The land of cheap tucker: Why the $10 lettuce could spark a food revolution

This was the 60's, a time of post war comparative affluence, but memories remained of depression and World War Two scarcity when families shared milking a goat grazing on their footpath, and eggs and garden fertiliser came from the backyard chook shed.

Frugality was expected, even in nice middle-class homes.

Backyards still had fruit trees and vegie gardens tactfully out of sight behind the clothes line. Dad was not a gardener, nor Mum a cook.

But our mulberry tree grew itself, as did the strawberries, passionfruit, the choko vine over the dunny, the row of paw paw trees and the persimmon, mint by the back door, rosemary to flavour the mutton, thyme for the chook boiled with rice and veg. It was a rare house that didn't have surplus food for informal trade.

The few 'bought' veg, like spuds, came with the veg man on the back of his ute on Thursday afternoons.

They were cheap, invariably local and in season. Every suburb had its market garden back then - even in inner Sydney until the 1980s or 90s. Most had a dairy, where the milk bottles left on the doorstep were taken back to be sterilised and reused each time the milkman left your fresh bottles each night or morning.

Bakers and cake shops made their own, without the cost of transport or preservatives. The local cake shop showed off its jam and cream sponges on pedestals, but the rack on one side held the half-price day-old bread, the two day-old rock cakes.

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Grocers kept bags of broken biscuits, and large wheels of rat trap cheese out the front, nor was there any stigma in buying cheap food.

At least half the butchers' display was cheap meat, not just mince and sausages, but elderly sheep for mutton stews, 'boiler' chooks that had outlived egg laying, offal like brains, tripe, lambs fry, kidneys for a few cents, or pigs trotters, meat scraps for a stew.

These days the really cheap meats bypass the private consumer and go to the fast food industry, where, they are overpackaged, frozen, and sold for hundreds of times their food value.

I remember the year it changed. Dad was a management consultant, and on one evening walk he enthusiastically outlined the philosophy he's heard that would change the world: persuade the customer to 'buy expensive'.

No more cheap stuff at the front of the shop - put the pricy tempting items where they'll see them first. Make them travel the entire shop for the items they really need, buying on impulse as they pass.

Somehow 'because it makes money' became an acceptable reason for developers on local councils to 'rate out' the local market gardens, the dairy farms and local cheese makers, and family factories, as well as to permit building on flood prone land.

The flood devastations of the last few years have been the result of poor, or corrupt, decision making, but our $10 lettuces are equally a result of developer greed and as well as similar human environmental idiocy.

Most of the cost of today's fruit and veg comes from flying out of season asparagus from Brazil, or watermelons from Darwin, plus a supply chain or fertilisers, herbicides, fungicides from around the world, as well as the ludicrously strict supermarket standards of colour, size and uniformity.

Cooking shows and glossy cookbooks have taught consumer to 'buy for the recipe' rather that work out what can be made from what is cheap, in season, and home grown.

Just possibly the $10 lettuce may be just what we need. Supply line failures are forcing shops to buy local - or even 'slightly imperfect' - produce. Families are re-chooking the suburbs. Local markets are booming.

Office workers who had to abandon the air-conditioned grey walls during the lockdowns have covered they don't want to go back again.

Working from home means time to put on a slow stew or weed and pick the broccoli for dinner in your coffee break, or even begin a small distillery, a repair business, or 'pick you own' farm.

Veg seed and seedlings have been in short supply since the beginning of the pandemic, as the supermarket-fed generation realises that not only can a lot of food be grown in a small place, but that a few bandicooted spuds, eggs from the backyard chooks, home-grown salad and a couple of backyard pears is actually 'faster food' than any company can deliver to your doorstep.

There as a reason 1950s blokes would put down their briefcases at the end of working day, and head out into the garden. Working among green growth is restorative.

There is more immediate gratification in swapping a basket of limes and oranges for a few pots of marmalade than any invisible financial transaction. Invisible financial transactions are excellent and essential, but they don't leave the house smelling of home-made biscuits or winter veg soup.

Growing food is fashionable again. Food writers are focusing on the cheap, the quick, and the 'in season'.

Friends and neighbours are swapping produce, not just the oldies of my generation, but the young who have grown up in the era of pre-packaging, who are now discovering that fresh, local and in season actually tastes better, and is fun.

This might just be the beginning of a planet saving revolution. It may also be the foundation of a new generation of cheap delicious meals.