I took some time yesterday to stop in at a small organic farm just a few miles from where I live, and pick strawberries. The strawberry season here is about two weeks long, maybe three weeks if we get lucky. Then it will move north to New Hampshire and Vermont, and eventually up to Canada.
While picking the succulent strawberries, and eating about every third one I picked, I was thinking about Anna’s story of her friend who has given up on trying to figure out which foods are safe and locally produced, and just indulges her urges by buying tomatoes from Holland and, presumably, apples from Chile and avocados from Mexico (posted on the third page of my next to last posting).
I found myself wondering, for someone who wants to eat right, as it were, where we draw the line. Just following the strawberry situation further. Am I still buying local if I buy strawberries that come in from New Hampshire? How about Quebec, where farmers are apparently expert at extending the season, typically shipping strawberries to a local farm store here well into September? Or California?
I raise these questions without having a strong opinion, because I don’t really know exactly where to draw the line. I know the Massachusetts strawberries are the best, since they aren’t sprayed with insecticide they don’t have to travel, and I can speak to the people who grown them. (They would have been even better if I had ridden my bike to the farm rather than driving.) I usually don’t know about the spraying of the strawberries from Quebec—they look and taste a lot like the ones I get in Massachusetts. They certainly generate an environmental cost in traveling to Massachusetts.
And then, what about products I can’t easily find locally, but which I know are raised with care in other less developed countries, and benefit local communities in those places? I’m thinking about shrimp raised on special farms in Ecuador that don’t use antibiotics and in spread-out conditions. And cocoa beans grown organically by small farms in the Dominican Republic. Does the fact that there is an environmental burden involved in shipping these products mean they can’t be sent out to other parts of the world, and these communities lose an option for earning income?
There’s certainly a lot to be said for buying locally and benefiting the local economy, and much has been written about the virtues by Michael Pollan, Bill McKibben, Joel Salatin and others. As I picked the local strawberries, though, I couldn’t help but wonder if there are other ways of peeling this onion.
I try (if we don’t grow it)to buy most of what we eat at the farmers market. The farmers have been very willing to talk about their products. Some of the foods are from different areas of CA. I suppose that could be local? Maybe it is how you define "local".
Learning to cook/eat what is in season can be a challange, especially when craving something. Living in the Sacramento area allows for a lot to be grown in the back yard all year.
Imported foods are few for us. My dad would argue that California avocados are much better than those from Mexico.
My local farmer’s market also demands local food only. During the growing season I get my produce there. In the fall I buy a side of beef. I get my milk and eggs from a local farm year round (except when they’re out of eggs). I still haven’t had a truly pastured chicken, but I buy organic whenever I can. I occasionally get the most awesome pork from a local farmer (when I can afford it).
Our WAPF chapter buys products in bulk, and sometimes local co-ops get together and split cases. These are usually far-away products but at least it all comes in one shipment. This year the High Plains Food Co-op is starting up and that is all within 500 mile radius.
My family hates to go to restaurants with me because I ask the waiter if there are any trans fats (most don’t know what they are), if they have virgin olive oil, and real butter. I also ask if they know where the meat came from. It’s mostly an embarrassing experience but hey, point made.
I rarely go to a chain grocery store but if I do, I find the produce guy and ask what is local and organic. I walk out if they say they don’t have any. Same thing with the Health Food Store – I make a point of asking if the beef is grain-finished, and if they don’t know or say yes, I say no thanks and walk away.
Years ago I was very frustrated about the availability of raw milk. In 2005, there was one legal raw dairy in Colorado. Then we got herdshares legalized, and now there are 26 raw dairies.
Organic food sources were also scarce, not any more. Then I started seeking out good fats.
The market eventually responds if you’re noisy, picky and willing to drive.
Now I am lobbying for local.Give it a few years, and if you can’t find quality food locally, then go ahead and get remote. Implement change with your wallet – it really really works!
I know what I spend on food now at least equals what I used to spend on food and expensive cleansers, lotions, sunscreen, dog and catfood, plus doctor visits, and exorbitant vet bills.
I lost weight and feel much more energetic, happier.
-Blair
I wrote my thoughts about this topic in a blog post last year. You can see it here, complete with a comment from our host:
http://www.mundanedaily.com/?p=75
I wonder, Elizabeth, what that customer is doing now that she’s learned about the purpose of a farmers’ market. Will she return, or settle back into the grocery store. Or will she, like Kathryn, balance things out by using both as necessary? More important, will she begin to rethink her definition of "necessary?"
