Boulder’s Farmer’s Market is in full swing each Saturday now, and jam packed with people looking for fresh organic vegetables, flowers, seeds, jellies and jams. People of all ages crowd into the market, including babies in backpacks, children and teenagers in tie-died t-shirts, musicians, and older people of the gray-haired variety like us. After our morning walk we stroll through to find the fresh asparagus we have in mind for dinner. “Just picked this morning,” says the cheery lady behind the counter.
Mark points out that usually when he buys organic vegetables they are more expensive and don’t taste as good. Bah, humbug. We pay 5 solid dollars for the bunch of thick asparagus spears in the spirit of sustainability, and hope they will not be too tough.
We get points for low food miles when we buy the locally grown asparagus. I heard this concept on NPR this week in their new series on sustainability, although I think it is not completely new to me. The concept of food miles is the number of miles a food must be transported to get to you. The assumption is that buying locally produced food is more sustainable bec
ause less energy is used. Of course, transportation is not the only measure of energy used to produce food. So if the tomatoes or asparagus at the Farmer’s Market today were grown in a hot house requiring electricity produced from a non-sustainable source, all bets are off on feeling noble about the food miles.
I would imagine bananas a very bad, since they don’t grow in the United States. My strawberries-in-the-dead-of-winter habit is also an issue.
Is there even the smallest sacrifice we are all willing to make for the Earth?
Mark points out that usually when he buys organic vegetables they are more expensive and don’t taste as good. Bah, humbug. We pay 5 solid dollars for the bunch of thick asparagus spears in the spirit of sustainability, and hope they will not be too tough.
We get points for low food miles when we buy the locally grown asparagus. I heard this concept on NPR this week in their new series on sustainability, although I think it is not completely new to me. The concept of food miles is the number of miles a food must be transported to get to you. The assumption is that buying locally produced food is more sustainable bec
ause less energy is used. Of course, transportation is not the only measure of energy used to produce food. So if the tomatoes or asparagus at the Farmer’s Market today were grown in a hot house requiring electricity produced from a non-sustainable source, all bets are off on feeling noble about the food miles.I would imagine bananas a very bad, since they don’t grow in the United States. My strawberries-in-the-dead-of-winter habit is also an issue.
Is there even the smallest sacrifice we are all willing to make for the Earth?
Mark and I are faithful recyclers at least. The Farmer’s Market had several Zero Waste Stations set up. Some of us are trying, but we need to try a lot harder
Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone -
Paved paradise and put up a parking lot. - Joni Mitchell
5 comments:
Speaking of low food miles, If you think about it, it would be far more efficient for everyone on earth to eat only plants due to the fact that in order to eat meat, we have to use a large amount of resources just to feed the animals we are then going to eat, its quite wasteful. An iteresting fact is, it takes 300 fish to feed a human for a year, 9,000 frogs to feed those fish, 60,000 grasshoppers to feed the frogs, and 1000 tons of grass to feed the grasshoppers. Why all this when we could save the earths energy by just eating grass? =)
Good point, thanks for posting, Shannon. Could I have tomatoes, green peppers and avocadoes instead of grass, though?
Lynn
Lynn -- This is a message for Shannon: Have you read Diet for a Small Planet? Are you vegetarian?
Im not a vegetarian, I just learned some intersting things in biology this past semester and felt like sharing =)
This is truly an interesting way to communicate! I love your mom's blog (i.e. great blog, Lynn!) and appreciate the value-added comments from you, Caitlin, and Ronna. BTW, it takes approximately 20 pounds of grain to produce one pound of beef. :) --la
Post a Comment