food ethics

[2eclipse]

yesterday I listened to speaking of faith on NPR. Krista was interviewing Barbara Kingslover (author of the poisonwood bible) about the ethics of eating. Barbara and her family moved to southern Virginia (god help her) and made a project of eating for a year only those things they could grow/raise themselves. It seems the family has written a book about the experience, called animal, vegetable, miracle.
In the interview, kingslover talked about how we in this country have forgotten to ask questions about where our food comes from and what it takes to get it to us. She brings up hurricane Katrina and addresses the fact that it isn’t simply the government’s responsibility to provide infrastructure….but that the tragedy was also a result of the vulnerability caused when an area cannot support itself on what it grows. She asks the question “how long can we live like this and expect to not pay a price” in light of how much of the world’s resources we are using. Some people give up meat in order to eat more sustainably. She gave up bananas, citing the use of fossil fuels to provide them(for transport and refrigeration). She did some thinking about it and decided it wasn’t cruelty free in light of the resources being used.
I find myself convicted by the points she brought up. I love sushi! How much of my food comes from china or japan? How much of my food comes from California instead of being grown locally? It used to be that almost all the food a community consumed was grown locally and organically. Now it has become a “special” thing to eat that way. We import exotics from overseas while the farmers around us are struggling! How many fossil fuels are burn to bring me the food I eat? I am very interested in reading this book….and in talking with ross about what we can do to change our eating habits. I agree with her that we have a responsibility to think about the overall economic and ecological impact of our habits, not only locally, but globally.
I am also torn up about it…..because some people have allergies and some people have such strong dislikes of certain foods that they need more specialized foods. If everyone started being more conscious about what they ate to the point where there was no market for imported foods, the prices on those items would go up proportionally. Is it really such a smart thing to shift the market in this way?

Comments

[rumpleteazaer.livejournal.com]

I am very interested in reading this book too. Living in Ohio means I am rather fortunate in the abundance of locally produced food. I am alos fortunate that my allergy to shellfish means most seafood is at least not apitizing to me or at worst lethal.

It will sadden me to give up the bananas and pineapple though :(

[frog-lady.livejournal.com]

Unless someone has really serious allergies (like a friend of mine who's allergic to all nightshades), it shouldn't be too hard to find at least most of their unprocessed food locally. If people in Maine can do so, I'd guess that it's possible in most of the US. That said, eating only local food takes more time and energy, especially to store produce for winter, and not everyone can do so. This post goes into some of the associated issues...but I think the major thing for people to consider right now is that eating some locally grown and/or processed food is better than eating none.

Oh, and re. local foods and allergies/special foods--if one makes one's food from basic ingredients instead of eating processed foods, it's a lot easier to avoid the things to which one is allergic, especially if those things are common additives.

Sorry my comment got so long. :)

(By the way, I'm enting on Ravelry. I saw you were also on lj and friends with crowyhead, and friended you here as well.)

[zankoku-zen.livejournal.com]

This isn't about just eating locally.

It's also about the people who can afford to pay for either organic or locally grown food.

Think about that.

The quality of food available to you greatly depends on the kind of money you make. Fresh fruit and vegetables can be greatly prohibitive financially for those in the lower eschelons of the pay earning scale.

It's the Whole Foods vs Walmart debate.

[knitthenight.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'd love to read that book, too. That's something I dream of doing someday.

[keisolo.livejournal.com]

Sounds like something I might want to read.

It's also something I'd like to do... but this goes back to one of my gripes regarding green-ness - at this point it's harder to do if you have really tight budget strictures. Which is why so many people shop at Walmart, which is something we do manage to avoid.

You should look into Robert Redford's "The Green." He does a bunch of things with it on Sundance channel, but they also have a website.

don't forget water too....

[llm145.livejournal.com]

I read this great book for grad school a few years ago, "Cadillac Desert," about our policy on water in the west. It really brought home the utter ridiculousness of our agriculture policy in the country - although there have been some good unforeseen side effects of the policy too (like the influx of power right when we needed it during WWII). To quickly summarize the book's argument, the government built for gigantic dams the create reservoirs. Then farmers receive subsidized prices for water from those reservoirs. Because water has become so artificially inexpensive, farmers began grow water-dependent crops in arid areas where those crops should never be grown - even as farmers in other areas back East are paid to destroy those same crops. The real cost of a loaf of bread (after the subsidies for all the water, the charges for the taxpayer-funded dam construction, and the subsidies to destroy unneeded crops are added back in) is bizarrely high. Not even to mention the environmental damage of all of those dams - or the realities of pork-barrel politics - or the explosion of population in areas that can't naturally sustain it because of government-subsidized water. Anyway, it's a really interesting book, believe it or not, and he makes a compelling argument. If you read it you will never be able to look at food or water in the same way. :)

[spiralshell.livejournal.com]

I am looking forward to reading this book -- sounds really interesting.
And I think that like so many things it's about making small steps.
Just like if every American got a car that got just 3 to 5 miles more per gallon, we would reduce our fuel consumption by a huge amount, if everybody bought apples every other shopping trip instead of bananas, we would shift our fruit consumption from very long distance to pretty local. Everybody does not need to get 40 mpg for us to significantly reduce our dependence on gas, and everybody does not need to eat all local all the time in order to reduce our dependence on long-distance food. Yes, it would be great to get there eventually, but we have to crawl first. :)
None of this has to be all or nothing -- it's much more about getting a lot of people to make small changes than about getting a very small number of people to make the enormous change of eating only local foods.