Back to the source
Home » Magazine » Good, issue 1 » Features » Back to the sourceTake back control of your food supply, save money, and do your health and the planet a favour. It’s time to declare food independence! Here’s how.
It started with the kids. I fed them organic food because, like many other new (and possibly neurotic) mothers, I thought it was the best thing for them. It didn’t occur to me until later that all the fruit, endless rice cakes and ready-made baby mush had travelled vast distances before arriving at my house, only to be hurtled across the room by a grouchy, weaning baby.
I realise now that the word ‘organic’ was no guarantee of quality nutrition. Nor was it necessarily better for the environment, considering the miles most of the food clocked up en route. Shamefully, fruit from the apple tree at the end of our garden had been rotting into the ground all the while.
That was 2003, and being a fairly mainstream sort of person I was probably indicative of many others around me. Organic was the buzz-word; eating local seemed a little, well, boring. How times have changed.
In the past five years, the world has undergone a food revolution. Consumer demand for organic food has continued to grow, but alongside it another, possibly even bigger food movement has been gathering momentum.
Food shoppers have become inquisitive. We want to know where our food comes from, how far it has travelled and who grew it. We’ve started to join the dots and realise the huge multinational companies that have provided the bulk of our food for the past 20 or 30 years might not always have our best interests as their number one priority. We are starting to go back to the source of our food.
In New Zealand, this has driven the opening of 25 farmers’ markets in the past four years, the arrival of organic box schemes, other independent food initiatives and a massive swing back to growing our own food. In a Ministry for the Environment study published in February, 77 percent of consumers said they now consciously seek out Kiwi-produced or manufactured food.
But choosing local food isn’t as easy as it might sound. Despite living in one of the best food producing nations on Earth, we now import more food than almost any other OECD country.
On any given day, the ingredients on our plates could clock up more mileage than the equivalent meals anywhere else in the world. If you don’t believe me, add it up: bacon from Canada (13,888 km), garlic from China (10,200 km), oranges from California (11,073 km), even much of our NZ-branded tinned food is now imported from China (another 10,200 km). By the time we’re reaching for the Guatemalan coffee (11,448 km), your meal might have travelled nearly 60,000 kilometres—around the world one-and-a-half times.
In One Door, Out the Other
Why this all matters is the beginning of a long and complicated tale and one that makes New Zealand exporters very nervous. With an economy so dependent on food exports, there is a feeling that to make a fuss about “food miles” is almost unpatriotic.
An aggressive PR campaign might have given our grass-fed lamb a stay of execution (thanks to a Lincoln University study that found its production four times more energy-efficient than grain-fed British lamb) but overseas, the market is changing. Over the past 18 months our fruit, wine and olive oil have all been singled out by the UK and US press as products to avoid. Last month, British supermarket chain Waitrose announced it will be opening 100 new stores specialising in local produce. It has yet to announce what its lambs will be fed, but as environmentalist George Monbiot told me last year, “They have grass in Britain, too”. Monbiot’s claim that it is “obscene” to import apples from New Zealand caused an outcry here last year, but he was simply echoing what many food shoppers and retailers around the world now believe.
The bottom line is that food that travels consumes fuel. In fact, four-fifths of the oil used in global food production is expended once the produce leaves the farm, to move, process, package and store the food as it is transported to your plate. And the more fuel we use, the more greenhouse gases we create. An example: every kilogram of out-of-season grapes we import from Chile is responsible for 6.3 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions. You could argue that there’s little point signing your kids up to the walking school bus if you send them off with a lunchbox full of exotic fruit.
New Zealand exporters and importers have always claimed their products do less damage than many because they travel by boat, a pussycat in pollution terms when compared to air travel. But a German report published in March suggests the carbon dioxide emissions from the shipping industry could be three times worse than previously calculated—already double the global total of aviation emissions, and predicted to increase by 75 percent over the next 15 to 20 years.
