VFH Project 6 | 2020 | Conclusion by Henk_Lamers

VFH project | 6

2020

| 21

Conclusions

Jeanne de Bont Henk Lamers

Table of contents

Conclusions 2020 | 2021

Weight

Price

Origin

Transport

Farming

Environmental score

Global costs

Markets and Supermarkets

Quality labels

Waste

Action points

Transported kilometers in 2020

Visualizing 3.127.374 Kilometers

Resources

People waiting in front of a supermarket during the first Corona outbreak, a rare event in our country.

Conclusions 2020 | 2021

In this publication we look at all the results for the year 2020. We have converted the conclusions that we can draw from this into a number of action points for the year 2021. But the year 2020 was a very difficult year for us due to the many unexpected things that took place. At the beginning of the year we had to deal with an outbreak of the Corona virus. Because there was no vaccine yet, the whole world was slightly panicked. People were forced to stay indoors and a curfew was imposed. So you were only allowed to go out to do some shopping or to get some fresh air. All in– and outdoor sports were banned so there was nothing for it but to sit inside for months. During the same period we were also busy building our new house. On top of that, we had to deal with an urgent hospitalization of one of us. And so it was hard to find the time to work on these publications, it took us a lot of energy. All in all, we had no chance to directly calculate and view the final results for the year 2020 and to start the new year with conclusions of the results. We didn’t get the opportunity until this year, 2022. But if we look back at what happened in 2021, we have had a good sense of it and luckily we are on the right track. In order to be able to work faster, we will simplify all brochures that have yet to be produced. We expect the entire process to take several years before we can live sustainable and largely self-sufficiently.

Weight

This graph shows how many kilograms of vegetables, fruit and herbs we, as consumers, bought in the year 2020. The total weight of 618.400 kilograms is quite astonishing. Just imagine a mountain of 618.400 kilos of vegetables, fruits and herbs! This of course includes all of the waste, so we did not eat all of it. The graph shows that most of it consisted out of fruit. Second are all the vegetables. The smallest part is for all herbs.

Vegetables With 178 kilos and 763 grams, this seems a little, but it is rounded up to 490 grams per day, about 245 grams per person. Apparently that is just not good enough according to the ‘Voedingscentrum’. They recommend that an adult should eat at least 250 grams of vegetables per day. That is the minimum.

Improve Eat more vegetables each day. 6

Fruit It is quite obvious that the heaviest weight comes from the fruit. It’s an open door because fruit is the cause of the largest pile of waste in comparison with vegetables and herbs. Roughly speaking, fruit produces one third of waste. We have eaten about 420 kilograms of fruit. That is 575 grams per day per person. This amount of fruit, produces 191 grams of waste. In the end we ate 384 grams of fruit per day. According to the ‘Voedingscentrum’, adults should eat 200 grams of fruit per day. So we are well above that.

Reduce our fruit intake.

Herbs The ‘Voedingscentrum’ has no advice for eating herbs. Apparently you don’t have to eat herbs to stay healthy. It’s not a disaster when you don’t use them. We use herbs to limit our salt consumption. And to make dishes tastier. Strangely enough, the proportion of waste from herbs is almost fifty percent. That is actually a higher percentage waste than from the fruit.

Price

If we really did it for the lowest price, we would have had to buy the best fruit and vegetables from Lidl in 2020. Lidl was on average sixteen percent cheaper for fruit and vegetables in 2020 than other supermarkets, according to a price survey by the Dutch Consumers Association among fifteen supermarket chains. Spar was the most expensive supermarket for fruit and vegetables. The prices there were eighteen percent above the average. But we were focussing on organic vegetables, fruit and herbs. With regard to the range of organic vegetables, fruit and herbs from the regular supermarkets, Aldi sold only five organic varieties, Lidl eleven. Albert Heijn had the widest choice of organic vegetables, fruit and herbs with 51 items. Jumbo had 45 and Plus 35. Vegetables When we look at the subtotal of the vegetables in the graph, we see that we have spent 873.29 Euro. About 2.39 Euro per day for the vegetables we ate in 2020. To give you an idea, the daily minimum cost for a hot meal, according to Nibud, is about 2.06 Euro per person. To be precise, it’s 2.06 Euro per day for a woman and 2.13 Euro for a man. They are talking about a dinner here. For a couple that would be an amount of 4.19 Euro a day and about 1529.35 Euro per annual year.

Improve Eat more vegetables each day. 8

Fruit We spent 1663 Euro on fruit in the year 2020. Roughly speaking, that’s almost double the money we spent on vegetables. We use most fruit for breakfast. An (average) man uses 1.51 Euro of fruit and a woman 1.30 Euro. That is 2.81 Euro per day and 1025.65 Euro per year. So we spend over a third above the average.

