Food and the Economy - Fruit & Vegetables

The second Agricultural revolution, often referred to as the green revolution, enabled Britain by 1978 to be self sufficient in temperate foods. As the last time this had been the case was in 1760s, combined with the population growth in the intervening two centuries and volume of food produced is remarkable. However it is not until you look at individual crops that the growth of yield becomes understandable. Even as late as the 1940s a British grown Tomato plant would yield about a pound of fruit. Now modern varieties yield forty pounds of fruit per plant.

Back in the 1940s tomatoes were seen as a luxury item, and it was one of the reasons why gardeners grew their own tomatoes and why foods like this were understood to be seasonal. Remember this is before mass travel and Elizabeth David, and the adoption of a Mediterranean style of diet in Britain. When I was a child, in the 1970s as an April fools joke the BBC even carried a report about the failure of the Spaghetti harvest. This caused panic buying in the shops of Spaghetti Even then I really only knew of Spaghetti in tins in tomato sauce, one of the 57 varieties.

Just at the time the that Britain became self sufficient in temperate foods, there was a genuine revolution happening in the food that people were prepared to eat too. People like me who were fed up of over boiled cabbage and bland flavourless food. Like a lot of people, I assumed it was influence of “Mrs Beaton” who had advised that Cabbage needed to be cooked for half an hour. While this was true in part, the other factor was that the seed varieties that had been developed for commercial growers provided fruits and vegetables that were more even and consistent in colour and size, but lacked flavour.

Also at the same time, 1976/77, I had read a book that had predicted BSE, so I had become much more aware of the food I was eating and became a vegetarian Therefore I inadvertently avoided many of the changes that the food industry was trying to impose upon us. By becoming vegetarian I knew that I needed to be more careful about ensuring I had the full range of vitamins and minerals, not least all the people that were telling me that I would become very ill by excluding flesh from my
diet.

Another aspect that was influencing food in Britain was the cultural impact of immigration adding herbs, spices and flavours to the British diet. Although to be more accurate these were being re-added to the diet as in the past many of these flavours had been part of the British diet as a result of the empire. This combined with Britain joining the Common Market, as the European Union was then called, and the nature of the British diet was changing.

While the adjustment in the diet was much needed, the farmers and growers were slow to change their production to match consumer preferences. This is one of the few times when I will defend the supermarkets, as they could see the change in peoples tastes and started selling the products that influenced by the Mediterranean diet. When I first wanted to buy olive oil, I was told that I could only buy olive oil from the chemist. I actually found it in a whole food shop, along with many exciting other ingredients.

Therefore, with the increase in yields of fruits like tomatoes, the British diet was set to become much more healthy and more varied. But just as these dishes are easy to cook at home, they are also easy for the food industry to mass produce and find ways to make them cheaper via adulterating them with cheap fats, bulking agents and starches. Therefore the improvement in the diet never happened.

While this adjustment in the diet was very welcome it has an environmental and economic impact. My first job was in Horticulture, at a nursery that grew a lot of tomatoes. I discovered that commercial growing was very different from growing a few plants at home. Equally I discovered that commercial growing was very hard work and poorly paid. It was clear even then that British growers were struggling to compete with imported tomatoes. British growers were also struggling to cope with the increase in the oil price, this was the 1970s. While importing cheap food can benefit the poor, and as an agricultural worker I was part of that demographic, the cost of importing food means there is a cash outflow from the UK economy.

The long term costs go far beyond the price we pay for the imported tomatoes as in Spain hundreds of hectares of land is now covered with the plastic of poly tunnels. As the plastic only lasts three or four years, this has created a major pollution problem of waste plastic in the environment. Also as these poly tunnels are in arid areas, the water needed to water the plants comes from ground water, and is lowering the water table. Add into the mix the effects of climate change and the effect of cheap imported fruit and vegetables starts to look rather stupid. While in a free market it is possible to buy fruit from any source, this way of growing and buying from the cheapest source is totally unsustainable as it is reliant upon groundwater and not rainfall. Further, in the event of a drought in Spain, where the majority of tomatoes are coming from, the low prices just would not be maintained.

Tomatoes are just one illustration of the madness that has prevailed in the food industry. The range of food available has increased and improved, but in the last forty years we have gone from being self sufficient in Britain to a place where over forty percent of our food is imported. Just as the availability of cheap credit created the illusion of greater wealth, the illusion of cheap food has only ensured that the poor have been kept in poverty.

The effect has also been that farmers and growers have lost the ability to grow many of the foods that are now part of the British diet. I really don't want to see a return to the bland and limited diet of the 1960/70s, but nor do I want to see the loss of the diversity of imported foods that we now see in the shops. However, we need to grow more of the food that we can ourselves.

The economic cost is an outflow of billions of pounds from Britain, and as well as importing foods that we could be growing here, we are importing water from water poor areas. The need will arise very soon for us to aid water poor areas much more than we do at the moment. This is not about folks feeling guilty about eating a diverse diet, but we do need to adjust the way we buy our food so that we in Britain (the same applies to where ever you live) are no longer buying as much imported foods.