When Healthy Food Isn’t
Even within New Zealand, food now travels thousands of miles from farm to plate. The emergence of agri-business—giant corporate food farms—means that more and more produce is coming from fewer and fewer locations. Eight years ago, there were 4,500 market gardens in New Zealand. Fewer than half remain. Now, around 120 growers supply 80 percent of the market. An extensive transport system is required to get this produce from one end of the country to the other.
Adding to these distances, most of the food we buy at the supermarket is processed through central distribution centres. A corncob picked in the Hawkes Bay would need to travel to the nearest distribution centre in Palmerston North before being trucked back to Gisborne to be put on the supermarket shelf. That journey could take a week and clock up 500 kilometres.
Organic food isn’t exempt either. The only organic slaughterhouse in the North Island is just outside Hamilton. To sell organic-certified meat in Keri Keri, a Northland farmer has to send his cattle nearly 400 kilometres south, and back again. It would be difficult to argue the resulting steak was better for the environment, although you wouldn’t know that by simply reading the label.
The local food debate goes far deeper than just the carbon emissions of a single food item. Food that travels also loses its freshness, its taste and, critically, its nutrients. Most conventional fruit and vegetables grown by commercial producers today are selected on the basis of their ability to withstand long journeys and still look good at the end. They are bred for uniform appearance, mechanised harvest and easy packing. To ensure growers meet demand and make a profit, nutrition has to come way down the checklist.
It’s not uncommon for a vegetable to spend five days in transit, one to three days in-store and up to a week in the bottom of your fridge. Imported fruits can spend eight to ten weeks en route. The proportion of nutrients lost during these journeys is still under scrutiny, but it is generally agreed that vitamin C starts degrading from the minute of harvest.
Certainly, a number of studies suggest our food has lost between 25 and 50 percent of its nutritional value in just one generation. Canadian researchers analysing government food tables between 1951 and 1999 declared that today’s consumers would need to eat eight oranges to get the same amount of vitamin A our grandparents obtained from just one fruit. The US Food and Drug Administration has tried to compensate for this by increasing the recommended daily servings of fruit and vegetables to nine—anyone struggling to get their kids to eat five?
Birth of the Locavore
People are starting to remember what our grandparents knew: local, seasonal food has a far better chance of both tasting better and being better for you. This is one of the reasons why author Barbara Kingsolver shifted her family to rural Tennessee and embarked on a year of eating only seasonal food. Her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, is a vivid and passionate account of their efforts to reconnect with the food chain. What she and her family didn’t grow, they acquired from neighbours or bought from local producers.
Others who embarked on a similar path have set themselves more definite boundaries. Canadians Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon spent 2005 eating only food grown within 100 miles (160km) of their front door. Their blog, www.100milediet.org, inspired a group of San Francisco women who went onto coin the word “locavore” to describe their hyper-local diet. Their website, www.eatlocalchallenge.com, called for others to do the same and continues to detail the efforts of thousands of Americans who eat only produce from within 100 miles of their homes.
In Britain local food has become almost a cult. Celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay recently suggested that restaurants not serving seasonal ingredients should be fined. Meanwhile Jamie Oliver’s hit TV series Jamie at Home encouraged everyone to start growing their own food again. For the first time in decades vegetable seeds are now outselling flower seeds and there is a five-year waiting list for allotments.
One pub I visited near Bristol sources 70 percent of its ingredients from within just one mile of its front door. Cows and sheep are led over from the farm across the road and slaughtered out the back. All the vegetables are picked from the pub’s own garden. The young Michelin-starred chef who runs the place knows all the suppliers personally.
“This way I know the meat has been naturally reared and well cared for,” he says.
New Zealand’s own local food initiatives are now beginning to take root. Our first community-supported agriculture scheme (CSA)—a model of food production and distribution pioneered in the US—is now underway in the Wairarapa and serving the Wellington region. The scheme, initiated by the inspirational Colin Walker, asks for an upfront membership fee which covers the initial set-up costs and ensures the farmer or producer will have a guaranteed income. Thereafter, members receive weekly boxes of organic fruit and vegetables for around the same price as conventional produce.
