Food Choices: Organic, Vegetarian, Local

"A common complaint about organic and local foods is that they are more expensive than 'conventional' (industrially grown) foods. Most consumers don't realize how much we're already paying for the conventional foods before we even get to the supermarket. Our tax dollars subsidize the petroleum used in growing, processing, and shipping these products. We also pay direct subsidies to the large-scale chemical-dependent brand of farming. And we're being forced to pay more each year for the environmental and health costs of that method of food production." - Barbara Kingsolver ["Animal, Vegetable, Mineral", p. 117]

What we eat, where it comes from, and how it is grown, has a major impact on ourselves, on the humans who produce the food, and on Earth. This chapter includes health, food, and water issues, the role of global corporations in these, and ways to eat more sustainably. As with energy, the media are now full of information about sustainable food, so I only discuss things of particular interest to me. For a similar viewpoint to this chapter, search for Jennifer Bogo's "When Conservation Meets Cuisine" on the National Audubon web site. Much of the material covered here may also be in "Food, Energy, and Society" by David and Marcia Pimentel.

The Globalization of Food and Water

The Green Revolution also led to the rise of global agribusiness. Global agribusiness means you don't know where your food comes from and how it was produced. A small handful of global corporations control virtually all seed and fertilizer production. U.S. Undersecretary of Agriculture for Rural Development, Thomas Dorr, has said that "the right scale for farms in the future will be about 200,000 acres of cropland under a single manager." Three-quarters of U.S. farm subsidies now go to the largest 10% of farms. These are not family farms; they are owned by corporations. At the retail level, Wal-Mart sells more food in the United States than any other company, accounting for 10% of annual sales. Supermarket food is cheap because it does not include the hidden costs of food subsidies, exploited labor, fossil fuels and global warming, subsidized transportation, soil and water depletion and pollution, medical costs of a high fat diet, dangers of genetically-modified crops, and ecological costs of monoculture.

The Green Revolution has been subsidized by cheap fossil fuel, thus world food supply is part of the house of cards that may come tumbling down when oil runs out. The average mouthful of American food has traveled over 1500 miles, and ten calories of fossil fuel are required to produce one calorie of food. Where will we get the energy needed to produce fertilizers and pesticides in huge quantities, to build and maintain massive irrigation projects, to drive farm machinery, to process and package food, and to transport food these thousands of miles?

The growth of agribusiness has made economic competition for food a global issue. Ecojustice (see the Ecojustice chapter) demands that populations in places where food is grown should be fed first. But that doesn't happen when rich people and nations want food grown in poor areas. Crop land in Africa, southeast Asia, and South America provides food for the rich nations, not for the locals. Meat, fruits, vegetables, and grains all move around the world to whomever will pay the most. The World Trade Organization controls international competition and prices, usually for the benefit of agribusiness, not for local populations.

The cornucopians of agribusiness are now bringing us genetically-modified organisms (GMO), which are plant varieties that carry genes from other unrelated organisms. Moving genes from one species into another is a far cry from Mendelian genetics, in which plant varieties within a species or group of closely related species are selectively modified by trial-and-error. In GMOs genes are being placed into plants of species in which they have not previously existed; these genes can then move by natural fertilization throughout the species. The potential results of this uncontrolled scientific experiment are hotly debated. In addition, agribusiness wants to control their "patented" GMO seed so that farmers world-wide have to buy seed from the corporation rather than saving for next year the seed produced by their own crops. The whole issue is so hot that some European countries have banned GMO food, while the U.S. refuses to require GMO food to be labeled. If you live in the U.S. you may not know when you are buying it.

Agribusiness has also brought us "factory farms" in which animals are kept in totally artificial conditions where they can barely move and are fed various hormones to artificially increase their meat, egg, or milk production. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is the best known organization fighting such subjugation of animals to human demands. Factory farms are also infamous for the amount of pollution they create, and for driving family farms out of business.

