I finished reading an eye-opening book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I feel it's a must-read for every American. Barbara and her family moved to her farm and lived entirely on the local production for a full year.
You may not agree with them, you may not understand them, you may not appreciate them. I put myself in all three buckets before reading this book. But being exposed to the ideas presented is worth everyone's time. I'm a believer.
We've all heard about how farming has changed (moving to big corporations) and how they destroy the environment (gas emissions from farm animals, lack of crop rotation destroying soil). But what is less appreciated is how we can change things by eating and growing food closer to home.
Though awareness is growing, this book has helped make it clear why we should change our habits:
If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week. That’s not gallons, but barrels. Small changes in buying habits can make big difference
Also gaining awareness is the fact that we rely so much on just a handful of crops. Corn is in nearly every item we buy at the grocery store. From the sugar in soft drinks, to the feed that fattened up our chickens. History has shown this isn't a good way to live:
History has regularly proven it drastically unwise for a population to depend on just a few varieties for the majority of its sustenance. The Irish once depended on a single potato, until the potato famine rewrote history and truncated many family trees. We now depend similarly on a few corn and soybean strains for the majority of calories (both animal and vegetable) eaten by U.S. citizens.
I find it interesting that the more 'affluent' society becomes, the less good food we eat. We shift from water to soft drinks. We go from eating local fruit to munching on kiwi and banana year-round…
Because of this book I'm looking forward to trying new, local, organic fruits and vegetables. I'm excited about a shift in my diet and a new appreciation for food. Again, I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.
Some useful resources:
That book was phenomenal. In a similar vein — in the realm of food culture rather than narrative style — check out Michael Pollan. In Defense of Food offers an interesting glimpse into how humans are meant to eat (not in the 2,000-calories a day way, but the how-nature-intended way.
Thanks for the book suggestion, I’ll check it out.
Thanks for the book suggestion, I’ll check it out.
Ah, a topic dear to my heart since I discovered my first organic market full of “weird” new food and once raised organic currants and gooseberries on a tar paper roof. :)
It’s not just that the average American has cut down the list of foods they eat to about three grains (wheat, corn, rice) and a handful each of vegetables and fruits (I swear a lot seem to limit it to peas, corn, green beans, white potatoes, oranges, apples, bananas), but more importantly, we’ve also cut most of the agricultural production down to just a couple of varieties of each of what we do grow–the varieties that yield best on giant agribusiness farms and, more importantly, stand up to long storage and shipping cross country (or cross ocean). Storage and shipping quality have little to do with nutrition and, alas, less to do with taste. To top it off, almost everything grown now is from hybrid seed that cannot be saved to produce more of the same next year. Not only are we losing the genetic diversity that allows any crop species to survive the inevitable new diseases, blights, and pests, most of the food supplies of the world are now held hostage to the survival of the seed production of a few giant corporations.
Forty years ago, every corner supermarket in this city routinely carried more than a dozen specialty apple varieties every fall, some of them heritage varieties that were local favorites. Now you pretty much need to launch an expedition to a specialty or farmer’s market if you want anything other than a Delicious, MacIntosh, or Granny Smith, and if you happen to want a nice ripe persimmon or fresh green fig instead, you probably need to look up a source (and likely empty your wallet). As for other items of what used to be local produce–I daresay very few young people in my neighborhood these days have ever in their lives eaten a parsnip, rutabaga, or jerusalem artichoke, and they probably wouldn’t recognize a huckleberry if they fell over one.
About better living through chemistry and the “green revolution” that is destroying the environment with concentrated fertilizer and animal waste runoff, the less said the better. The argument, of course, is that we can’t feed all the people now living in the world with organic agriculture–to which the reply is they all soon won’t have a livable world due to the side-effects from the alternatives. Any way you slice it, we need some combination of fewer people, a saner and less resource-intensive diet, and more sustainable agriculture.