Colin says the people who come to him are interested in investing in their food. “In return, they get to develop a link with their farmer and know they’re getting good quality food from people who care.”
The Feel-Good Factor
So why has this old-fashioned, simple way of eating become so popular? I suspect the local food movement has less to do with altruism and personal health than it does with a basic human desire. The truth is, knowing the source of your food makes you feel good.
As locavores the world over are discovering, eating food grown by local producers links you to your community. In a world where so much is impersonal, being able to talk to the farmer that dug up your potatoes—or digging them up yourself—gives us a feeling of connection. It’s a buzz to hand our money to a small producer, knowing it will keep them in business. It’s an even bigger buzz to dig up vegetables that you planted yourself and turn them into dinner for your family.
That was Lynda Hallinan’s experience when she started growing her own food three years ago. As editor of New Zealand Gardener magazine, last New Year’s Eve she made a radical resolution. Spurred on by the rows of imported fruit in her supermarket, she decided that for a year she would live entirely off the produce of her own suburban garden. She gave herself ten dollars for essential supplies, and permission to trade with other stall owners at the farmers’ market for favourites like cheese and meat.
Lynda is thrilled to see the number of younger people who are now getting into it. “For many years, people only saw their gardens as places to add value to their properties, rather than as a place to grow, to learn and to feed themselves.” Now when she gives a talk there’s as many people in their thirties and forties as there are in the older crowd.
“Once people start growing their food, they’re not going to stop. It’s such a pleasurable, rewarding experience,” she says.
Growing your own food cuts out virtually all the fossil fuel that is required to transport your food to the shops, then transport you to the food. It also does away with the packaging. As Michael Pollan recently wrote, “It has a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it.”
It can also be cheaper. A $3 packet of seeds can turn into 100 lettuces, while a $25 lemon tree could provide a lifetime’s supply of fruit. As food prices around the world soar, being able to produce your own food could soon become a key skill. So too will being able to source food from outside the regular supply chains. If you know your local producers, you’re not dependent on a global food market which is vulnerable to both international events and price fluctuations.
Set Your Own Limits
Becoming a locavore has many benefits, but it does require us to change our expectations. You’ll no longer be able to decorate a mid-winter pavlova with fresh raspberries, or squeeze yourself an orange juice in the summer. Your meals will be led by what’s in season, rather than what you can get your hands on at the supermarket. It might sound restrictive, but the more seasonal food you eat, the more you realise there is a whole world of taste and flavour that has been lost to our modern palates.
If you eat apples throughout the winter, you’re far less likely to try the quinces that appear around this time of year. Strawberries become something to look forward to and gorge yourself on before they disappear. The first asparagus of the season is an event to be served up with great ceremony. By eating locally and seasonally, you’ll end up consuming a far bigger variety of foods than if you buy the same foods week after week.
You also need to decide what kind of locavore you want to be. Personally, my extremist tendencies always lose out to ease and comfort, so I try to buy as local as possible but still bring home imported coffee, bananas and rice (and probably a lot more, too). I always ask my retailer where their produce is from so I can choose food from the nearest supplier. My rocket and herbs turned out to be from just down the road—walking distance.
There are good arguments for continuing to buy from places like the Pacific, where produce supports developing communities, and for buying fair trade products where your money might help a farmer send his kids to school. These are decisions to be made along the way.
The global food chain is under more strain than ever before. Population growth, changing diets, extreme weather events and the demand for biofuel crops has left millions around the world with an uncertain future regarding their food supply. For New Zealanders, this means the cost of food will continue to rise as exporters rush to meet the international demand.
While the era of cheap food may be coming to an end, perhaps it will be replaced by an era of good food. If consumers continue to ask questions, seek out food that has been produced locally, organically and fairly, then both the environment and our health will reap the benefits.
