Eat local food to tackle climate change - Archbishop

In an interview with The Times, Dr Rowan Williams said Britons should eat less food that had been air-freighted from places like Kenya and instead get in touch with ‘the natural rhythms of the seasons’.

“I don’t want to create an instant crisis in those economies but that’s the direction, a steady move away from it. You want to ask what it is doing long term to a Kenyan economy that becomes dependent on what are effectively cash crops for export,” he said.

He said the public should eat local produce and he called for more land to be made available for allotments to help people reconnect with nature – a message strongly supported by many in the agricultural community.

But Dr Williams’ comments, on the eve of his Climate Change lecture (Tuesday, October 13), have been fiercely criticised by the Fresh Produce Consortium (FPC).

The FPC said Dr Williams was living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’ if he thought the UK could be self-sufficient in food production.

The FPC said 60 per cent of fruit and vegetables imported in the UK could not be grown domestically, adding that consumption of fruit and vegetables accounted for ‘only’ 2.5 per cent of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions in total.

The FPC also urged Britons not to cut trade links with developing countries where it said Kenyan exports to the UK were worth £100 million alone.

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