Where does Britain's food come from?

Have you ever given much thought to where your food comes from that you buy in the supermarket? The honest answer to that is probably that you haven't but much of Britain's food actually comes from other countries.

When you think of potatoes, where do you think? Britain? Actually, you'd be wrong. The typical exporter of potatoes is actually Israel, meaning they travel 2200 miles to the UK. According to the British Potato Council, the UK imports 350,000 tonnes of potatoes a year, and that includes during potato season.

Now how about tomatoes? I know we have them growing in our back garden, and so do several other people I know, but the main exporter for them is actually Saudi Arabia, where they have to travel 3100 miles to reach the UK. In fact, according to the British Tomato Growers Association, two thirds of the tomatoes eaten in the UK are imported ones.

One surprise I found whilst going through the list, was carrots. I was sure that these would say UK by them, as they're something that my own Granddad has always grown in his garden, I just always presumed it was a common garden staple for a British house. But the UK actually gets most of its carrots from South Africa, meaning that they have to travel around 6000 miles to reach our plate. In 2005, in fact, China was the largest producer of carrots and turnips, according to the Food and Agriculture Organisation, when China accounted for at least a third of the global output, followed by Russia and the US.

So what is it that comes the furthest to be on our plates, travelling a whopping 11,700 miles from New Zealand? The answer to that would be lamb. In New Zealand, there are 10 times as many sheep as there are people and more than half of the country's lamb exports travel thousands of miles to the EU.

Closely following lamb in terms of distance, is New World Chardonnay, which travels 9000 miles from Australia. Chardonnay is now the number one grape variety in Australia and the rest of the New World, where its versatility makes it a reliable grape for producing wine in huge quantities.

Of all the imports, the nearest - broccoli and strawberries - travels just 780 miles from Spain. In fact, in the UK, we import 89 percent of our fruit, which works out at a huge 19 out of 20 pieces of fruit we consume.

So it's obvious that British imports are plentiful, but another astonishing fact is that the UK account for more than one-fifth of the total UK greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, if you drink bottled water, it technically costs more than 1,000 times as much as tap water, as it comes by lorry rather than through pipes, which means its using more energy, and producing much more carbon dioxide, as well as more waste.

The statistics of where are food comes from makes shocking reading.

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