Aldi and food miles - good or bad?

I shop at my local Aldi supermarket about once a month. There are about half a dozen items that I buy - I don't shop there more regularly as they don't stock everything I buy and it frustrates me shopping at two supermarkets when I barely have time to go to one - and I am usually dashing in and out with kids in tow.

Today however, I only had one (pram-restricted) child with me, so I had an opportunity to peruse their items more leisurely and see if they had changed their stock much since the last time I was able to look around properly. This time however, I was paying much more attention to the labels, and what struck me most was the rarity of any labels bearing the words "Product of Australia".

I know I shouldn't have been surprised, given all the media hype about the same when they first opened in Australia, and to be honest I wasn't - just disappointed I suppose. I understand the absolute attraction of the Aldi chain when you are trying to shop frugally: who doesn't want to save money on their grocery bill? I sure do! Especially when I have chosen to spend more buying organic fruit and vegetables, I really need to cut back in other areas in order to accomodate that. But as I wandered around the aisles, I couldn't help but think that all this cheap, conventionally-produced, imported food is a bad thing for the environment. But is it? I did a bit of goggling to see what I could come up with.

The main reason why these items are cheap is because of their economy of scale of course - Aldi buys only a limited number of items and buys them in huge quantities. They also don't spend much on presentation or packing - many items are stacked on their delivery pallets on the floor. They also charge for plastic bags (which I like - bring on the green bags!). But, as I previously mentioned, most of their items are imported, using a great deal of fossil fuels in their transportation - the concept of "food miles". Superficially, that looks like a bad thing for the environment, and indeed, that is exactly what I was thinking this morning.

But, the obvious flipside of not-importing food, is to produce it locally. And how sustainable is that? I've just finished reading the chapter on Australia in Jared Diamond's book Collapse, where he discusses the extreme fragility of our soils - in fact he calls most of our agriculture "mining", because our soils are so old and nutrient deficient that (in many, many areas) we have to add all the nutrients required by the plants artificially, much in the manner of hydroponics! He suggested that perhaps our reliance on agriculture and farming in general may have to change in the future if we wish to have a sustainable society.

So then I have to wonder, which is worse? Importing food using fossil fuels, or increasing our domestic food production by growing food in marginal areas and promoting land degredation? In this article, Zach Alexopoulos from Sydney University thinks food miles is just a "fad" and doesn't address the real issues.

What about the conditions of the workers in the countries that produced the imported food though? Is the food so much cheaper to produce because the workers are getting paid next to nothing? Working in sub-standard conditions? Using pesticides that have been banned in other countries for decades? Are they clearing vast swathes of old-growth rainforest in order to grow these crops? Are they using GM crops that aren't required to be labelled as such?

There's no easy answer to those questions sadly, it's just not possible to know for every different brand and food product.

So what's the best alternative? In truth, I have no answer for that. My own thoughts are this:

• Clearly, growing any (or all, if you are lucky enough to have the room and the time!) of your own food is a terrific thing, as is supporting your local farmers (and I mean in your region, not just country) - if they are organic farmers, so much the better.
• Decreasing the amount of packaging and processing (including frozen goods) in the foods you buy has a flow-on effect in this issue because you are limiting the amount of energy that was required to produce them in the first place, and they may also be lighter (eg bulk dried beans versus tinned beans), therefore requiring less energy to transport them.
• If you stick to the previous two points as much has possible, then buying whatever it is that is left on your regular grocery list at the cheapest prices you can get them seems a reasonable compromise. Having said that however, I still have a nagging little voice in the back of my head saying "yeah, but...", so personally, I think I will stick to buying Australian products at the other supermarket, where I can (and the "big two" supermarkets filling their shelves with their own-brand imported products is a whole 'nuther issue! *Sigh*).