The last dying wish of Iceland’s economy was to have its ashes scattered over Europe. How does it affect food?

One result of the grounding of planes because of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano is that Britain has been cut off from luxury foods flown in from the Great Rift Valley that runs from Southeast Asia to East Africa. From The Guardian, April 16:

Britain's supermarkets could soon run short of perishable goods including exotic fruits and Kenyan roses as the ongoing ban on UK air travel brought Britain's largest perishable air freight handling centre to a standstill today. Norbert Dentressangle, the logistics company that operates this facility at Heathrow Airport, has warned that this weekend will effectively be a write-off. This will mean a three-day shortfall in the supply of certain products, including asparagus, grapes, green onions, lettuce and pre-packed fruit salads. The fear is that, while there are still supplies of these products in the supply chain, they are likely to be exhausted next week.

Very little of Britain’s food is imported by plane; the chances that people missing their already aseasonal greens and cut flowers will cause food riots are slim. Then again, maybe people are much more attached to the convenience of a pre-packed fruit salad than I am.

The big impact is at the Kenyan end of the delivery chain. Kenya sends about a thousand tons of pre-sliced and packaged fruit and vegetables to Europe’s supermarkets by air every day, food which is currently rotting at European airports. There is no local market large enough to buy this volume of fresh food. There is only so much salad that Kenyans can eat.

I am still amazed that there is money to be made in flying a fresh, pre-cut salad from Africa to Europe. Salads are pre-prepared for airfreight rather than just sending whole lettuces because the less redundant weight that there is in each package then the marginally cheaper it is to bundle into an airplane. It is a remarkably convoluted food system, where simple greens have become a luxury product expected at supermarkets year round and are flown in from anywhere that grows them.

What this particular volcano has seemed to reveal is the raw vulnerability of markets that rely on airfreighted cargo. It is certainly not going to reorient Europe towards ditching imported lettuce, but in the least it will hopefully start the debate that there is more to food miles than just environmental concern and that food security is at stake.