No hiding food miles from savvy consumers

A recent holiday to the north of Spain and the south of France enabled me to take a good look at local farming systems and to reflect on New Zealand's place in the wider world.
This is the rugby-playing part of France and, as well as rugby, New Zealand is known as a producer of quality lamb.
All food products are required - by the European Union - to display the country of origin, usually as part of the price ticket attached to the supermarket shelf.
It is interesting to walk through a large supermarket or the village fruit shop or butchery and see just where the products come from.
Restaurant and café menus also show country of origin of all meats and fish so there is no hiding it from the consumer.
Commonly featuring on restaurant menus and proudly displayed in supermarkets and butchery shops is New Zealand lamb and the French certainly know how to cook it.
I very diplomatically avoided a confrontation with our B&B host over food-miles.
She was arguing against New Zealand lamb because of the distance it must be transported.
Her limited English and my non-existent French prevented a meaningful discussion about the energy used to produce and transport New Zealand lamb to the consumer as compared with the home grown product.
This is an area that Beef and Lamb NZ will need to work on and, based on my brief skirmish, it is not going to be an easy battle.
Despite supermarkets carrying a wide range of well presented meat products, the butchery still plays a major role in everyday life. The butcher has a big influence on what the householder buys and how it is cooked and I wonder whether these meat ambassadors receive the support they should from our meat industry.
What the consumer eventually buys is subject to a whole range of influences but certainly quality is important, presentation can catch the eye, animal welfare can turn them on or off, as can environmental concerns, with energy efficiency somewhere in the mix. So too is association, and I guess there is more New Zealand lamb consumed in the south of France where they know about the All Blacks than in the football/soccer playing parts of the country.
For that reason we may sell more lamb by associating it with Richie McCaw than the Evers-Swindell twins!
The variety of crops grown throughout France and Spain is also of interest, particularly in relation to the soil types they are grown in and the influence of the EU on what is grown.
Cruising through fields of sunflowers for three or four days left me wondering whether sunflower is the crop of choice for these farmers because it is the most profitable or whether it is being grown under instruction from the EU.
Travelling through the country, sunflower gave way to grapes and other than a few crops of millet, very little else was being grown.
On deeper, usually alluvial soils, there were cherry orchards but some had a problem with silver leaf or some other fungal disease.
On shallower hill soils - where they were not terraced for grapes - there were either oak plantations for truffles, or olives. While some of the grapes were on deeper alluvial soils, the majority were on what can only be described as "bony" ground, almost pure gravel. The grape harvest started while I was there, both hand picking and machine stripping. In several areas where old vines were being replaced by new stock or they were changing from cherries to grapes, the new vines were being set up for machine picking.
Obviously labour is an issue and, depending on the size of the establishment, family members return to help with the harvest or casual labourers are used.
It was interesting to watch the tractor and trailer loads of grapes being transported to the local co-operative winery for crushing, each grower keeping his wine separated from other members' and either bringing it back to his own winery for gate sales or selling it to bigger clients through the co-operative.
It would have been great to have had the time to sit down with the growers and discuss the structure of their cooperatives.
The wine industry in France is obviously heavily protected, despite the EC rules, with few "foreign" wines appearing in the supermarkets. A wide range of food products are protected, whether by regulation or by French patriotism and it certainly provides some perspective on the battle New Zealand producers face.
Bob Cathcart is Land Management Specialist, NRC