Where does it come from?
"Food provenance means knowing the root of where your food has come from and knowing how the food was produced, transported and delivered to us" Local Farm Produce
Looking at this picture of a kid's book that I found when looking for a suitable image to head this post, I realise that there are even more aspects to this blog's question than I thought. Some of them rather uncomfortable.
I grew up in an Island nation - Great Britain - well England, Scotland and Wales - Ireland is another island altogether, and I have lived most of my life in another island nation - Australia. Now Britain is not very far away from Europe - you can see Calais from Dover on a clear day, but Australia's key characteristic is its remoteness. The tyranny of distance. However it is largely self-sufficient in food - you can grow just about anything here and the population to feed is small relative to its size. We may not yet grow absolutely everything but we could. England is hampered more by climate and land available and the number of people to feed but nevertheless is extremely good at intensive farming and does a pretty good job of being almost self-sufficient.
However, neither of these two countries sell only products from their own country. England may well be changing because of Brexit - it will be interesting to see if, for example, they import more food from Australia rather than Europe, but England is not really my concern here. It's just a useful place with which to compare, mostly because I grew up there. Huge amounts of food are imported to both countries - both fresh and processed - although I'm guessing there are pretty strict regulations on the importation of fresh fruit and vegetables into Australia. We are very nervous about disease, and competition - from our sibling nation New Zealand in particular. So what do we import and why?
Cost, of course is a prime factor. I don't know who invented containers - I must look into this sometime - but it's apparently amazingly cheap to ferry things around the world in containers. I must say I look at pictures of ships like the ones above and wonder how the containers don't all fall off in high seas? Or perhaps they do. There doesn't seem to be anything keeping them from sliding off. And not only is it cheap to transport food, but also lots of countries either subsidise their agricultural industries or else the workers are exploited and paid very minimal wages. The cost of living in many countries is much lower than here. Add to that corruption and exploitation - also more common in the third world - if we still call it that - and there is no competition. Certainly not when competing with our own produce. So when you are faced in the supermarket with a tin of Italian grown tomatoes at a substantial discount to Australian grown tinned tomatoes what do you do? Italian has a cachet about it too doesn't it?
For that's the other reason we buy overseas produce - those specialist things like Wensleydale cheese - any kind of specialist cheese in fact, or Italian truffles, Parma ham, Japanese/Chinese soy sauce, French mustard, Burgundy wine, all those spices that we don't grow here.... The list is endless really. Now Australia is doing its best to compete on all those fronts, and it may eventually have the quality, indeed has matched the quality already in some cases, even surpassed the quality, but it's almost always more expensive.
"When farmers and producers promote the provenance of their produce and value added products, they can access niche markets and higher profits that would normally be unavailable to them" Local Farm Produce
And so yet again the high quality Australian product is only available to the better off Australians. The poor have to just buy the cheapest available, be it from somewhere in Asia, Europe or South America. Transporting something from Queensland to Victoria probably costs more than transporting a container from Italy.
I do try to be true to Australia. Part of the reason for today's post, is tonight's special meal which has to feature smoked salmon. We have too much of it in the fridge, and it is probably going to go off before too long. Because my husband buys bargain quantities in Aldi of Danish smoked salmon. I berate him every time but I can't win the argument that it's a bargain. Smoked salmon and salmon too, is one of those things that I truly try to be Australian in buying. Partly over loyalty to Australia and partly over concerns over the safety of European farmed fish - mind you there have been disturbing stories of pollution here too.
When I am in the supermarket I generally look at the origin of what I am buying. And at least these days we can always see where something comes from, or at least that it doesn't come from Australia, even if it is in tiny print. And I confess that I knowingly buy non-Australian products in some instances - the tinned tomatoes for example. But I also realise that there are some products whose origins I don't even question, either because I know they are Australian - milk, butter, or because I know they are not and that there are no Australian ones - sardines - and here I'm a bit of a snob and will buy European ones if I can, though not Norwegian - they kill whales. But European ones are hard to find in the supermarket. And then there are those products where I don't even look - orange juice (I should), pasta - I think I know which is Australian and which is not, but do I really? I'm sure there are others. So I'm really a bit of a hypocrite, as we probably all are - even the producers themselves.
"Often producers are asking consumers to think deeply and intimately about the food that they produce, but they don't apply that to the other things that they eat themselves." Alexandra Iljadica, founder, Youth Food Movement Australia
When it comes to fresh food there is really no excuse to buy overseas products - just keep to what's in season and you can always buy Australian - well I'm not sure about garlic to be honest. Fish is included in this mantra and I really don't understand why the supermarkets sell so much imported (and therefore frozen) fish. If you go to the Queen Victoria Market it is quite obvious that there is an abundance of fresh Australian fish - and yes, some of it is expensive, but there is plenty of cheaper fish available too. And somehow you never seem to need as much fish as you do meat.
Knowing where your food comes from and how it is produced is becoming an increasingly taught subject in primary schools, with lots of them having vegetable gardens. The theory is that it makes food more interesting to eat, and helps them be more sustainable. But it also brings up that other aspect of knowing where your food comes from - killing animals for food. I always remember my small children asking me as they were about to eat their dinner 'what animal is this mum?' and quaking in my shoes a bit. For when it comes to meat and fish I am a hypocrite indeed. It seems to me that whether you look after your farm animals with care and love or pack them into feedlots and barns, ultimately you kill them for your food. It's barbaric really and I really ought to be a vegetarian. Not a vegan - never a vegan. What's wrong with dairy food? But nevertheless I do eat meat and fish. How do I manage this feat? I know the fish and meat I am eating was once a living breathing, possibly cuddly and intelligent animal, but somehow my brain partitions that knowledge off into a dark corner when I am eating. I do try to eat vegetarian at least once a week, maybe I should try more. But I don't think I shall ever truly attain vegetarianism.
It is interesting though - on the one hand you have an emphasis on home-grown, preferably organic and sustainable, which is expensive and therefore out of the reach of the poor - unless they grow their own, and on the other hand you have the cheap and the imported. Not that imported is necessarily cheap, And so I go round and round - but always to the conclusion that I'm a hypocrite - like most of us.