Water

Global corporations are taking over the bottled water business. In my bioregion there are no rock aquifers, and gravel aquifers from continental glaciation are few and far between. These aquifers and their associated rivers are used for local water supply, for river-based recreation, for hydropower, and to maintain the riverine ecosystem. Yet big corporations want to mine water from the gravel aquifers to put into bottles and ship around the world. This is the modern versions of "spring water" bottling of the previous 100+ years, but multiplied from hundreds of gallons to millions of gallons. USA Springs wants 400,000 gallons a day from Barrington NH; this is opposed by local citizens organized as Save Our Groundwater. Poland Spring (a Nestle subsidiary) wanted to greatly increase the 200,000 gallons a day it pumped in Fryeburg ME, but local opposition vetoed this so Poland Spring will get water from less-populated Kingfield ME instead. Aside from the sustainability question, a major issue was the increased truck traffic to move all this bottled water somewhere else. See Defending Water for Life in Maine for more on this local issue and the Alliance for Democracy for the national level. The corporations who are after this water argue that because the water will be shipped internationally, international trade agreements like NAFTA and WTO apply, so denying them the right to extract water is an illegal restraint of free trade.

The quality of public water supplies is closely monitored by state health agencies and by the EPA under the "Safe Drinking Water Act"; but bottled water is under the aegis of the Food and Drug Administration, which does little or no testing and has no requirements. Bottled water corporations have been convicted for misleading advertising. Plastic water bottles are a major waste product. There are many reasons to prefer local water from your public water supply; if you don't like it from the tap, consider a renewable charcoal filter.

Water, literally the source of life, is becoming scarce in large parts of the world. Future wars may be fought over water rather than over oil. The rights of individuals and communities to using local water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and cleaning are being trammeled by national governments and corporations. In many places water for irrigation of crops takes priority. This may be ethically acceptable where the food produced is locally consumed. But it is not ethical when the irrigation is used for feed grains that are shipped worldwide (whether to feed humans or animals), for fruits and vegetables that are shipped worldwide, or for biofuels that are shipped worldwide, while the local people do not have enough water. The sustainability of irrigation is in serious doubt in many parts of the world where water tables in aquifers have dropped (water mining) or river water is more than "fully allocated". The so-called "free economy" does not work where water is scarce.

When Bechtel attempted to take over the water supply of Cochabomba, Bolivia in 2000, the local people protested strenuously. The protest generated the Cochabomba Declaration, which states:

"Water belongs to the Earth and all species and is sacred to life. Therefore, the world's water must be conserved, reclaimed, and protected for all future generations and its patterns respected. Water is a fundamental human right and a public trust to be guarded by all levels of government. Therefore it should not be commodified, privatized, or traded for commercial purposes."

But the battle is not over. The corporate world now proposes water offset trading similar to emissions trading (see the Energy chapter). Such trading would allow corporations to cover up with greenwash what they are really doing, and make it OK to steal water from people in one place and replenish it someplace else.

Food and Health

Americans, and to a lesser extent people of other wealthy countries, have serious weight and health problems. And as with other problems, we turn to the technofixes of this diet or that, and this pill or that, expecting great results for little effort. However, just as ensuring a steady earned income requires commitment and hard work, so being healthy requires commitment and hard work. Sporadic diets, exercise, or pills will not do the job. Permanent changes in diet and exercise habits are required.

Keeping your body in good condition is a part of caring for yourself and for Earth. The latest USDA Food Guidelines describe a healthy diet. The guidelines change as research progresses because we are still learning about how our human bodies function. Every pound of DRY food contains about 2000 calories, whether it is carbohydrate, fat, or protein. For a sedentary individual this is plenty for a whole day. If your intake averages only 100 calories a day greater than you burn, you will gain a pound of weight every month, because every pound of fat stored in your body contains 3000 calories.

Good health requires not only controlling food intake but also exercising the body. Exercise helps to control or lose weight, but not as much as most people would wish. Health guidelines recommend a minimum of 30 minutes of exercise three times a week. But 30 minutes of walking or equivalent low effort only burns 150 calories. Hard exercise that really gets your heart and breathing going raises the 30 minute burn to 300-400 calories. Walking, running slowly, and running fast all burn about 100 calories per mile, so it takes 30 miles to lose a pound of fat. Swimming and biking burn less. Even a heavy exercise program may not let you eat all you want.

For motivation to keep in shape, find some forms of exercise that you like enough to stay with for years. Obviously, in a green book like ECOSHIFT, I recommend outdoor activities, and preferably those that do not involve lots of high-tech equipment. See the Voluntary Simplicity chapter for more on living a low-tech life. Whatever you choose, don't start too fast. Too many people say "I started running, but my knees didn't like it, so I quit." Your body takes time to adjust to a new activity, so start easily. Plan on several months to get to your desired level. If your body really won't let you do something, try something else. There are lots of choices out there, and every physical activity has many books written about how to do it right.

