The Power of the Obamas’ Organic Garden April 15, 2009

There has been a lot of talk this past week about the new vegetable “kitchen” garden planted by the Obamas on the White House grounds.  What got people talking is not so much the fact that the Obamas started the garden.  In and of itself the garden is not too important, at least not to anyone other than the Obamas. 

 

What did get people talking was a rather laughable letter sent to the Obamas by the Mid American CropLife Association.  In it, the Association took issue with the label “organic” as applied to the garden.  The Association defended “conventionally” grown food as being “wholesome and flavorful yet more economical,” all the while being sustainable. 

 

But the truth is that many conventional food production practices harm the environment, increase farm consolidation (thereby decreasing small farm ownership and regionality of food source), and rely on artificially low costs with the help of government subsidies. 

 

The Association listed several methods that they argued are sustainable farming practices, all the while attempting to paint industrial food production techniques as being environmentally sustainable.  But this misses the point.  People who advocate the benefits of organic and alternative farming welcome efforts by industrial agriculture to adopt farming methods that decrease negative impacts on the environment.  The truth of the matter is that industrial food production contributes to pollution of water bodies, soil, groundwater systems, and the air.  And the sustained practices that the Association alleges are in use by farmers are being employed on an extremely small amount of farmland in the United States.  For example, the letter asserts that “reduced tillage practices” are being employed on 72 million acres.  Yet, according to the most recent agricultural census data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there are over 992 million acres of farmland in America. 

 

The letter also employs the common image of the ideal small American farm that has been purposely and disingenuously raised by industrial agriculture producers and their defenders for years—the false idea that America’s food supply is produced by small family farmers who work their own land from sun up to sun down.  This is just false, and the industrial food producers know it.  In fact, they rely on this pastoral image pervasive in the collective American conscious to continue to consolidate their ownership of American food production, to secure monetarily beneficial government subsidies, and to fight moves toward greater environmental sustainability.  The truth, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is that 70% of the American food supply is produced by 6% of the total farms in the nation.  The truth is that small farms—the basis of that idyllic American image—have been sold to large agribusiness corporations and consolidated into behemoth operations. 

 

By arguing that industrial food production is more economical, the Association seems to be trading on the common misperception that organic food must always be more expensive than “regular” food.  This is the “whole paycheck” mentality.  It’s not necessarily the fact that the food is produced organically that causes it to be more expensive in stores.  It’s a combination of marketing organic as an up-scale, yuppy commodity, the ability of grocers to trade on the yuppified idea of organic to increase their prices, and industrial agriculture’s stranglehold on the market and on American food policy. 

 

In the end, the power of the Obamas’ new organic kitchen garden is its statement.  By planting a garden on the White House lawn and calling it organic, consciously or not the Obamas have demonstrated the importance of questioning where our food comes from.  That is an important first step in fundamentally altering our nation’s food policy toward sustainability. 

 

When I first heard about the new garden on the White House grounds, I was pleased, but I didn’t think it would matter too much.  But, the letter from the Mid American CropLife Association changed my mind.  If they are worried enough about the impact of this small garden, then I think that bodes well for the future of sustainable, local, economical food in America.  

The Environmental Benefits of Recession Era Food Shopping April 5, 2009

 

They say every cloud has a silver lining.  And in these tough economic times, that lining may actually be green.  As more and more people feel the effects of the recession, there is increasing demand for low-cost food.  Interestingly, the most cost-efficient foods oftentimes just so happen to be those that are the least processed.  I’ve come across a number of websites and magazines that offer suggestions for consumers to tighten the budget belt at the grocery store. 

 

Here are the most common suggestions I’ve encountered:

 

Tip Number 1:  Shop the periphery of the grocery store where you’ll find the fresh, generally less processed food.  Grocery stores tend to place less perishable items in the aisles.  It just so happens that those items are typically also the most highly processed, packaged, and preserved “food” in the grocery store.  The environmental costs incurred in producing products like these are obvious.  There’s the transport of the produce from the farms to the factories.  There’s the use of energy by the factories in processing the produce into some other form.  There’s the environmental impact of the production and shipping of the plastics used in the packaging.  There’s the shipping of the product from the factories to the grocers.  Then, after the “foods” are consumed, the packaging is thrown away and finds its way into the landfill.  Obviously, there are transportation and environmental costs related to the shipment of fresh produce, but generally, many of these layers are cut out.  And, if you compost, you can use all of your food, rather than throwing away voluminous amounts of plastic packaging. 