The exporters might be worried, but you shouldn’t be. We have some of the world’s finest, tastiest produce on our doorstep. Tuck in!
Want more?
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: My Year of Eating Seasonally by Barbara Kingsolver (Harper Collins, 2008).
Plenty: One Man, One Woman and a Raucous Year of Eating Seasonally by Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon (Crown Publishers, 2007).
Homegrown by Lynda Hallinan (NZ Gardener, 2008).
In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto by Michael Pollan (Penguin Press, 2008).
Local food for local people
We asked four journalists in the main centres to eat food from within 100 kilometres of their front door for a week. It meant giving up certain treats, asking far more questions than they were used to and cheating ... in some cases, rather a lot. What did they feed themselves? What did they learn? Their personal accounts follow.
Eating Auckland
“So, what are you going to do for pasta?” asks my dietician friend.
Crikey, I hadn’t imagined it would be a problem. I’m preparing for a dinner party with a main course of meatballs, from meat supplied by the local butcher, swimming in tomatoes harvested from a friend’s vine.
“Hmmm,” she says ominously over the phone. “I’d check your packet of spaghetti, doubt if it’s local.”
I squint at the fine print: manufactured in Bolivia by some Swiss company. It’s a major detour from my 100km food footprint.
“There’s a squash that has stringy fibre which is a substitute for spaghetti,” she says cheerily, “but it tastes awful.”
I would need a better battle plan if I was to survive a week of consuming only local produce.
Adopting a domestic goddess can-do attitude, I fill my pantry with veggies plucked from the gardens of family, friends and farmers’ markets. I source my protein from my friendly butcher, confident in the knowledge that the organic meat comes from animals grazing within The Zone. If my pantry is lacking bread- and cereal-based carbohydrates, there is ample protein, vitamin C and calcium to last the distance.
I even manage to score a few bottles of wine from a Waiheke Island vineyard, where they stomp the grapes with their own feet. I conveniently forget to question the origin of the bottle and cap.
My 12-year-old son is also taking part in my locavore experiment, and growing bones need milk. At Crescent Dairy Goats in Albany, I stock up on fresh unpasteurised goats milk and some mature cheese for my partner.
“It smells kind of nutty,” whines my son.
“Too bad,” I reply haughtily. “Make a smoothie—but don’t use the contraband bananas.”
I turn into a foodie freak, loitering in supermarkets and health food stores dissecting label contents and phoning distributors demanding to know nutritional facts.
In frustration I abandon the supermarket altogether. Instead, I get up at an ungodly hour on Sunday to re-stock my dwindling supplies from the Clevedon Village Farmers’ Market. Founder Helen Dorresteyn says 70 percent of the produce is grown locally and, despite wasting precious fuel miles getting there, my shopping basket is brimming with local fruit and veggies.
But my smooth transition into The Zone is derailed after a visit to a veggie store near my home in West Auckland. “I can only buy local produce,” I tell the shop assistant.
“I think the potatoes are grown here,” she says hesitantly.
“I need local potatoes,” I reply, sounding like Tubbs from The League of Gentlemen TV series, who only serves local people at the Local Shop. “Did local chooks lay these eggs?”
“Oh yes, they are definitely local,” she says with the restrain of those talking to the barking mad.
Back at home, my partner smugly reveals the free-range eggs have ranged too far: “All the way from Whangarei.”
By week’s end, I’m a stay-at-home hermit, refusing all invitations likely to involve food policing. The local diet takes effort and cunning, and I doubt if I could last a year. Still, I lost a few kilos and acquired a few foodie tricks.
There were no complaints when I served the meatballs on a bed of lettuce and herbs.
Kirsten MacFarlane is a food and fashion writer
Sources
- Clevedon Village Farmers Market Clevedon A&P Grounds and Exhibition Hall, Monument Road, Clevedon, South Auckland, 8am–noon every Sunday (except some public holidays), www.clevedonfarmersmarket.co.nz
- West Lynn Organic Meats 440 Richmond Road, West Lynn
- Crescent Dairy Goats 18 Anderson Road, Albany
- Christensen Estate Waiheke Island, www.christensenestate.co.nz
Eating Wellington
I stared into my freezer compartment, saw the stir-fry beef and sighed. No, I mustn’t.