Obviously much more could be said about health. But I am not going to use ECOSHIFT space to discuss either the many possible effects of toxic products in our environment or the many alternative and holistic approaches to medicine and healing. In general I am skeptical of New Age and mystical forms "healing". My approach is to be sensible, moderate, and mindful, and to be aware of different opinions and of what science says is true or untrue.

Sustainable and Vegetarian Food

Meat and other animal-based foods, like eggs and milk, are much less energy and land efficient than vegetable-based foods. A rule of thumb in ecology states that every time something eats something else, only one-seventh to one-tenth of the energy value is passed on. A pound of meat takes seven times as much land (and water) to produce as a pound of grain, but does not contain any more calories. Yet massive areas of tropical forest are being denuded to keep us in beef. Agribusiness hog farms in the Midwest are major polluters. Veal and lamb come from young animals usually kept in cramped conditions. Red meat can cause significant health problems. These are some of the reasons that many Americans are reducing the amount of meat in their diets. Vegetarianism is not an all or nothing thing. Semi-vegetarians, like me, tend to avoid red meat and reduce meat and fish in general. Lacto-ovo vegetarians avoid all meat and fish but eat egg and milk products, which need not harm the animals involved. Vegans avoid all kinds of animal-related food. As a deep ecologist (see the Deep Ecology chapter) I think about the possibility of a no-kill diet, in which neither animals nor plants are sacrificed to feed me. This still leaves dairy products, eggs, fruits, nuts, seeds, hand-harvested legumes, and vegetables such as tomatoes and squashes. I await a book on such a diet, but until then "Becoming Vegetarian" by Melina, Davis, and Harrison will suffice. It describes how to improve your health while decreasing your Earth impact, no matter which kind of vegetarian you choose to be.

Production of meat from livestock in order to feed the world's meat-eaters requires 30% of Earth's ice-free land surface and contributes 18% of annual emission of greenhouse gases. Methane has 23 times as much effect on global warming as CO₂, and one-third of global methane emission is generated in the gut of cows, sheep, and goats. Conversion to a vegetarian diet is closely related to sustainability. Consider the analysis of Eshel and Martin [Eshel G. and P. Martin, 2006 . "Diet, Energy, and Global Warming". Earth Interactions 10:1-17]: "We show that a person consuming the mean American diet, which is roughly 30% animal-based, is responsible for the annual emissions of a ton and a half of CO₂ equivalent beyond those incurred by a plant-eater consuming the same number of calories." You can compare this 3000 lb difference with the table in the Energy chapter. Changing diet by reducing animal-based food has a CO₂ effect roughly equivalent to changing to a car with much better gas mileage. In addition, if everyone became vegetarian much agricultural land could be converted to biomass energy production.

Sustainability is also affected by how food is prepared, packaged, and served. Processing of food from its original form into something else requires a lot of energy and water for manufacturing. Packaging of processed food adds to this, and disposal of the packaging creates yet more problems. Microwave cooking is the most efficient form of energy use for heating food. Oven baking or roasting is probably the least efficient, though this is mitigated when the waste energy helps to heat the home in winter. Many supermarkets offer a choice of paper or plastic bags for carrying food; paper is better as it is renewable and biodegradable, whereas plastic bags end up being burned overseas. Using your own canvas or net bags is best. Reusing paper bags and plastic fruit and vegetable bags helps too.

Sustainable food is not cheap. Americans have become accustomed to low-priced food. But Earth and its people will be better off when we become willing to pay the higher prices that represent the true cost of our food, instead of the artificially low prices subsidized by fossil fuel, mass-production, environmental degradation, government subsidies, and exploitation of animals and farm labor. Michael Pollan, well-known writer on these food issues summarizes "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." The somewhat enigmatic first imperative means real food, not junk food. Some more ways to eat sustainably are discussed in the next two sections.

Organic Food

Twenty years ago local food cooperatives and buying clubs enjoyed a big surge in popularity because they could buy organic products not then available in grocery stores. A small percentage of food consumers thereby created the current popularity of organic food. A few of the cooperatives have turned into viable stores, but many others tried and failed. The Great Bay Food Coop, for which I was Treasurer, ended its three-year attempt at running a store for three reasons: lack of volunteer help, competition from the enlarging organic food section of the local supermarket, and the policies of mega-distributor United Natural Foods, which doesn't like to sell in small quantities. Buying clubs remain valuable because they can purchase in bulk, they eliminate retail markup, and they can buy specialty products still not in supermarkets. They face a decision about whether to deal with United, which runs its own "chain" of United Buying Clubs, or with smaller distributors like Associated Buyers. A list of food cooperatives and related links can be found on Jim Williams' web site.

