The consumer appetite for locally grown fresh fruit and vegetables is now marching its way across Europe as if Napoleon Bonaparte were in charge of marketing and distribution. The trend has become so significant that the European Commission even organised a conference on the subject last month. It really is that important.
'Local agriculture and short food supply chains: enhancing the local dimension of the Common Agricultural Policy’ was the worthy and rather wordy title of the EC’s one-day meeting. As is the way with these things nowadays, you learn it was “worthwhile and interesting” from a post on EU farm commissioner Dacian Ciolos’ Facebook page (facebook.com/dacianciolos).
“We must get a better understanding of this type of marketing,” Ciolos said in his opening remarks to the conference. “We need to rediscover it. Once the analyses and reflections are done, the actual way in which these new food supply systems operate will probably have to be improved, to give them their rightful place and allow them to develop even further, in the right conditions.” You can watch a webcast of the conference here: bit.ly/ECwebcast.
It’s the kind of considered approach you’d expect from a man like Ciolos. At the same time, I’d bet it’s just the kind of response that would’ve had Napoleon fidgeting in his saddle, anxious to set out for Moscow and all the glories he thought awaited him there.
Localism is a trend that seems to have gone from gentle trot to full gallop in a matter of moments – as if wild horses had taken hold of the imagination of today’s supermarkets. Food retailers want to stock locally grown produce on their shelves because they say it’s what their shoppers want. For them ‘local’ means ethical and environmental, and virtually everything in between.
It has already brought up some obvious inconsistencies. As the London Times reported, a number of leading UK supermarkets are now “fixing” the seasons and demanding British summer fruit and vegetables in springtime. “Retailers, ignoring the natural calendar, are running special offers on British produce such as strawberries, plums and cabbages, leaving farmers with punishing contracts that they struggle to fulfil.”
Before we dismiss this is as a little local difficulty for a nation of shopkeepers, we mustn’t forget that food retailers across Europe now face many of the same challenges. They want to buy local produce, but their huge concentrated buying power is confronted by an industry of comparatively small-scale fresh fruit and vegetable producers. It’s a challenge we all know about, and the difficulties are even more apparent at a local level.
The EC plans to address the issue of short supply chains in its upcoming reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Where previous reforms encouraged growers into producer groups, Brussels now seems poised to help them meet local demands too.
It’s safe to say that suppliers outside Europe will be watching developments very carefully indeed. They need to work out how supply chains that stretch to many thousands of kilometres can also be made shorter. This is a problem that bedevils European growers at national and regional level too.
It will probably boil down to more effective marketing of produce. Shoppers want to buy local; they also want a sense of something local. All this will demand a new level of co-operation between food retailers and their suppliers. Retailers would do well to listen to their growers, as well as their shoppers.
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