Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Why You Should Ask Who Picks Your Food

For the past couple of weeks, I've been buying organic blueberries from Georgia, reasoning that this is more local than California or Mexico. However, a blog post today about the farming crash in Georgia informs me that those blueberries were most likely picked by illegal immigrant laborers, who are now fleeing the state in the wake of new anti-immigrant legislation.

Jay Bookman writes,
After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia.

It might be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry.
It turns out that illegal immigrant migrant laborers earn an average of $8/hour for their work. Only 7.7% receive health benefits.

Now, I have little objection to illegal immigrants working in fields in the U.S., since they're providing a useful service, contributing to a troubled economy, and since few legal Americans would work so hard for so little. I do, however, have a serious problem with this degree of exploitation.

So here's another reason to buy local: that pint of blueberries has no label stating "produced and picked by fairly-compensated labor." But at a farmers' market, you can talk face to face with a farmer and ask, "Who picked these blueberries? How many people work for you? Do you offer health benefits?"

I also have a suggestion, or perhaps a challenge, for the folks in Georgia, particularly the unemployed: it's an incredible waste to allow these fruits and vegetables to rot in the fields. So talk to your neighbors and raise a crop mob. Get out there, bring in the harvest, and then donate what you earn to a workers' rights advocacy group such as the United Farm Workers of America, or to an immigrant legalization advocacy group such as the Farmworker Advocacy Network.

Farmers, if you can't get workers to pick for low wages, don't just throw your crops away. Contact some area gleaners groups, such as Mid-Atlantic Gleaning Network in Alexandria, VA. Volunteers will come pick your crops and bring them to area homeless shelters and food banks, and you'll at least get a nice tax write-off.

Thursday, June 16, 2011

What It Means to Be a Locavore

Boston.com today has an interesting and pretty well-reasoned article today arguing against locavorism.

However, the article misses a crucial point about locavorism. Being a locavore means more than just buying locally grown food. It also means being mindful about what food reasonably grows in your area.

The article argues:
One recent UK report found that the greenhouse gas emissions involved in eating English tomatoes were about three times as high as eating Spanish tomatoes. The extra energy and fertilizer involved in producing tomatoes in chilly England overwhelmed the benefits of less shipping. Even New Zealand lamb produced less greenhouse gases than English lamb.
This sounds like a good argument, but it misses several points:

  1. True locavores are mindful of their regional limitations. If you're buying tomatoes at Massachusetts farmers' markets right now, you should know that they were either grown in a hothouse, which isn't terribly efficient and probably produces more greenhouse gases than shipping them up from Georgia or California, or they were, in fact, shipped in from out of state. Which means that if you want to be true to locavore ideals, you must resist those plump, juicy heirlooms and wait until late July before buying tomatoes. Cherry and grape tomatoes may be ready sooner.
  2. If you're using vast amounts of artificial fertilizer to grow tomatoes in England, you're doing it wrong. Organically grown tomatoes use compost and well-composted manure, which do not contribute significantly to greenhouse gases or watershed pollution.
  3. Comparatively, Spain is closer to England than Florida is to Boston, and tomatoes from Spain are likely shipped via rail or boat, rather than by truck, which is also a more efficient use of fuel. So for England, from an environmental standpoint, Spanish tomatoes are, in fact, probably a better idea than English tomatoes. As long as they actually are from Spain.
Really, what it comes down to is this: do the research. Find out what it takes to grow a particular crop in your area, and then determine when it makes sense to start buying that crop locally.

You also need to determine for yourself what local means. Many locavores set the limit at 100 miles from home. But if you can't live without bananas in your cereal each morning, you're violating that limit. Ditto olive oil, chocolate, or coffee. In Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Barbara Kingsolver wrote that each member of her family was allowed to choose one non-local food to buy.  If you can stick to that rule, you'll be reducing your footprint significantly.

To be honest, my family isn't there yet. We buy organic produce from California and prepackaged pastas and canned tomatoes. But whenever possible, we try to buy local. We buy 90% of our meat in a meat share from Chestnut Farms. We buy almost all of our eggs locally from Chestnut Farms and Pete & Jen's. We plant and pick in a communal garden in my cohousing community. Until this year, we bought a CSA farmshare from Brookfield Farms. We buy almost all our dairy locally through the Dairy Bar or Sherman Market (exception: we have not found a good local source of goat milk for my lactose-intolerant daughter). Now that the farmers' markets are open, we gleefully buy fresh greens there (kale!) every week. And in a month, we're moving to a new home in Beverly with plenty of land where we hope to grow most of our own food.

The path to locavorism is a tricky one, but the most crucial skill you need to become a locavore is this: ask questions, find answers. Ask the farmers at the market where they are, whether they grew the produce themselves, how they grew it, whether they use a hothouse, how they heat that hothouse, and whether they use pesticides, herbicides, or artificial fertilizers. Talk to them about the pasture area their cattle have, or what they feed their pigs, or how they slaughter their chickens. Ask the farmers who works for them, whether they're paid fair wages. Ask them how far they have to travel to come to the market, how much fuel they use, and whether they partner with other farmers to save on transportation costs (I spotted Pete & Jen's eggs at a Blue Heron farmstand yesterday).

The more you know, the better and more sustainably you'll eat.

Friday, June 10, 2011

"I am a conscientious parent. I am not a HEPA filter."

Here's a remarkably well-written argument, not just for eating organic foods and using organic practices on lawns and farms, but to push for legislation to ban dangerous chemical use. Sandra Steingraber writes:

But Faith and her brother, Elijah, do not live solely within the bubble of my kitchen and property lines. They occupy a much bigger ecological niche, and I cannot verify the agricultural origin of every food item served at every birthday party, summer camp, sleepover, recital, and library summer reading program event. I can’t ensure that every backyard soccer field, every patch of lawn, and every pet in every neighborhood home they run in and out of are free of organophosphates. 
Nor can I stop the wind from blowing.
See the full article at http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6162/