Or, for roughly the same price, lettuce from a supermarket that has been commercially grown using pesticides and washed in water containing more chlorine than your local public swimming pool?

YES: local lettuce NO: washed lettuce in bags

Yes, the question was asked in a rather biased way but designed to emphasise, what we thought, happens when consumers don’t understand where their food comes from. Very typical in a national food industry where supermarkets separate consumers from producers.

The results however show that perhaps we are wrong, and convenience or hate of caterpillars and insects, is more important than quality and supporting local growers. If so what a terrible shame.

A shame because if we consumers continue to prefer convenience over quality more and more crops will be grown to meet these needs. This means crop varieties grown for shelf life not flavour and more use of chemicals in large scale production to reduce cost. And the processor and retailer taking the lion’s share of the retail price.
“The start of a food revolution?” Your local food community? At BigBarn we would much rather see local production and trading of the hundreds of different types of tasty salad leaves. Many will be chemical free and if freshly picked most will not even need a wash in fresh water. And all the money going back in to the local economy to encourage further food production and your own food community.

If you agree why not join our Crop for the Shop scheme and tell your local shop about it. Essentially Locals’ grow food and the shop sells it. For more click here. Or register here so we can keep you up to date on what happens in your are via our free post code specific newsletter. And watch out for our APP coming soon.

Or if you would like to vote click here and scroll down.