How to live off the land

Could you survive only on local produce? As the Government urges us to help reduce Britain’s spiralling food miles total, Rich Cookson spends two weeks without salt or sugar, tea or coffee, wine, pasta – or chocolate

If there’s an ancient art to preparing rabbit, I’d like to be in on it. I’ll spare you the details, but my kitchen looks like something out of a horror movie and the rabbit liver has just slipped off the chopping board and on to the floor – it’s more like Reservoir Dogs than River Cottage.

Still, food doesn’t come much more local than this. My rabbit was shot a few fields away and the vegetables were grown just eight miles down the road. The delicious, thick, creamy milk that will go into my mashed potato came free from a friendly farmer this morning. In a couple of hours, there’ll be a steaming bowl of delicious and wholly local rabbit stew and mash on the table.
The food we eat is travelling further than ever to get to our plates. A recent government report revealed that the food eaten in Britain travelled a staggering 30 billion kilometres in 2002. The study, from the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs, also found that the amount of food transported by lorries has doubled since 1974, and now accounts for a quarter of all miles travelled by HGVs in the UK.

The phenomenal grown of supermarkets, with their centralised distribution systems and out-of-town locations, is partly to blame. But they rightly say they’re only responding to demand: many of us want to eat strawberries and tomatoes all year round, without thinking too much about where they come from.

The Independent