Buy British

Buy British

Invest in ourselves - the biggest market is under our noses..literally. Brexiteers who are concerned about controlling our borders surely should want to invest more. Our food trade deficit - the difference between what food we import and export, is £33BILLION - so why not get rid of this by cutting food imports by half? Imagine what would happen if we spent that £30+B on ourselves?
Many of us will buy vegetables wrapped in a union jack packaging, believing we are doing our bit. But are we? There is more to it than that. Who has picked that veg and who is making the money out of that? Not to mention what is happening to our soil, because of the way we grow veg at the moment. See Soils
Nor is this a matter of individual consumerism, but manufacturers also using local produce. Why import beans from Canada to make baked beans?
Chris Grayling says Britain would grow more of its own food if no trade deal responding to industry claims that food prices could rise sharply in the event of a no-deal Brexit. He said this would hurt farmers on the continent as the UK was a key market. However, if this happened, he said the UK would respond by "growing more here and buying more from around the world". Yet in reality government building up food stores in case of 'No Deal' leaving the EU without a new arrangement in place, government preparing emergency measures to keep Britain’s massive food and drinks industry afloat - including stockpiling ahead of exit day on 29 March next year.
Just a few problems with this Chris! 1) Where are the farmers going to come from - their average age is around 60, so not best placed to do more work. 2) Where are farm workers going to come from? You have done away with AWB, so only minimum wages to get people up at all hours in all weathers. 3) Are you going to get more migrant workers - the very source of Brexit complaints - with most now going elsewhere as relative value of pound has plummeted. 4) Who is going to do the necessary research - 3/4 of all land based research closed in last 30 years of 'let supermarkets rule'.
Mind you you were also clearly clueless regarding farm work when you were a Minister of Work and Pensions - you said the high farm fatality rates may be due to the climate.

More than half see domestic production as more important now than before the pandemic

Survey found 51% of adults feel it is more important for Britain to produce its own food than they did three months ago.
How British Meat is being made
Hello Spam and tinned peaches
Last Food in England looks at the map of England which bears names which used to resonate through kitchens in the land: Colchester, Cheddar, Hereford, Swaledale, Bath, Lincoln, York, Wensleydale - the list goes on. England has more breeds of livestock, fruit cultivars and vegetable seeds to its credit than any other country in the world. Sussex, for example, was known for its cockles, herrings, truffles, seakale, cabbage, alongside its middlehorn beef, Southdown mutton and Tipper beer. Marwood Yeatman shines a light on what food remains, and highlights what could endure. This book is a wonderful voyage of discovery - an invitation to cook without recipes, travel without guides, and find history without museums. Take time to read about our fertile food heritage and the map of England will never look the same again.

Wetherspoons

Wetherspoons ditching Champagne and replacing with British bubbly. It will also sell less German and French (wheat) beers. Tim Martin — a vocal eurosceptic — said it makes sense to invest in UK drinks products now because of the EU’s “protectionist” tariff systems, which he claims are “widely misunderstood”. He says "tariffs are imposed on wine from Australia, New Zealand and the US, and on more than 12,000 other products. “The products we are now introducing are at lower prices than the EU products they are replacing.” He is giving the impression this will mean consuming more UK drink, but we could do that without leaving the EU.

Indoor farms could fine tune flavour and bring growing into supermarkets and schools - according to EU research.

Growing British

The aim of buying more local fruit and veg is to encourage growing more local fruit and veg. This could be good for:

People - all agree eating more fruit and veg is good

Planet - provided we grow in ways that do not destroy our soils (see Save our Arable Soils),

Local economies money spend on local food, gets circulated through local economy in shops, cafes, markets and pubs.

Glocalisation is where foods are locally-grown foods with breeding and heritage that comes from all four corners of the earth. Can grow Mexican, African or Chinese foods a cold European (sorry Pritish) climate?" It responds to major cultural and population shifts, enabling foreign workers here to grow food more familiar to their tastes - and introduce them here..
Seed Voyage links local growers and eaters of interesting food (in US/Canada only)

Lancaster


Seed Library for local gardeners & growers to share & save seeds from their own patch of earth. Growing our local food economy aims to make sustainable and healthy food a defining feature of Lancaster District