Herbs In 2020 we spent 285.52 Euro on herbs. About a third of the amount we spent on vegetables. And a fifth of the amount we spent on fruit. Now herbs are not a real expense. You also don’t buy a lot of them because you never need large quantities. Later we will see that mint makes the price with us. It is now mostly imported from Spain. But that will change in the near future.

Eat less but better (organic) fruit.

Grow mint from organic seeds.

Origin

In order to change our consumption behaviour, we must be aware not to buy green asparagus from Peru, green beans from Kenya or avocados from Chile. The closer to home you buy the vegetables, fruits and herbs, the fresher they are with little transport. It is therefore important to keep the time between harvesting the product and its consumption as short as possible. But that doesn’t work with oranges from South Africa. So buy local products. ‘Local’ in this case means: preferably from your region or at least from within the Netherlands. Next in line are organic products from Europe, those are also acceptable for us. Vegetables We think we are on the right track with vegetables. The longest bars in the graph show that, over the four seasons of 2020, the Netherlands was an important producer of vegetables. Spain and Italy are close second and third. All other European countries are minimal in their contribution. However, Belgium is doing better than Germany and France combined.

Improve We should try to avoid products from Chile, China, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Kenya, Mexico, Peru and Zimbabwe. Morocco is a questionable case. Choose products that are available in season.

Fruit The origin of fruit is a huge disappointment for us. See page twelve. But the positive thing is that we now also know that it is a setback. In the spring you can see that Spain was still an important supplier of fruit. But in the summer South Africa takes over. Fortunately, in the autumn, Spain will again become the main supplier. You also see an enormous fragmentation of suppliers who all deliver very little. A stable factor, not the best, by the way, is the Dominican Republic. Those are our bananas. Europe is the largest importer of bananas worldwide. In Europe, almost ninety percent of bananas are imported from Latin America. The former colonies of Cameroon and Ivory Coast supply about ten percent. The bananas that are grown in Europe come from the Canary Islands, Cyprus, Greece and Portugal.

Herbs Spain is one of the largest suppliers of herbs. See page thirteen. Some also come from The Netherlands, and Belgium supplies all herbs during the winter. It is strange that we have bought herbs from Argentina, Brazil, China, Israel, Kenya, Morocco and Peru.

Try to avoid products from countries like: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Peru, Turkey, United States and South Africa.

Don’t buy herbs from Argentina, Brazil, China, Israel, Kenya, Morocco or Peru.

Buy organic bananas with a label such as: Fairtrade, Max Havelaar or Rainforest Alliance. Eat only bananas that are grown within Europe.

Transport

When we started our VFH project in 2020, many things were still wrong with our consumption behaviour. In this graph you can see an example of it. We simply just bought what we needed and didn’t worry about their transportation. We were not aware of where products came from. For this example, we have calculated the most unfavourable scenario. We bought kiwis from New Zealand. The distance New Zealand to the Netherlands is 18.573.46 kilometers. Since we eat a kiwi a day, that makes fourteen kiwis a week. Fourteen times 18.573.46 kilometers is 260.028.44 kilometers! Of course we know that it doesn’t work like that and that kiwis are transported to the Netherlands in large container ships. But who can guarantee us that this week’s kiwi has been transported in the same container ship as next week’s kiwi or the week after that? The transport of products, especially in the shipping sector, is not transparent. There is no data available to the general public. Vegetables It is striking that in the summer and autumn we bought far fewer vegetables that came from far away than in spring and winter. You could conclude that the offer of local fresh products were at its best in this period. The total distance travelled by those vegetables, 313.492 kilometers, is even less than the distance travelled by the herbs, 356.036 kilometers. It doesn’t seem like much but it is almost 7.8 times around the globe.

Improve Be aware about the origin of the vegetables that you buy. Products from outside the EU are not an option. 14

Fruit Real action is required when purchasing fruit. This is completely out of proportion. 61.4 Times the globe around. This really needs to be done better.

Herbs This is very special. In all, the herbs have travelled a larger distance to get to us than the vegetables. And why? Do we eat very special herbs? We don’t think so.

Buy only fruit produced from within the EU, preferably within the Netherlands.

Buy herbs from the Netherlands or from within the EU. Grow our own organic herbs.

Farming

Our goal is to live on organic food. Even though it has not been shown that organic food is healthier. Organic products contain fewer pesticide residues. Organic farming also has a completely different approach and will, for example, not grow hectares full of one and the same crop, so that you have to use pesticides again to fight diseases. Organic farming grows various crops on a field. These crops keep each other in balance, resulting in fewer diseases. Less pesticides is good for all of us. So the first thing we should do is try to avoid all non-organic vegetables, fruits and herbs. Replace these with organically grown products. We weren’t there yet in 2020. We bought almost twice as many non-organic products as organic. Fruit The fruit is a different story. We bought 65.057 kilograms of organic fruit. Compared to 353.791 kilograms of non-organic fruit. That is more than five times as much non-organic fruit as organic fruit. That has to be improved.

