I’m pleased that the decisive issue of food waste made the pages of
The Argus yesterday (Food Rots as Stores Import, Tuesday 1st
September).

The article used the example of Greenway Fruit Farm whose harvest of
Hailsham plums will largely be left unpicked and uneaten this season.
This is symptomatic of the problems created by a system in which our
access to food is dominated by supermarkets.

The problem lies with the disparity between the consumer’s desires,
which are based on a mix of criteria - of which price is
understandably high on the list – and the priorities of supermarkets –
which is profit margins.

Tuesday’s article illustrated how this discrepancy in values will
always be a problem as long as supermarkets dominate our access to
food. For example, the article showed how both imported and British
plums were being sold for the same price (£1 per punnet) – which makes
the items, in terms of price alone, equally attractive to consumers
and therefore allows other criteria such as supporting the local
economy or food-miles to come into play.

However, the supermarkets make an extra 35p profit on each imported
punnet and therefore largely exclude local produce; therefore
eliminating the consumer’s opportunity to choose British produce.

The ability of supermarkets to offer incredibly low prices makes it
financially unviable for everyone to buy exclusively at independent
shops or farmer’s markets. But I’d like to draw people’s attention the
Abundance programme being successfully run in Manchester and Sheffield
(http://abundancemanchester.wordpress.com/).

This amazing project involves mapping out all of a region’s fruit
trees and allotments, including gardens and public areas, and
distributing the collected produce – in cases where it would otherwise
go un-harvested - to local groups and communities.

It would be great if an Abundance project here in Brighton and Hove
could be started - helping alleviate the influence supermarkets hold
over our access to local produce.

In the meantime, as a plum fan I'm going to try and get my hands on
some lovely Greenway fruit right away...