The Environmental Impact of Your Diet

What concerns me about the 'mainstreaming' of organics is that the founding principles of sustainability could be compromised.

In many ways it's already been corrupted and compromised....organic lettuce is almost exclusively grown by two organic farms in the same monoculture setup as conventional lettuce.

Many crops are imported, almost exclusively, to keep up with demand (think spinach from China) which significantly adds to cost and environmental impact with petrochemicals required for transportation.

Organic beef is often finished in feedlots just like the beef we disdain as "factory farmed" - it might not be injected with hormones or fed antibiotics or animal by-products, but the cattle are stil being fed a diet of grains they're not designed to eat, in an effort to pump up weight before slaughter.

Free-range chickens/eggs are often the more laughable oxymoron - a small door is often finally opened after weeks of baby chicks being matured indoors...by the time the "access to pasture" is provided, almost none know what to do to go outside, or have the inclination to do so.

There is an option - it takes time, motivation and a commitment to get to know your growers and ranchers....find local farms/ranches, drive out, introduce yourself and take a look around....see how the animals are raised, the crops cultivated, etc. Choose your food from farms committed to sustainable practices (grass feeding, pastured animals///rotational crops////mixed farms wtih crops and animals together) where you're welcome anytime to pop over and say hello!

Since moving, it's taken me months to find farms I'll trust for my food and the food for my family. It's time consuming to do it, expensive and you're often left to the mercy of mother nature if a crop fails (in our case, sweet corn is limited this year in MO)....at the end of the day, I think it's worth it - I know where my food comes from and who is producing it.

If anyone is interested in finding local farms there are two sites I recommend:

www.EatWild.com
www.LocalHarvest.org

If big players (Wal-Mart, etc) get into organic products, the prices are likely to go down. If this happens, more attention will be paid to the environmental impact, because big names such as Wal-Mart always attract a lot of attention.

Organic farming is often associated with ‘environmentally friendly’. I think Wal-Mart and other large companies know that they can use this to their advantage. It seems that it would be in their best interest to make sure that there is no environmental impact from their involvement.

Starbucks comes to mind. They parade the fact that they help protect environment, because they use socially responsible corporate polices.

In many ways it's already been corrupted and compromised....organic lettuce is almost exclusively grown by two organic farms in the same monoculture setup as conventional lettuce.

This is why I dream of owning a home with a huge garden and orchard.

I am not very big on organic foods but I know that they are a lot better for you as my whole family are farmers and you wouldn't believe what kind of sprays the government makes us use. I would absolute stick with more organic foods.

The current issue of The Nation is also about this topic. One thing that seriously put me off was that for workers, organic is worse than conventional produce. Because we do not want to eat food with pesticides, they have to use back-breaking methods like hand-weeding . I used to think that buying organic is good for the workers, because it means that they are not exposed to the pesticides either.

I have read from multiple sources that it is better for the environment to buy local than it is to buy organic, so that's what I try to do now.

The idea of organic is a good one...no harmful pesticides, etc. In a perfect world, all produce would be organic but there are other consumers of our food crops to worry about...bugs. I realized just how much damage they can do when I went to my inlaws' farm this weekend. My father in law planted sweet corn and used no pesticides at all. He told me if I wanted to take some corn back, I could go pick some. I had to pick through about 20 ears to get 10 edible ones. The others had corn borers and rootworm problems or corn smut. A better solution would be to use creative insect predation...bringing in predators of the pests to minimize spraying. I personally don't buy organic, but I do try to buy locally on the heaviest-sprayed crops. Things like potatoes, corn, strawberries, etc.

Just promoting vegetarianism?

Where are all the crys of "You can't include a food group!" Blah blah blah

like they treat low carbers?

Oh wait there is a double standard. Vegetarianism is P.C. isn't it?

Dave,
As a vegetarian for years (from age 7 to age 20), I have to say, you aren't really leaving out (I assume you didn't mean include, like you said. ;)) a whole food group-- "meat and legumes". You eat plenty of legumes-- soy, beans, etc. I was a lacto-ova vegetarian, so there's Dairy too.
There is also the fact that vegetarians are shown to live longer than meat eaters-- something that definately has not been shown for the followers of Low-Carb.

I care very much where my food comes from, although I think not enough people do. We are very lucky in NZ because most meat is grass-fed (there is ample pasture and grain-feed is expensive) and free-range eggs are affordable. Organics are still expensive and not always readily available, but that is slowly improving. I reason that eating fruit and veges at all is better than not, even if it means they have been sprayed.