So, the harvest season, and harvest festival, is almost over for another year. But do we really notice it any more? Deep in the rural areas we may be more aware of the cycle of growing and gathering, but in towns and cities, where most of us live, the season is rather more culturally embedded than it is practically experienced.

In truth, harvest these days is not such a localised phenomenon, either in place or time, as it once was. Today most of us buy our food from the supermarket, where we find a very similar range of produce available all year round. The concept of a specific, clearly defined harvest season is not so apparent. Time of year is not crucial anymore.

Likewise, the place of origin of our food is far less locally restricted. In order to maintain a year-round supply of our favourite things, supermarkets source produce from around the world. Here, as in so many areas of life today, we encounter a dilemma. 

Alongside our changing habits of consumption which disregard seasonality,  the seasons themselves seem to be less clearly demarcated; emerging evidence of the first of the competing factors in the dilemma - climate change.

On the one hand, in relation to our food supply, we are becoming increasingly aware of the problem of climate change. Shipping, and particularly air-freighting, produce from around the world can only add to the problem. Our concerns about the impact of food miles (how far a

product has travelled before it reaches

the consumer) and air miles (whether and how far a product has been air-freighted) upon the levels of production of greenhouse gases are not unreasonable.

On the other hand, buying produce from less privileged, less developed parts of the world is often a lifeline for them. Not to buy could severely damage the economic and social development prospects of poor communities. There is a question of social justice here, on both sides of the dilemma.

There isn't an easy answer. The answer somehow must lie in Jesus' teaching that we are to love our neighbour as ourselves. To continue unthinkingly with a lifestyle that damages the environment, to the greater detriment of those who bear little or no responsibility for the damage, and who are least able to cope with its effects, lacks the necessary love.  Yet, to fail to support struggling economies and poor producers, workers and their families, by adopting a knee-jerk response and not trading with them, would be equally uncaring.

There are no easy answers, but now that a firm international consensus has been formed on the science of climate change, there needs to be a rational and informed debate on the best way forward to reduce its damaging effects. We must support developing countries, by tackling poverty and promoting sustainable development. It is a debate of which the church must be a part, and which we must engage with, carefully and prayerfully.

With God's blessings,

Ian