Local food costs less

‘Only the wealthy can afford to eat local food; us locals on a budget have to do with Tesco and the likes.’ In Lewes that’s the easy reposte that trumps so many attempts at progress. ‘Down From Londoners’ are painted with a broad brush as poncy and spoiled, whether us incomers like me have lived here for 10,20 or even 50 years. But in my newfound spirit of action in the face of scorn and apathy, I decided to don my scientist’s hat and do my own analysis of whether it really does cost more to eat local food.

Our family has recently taken over being one of the drop off points for Ashurst Organic’s vegetable boxes. You can buy £10, £13 or £17 weekly boxes, and the £13 amply does our family of six. Last week I carefully weighed each of the 10 vegetable varieties in my box and set off with clipboard to Waitrose and Tesco to do a price comparison, veg for veg. You can see the answers here. My finding was that the Tesco box cost a wee bit more than the local box, and Waitrose cost about 20% more. QED – I have now proven it is that it is cheaper to buy vegetables locally than from supermarkets – organic at least. To make sure I have a good sample I will repeat the test every three months over the coming year.

Interestingly, whereas Ashurst gave me a half kilo bag full of the sweetest small tomatoes that burst in our mouth like edible fireworks, Waitrose was selling a plastic-wrapped flat pack of eight such tomatoes on the vine for a whopping (sorry, love that word) £2.17; according to their labeling that was 27p per cherry tomato. I had to discount that item to £2 to be fair to Waitrose…

Price aside, there is nothing to beat the freshness and pure life zing of veggies that were mostly picked that day, on rich green-sand soil up the road in Plumpton. Ashurst Organic Farm is an incredible place, where workers are paid decent wages and volunteers are given a hearty lunch. All the local organic farms are legally bound to be based on old-fashioned values such as respect for the soil and all parts of the growing system: crop rotation, no industrial pesticides, fertilizers and so on. And all this for little if any profit as supermarket competition screws their prices down. So cheapness is not an issue to the eater, NOT buying locally means deliberately favouring corporate food above local food – is this what we really want?

Study of vegetable price supplies to Lewes, East Sussex, in week beginning 13 October 2008
Weight	Veg	Waitrose per kg	Waitrose (£)	Tesco £ per kg	Tesco cost (£)	Ashurst
275g	Mixed salad	9.90 (not org)	2.70	10.00 (not org)	2.75
411g	Kale	11.06	4.52	6.45	2.65
103g	Red pepper	11.62	1.16	1.58 for 450g	.35
513g (30)	Cherry toms	27p per tom	8.10 (£2*)	3.92	2.07
96g	Mushrooms	4.83	.48	4.30	.41
361g	Parsnips	1.99 (not org)	.72	3.16	1.14
500g	Carrots	2.50	1.25	1.28	.64
250g	Leeks	5.49	1.37	4.45	1.17
1,400g	Potatoes	1.20	1.68	.827	1.16
39g	Chilli pepper	£11 (not org)	.44	£20 (not org)	.78
	Total		£16.32		£13.12	£13
Given that 2-3 items in both supermarkets were not available organically, both Tesco and Waitrose total would be higher if all organic. *note: at 27p per tomato, the cherry tomatoes would have totaled £8.10 for 30 tomatoes; I’ve reduced that to £2.