Local food

All the food and wine for my lunch today, except for the slice of lemon (from Spain), came from the village where I live or the nearby sea.

Thank you to Blip for suggesting today's global picnic in support of Oxfam's campaign about the global food crisis. This is something I think about a lot, and have written about on my food and gardening blogs for several years. In order to help change the world, we in western countries have to accept that our lives must change and that we cannot continue to exploit developing countries for our needs. As my small contribution to this, I try to eat only food that comes from within 100 kilometres of where I live and I grow as much of my own as I can.

We shouldn't expect developing countries to grow the products which make our lives easier or more pleasant, at the expense of those people's needs. An article in yesterday's Guardian by Felicity Lawrence highlighted the problems of people in Guatemala who grow palm oil for biofuels so that people in rich countries can feel less guilty about driving their cars while the workers themselves are unable to feed their families properly.

Our meal was an indoor picnic, I'm afraid, because of the cold wind and grey clouds, but the food, as always, was delicious - eating local food needn't be limiting wherever you are!