers here in terms of the variety of food they can obtain, and by the families of the producers. It provides livelihoods for more than a million people in poorer countries such as Rwanda, Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya.

The increasing volume of 'fair trade', which guarantees a fair price for producers, enables children to attend school and their communities to develop. Earnings from the 5% of Kenyan vegetables that are exported almost match those from the 95% of vegetables consumed locally.