Food
The practice of sustainable, deeply ecological food consumption is very challenging to navigate and establish both at home and especially while travelling. Perhaps the most ecological way to get food is foraging, but it is unsustainable and unrealistic on a large scale. Above is a picture of red currants which I recently picked in Northern Sweden. There are also blueberries, wild raspberries, wild strawberries, perhaps also mushrooms and cloudberries as well as edible leaves. It is hardly enough to live off. It is almost impossible to pick (and store/preserve) enough to satisfy one's needs until the following summer. Moreover, foraging requires knowledge.
Some outlets offer local, Swedish apples (below) as well as other Swedish produce such as potatoes and cucumbers. Often these products are packaged in plastic. Some food (such as lettuce and herbs) can be grown locally using vertical hydroponic agriculture. This requires high technology and consumes a lot of energy.
Those people who have access to land can produce more of their own food, but not all that is commonly consumed in modern Europe. Access to land is expensive. Vegan food is often imported, highly processed and packaged in plastic. Zero-waste options are not easily accessible in many locations. Often local and organic food is expensive. Some local people hunt, but this is an expensive (and high-tech) activity. Some would be unwilling to engage in this activity for ethical reasons.
Moreover, it is hard to tell anything about the organisational structure of the companies involved in food production as well as the organisations' social and ecological practices. In my own research I come to conclusion that (apart from the obvious cases of multinational corporations and large companies) the form of an organisation (a cooperative, a firm etc.) itself does not say much about the practices within the organisation.
In the coming years, I hope to see more research on food production for a deeply ecological, post-growth mode of being, as well as more widely available options for consumers to choose from, i.e., options not limited to supermarkets and occasional "alternative" shops.
When I buy food, I have to ask myself, for instance, do I buy something unpackaged but imported or local and packaged in plastic? Options which are at once local, unpackaged/minimally packaged, affordable, seasonal, produced by small scale producers with good ecological and social practices are extremely rare.
