Supplying organic food which has been produced locally is the very essence of the Cambridge Organic Food Co. We'd therefore very much like you to read these few notes on the local aspect of our work so you can better appreciate the benefits of buying and eating local food, and also the limitations we encounter.
There are many reason why buying your food locally is a good thing to do, but right up there at the top of the list is the issue of 'food miles'. Food miles is the total distance your food has to travel between leaving the farm and arriving at your plate. As the world wakes up to the concept of the carbon footprint the issue of food miles has become massive. Its not just overseas travel that is the problem, most mainstream food products clock up a fair mileage just being transported around the country from farm, to packhouse, to distribution centre and to supermarket, an even then you have to drive to and from the supermarket to get it. We even know first hand of organic potatoes which were grown locally and then taken up to York to be sorted and bagged. Some of these then came back to a Cambridge supermarket where they were, ironically, labeled as 'local'. Ridiculous.
The produce we buy direct from our local farmers simply comes from their farm to our packing shed, where it is put into your box and sent to your home. We put a lot of effort into ensuring our delivery rounds are as efficient as possible and a delivery round with 30-40 boxes on saves that many people making individual journeys to the shops.
As well as the environmental implications of transporting food over vast and unnecessary distances, there is a cost involved with this as well. Over the last few years fuel has become more and more expensive and this has had a knock on effect on the price of food. Everywhere, that is, except at The Cambridge Organic Food Co. We know that many households have had to tighten their belts of late and we have therefore not increased our prices since 2007. The reason we have been able to do this is because we are less affected by the price of fuel. You will notice, for example, that prices of the big national box schemes have risen steadily while ours have remained.
As anyone who has eaten a tomato straight off the vine will testify, produce is much better eaten as soon as possible after harvesting. Buying locally means you get your produce much faster from the field, while the Spanish tomatoes destined for the supermarket are still in a container half way along the channel tunnel the ones grown in Great Abingdon are already in your kitchen.
Most of the money you spend on your box will go to either the people who work at The Cambridge Organic Food Co. or to the farmers who have supplied the produce. This means that money has been kept within our local economy, rather than traveling outside the area and into the pockets of shareholders. Whats more, by maintaining a regular market for their produce our local farmers are encouraged to keep up the fantastic work that they do and new ones are encouraged to convert to organic. This not only secures our longer term supply of fresh organic produce, it helps support the habitats of wildlife on our doorsteps.
It happens every year. During April or May at least one box scheme member will leave saying 'you don't put enough local produce in the boxes'. While we admire the sentiments of these well meaning, if a little unguided, individuals you can imagine how frustrating this is for us, considering the high emphasis we put on locality. Truth is, however, that it would be simply impossible to provide a service which filled boxes exclusively with local produce. The biggest limitation is seasonality. There are certain times of year when there simply isn't very much produce in season, most notably the 'March/April/May' period. If you happen to be reading this during this period and you are thinking to yourself 'there's not much local produce in the COFCO boxes at the moment' the please consider these two points...
1. That during the lean season the box scheme still provides a vehicle for the sale of what little produce is available locally. In other words, the only local items in your box may only be a salad bag, the potatoes and some purple sprouting broccoli, but were it not for the box scheme these items might not have otherwise found their way to market and the farmers still get a little bit of income to see them through to the more prosperous season.
2. If we haven't got it here you certainly won't be able to buy locally grown organic produce anywhere else.