Why buy seasonal?

All fruit and vegetables have a season, a time when they are abundant, when they taste best and are most nutritious. Knowledge about food seasons was once essential to our survival but today we have lost our connection with nature's seasonal cycles. Regardless of advances in technology, eating food that is in season is better for us, and choosing local seasonal food helps us lower our carbon footprint by decreasing the amount of food that we eat that has travelled a long way to reach us.

Not only this but as fruit and vegetables have become available throughout the year, we have also become more and more dependent on standardisation, varieties are breed for their ability to withstand storage for long periods of time and transportation over large distances. As a result we are losing hundreds of local varieties, for instance you may visit a supermarket and simply be given the choice of red or green apples! 

 As Sustain points out as part of its campaign to save British orchards:
There are as many as 6,000 varieties of dessert and cooking apples and hundreds more cider apples. Today ten varieties account for 92 per cent of the UK’s area of eating-apple orchards. The two most dominant British varieties are the Cox and Bramley. At the peak of British apple season, only around a dozen apple varieties can be found for sale even in our largest supermarkets. Ironically some stores stock more varieties out of season with over two thirds of them imported from countries such as Spain, France, USA, China, South Africa and New Zealand; these include varieties such as Pink Lady, Royal Gala, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith.  (Sustain's Orchard Project)

So ironically the present food system which offers us apples all year round actually limits our choices. Local and seasonal apples offer variety, choice and a diversity that ultimately benefits consumers, farmers and the environment.

Why buy local?

Food travels further than ever before. Fruit and vegetables can travel thousands of miles, from where they are grown to where they are packaged to where they are consumed. Money leaks out from local economies, and the vast distance travelled by over-packaged and processed food contributes significantly to climate change.

Small family businesses, local farms, small scale processing plants, market stall holders and small shops are all disappearing, struggling to compete in today's global market. As a result we are losing local distinctiveness, traditional varieties of fruit and vegetables and a connection to the food we eat. Buying locally increases economic stability - supporting local producers and retailers, keeping money in the local community and providing social benefits. Fresh local food is not always easy to come by, but there are people producing it if you know where to look - and the more we demand it, the easier it will become for local growers to sell, and the more will become available to us.

Seasonal and local opportunities!

The Time is Ripe calendar features fruit and vegetables on the basis that this is the period when they are harvested in the United Kingdom, or are UK crops that can be stored without needing power. We have not included periods of time when something is available in the UK only by using heated greenhouses, as this requires large amounts of energy.

Iain Tolhurst, an organic grower, based in the South East provides between 70% and 90% of the vegetables in his box scheme throughout the year without using any energy to grow or store the food he grows. He uses unheated under cover growing to provide salad crops over the winter, stores potatoes in the field (using a clamp), and digs other crops up as needed (e.g. carrots). This sort of practice is just as possible in the North West of England.