 

Tip Number 2:  Try dry beans and grains (preferably from the bulk section).  Bulgur, who knew?  Couscous, you’re so easy to make.  Polenta, how fulfilling and easy.  And the beans!  With just a minimal effort at planning, using dry beans in place of canned is so easy.  Using dry beans and grains cuts out the increased transportation costs of shipping heavier canned products, as well as reducing the use of cans.  And when beans and grains are purchased from the bulk section of the grocery store, packaging and its related environmental costs are reduced. 

 

Tip Number 3:  Consume less meat.  The financial and environmental impact of consuming less meat is substantial.  Meat is expensive and unless you’re buying your meat directly from the free-range, environmentally sustainable farm, it’s likely that the environmental costs of the meat are huge.  First, the corn has to be grown and shipped to the factory farms to feed the cows.  The feedlots are often huge fenced areas without shade where cows wallow in their own excrement.  Their waste is then washed off the land by rain and often finds its way into waterways, contaminating the ecosystem.  After the cows are large enough, they are trucked to a slaughterhouse, then packaged and shipped again to a distributor.  Finally, the packaged meat makes its way to grocery store shelves.  The same questions of environmental cost and humane treatment arise with chicken and pig production, as well.  For more information, read this article from a 2002 edition of E The Environmental Magazine.   

 

Tip Number 4:  Shop with an open and creative mind.  Buy produce that is on sale, rather than shopping directly from a recipe list.  When perusing the produce choices, try to be creative in coming up with multiple combinations using the same basic ingredients.  By using a little creativity, you can reduce the amount of waste from purchased but unused food.

 

 

Tip Number 5:  This isn’t really about shopping, but it does help to conserve money and environmental resources.  Consider growing some of your own food.  Even if you don’t have a backyard suitable for gardening, there are many online resources with instructions on how to grow vegetables and herbs in containers.

 

Tip Number 6:  Buy fruits and vegetables from local farmers’ markets.  This is where real bargains–and real freshness–can be found.  Plus, you get the chance to speak with the people who grew the food, allowing you to learn a little about their farming practices.  To locate a farmers’ market, go to www.localharvest.org.

Food Choice: The Good and Bad of Organic and Local March 8, 2009

Mother Jones magazine has an ambitious article by Paul Roberts in its online edition (I’m assuming it’s also in the print edition) discussing the many varied difficulties in converting from industrial to sustainable agriculture.  It’s quite a good article in its entirety, but I wanted to focus on one particular part:  the use of relatively easy, recognizable methods for identifying “good” food over the standard industrial based “bad” food. 

In the article, the author rightly condemns the use of tags like “organic” or “local” as a quick way to identify truly sustainable food.  Increasingly, we use words like these as checklists of sorts to determine what’s sustainable.  While I believe selecting organic or local food is better than selecting the standard agribusiness product, the problem with these tags is they are not, standing alone, very reliable methods of really ensuring that our food choices are sustainable.  For example, the author points out that other social costs, like underpaid farm laborers and the travel miles associated with trucking manure to organic farms, are present even when producing organic or local food and are not taken into account when consumers employ a tag like organic or local in their purchasing decisions.

I agree that using these types of easily recognizable checklists can be bad in the long term (or at least do not solve the entire problem of sustainable food choice).  But, I think their use is essential right now as a way to get people thinking about food alternatives and sustainability.  Sustainable food is one of the most complex and diverse environmental problems I think we are facing right now.  I rank it right up there with global climate change.  There are so many factors, on so many different levels of justice, that identifying workable solutions is not easy. 

But, I think that checklists are, right now, probably a good thing because they help people evaluate their choices and reconsider their eating habits.  I think perhaps the biggest challenge to adopting a more sustainable food production model is for people, on an individual or family level, to change how they have been purchasing, consuming, and thinking about food for generations.  In my view, checklists are a beginning, not an end.  Once people begin to think about choosing organic or choosing local, they begin to think about why those choices are better.  The challenge will be to ensure that those checklists do not become entrenched and limit the next steps in the progress of food sustainability.  

Fertilizer Causing Dead Zones March 17, 2008

A new study published in Nature concludes that dead zones in streams and creeks across the United States are increasing as a result of fertilizer run-off.  Streams, creeks, and other similar waterways naturally filter nitrate, a component of fertilizer.  However, as the streams become overloaded, they filter less and less nitrate.  The nitrate that is not removed makes its way to the ocean, where it feeds algae and other organisms and contributes to dead zones in coastal areas. 

But, there is a way to combat the detrimental effects of nitrate in waterways.  The use of organic farming practices actually reduces nitrate leaching, leaving streams, rivers, creeks, and the like better able to filter the nitrate that runs off with the surface water.  This is another reason why organic farming is better for the environment than conventional practices and why organic farming should be widely promoted.