What Can I Do as a Consumer?
As consumers we can all make a huge difference to the world's ability to feed itself just by making some changes to our own diet and shopping arrangements.
- Eat less meat and a little less dairy produce. This is probably the biggest single step we can take to reduce our environmental impact - which includes the impact we have on rising food prices worldwide and the inability of people in poorer countries to feed themselves.
- Get a grip on Food Waste - the ideal being that NO food gets thrown away. This might mean shopping daily rather than weekly, trusting our eyes and noses more when considering when something has gone off, reusing leftovers from one meal when cooking the next meal, or eating fragile foods first. Another option is to decide not to go shopping until the fridge is empty!
- Sign up to a local organic box scheme full of fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables. Try to find a box scheme that supports small organic growers near to where you live, rather than large commodity-scale producers or unnecessarily imported produce. Avoid using frozen, canned or airfreighted produce.
- Buy bread from the local baker (or bake your own) and such meat as you need from a local butcher. As discussed elsewhere, essential food processing like milling, baking, brewing and butchery will need to take place as close to the consumer as possible in a post-oil world. It is therefore a good idea to support such bakers, brewers and butchers as you may already have in your high street.
- Grow some food yourself, starting with some vegetables in your own garden or on an allotment. If you don't know how, get a good book or join one of the many informal schemes where allotment holders support each other.
- If you're already growing plenty of vegetables, consider getting a couple of chickens or even a pig - but only if you can work out where to get enough food in the form of scraps or waste products to feed it/them.
- Link up with others who are concerned about our post-peak-oil food supply and take action in your local community, for example by getting involved in a Transition Town initiative. Working with others for example you could try to ensure that land is available for food growing and that those who want to start growing food get the support they need. Or consider setting up a new CSA in your town.
East Anglia Food Link exists to facilitate this action and there are a number of ways we can support you if you want to take action along these lines - see What We Do.