Herbs We play almost equal for both organic and non-organic herbs. But here too it would be better if we switched to organic herbs altogether. Incidentally, the weight of the organic herbs remained about the same per season. The weight of the non-organic herbs fluctuated much more.

Improve Buy only organic grown vegetables.

Buy only organic grown fruit.

Buy only organic grown herbs.

Grow your own organic vegetables.

Grow your own organic fruit.

Grow our own organic herbs.

Vegetables If you look at the subtotal of organic vegetables, we bought about 141 kilograms of them in 2020. On the other hand, we also bought 37 kilograms of nonorganic vegetables. Not a bad result in itself. It’s also surprising that we ate more non-organic vegetables in the spring. During the year the awareness to buy organic vegetables has increased month by month. In the winter, we ate ten times more organic vegetables than non-organic vegetables.

Environmental score

We think we are on the right track here. We must avoid groups D and E. And fortunately that is somewhat the case. Most products are bought in the A, B and C groups. But still that should be done better. Vegetables Most vegetables purchases fall into the group A, B or C. And that’s a good sign. The groups D and E are negligible.

Fruit The fruit is another story. Here you see that the groups C, D and even E are the best engaged. But there is hope. Because in the winter there were also thirty purchases in the B group. We hope this will be a trend.

Herbs The herbs mainly take place in the B and C group. Actually, all D and E groups should also be avoided.

Environmental score explanation We have again interpreted the fruit and vegetable calendar as accurately as possible. A B

Improve Try to get all vegetable purchases within the A, B or C groups. 18

Comes from the Netherlands, is in season, from a field (organic) and has a quality mark. Comes from the Netherlands or Europe, is in season, from a field or a greenhouse (organic) and has a quality mark. Comes from the Netherlands or Europe, is in season, from Dutch greenhouses (not organic) and has no quality mark. Comes from countries such as Israel, Egypt, Morocco (about three thousand kilometres), is out of season, comes from Dutch greenhouses (not organic) and has no quality mark. Comes from Africa, South America, Asia or New Zealand (about ten thousand kilometres), outside or within the season (it doesn’t matter), comes from Dutch greenhouses (not organic) and has no quality mark.

Try to get all fruit purchases within the A, B or C groups.

Try to get all herbal purchases within the A, B or C groups.

Global costs

This is a bit of an odd graph. It is divided into non-organic, organic and the total amount of purchases in euros. That is organic and non-organic together. Non-organic You can see that the purchases in the spring were just under five hundred euros. Then it rises above five hundred euros in the summer. And in the fall and winter, spending drops. That in itself is a good sign. Despite this trend, we have spent more on non-organic than on organic food.

Improve Expenses for non-organic should be reduced. 20

Organic This seems to be heading in the right direction. In the course of 2020 we started to spend more and more per season on organically grown vegetables, fruit and herbs. If you compare the expenditure in the spring with the expenditure in the winter, that is almost 2.4 times more in the winter.

Spending on organic products must be increased.

Purchases The total expenditure does actually not say much yet. It hovers around seven hundred euros per season. In fact, you can only do something with this data if you have collected data over several years. And even then... food prices will become more expensive over the next years, and not cheaper.

Markets and supermarkets

This graph clearly shows that we buy more products on the weekly market than in the supermarket. And in fact, that has remained the case throughout 2020 as well. Roughly speaking, we buy six times as many products on the market as compared to the supermarket. Supermarkets When we started this project, in the spring of 2020, we spent twice as much in the supermarket compared to the summer, autumn and winter of 2020.

Improve Shop only at Ekoplaza. 22

Markets In itself it is not necessary to buy everything on the weekly market. If you could buy everything at an organic supermarket, that’s no problem either. But the market is close. And the sellers know you. Apparently that counts too.

Quality labels

In this graph, if a product is organic, we have also marked it as having a quality label. Since we buy the largest amount of products on the market, you assume that when you buy an organic product, that is also the case. There is no label for organic products per se. Quality labels You can see that after the spring of 2020, the amount of quality labels has almost doubled in the summer, autumn and winter. The largest group is made up of organic products. Then the groups EU Organic and PlanetProof follow.

No quality labels The amount of products without a quality label is still very large. But it seems to stabilize around 120.

Top ten quality labels for food

Improve Buy only organic or with a quality label. 24

ASC Farmed fish, crustaceans and shellfish

MSC Sustainably caught wild fish, crustaceans and shellfish

Better Life Animal Welfare

PlanetProof, dairy, eggs, fruit, vegetables, flowers and plants

Demeter Biodynamic Agriculture

Rainforest Alliance Tropical fruits, coffee, tea and chocolate

EKO Organic products

Fairtrade Fair prices for producers

EU Organic label Organic products

UTZ Sustainable agriculture for people and nature

Waste

Interesting to see that in a year you buy products of which you throw away a quarter part. We call this unavoidable waste. This includes, for example, potato, orange and banana peels. We haven’t found a solution for that yet. Vegetables In the case of vegetables, the weight of unavoidable waste is one eighth. So here too you would say eat more vegetables. Because then you limit the amount of waste.

