Files
Abstract
The main implication of the food miles indicator is that in order to protect the
environment consumers should purchase food locally and seasonal. However,
something that it is missing in all discussions is the evidence about how bad or good -
in terms of locality and seasonality- is the actual consumption of food. This is
probably due to the fact that food consumption statistics are available as aggregated
annual data. In this paper we analyse the purchases of food, in particular the
purchases of soft fruits in Scotland, which not only have marked production
seasonality but also are imported from the rest of the UK and from abroad. For the
analysis we use the Kantar Worldpanel dataset for the period 2006 until 2009. The
results indicate that Scottish soft fruit covers a relatively small segment of the market
and therefore eat locally would imply reduce significantly the consumption of soft
fruit, even during the Scottish produce season. As regards the consumption
seasonality, the purchases of soft fruit, particularly strawberry, seem to be seasonal
despite the possibility of getting out-of-season imported soft fruit.