Food Webs

As published by CPRE...

This report is based upon a unique study carried out over an eight-year period in East Suffolk. It reveals the many benefits that local food networks offer to society. Crucially, it identifies the vital need for planning and retail policies to support and develop local food economies in England. The research also reinforces understanding of the critical role local food economies play in safeguarding the character of local landscapes and the habitats they contain, sustaining rural communities and reducing the environmental impact of food production and distribution.

The variety and quality of the food harvested from our countryside is one of the nation's greatest assets, as is the great diversity of our landscape which has been shaped over the millennia by local farming practices. In recent decades, the link between landscape and food has undergone rapid and dramatic change as the food market place has become dominated by supermarkets, which increasingly source their food from larger and larger farms and from abroad*. This trend to long-distance sourcing has serious implications. While the future of the diverse farmed landscapes that surround us has become increasingly vulnerable and uncertain, rural employment has also declined, together with possibilities for local enterprise. Crucially, there are fewer opportunities for expanding consumer choice through the development of new small businesses in the local food industry.

In contrast the case studies presented here show how in East Suffolk a combination of far-sighted planning policy and informed planning decisions has created a framework within which a diverse 'Food Web' of local producers, wholesalers, retailers and consumers can prosper. The area has benefited from an approach that supports a variety of retail outlets including a range of small and medium-sized supermarkets in the market towns. Within this framework small businesses can not only start up and survive but flourish, attracting other business and visitors to the area. The report also reveals increasing consumer demand for local food. The creative ways in which local food producers and retailers are meeting such demands are not only generating new business opportunities, but providing a host of additional services to the customers and communities they serve.

The report shows how the local food economy thus underpins not only the economic viability of the countryside, its market towns and villages, but also brings wide benefits to consumers, to visitors to the countryside and to the environment as a whole. These include the provision of fresh, locally identifiable, healthy food; ensuring genuine consumer choice; support for farming and the sustainable management of our living landscapes; support for the community in rural areas; ; long-term reductions in energy use; and sustaining the development of associated industries, such as tourism and countryside recreation. Such findings reinforce the conclusion that, far from being a marginal and declining element of modern life, local food economies are integral to it.

Central to these findings is the need to understand the full social, economic and environmental costs that the supermarket multiples impose on their surrounding areas and the threat they continue to represent. Considerable research has already highlighted the damaging effects of supermarkets and of the increasing concentration of the retail market**. In this context, supporting local food economies is of utmost importance to us all, wherever we live, not least because they offer genuine diversity of choice for consumers: the choice to buy traditional varieties of livestock, dairy products, fruit and vegetables and other fresh local foods and local products with a known provenance.

The policy implications of the research presented here are clear. First and foremost, local food economies must be recognised as integral to delivering key policies on issues such as employment, healthy living, countryside management and energy use. Secondly, the conditions needed to safeguard and foster local food economies should be understood and promoted within the planning system. These include setting limits on future developments of large supermarkets and the spread of supermarket chains in the high street in the guise of convenience stores. Thirdly, there is need for coordinated action to educate consumers about where food comes from and how it is produced. Legislative change is needed to ensure clear and simple labelling enables customers to make informed choices about the food they buy and the systems their shopping supports.

*Sustain / EFRC, Eating Oil - Food in a Changing Climate , 2001
**Friends of the Earth, Good neighbours? Community impacts of supermarkets , 2005: 'By dominating food sales, they take away the chance to shop in traditional shops, such as greengrocers and butchers; they make it hard for new schemes to start and expand; and by targeting non-food shops they could take away the choice to visit a thriving town centre.'

To download the full report, visit the CPRE web site at www.cpre.org.uk