The Eco-Foods Guide:
Don’t Worry Buy Local
The further our food travels, the more costly it is to both
us and the environment. With the advent
and widespread use of transit technology farmers, in the 1800s, began to see
the financial benefits of producing for the major metropolitan areas in the
northeast. As this sector grew, so too
did the number of hands which the food went through before reaching the
consumer. With the passing of NAFTA in
the early nineties more and more farming operations are being moved south into
Mexico and other Latin countries where the chemical restrictions on farms are
much less strict. Often food bought from
the supermarket has taken weeks to reach the shelves, whereas purchasing from a
local vendor can see product that is only hours to days off the plant: with
more time comes less flavor. The support
of local farmers also keeps that land from falling prey to urban
developers. Once it’s been turned from
farmland into housing or business, there’s no way to change it back. The cash which we use to purchase local
produce often stays within the community; going to local shops, utilities, and
banks.
‘Tis the Season
The food which is fresh out of the ground is the food which
is best for us. Time has not robbed it
of its precious nutrients. Buying local
foods in season can also help to remove many of the costs which add up when
buying foods from somewhere distant out of season. While many people believe that to achieve a
balanced diet we must eat foods which are out of season, it is quite possible
to maintain that balanced diet by eating local in season foods, for the most
part. Eating seasonally provides a sense
of the beginning and ending a crops time as being special. Seasonal eating, however, does require a
great deal of adjustment as far as how and what we eat is concern. We may end up having the same ingredients
night after night, but the key is preparing them in different ways. Even better though is finding that completely
different food that we’ve never before tried, but is in season when the crop we
usually use is not.
You Can’t Grow Coffee
in Maine
New York is second largest apple producing state in the U.S.,
but the majority of the apples on New York store shelves come from Washington
state, so the food which is grown locally is not being consumed locally, with
the off-season being made up by the New Zealander imports. Though, the New Zealand types of apples do
use the good-for-the-environment standards that are oft-lacking in the
Northwest. The U.S. buys more coffee
than any other nation in the world, helping to make it the most traded
commodity other than oil. Much of the
gourmet coffee is grown in South America, where farmers may receive little to
nothing for their work due to their debts to local coyotes. There are three
“eco” coffees: the organic, shade-grown, and fair trade. Organic coffee is grown without the use of
unnatural chemicals, shade-grown is grown without cutting down the forest (this
is where it grows naturally anyway), and fair trade is an effort to maintain
that the grower receives a fair sum for his work (a minimum of $1.26 per pound,
well above market). It can be difficult
to decide between the many possibilities: saves the environment, saves the farmer,
or grown locally. We can’t always be
lucky enough to find one which fits all of the above, so we must make the
decision about what is most important to us.
Conveyor Belt Food
When buying processed foods, ninety cents of every dollar
goes to the industry in the form of marketing, transit, processing, and
packaging. That leaves a mere ten cents
of your money going to the farmer himself.
The processed foods we buy are full of additives and preservatives, some
having been safely used for centuries, while most don’t have such a long track
record. The last time the law on food
additives was amended was 1958; fifty years later, perhaps it’s time to go back
and review the potential risks. There
are many additives which have questionable effects, but the greatest risk is
perhaps served by salt and sugar, because we eat so much of them. A common practice for removing bacteria and
microorganisms from our food is irradiation: killing off many of the bad things
in our food, while at the same time riding it of many of its nutrients. Rather than prevent the contamination, the
industry is focused on getting rid of it in its final product. The easiest way to avoid these types of food
contaminants is to avoid them completely: don’t buy processed foods, make your
own.
Bio(tech) Hazards
A great portion of the American people is unaware that
genetically modified foods are sold in their grocers. The biotechnology industry likes to keep the
fact that its foods are on our store shelves a bit of a secret from the common
consumer. Proponents of biotechnology
like to say that their work is along the same lines as Mendel’s breakthrough
with peas. However, breeding two like
species and splicing in the genes of a completely separate entity are nothing
alike at all. The results of such
monstrosities cannot be known by merely adding together the two previous
potentials, because the blueprint of life has itself been altered. Crossbreeding occurs naturally in the
environment, the splicing of one organism’s genes into another does not. In changing the construct of life, we are
altering the assumed outcomes that have been requisite in nature for millions
of years. Not only could these new
creations have negative effects on their natural counterparts, they could have
numerous detrimental effects on the humans who consume them. Because these transferred genes are in an
unfamiliar place, they are always on and therefore can be easily transmitted to
other organisms. Many non-GMO plants
have already been polluted in such ways, often leaving farmers’ products as
unnatural as the GMO plants themselves.
The Terminator technology developed by Monsanto was meant to completely
stop the most natural part of life, the need to reproduce; the seeds put out by
the destructo-plants would be completely sterile. This type of technology would render the
natural replanting practices of thousands of cultures outdated and pointless,
as well as make their costs skyrocket.
All of this in order to protect what the seed companies claim is their
intellectual property.
All Creatures Great and
Small
Keeping livestock on the family farm has become something
more of a pastime than a way of income.
Today most livestock is kept in densely populated confines. It is not unusual for one to two million
chickens to be held at one operation.
Chicken has become the American meat of choice with the decades of anti
red meat marketing. The corporations do
not look toward the health of the animals or the health of the consumers, only
the health of their bottom line, when considering the large confined animal
feeding operations. Free-range is the
best bet when purchasing eggs at the market.
Organic only means that the poultry was feed organic grain and doesn’t
necessarily mean that they were allowed room to walk, however it is more
likely. While it once took for-meat
chickens twenty one weeks to reach goal weight, today at most operations the
same is reached in only seven weeks.