Surviving on locally sourced food would be simpler if I were vegetarian. However, I am Man the Carnivore. Give me a fillet steak or lamb rogan josh any day. But though there’s a meat works only 6km away and farms surround me (I live in Ohariu Valley, 17km from Wellington), most of the capital’s meat comes from much further afield. Beef, lamb and pork are off the menu.
(I resist entreating my farming neighbours because it’s not something I’d normally do. Anyway, if I got a lamb I’d probably just name it Larry and let it loose.)
Because homes have replaced hot-houses, apartments outnumber aubergines, and townhouses are worth more than tomatoes, growers have been pushed out. But a diet of local produce is still just possible.
Brekky is relatively simple, thanks to local bakeries (don’t ask about the origin of the wheat; I didn’t). And fruit’s okay too—the city farmers’ market has fruit from Otaki and Levin. Milk I did without. The valley apparently used to have more than 20 dairy farms. There are none now, and milk comes largely from faraway cows.
Thank god for Griffin’s, in Petone, for morning tea. Their biscuit range means any rumblings from breakfast are easily settled, though ‘morning water’ just doesn’t sound right. I long for coffee, but local bean plantations are scarce.
Lunches aren’t too difficult. Regional poultry farms supply many local food outlets with meat and eggs, so variations on chicken and eggs become a lunch staple, as sandwiches or omelettes. More fruit, either from the farmers’ market or the Wairarapa, is another viable lunch addition. I have to go to Wairarapa on business, so stock up on pip-, stone- and berry-fruit—and apple cider!
Chocolate is another essential. Schoc in Greytown is a life-saver, producing mouth-watering hand-made chocolates (lime and chilli, yum). Okay, I didn’t ask where the milk or the cocoa came from, but at least the chocolate is made locally.
On the dinner table, fish caught not too far offshore qualifies as local, and the Marlborough Sounds—within my 100km challenge range—is home to Regal Salmon.
The most unlikely local food on my menu? Nachos. Mexican Supplies of Hutt Valley uses New Zealand-grown GM-free corn to make Mexicano taco chips. With home-made tomato salsa – tomatoes and peppers from Otaki, chilli powder from Woolworth’s (I cheated there)—they’re tasty, but oh, for some sour cream!
The vegetable offerings from Otaki and Levin at the farmers’ market are a boon, and I load up on lettuce, cucumber, radishes, spring onions and tomatoes … but most of the potatoes are aliens from Pukekohe or Manawatu.
Although chicken is versatile, I long for red meat. As the week goes on I eye road kill with increased interest. It’s enough to drive me to drink, so it’s lucky that Wairarapa boasts some wonderful local wines, many available at the usual supermarket and liquor outlets.
I sit and think, helped along by a glass of local red and a plate of cheese and crackers. (Kapiti just up the road is famous for its cheeses, and Griffin’s makes a cracker cracker.) The salutary lesson in my week of local eating is that so much of what we take for granted comes from such a distance. Pork is from the South Island and travels to Wellington via processing plants in Auckland. Yes, pigs do fly—or go very fast by truck, at least.
I wonder how Wellington’s going to get on when The Big One strikes – the long-overdue, massive earthquake that’s likely to isolate us from our main food suppliers. I’m considering resurrecting my poor vege garden, and possibly rustling some local sheep. But first, I really do have to buy some steak.
