New Questions for Local Food Companies

In another post of this blog, I wrote about the critiques surrounding the zero-miles food theory. To sum up, the problem is that today people travel around the world and live big parts of their lives far from their birthplaces much more than in the past. All of this has caused displacement, and food from birthplaces is the easiest and best way of curing distress. That's why Italian people living in London don't buy zero-miles English food, but lots-of-miles pasta and Parmigiano. And the same happens to the Indians living in Europe, the Egyptians in the US, and so on. 

In addition, much research has demonstrated that sometimes importing food from other countries is less polluting than growing food at home. Finally, many local companies are selling their products on the internet globally, sending local foods to other countries and thus contradicting the basic rule of the theory. Interestingly, those who buy this local food are both people suffering with food nostalgia and people who have nothing to do with the geographic origins of that food. As a result, the idea of eating food coming from the same area where one lives is still fascinating in theory, but is becoming less feasible in practice.

If we assume that the zero food miles theory is in difficulty, we must also assume that the companies producing and selling local food have a problem. In fact, these companies have often based their communication on the fact that they are a zero food miles company. Now that the theory is less fascinating, new questions arise. Why do people buy local food? How should local food companies promote their products?

The problem is already here, and some of these companies are looking for new strategies. Interestingly, Italian national channels are broadcasting the commercial of mozzarella Francia, a local brand which is very popular in the area surrounding Rome. This brand has often promoted its products by underlining its local production process. The new commercial, instead, ignores the local character of the brand, which is now available in many Italian regions and is in fact promoted on national channels. The commercial focuses on the fact that this mozzarella doesn't contain citric acid and other ingredients extraneous to mozzarella's traditional recipe, only containing milk, salt and rennet. Thus, the commercial seems to say: “Wherever you live and were born, buy it because it's local, and thus it's good”

I strongly believe that local food will be increasingly successful in the near future. However, what I also believe is that the people who will buy it will live far from the region where that food has been produced. They will buy it either for nostalgia or because they simply like it., because it's better than the global counterpart By contrast, local foods will decreasingly be bought as it is produced close to home. In short, the famous lardo di Colonnata will be more successful out of than in Colonnata.

Zero Food Miles: Theory and Practice

Zero miles (or zero kilometres) is a really fascinating food theory. It asserts that we should consume food grown and marketed close to the place where we live. By doing so, we avoid food that travels for many miles by flight, ship, truck and other polluting means of transport. Apart from pollution, zero miles also allows us to eat fresher food which does not contain preservatives and other ingredients that threatens health, taste and nutritional values.

As often happens, good theories fail when they are turned into practice. First of all, it has been demonstrated that the environmental relevance of zero miles does not apply to everywhere. In the northern part of Britain, for example, growing fruit and vegetables needs energy-consuming, heated-up greenhouses, as the weather does not permit the natural growing of some vegetables. A recent research has demonstrated that importing products from Spain pollutes less than growing them in the central and northern part of Britain. Thus, the first point is that zero miles does not guarantee environmental advantage on some parts of the planet.

However, the real problem with zero miles is cultural. In fact, in this era more than in any other, people travel and live for long periods far from their original places, often for their entire lives. In these new places, they build new lives, establish new relationships and do things that they would have never done at their original homes. Yet, they often feel the need not to lose their roots, and consuming foods from their birthplaces is the easiest and best way to retrieve those roots.

My Italian friends living in London theoretically support zero kilometres, but their refrigerators and kitchen shelves are full of Parmigiano Reggiano, authentic Italian pasta and mozzarella, extra-virgin olive oil authentically produced in Italy and an array of Italian foods much more various than those I have in Italy. They find them in the most popular supermarkets in London, which import all that food from Italy ignoring the zero miles theory. Questioned by me, my friends have said that they would never replace Parmigiano Reggiano with British cheese, Italian pasta with British pasta, and so on. Clearly, those products make them feel at home. Apart from their wonderful taste, those foods have the function of retrieving my friends' roots. The same happens to the other Italians who have emigrated everywhere, and to the Indians, Egyptians, Bulgarians and so on that have built new lives far from their birthplaces.

Food is a magician. It conveys memories, emotions, scents and people that have been important in our past. This is not theory, but everyday life. A useful and effective theory such as zero miles cannot keep up with the strength of the flood of emotions and nostalgia that sometimes gets into our lives without asking permission. It is probably disputable, but when at the crossroads where we will have to choose between correctness and emotions, we will more often give up our environmental awareness and take the road of the taste of our past.