From mountains of food waste to extreme carbon emissions, importing food from across the globe is damaging our environment. So Kent Veg Box is challenging the supermarkets by selling in-season fruit and veg, all within 50 miles of their doorstep.

So is eating locally sourced produce the answer to climate change? 

With over 15 years in the industry, Steve Oram, started up Kent Veg Box to supply local people with local produce. He sells boxes of fruit and vegetables online, and delivers them to his customers. 

But when the first lockdown hit in 2020 and the world came to a halt, he was busier than ever. 

Steve’s business not only supports him and his community but Kent farmers too. He said; “You are in effect through us investing in all these small businesses and enabling me to go out to them and say… and they have the confidence to plant them knowing I will buy them at a price on behalf of my customers even if the market in London dies, I’m still paying that set price for them.”

But why should we eat local food? Perhaps the pandemic pushed people to give sustainable eating a chance with supermarkets becoming less available and local crops more accessible.

“If it’s come from a short distance its fresher and it tastes better and it’s got better nutritional value, it’s the stuff that on climate change no one thing is going to change it but if we all do little things then we can have a big change.”

“The most important factor fo us as a business is food miles. The fact that ll of our food comes from less than 50 miles. No other box scheme does it,” said Steve.

But turning a box of veg into a weeks worth of meals can be quite daunting. And furloughed Lucy Charlesworth wanted to change that narrative. She set up ‘Lucy’s Ladle’ last year to help her community through the pandemic, by cooking and delivering soup made from locally farmed vegetables. 

Lucy Said; “I’ve always loved cooking and I find it really therapeutic, I thought maybe I could offer to help people through food.

“So I wrote a load of cards and posted them through all the doors in my road offering to donate portions of vegetable soup for people who couldn’t get out or were struggling.

“And then I put a couple of messages out on neighborly WhatsApp groups and people started buying the soup.” 

But what is so good about locally farmed, fresh food?

By turning her veg into dinners and her passion into a business, Lucy nows makes up to 200 portions of soup a week, packed with nutrition.

“A lot of the stuff I make it involves quite a lot of ingredients and people just don’t have the time or want to spend all that money making all that stuff and then be stuck with a great big pot of it, they like to have the variety made for them,” she explained.

Both sustainable eating and concerns about the food industry’s part in climate change are more prevalent now than ever, but where has this shift in attitude come from?

“I think everyone’s trying to support local businesses more, so that’s definitely a big part of it, obviously we are going through a lot of issues with supply chains as well from stuff that comes in from abroad which it typically does for supermarkets,” she said.

Fresh food, grown on home soil, maintains a level of quality that perhaps imported fruit and veg just can’t preserve. So cooking as many of the vegetables into your meals will help use them up efficiently but also add a lot more nutrition to your diet. 

“I think you have to remember when you get a box delivered there is so much you can do with that veg and it will go such a long way and you don’t have to use it all on the first day because it will keep,” Lucy said. 

So how can we incorporate it into our diets?

For some people the transition to eating the in-season locally grown product, seems impossible, so with the help of companies like Lucy’s Ladle and Kent Veg Box, we can all educate ourselves and adapt to cooking both healthy and efficient meals.

Lucy’s advice is to ‘start small, go to your local market, or deli or veg shop if you’ve got one and buy a few bits, and maybe look up a few recipes beforehand’.

Steve’s customers have realised that this change to their diet has equally changed their lives. He said; “I think a lot of people have thought, ‘hold on a moment, I should have been doing this ages ago, I’m getting better food, I’m not spending as much money and actually I quite enjoy what I’m doing, and I’m doing my bit for the environment too.’”