Improve Eat more vegetables each day.

Fruit The fruit produces the most waste. Roughly speaking, a quarter of the fruit is waste. So to limit waste you would say eat less fruit.

Only eat fruit that gives little or no waste.

Herbs With the herbs, the waste factor is proportionally the highest. Sometimes you even throw the whole (mint) plant away after use. Anyway... herbs also weigh less.

Action points

The first conclusion we can make is that unfortunately we cannot perform the actions below. Due to our move to the municipality of Almere in 2021, we have produced this publication in April 2022. But even without being aware of these action points, we were able to implement them reasonably. That meant that from now on we went shopping at the Odin supermarket. And as a result, a lot has changed in terms of purchasing vegetables, fruit and herbs. Vegetables Eat more vegetables.

Fruit Eat less fruit.

Herbs Grow your own organic mint.

Vegetables that come from outside Europe are not a good option.

Buy bananas with the Fairtrade Okay, Max Havelaar or Rainforest Alliance, label.

Only buy organic herbs from Europe.

Choose products that are available in season.

Buy organic bananas.

Try to buy as many organic vegetables as possible. Try to get all vegetable purchases within the A, B or C groups.

Only buy fruits from Europe. Buy more organic fruit. Try to avoid non-organic fruits. Try to get all fruit purchases within the A, B or C groups. Only eat fruit that produces little or no waste. General Make the next publications more compact, with a focus on the graphs. Expenses for non-organic should be reduced. Expenditure on organic products must be increased. More shopping at EkoPlaza. Buy only organic products and products with a quality label.

Stop buying non-organic herbs. Try to get all herbal purchases within the A, B or C groups.

Transported kilometers in 2020

Now, we come back on the chapter of transportation. We stated that all our vegetables, fruit and herbs travelled 3.127.374 kilometers in 2020 before we arrived on our plates. But 3.127.374 kilometers is rather difficult for us to comprehend as a distance. So we wanted to get a better feeling for the huge amount of kilometers that these products travelled. The next step was to visualize all 3.127.374 kilometers, which was quit a challenge. But the results of this exercise gives a better feeling for the total distance. And hopefully we will think twice the next time that we buy a product that comes from far away countries. We started to visualize 1 kilometer in shape of a white circle. On the following pages you will see patterns of white circles representing a specific distance.

Visualizing 3.127.374 Kilometers

We mainly encounter technical limitations of our displays and the PDF format. We can depict 250.000 points, but even then you get some moiré effects. So if you really want to see those 250.000 kilometers, you will have to enlarge this document. By the way, we don’t know what will happen at ISSUU. They will probably also perform compression on this publication. Which will not affect the image quality favourably. Let’s wait and see what happens. Now that we have seen the possibilities and limits of showing the amount of circles on one page, it should be possible to visualize the total distance of 3.127.374 kilometers.

Starting with 250.000 kilometers 35

+ 250.000 = 500.000 kilometers 36

+ 250.000 = 750.000 kilometers 37

+ 250.000 = 1.000.000 kilometers 38

+ 250.000 = 1.250.000 kilometers 39

+ 250.000 = 1.500.000 kilometers 40

+ 250.000 = 1.750.000 kilometers 41

+ 250.000 = 2.000.000 kilometers 42

+ 250.000 = 2.250.000 kilometers 43

+ 250.000 = 2.500.000 Kkilometers 44

+ 250.000 = 2.750.000 kilometers 45

+ 250.000 = 3.000.000 kilometers 46

+ 62.500 = 3.062.500 kilometers 47

+ 62.500 = 3.125.000 kilometers 48

+ 2.374 = 3.127.374 kilometers 49

Resources ASC, Farmed fish crustaceans and shellfish, Utrecht, Netherlands Better Life Animal Welfare, Beter Leven, Den Haag, Netherlands Demeter, Driebergen, Netherlands EKO Organic products, Ede Netherlands EU Organic label, European Commission, Brussels, Belgium Fairtrade, Bonn, Germany Het voedingscentrum, Netherlands Nutrition Center, Den Haag, Netherlands MSC Sustainably caught wild fish, crustaceans and shellfish, London, United Kingdom Nibud, Nationaal Instituut voor Budgetvoorlichting, Utrecht, The Netherlands Planet proof, Den Haag, Netherlands The Rainforest Alliance, Amsterdam, Netherlands UTZ Sustainable agriculture for people and nature, Amsterdam, Netherlands

VFH project | 6 | Conclusions 2020 | 2021