Today the offer of fruit and vegetables is very various: we are inured to eat every kind of vegetable during all year. Today nobody knows when the marrows, the beetroots or the apples grow, because they are always available in the supermarkets. Some years ago, when you went shopping, you could only find the fruit and vegetables harvested in season.The different factors that allow to have the continuity of the offer are:
- the possibility to extend the calendar, thanks to the cultivation in particular places that allow either to preserve the farming from the atmospherical agents and to anticipate or to delay the sowing-season or the harvest-time.
- the new techniques of preservation, in particular in cold stores where the low temperature slacks the degeneration of the vegetable.
- the transport modernization: today, in fact, it’s possible to move the goods with fast and frozen transports, that allow to preserve the products freshness during the travel.

It’s important to remember that fruit and vegetables cultivated and eaten in the right time are richer in vitamins and tastier.
It’s also important to remember that imported products from overseas countries have a very negative ecological balance because of their high consumption of fuel with the relative discharges. According to the valuation of Coldiretti a “km 0 menu” (with locally cultivated food) produce the half of the carbon dioxide discharge in comparison with a “high distance menu” (with imported products). An environment-friendly citizen has to research the local producers, in order to reduce transports and packages to preserve the ambient.

Published 30 March 2017