We don’t, however, have much money. We’re just on the border of being able to qualify for food stamps so with gas prices going up and public transportation not an option for me we find ourselves sometimes going hungry. In the winter it’s worse. We’re forced to buy cheap, mass-produced, highly-processed foods just to survive. Once again though, I’m hoping this winter will be better as I do my best to can whatever extra I can get from my garden and my neighbor’s and supplement our diet.
I guess what I’m saying is that for me the issue isn’t ‘how local should I buy’, it’s ‘how local can I afford to buy’. I’d love nothing more than to buy half a cow and freeze it for use during the year, but we just don’t have enough money coming in to save up for something like that.
I’ve long joked that I can’t do the 100-mile-diet because of coffee and chocolate. But I can make better choices with those imported items. But for carrots, lettuces, and common produce items? They can be grown right here in my county (assuming enough water, actually), heck, even in my back yard if I put in a bit of effort, so why should I buy carrots from another part of CA, Oregon, or Washington state? My county is the main producer of US Haas avocados. I buy them in season, and forgo avos the rest of the year from Chile and Mexico, perhaps not 100%, but darn near. I can "savor the local flavor" far better if I have to go without my avos a few months.
I can completely understand *why* so many people are ignorant of seasonal and local buying issues, or if their budget is too tight, or if they have only conventional stores (though they should ask the managers to make an effort to source locally). What I find harder to understand is the *entitlement* I sometimes run across of "I want and I can, therefore I will have" attitude of people who actually know that their consuming decisions have an impact, but who can’t quite bring themselves to rein in all their indulgent tendencies. I’m not saying I rein in all my indulgence urges (chocolate certainly isn’t a necessity, my husband would argue about espresso), either. But I have a very hard time being "aware" but acting otherwise.
And in these days when one never knows which industrially produced food will be the source of a new nationwide illness outbreak, I guess my "payoff" for restraint about buying out-of-season, long-distance tomatoes (aside from flavor) is that it’s one less thing to think/worry about. As I write this, I’m thinking that some non-raw dairy consumers might feel the same way about raw dairy. But I’m guessing I know a lot more about the raw dairy I buy (and am choosier) than they know about the out-of-season, long distance tomatoes they put in their cart.
I’ll make a pitch to add Bill Mollison’s "Permaculture" to your book list. I have a small garden that uses these principles and I am very pleased with how little work it entails.
I have a pretty constant source of arugula and swiss chard in the winter, tomatoes in mid-summer, and lettuces in spring. Other annuals, such as dill, appear often as well. I then just augment my plantings and stay in pretty good shape. My garden is in the ‘0’ zone next to my house, so it’s not hard to spend 10 – 15 minutes three times a week to care for it.
I highly recommend this book to home-schoolers too. It covers some basic principles of environmental science with clarity.
You have an excellent point. I find it particularly absurd that arid CA shops so much produce to, for example, the Great Lakes area. We are in effect shipping water from a desert to areas with a lot of water. Irrigated pasture actually does not take as much water as many other crops. I don’t know how water usage for grass fed animals compares to water usage for feed lot animals. Given that the feed that confinement animals eat has to be grown as a crop, then harvested and processed, then shipped to where it is used, grass fed is considered by many to be more environmentally responsible.
Jean
Absolutely! Water usage in CA is a huge, complex issue (actually it’s a huge issue everywhere, even where water appears to be abundant), and a major factor in local food issues in CA as well as elsewhere.
It’s the designer’s manual. The price is hefty, but it’s like a textbook. I’d imagine some of the less expensive books have good info too, but this one is comprehensive.
On top of this, the thing we mainly use apples for in my household is apple pie and apple sauce. As the peeling are composted, I feel that exposure to fungicides is minimal.
But take a step up. If you traveled for food… Say, as an Indian swaps territory for high ground – again, they are seeking what they need seasonally for nourishment.
As you continue to take steps away, you begin running into problems. Just as midwives say about birthing, so is it for the food system: "intervention leads to intervention". If you are co-existing with nature, you wouldn’t need sprays. Period. You wouldn’t grow something that doesn’t grow somewhere "in the wild".
All of that to say that I very happily grow in a big greenhouse, water my outdoor garden two months of the year, have a fig & nectarine tree (neither of which belongs in our climate), and plenty more non-100-mile things. But I also like beating the odds, and trying something new. Stretching the system.
Did traditional folks of ol’ have this itch? Sure! But perhaps their seasonal traveling (and staying plenty busy with fermenting, spinning, butchering, etc) kept them busy with their bodies and minds, thus not allowing for so much curiosity.
Again, I definitely enjoy an orange any day, and I’m in the NW. I think there’s also a fine line between abiding by the past 100% (traditional lifestyle to the umph degree), and enjoying life for the fullest, incorporating as many good things as you can into the time you have.
~S