More on green beans

I slipped up at the supermarket a couple of weeks ago and bought some green beans to make a particular recipe, even though I knew the season was really over.

It wasn't until I got them home that I noticed the label - Product of Australia.

Say what?!

I felt kind of shocked because it had never occurred to me that they sold imported perishable vegetables in regular ol' supermarkets here. I remember how gobsmacked I was by the imported African green beans I saw in UK supermarkets, but I hadn't realised that this was happening in New Zealand too.

However, in digging around on the topic I came across this interesting article from the Guardian - How the myth of food miles hurts the environment. It turns out the African beans are a common product over there - who knew? The article argues that food miles are only part of the picture and lots of other aspects of food production also have environmental impact - ideas that have been circulating here for a while thanks to the study on the carbon footprint of New Zealand lamb released in 2010, but including a few other factors that I hadn't considered. I find it intriguing to think that the air freighted beans from Kenya could actually be better than the local ones - I wouldn't have thought that the impact of using fossil-fuel-based fertilisers and oil-powered tractors would be that great compared to flying them to another country.


On the other hand, I'm guessing that those Australian beans weren't grown using just manual labour and cow muck.