A major effort to increase awareness about the origins of food and drink involves coffee, which is drunk in huge quantities around the world though it grows only in the tropics. In Central America coffee used to be grown in mixed plantations on family farms, with various kinds of fruit trees, hardwood trees, and bananas in the overstory and coffee in the shaded understory. But over the past 20 years, half of the vast areas of coffee plantations in Central America have been converted to large agribusiness operations involving new high-yield varieties grown in full sun and monoculture with heavy applications of fertilizer and pesticides. These plantations are biological deserts compared with shade-grown coffee plantations, which are diverse, stable, and sustainable ecosystems. The web site of the National Audubon Society documents that some wintering North American bird species, such as Baltimore orioles, depend on shade-grown plantations in Central America. National Audubon now sponsors its own brand of coffee, guaranteed to be shade-grown, and the Smithsonian National Zoo certifies organic shade-grown coffee . Many other sellers now specify their coffee as "shade-grown" or its near synonym, "organic". Equal Exchange buys shade-grown coffee directly from local farmer cooperatives, pays fair trade prices, and eliminates predatory "middle-men". Shade-grown family plantations provide income, wood, food, and work for local families. For the good of Earth and the beings that live on it, we need to be sensitive to the origin and the history of what we eat and drink.

Locally-produced food

Farm stands and farmers' markets provide us the opportunity to buy locally, thus contributing both to energy conservation and to protection of farmland from development. In 2007 there were 3700 farmers' markets in the U.S. In "Deep Economy", Bill McKibben points out another advantage: "consumers have ten times as many conversations at farmers' markets as they do at supermarkets (ital. au.)", thus helping to restore local community (see the Ecojustice chapter).

Community-supported agriculture (CSA) involves you in the production of your own food. In a CSA farm, individuals purchase a share of what the farmer produces in a year, volunteer to help with the farming, and pick up their share of the farm's produce each week. The requirements for volunteering vary among farms. The cost of a share generally is $300-500 per year, but half-shares are often available. Some farms have additional autumn shares that can provide local food well into the winter. In 2007, the U.S. had 1500 CSAs; you can find the one nearest you by searching "CSA" on the USDA's Alternative Farming Systems Information Center web site. The upsurge of farmers' markets and CSAs has produced a resurgent interest in canning, root cellars, and other methods of food preservation.

"Reclaiming the Commons: Community Farms and Forests in a New England Town" by Donahue and Jackson, tells the story of Land's Sake community farm in Weston, Massachusetts, and describes the advantages of local food and the concurrent protection of agricultural land from development. Near me a group called "Sustainable Tamworth" encourages eating locally with frequent localvore dinners and a Yahoo e-mail group for discussion. As energy costs rise, there will be more and more incentive for locally-produced food. Although locally-grown food may not be organic and may be more expensive than supermarket food, it is far more sustainable. While the higher costs of organic and local food may come down as demand rises, we must be willing to pay the higher costs of local labor compared to agri-farms using migrant or overseas workers, and to make sure local farmers get their fair share of our wealth.

Producing Your Own Food

Growing food for the family can also be a significant ecocentric spiritual experience. Gardening has always appealed to many people, perhaps because it is a way of reconnecting with Earth (see the Ecopsychology chapter). Although growing flowers produces aesthetic pleasure, growing vegetables produces food for both the body and the soul. Children have a natural desire to grow things; they love to put soil and seeds into paper cups and watch what happens. Involving them in growing their own food could be an outdoor family experience with both immediate and lifelong rewards. If your own yard or community garden plot ("allotment" in Britain) is not practical, then take your children to a CSA where they can volunteer to help (see previous section).

Vegetable gardening has its difficulties and drawbacks. The finest crops can be lost in an instant to marauding woodchucks, deer, raccoons, rabbits, and insects. One gardening rule of thumb is to be sure to plant enough extra for the wildlife. Elaborate discouragement schemes such as fencing that goes underground, spreading animal and even human urine around, and box traps and relocation to wooded areas may be required. A good garden needs organic matter and all the nutrients it provides, so composting is an integral part of gardening. Composting of both food (but not meat) scraps, yard cuttings, and leaves is a natural way of recycling, and is a great way to introduce children to natural ecosystem processes. See the Housing chapter for more on composting and yards.

Eating Out