Berserk Marketing

Food consumers have become more alert to the carbon footstep left behind as a result of the type of shopping they indulge in, for items to put on their dinnertime table. Not that most people, during seasonal harvest times haven't always been interested in purchasing local products. Simply because the fresher food items are from the field they're grown in to the dining room table, the more nutrients they contain, the fresher and sweeter they taste.

And, given the short run from local farms to neighbourhood grocers, the less deleterious environmental impact they have.

When we're shopping now in our supermarkets we're assured by signage on the produce shelves and by packaging information that we've chosen a food product that was grown and picked close to home. This makes us feel snugly smug, that we are self-sufficient, able to feed ourselves at close range, and that we, as consumers, are helping to combat environmental damage.

Notably, with many other food products, like citrus fruits, pineapples, bananas, for examples, we know they've been trucked and shipped long distances.

But with local, seasonal soft fruits whose seasons run the gamut from strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, peaches, plums, melons and grapes, we know we can buy locally. When asparagus, green and wax beans, lettuce, globe peppers and tomatoes are in season we exult at their fresh, local taste.

At other seasons we accept that we must buy such produce grown in Guatemala, Peru, South Africa, Israel, Florida and California, and we indulge our shopping habits because we love to eat a wide array of foods, so readily available in our global marketplace.

But what kind of lunacy is it when marketers decide to complicate matters by trucking local produce - grown a mere 40 kilometres from a city centre - some 730 kilometres distant, to a giant warehouse. And from that giant warehousing facility servicing the needs of supermarkets associated with a single corporation, the foods gathered there are then delivered back, to the supermarkets in the city where they were grown locally.

That's just what is happening in the Ottawa area, where Loblaws, in their marketing wisdom decided to do away with local warehouses and instead return to a giant distribution centre. And where local producers are now faced with losing business with this giant retailer if they're not prepared to truck their market-ready food at substantial additional cost to themselves the distance required, to the distribution centre.

Meanwhile, Loblaws continues to proudly advertise the Canadian, and local content of their food offerings. Such marketing brilliance.