Sources
- Farmers’ market corner of Ghuznee and Vivian Streets, Sunday mornings, 4am–2.30pm
- Pacific Catch Seafood 150 Lambton Quay, Wellington
- Moore Wilson Lorne Street, Wellington
- Nada Bakery 64 Johnsonville Road, Johnsonville
- Woolworth’s 31 Johnsonville Road, Johnsonville
- The Big Apple Main Street, Greytown
- Schoc Chocolaterie 117 Main Street, Greytown and 11 Tory Street, Wellington
Eating Christchurch
I suspect it’s pretty easy to eat locally when you’re a keen gardener, hobby forager and hunter-gatherer, so we kick off with a challenge: guests for Sunday dinner.
Pre-dinner snacks are our own pickled olives, local hazelnuts and a bisarra dip made from our own broad beans. We cheat shamelessly with the crackers. Then there’s a roasted leg of fallow venison with sweet chestnuts and our own vegetables. The chestnuts are from just down the road; I check the map and the venison just squeaks in, shot 90km away.
The Lyttelton Farmers’ Market offers a cornucopia of Canterbury honey, vegetables, meat and baked goods. It does your heart good not only to eat such healthy food but to know exactly where the stuff comes from—and none of it’s from anything like 100km away. About the most distant would be Murrellen pork from pampered pigs raised at Springfield.
Staff at local supermarkets are a bit nonplussed by my questions about how local their produce is: one tells me it’s from the local markets and that’s all he knows. “People don’t ask if it’s local. They’re just looking for quality and price.”
It’s a different picture at the Funky Pumpkin, where Jim Fairlie knows exactly where everything is from—carrots from Rakaia, broccoli from Southbridge, Chippewa potatoes from Marshlands. “A good half of what we sell is Canterbury-grown. People prefer it to be local but don’t mind if it’s from as far afield as Nelson.”
Vagaries of supply and demand make it difficult to buy everything locally. Jim’s been in the business 60 years and says in the old days a crop of caulis would mature over a wider time range, keeping the local supply steady for longer. “But the modern hybrids tend all to mature at once, so you get a feast then a famine.”
My closest fish shop is Christchurch Wholesale Seafoods, where Adam and Kim have a selection of mostly local fish, like boneless skinned red cod (aka Akaroa cod). Adam gets it in daily from the local fish auctions or directly off one of the Lyttelton boats, and even the Forest & Bird pessimists rate red cod at the better end of their fish guide.
While I’m in the shop, Asiima from SHE (“spiritual human evolution”) Cafe calls to collect the day’s supply of monkfish and salmon fillets to go with produce from their own organic garden. I’m a bit sceptical about the name, but he explains that the restaurant’s philosophy is green and spiritual, “but without the dogma that often goes with it. We like to buy local, and it equates to freshness anyway”.
My local butcher is Cashmere Cuisine, where Geert Kap is cutting some fine-looking sirloin steak from Alliance in Ashburton. Close enough for me, but there’s no way of knowing how far the beast travelled to the works. It’s sometimes difficult to get the full range of cuts locally, Geert says. The shop is stocked with local cheeses, wines, relishes and bacon, smoked salmon and sausages made on the premises. “We get everything we can locally, but consistency of supply is sometimes a problem, especially when dealing with small producers,” he says.
He has the perfect solution for buying local wine though: the award-winning Cracroft Chase Wood’s Edge pinot gris, grown and produced up a small valley just 3km from the shop. With wine grown that close to home I can drink with a clear conscience, even if a clear head may not follow.
