Customers packing their veg boxes onto their cycles

Image by Bry Lynas

A lesson to us all?  We, at Llangybi Organics, run a vegetable box scheme. Every Friday, we harvest and pack our veg in boxes and bags for our customers to collect. Everything we produce is grown on our two farms which are within one mile of each other. So food miles = 1 at the outset. Some customers collect their veg on foot and some collect by bike. These two cycle around 5 miles to get theirs and so does another regular. This is the way food distribution should be if we, as a species, are to reduce our heavy footprints on the planet's biosphere.

Not carbon-free but worthy: Most of our customers live too far distant to collect our produce by self-propelled means and have to rely on cars. But they're smart: they have almost all organised themselves into local groups so that only one person and car need make the journey each week, collecting for the others in the group.

And the moral of the story?  Our ideal would be to have all our customers within riding or walking distance so no cars were involved at all. Sadly, most people in the area are stuck in the supermarket rut and have no interest in supporting locally-grown organic veg. But maybe our customers' example will inspire other local growers and communties to at least aspire to car-free food transport.