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Tesco's flying vegetables

How not to save the planet

27th August 2007

For immediate release

Supermarkets encourage customers to buy veg flown in from Africa, while they're growing alongside stores like this one at Brislington.

While the local vegetable crop is at its most prolific, the shelves of Tesco and other supermarkets are offering the same veg specially flown in from Africa.

Just this month, Tesco has been offering its customers peas, runner beans, courgettes, sweetcorn and carrots that have been flown across two continents in at enormous cost, adding to the overload of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Yet the same veg are readily available from farms locally, and are even being grown on the allotments alongside the store.

Stockwood allotment holder and Green Party activist Peter Goodwin was amazed to see the supermarket display.

"You couldn't make it up" he said.

"Here's a supermarket that likes to pretend it cares about the environment. Yet it uses African land and labour to produce food for the UK market instead of for Africa where it's needed. It flies the produce to the UK, adding a burden of CO2 and excessive packaging to the cost ^{[note 1]}. And it does all this at a time when the same produce is readily available from local sources."

The Greens believe that change is urgent at both ends of this trade. In Africa, so that crops can be grown more appropriate for the climate and for local needs. And in the UK, to encourage markets and distribution networks for local seasonal produce.

Notes

1. Tesco claims to care about its 'carbon footprint'. Yet its published figures conveniently don't include the impact of air-freighting vegetables from Africa, or of disposal of packaging. See www.tesco.com/climatechange/carbonfootprint.asp
2. See also links to Bristol Green Party's food policies

Contacts

Peter Goodwin (Green Party Press Officer), Tel. 01275 543280