Why Local Is Focal

If you don't want a bitter taste left in your mouth, even the livestock you eat should enjoy local produce, writes Ali Schofield

Think back 20 odd years and no middle-class dinner party host worth their salt would admit to using completely locally sourced ingredients to make their prawn cocktail, Mediterranean pasta and spotted dick. Far more status-saving was to have things imported - hams from Spain, fruit from the Bahamas - than to admit consorting with local farmers and, shock, getting your hands dirty.
These days, it's less the Good Life, more the average person's life, to care about food miles, pesticides and the quality of life the producer, and the animals they tend, have had while producing our food.
Local produce has become big business in Britain, and Harrogate is no exception. Indeed, in its fairly short time on West Park, Weetons has won countless awards, both locally and nationally, instilling a firm local food ethic. As well as the well-stocked shop, Weetons offers a delivery service which takes into account environmental concerns about using our cars to get to towns where such local produce is sold.
Research has shown that in order to export a kilo of apples from New Zealand a whopping 1kg of carbon dioxide emissions is produced. The same amount of locally grown apples delivered to your door in a box scheme like Weetons' lowers emissions 20 fold, creating just 50g of carbon dioxide.
The same, inevitably, goes for meat production - a fact that local restaurants including the Clocktower, Ye Olde Punchbowl Inn and the Hare and Hounds, as well as suppliers, are recognising. While the transportation of livestock is a big issue though, so is the carbon footprint made in the production of feed for the livestock.
The last 50 years has seen world meat production increase by five times. This inevitably means that more space is needed than ever before to graze animals - the term 'hamburgerisation' has been coined to explain the deforestation which occurs in places like Brazil to accommodate cattle - as well as more land needed for the production of animal feed. GM-heavy soya crops have led to further deforestation in South America, with worldwide soya production - of which animal feed takes up 85% - doubling in the last 20 years. The most obvious solution is to keep everything, as far as possible, local.
Many also believe that it is only in returning to time-honoured methods of producing food and drink that we can restore some of the damage reeked through irresponsible practice. Theakston's brewery in Masham employs Jonathan Manby, one of the last brewer's cooper in England to have served a traditional apprenticeship and to continue making beer casks in the traditional way. Beer buffs suggest this can make for a better taste. And that, surely, is what local produce is all about.