Sources
- Lyttelton Farmers’ Market Oxford St, Saturdays 10am–1pm
- Ashby’s Butchery for Murrellen pork, 491 Papanui Rd, Papanui
- Fons and Ellis Sanders for spray-free tomatoes, 83 Oxford Rd, Rangiora, 03-313 3610 (gate sales available)
- Funky Pumpkin 310 Colombo St and 227 Blenheim Rd, Riccarton
- Christchurch Wholesale Seafoods 1/303 Colombo St
- SHE Cafe 79 Main Rd, Governors Bay
- Cashmere Cuisine 18 Colombo St
Farmers’ markets in or around the city include:
- Deans Bush 16 Kahu Rd, Saturday 9am–12pm
- St Albans English Park, 127 Cranford St, Saturday 9am–2pm
- Kaiapoi Charles St, Saturday 9am–12pm
- Lincoln Edward St, Saturday 9am–12pm
- Riccarton Racecourse Rd, Sunday, 9am–2pm
- Richmond Cambridge St, Sunday 9am–3pm, and Tai Tapu Old Tai Tapu Rd, Sunday 10am–2pm
Eating Dunedin
Eating locally for a Dunedinite—does that mean I can scoff Cadbury’s chocolate with impunity, washing it down with Speight’s beer, even though most of the ingredients come from further afield? I take the high road, and decide to get my basic food needs met from what’s grown within 100km of my home (as the crow flies). But let’s not be too fanatical; I won’t beat myself up about drinking my favourite tea from South Africa.
I’m eating local for a week in March—harvest season, with a cornucopia of fruit and vegetables, some from my very own garden. The tomatoes ripen by the day and cooking apples are ready. I gather greens and herbs, and dig up the first of my potatoes. My mother’s garden is overflowing with vegetables; whenever I visit she sends me away with laden bags. Five plus a day? Easy.
The first day of my week as a locavore begins with a trip to the Otago Farmers’ Market, beside Dunedin’s heritage Railway Station, where 5,000 people shop every Saturday morning. It’s been a life-saver for the few market gardens left in the Dunedin area: family-run places like Goddard’s and McArthur’s Berry Farm. I buy fruit from near Roxburgh, garlic and vegetables from the Taieri Plain and Clinton, honey from Ranfurly, cheese from near Karitane and Oamaru.
There’s meat and fish available, but as a vegetarian I rely on other protein sources. Eggs come from my friend’s backyard chooks. Nuts and pulses are from Canterbury, a bit too far away, but bought at Taste Nature organic shop, which helpfully labels the origins of all food. Breakfast is Harraway’s organic oats, grown in Central Otago and Tapanui.
Dairy products (except for cheese) are hard to source locally. It takes several phone calls to finally discover that the milk in Dunedin is processed in Christchurch, and most other dairy products are processed in the North Island. I eventually find a farmer who’ll sell me a couple of bottles of raw milk—and some ghee—from the farm gate. The ghee proves useful, as I can’t find any locally produced oil.
There are several local bakeries, but the closest flour is grown in Canterbury. My pasta’s from Dunedin’s Pasta d’Oro, but it’s made from Australian durum flour, because New Zealand isn’t hot enough to grow that type of wheat.
At a Green Drinks gathering (see page 122 for more on these) hosted by boutique brewery Green Man, I meet a grower whose oyster mushrooms I’d bought earlier the same day. That kind of direct relationship with local food producers has a feel-good factor that you don’t get at the supermarket, where labels were often vague: “Made from New Zealand and imported ingredients.”
Is it my imagination, or am I a little thinner by the week’s end? Certainly my sugar consumption has decreased—well, except for a wee bit of Cadbury’s.
Sources
- Taste Nature 59 Moray Place, Dunedin
- Artemis Herbal Teas 16 Fingall Street, Dunedin, www.herbalmedicine.co.nz
- Milmore Downs for flour, grains and pulses, Amberley
- Terrace Farm for flours, grains and pulses, Rakaia River Road Methven
- Otago Farmers’ Market Saturday mornings, beside Dunedin Railway Station, www.otagofarmersmarket.org.nz
- Bennies Honey 45 Thomas Street, Ranfurly
- Evansdale Cheese Waikouaiti, Otago www.evansdalecheese.co.nz
- Green Man Beer 9 Grange Street, Dunedin, www.greenmanbrewery.co.nz
- Whitestone Cheese Cnr of Torridge and Humber Streets, Oamaru
- Emerson’s Beer 14 Wickliffe Street, Dunedin
- Harraway & Sons oats and oat products 161 Main South Road, Dunedin
- Pasta d’Oro 616 Kaikorai Valley Rd, Dunedin