This is mainly arrived at by the application of antibiotics to the
stock, in order to ensure quicker growth and more efficient conversion of feed
to muscle. These practices take place in
the hog and cattle industries as well. A
great deal has been made about the manure lagoons these gigantic operations
require. There is nowhere for the
copious amounts of feces to go and nature will not take care of it because
nature would not allow so much to be produced.
A Fishy Story
The fishing industry is able to catch twice the amount of
fish that the ocean can produce each year.
These industrial fishing vessels trawl up all kinds of fish, many of
which are not suitable for human consumption.
Unlike the small town fisherman the young immature fish are not returned
to the ocean to reproduce, further depleting future supplies. Further up the food chain, the larger fish of
the ocean find themselves with less and less food to eat, therefore dwindling
their numbers. Nearly a quarter of
caught fish are discarded because the methods used don’t target selected
species. Much of the cheap fish industry
has moved towards the farming method.
Perhaps an effective way of not depleting the oceans should we stick the
herbivore fish such as catfish and tilapia, but the salmon farms are a main
cause of worry. The salmon farming falls
prey to the same industry calamities: overcrowding, chemical use, and
waste.
The Lowdown Behind the
Labels
Beginning in 2002 all the different organic certification
programs have been rolled into a single entity, bearing three different market
labels: 100 Percent Organic, Organic, and Made with Organic. The key factor in a label is that there is an
unbiased third party reviewing its certification. Many of the labeling agencies have
requirements for every stage of the crops life, from planting to picking and
beyond to market. There are also many
non-food environmentally friendly labeling practices, such as the Smart Wood
program certifying lumber which has been acquired and made with the environment
in mind. The Marine Stewardship Council
works at certifying fisheries around the world which meet their specific
environmental criteria.
Organic… What Does it
Mean?
Organic food is that which is made in cooperation with nature
not against it. Organics has been
growing since 1989 at around twenty percent every year. Europe was first and has maintained their
position as the greatest demander of organic foods. The 1990 Farm Bill introduced the Organic
Foods Production Act which formed the National Organic Program. The program was meant to set standards and
certification for organics. The original
rules put forth by the USDA allowed organics to include GMOs, sewage sludge,
and irradiation: all seemingly contradictory to what organics stood for. The final standards, put out in 2000,
eliminated those three practices. While
the number of U.S. farms continues to decrease, the number of those remaining
farms which are becoming organic is increasing.
As organics have become ever more profitable, or detrimental to the
industrial agriculture, big business has begun buying them up.
Consortium rejects FDA
claim of BPA’s safety
Bisphenol A is a chemical compound originally developed as a
synthetic estrogen over one hundred years ago.
Today, BPA is used for numerous household containers, especially
plastic. There is much worry about the
potential bad side effects of BPA due to its ability to leak from it containers
and because more than ninety percent of Americans tested had BPA in their
urine. The FDA insists that the chemical
is safe for human use, specifically citing two studies conducted by Rochelle
Tyl over the last ten years. In the
studies Tyl applied the chemical to lab rats, and her results showed no
negative effects. Many have begun to
question her results however, due to many inaccuracies in the reports as well
as a lab fire which took place between the two studies. Other studies have shown that BPA does have
negative effects, however the FDA continues to hold its position.
Cooperative Shoppers
Get Food With a History
The Oklahoma Food Co-Op requires a fifty two dollar fee to
join and now has over 1800 members since its founding in 2003. Buying from the co-op means that your food
dollars stay in the state and stay with the small farmers not the big
corporations. At the co-op buyers are
often able to talk with the custodians of the land and learn about their
farming practices as well as acquire recipes.
There is a much deeper connection made with the food when you are able
to see the people who help to make it.
You can hear the story of the food, of the farm, and of the farmer.
Organic Agriculture and
Human Health
Organic agriculture makes use of the natural ecological
processes to produce food which is good without the negative effects. Organically grown food is better for use in
seeking good human health and nutrition because it has greater nutritional
quality and quantity, with much less chemical residue left over from pesticides,
herbicides, and fertilizers. The produce
which is grown organically gains nutrients from the soil in which it grows that
would not be obtained by conventional means.
Organic produce has a greater density of nutrients due to its decreased
water content, have more iron, magnesium, vitamin C, and antioxidants, and have
a balance of amino acids more in line with good human health. Organic livestock are healthier, less likely
to contract a disease potentially harmful to themselves or humans, and have a
lower ratio of saturated fat to unsaturated fat. Organic foods receive less processing than
conventionally produced foods such as, chemicals, irradiation, additives, and
flavors. Organically produced food does
not contain nearly the residues which conventionally produced food does which
can hurt the endocrine or immune system, cause cancer, and cause sexual
reproductive problems even after being well cleaned. The antibiotics which are funneled in to
conventional livestock to prevent disease and promote growth can create
resistant strains in humans. Organic
agriculture is better for the environment, the consumer, the government, the
economy, and the industry. Going
completely organic would likely result in an overall improved health of the
population and a great reduction in the cost of human health.
Readings May Originate from the Following:
Cynthia Barstow. The
Eco-Foods Guide.
Christopher Cook. Diet for
a Dead Planet.
Richard Manning. Against
the Grain.
Vandana
Shiva. Stolen Harvest.
Smith, Jeffery.
Seeds of Deception: Exposing Industry and Government Lies about
the Safety of Genetically Modified Foods.
This article originally written April 29th, 2009 for OU IPE 3913 - Food, Agriculture and the Environment.
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