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Menu for the Future
This winter I’ve been participating in a discussion group organized by the Catamount Earth Institute that looks at food and agriculture in America, and what each of us can do to live more sustainably. We’ve been discussing readings from Menu for the Future produced by the Northwest Earth Institute. The readings support my belief that growing some of our own food is important, and that when we need to supplement the garden, we should try to buy locally grown, organic foods.
Here are some interesting statistics from Menu for the Future: For grocery store food, the average item has traveled 1500 miles from field to table. Every calorie of food we eat costs 10 calories of energy derived from petroleum. These calories include fertilizer, tractor fuel, pesticides, packaging and transporting our food.
Grains, vegetables and fruits require less energy to produce than meat because animals generally are fed grain – and an animal is not an efficient converter of its food to the meat that we eat. Thus it takes 68 calories of input to produce 1 calorie of pork that we eat, for example. Still, like most, I eat meat – though probably less than the average American.
Compared to other industrialized nations we spend a lower percentage of our income on food than any other country – roughly 10%. Consumers in Italy spend more than 25% of their income on food, the French 16% and the Japanese about 19%. And why is that, you may ask? Industrialized agriculture in America is subsidized by our government in the form of payments and tax breaks.
We also allow our industrial farms to pass on to us many hidden costs: the cost of polluting our land and water, the cost of health care for low-income farm workers, and the cost to our own health of eating foods that make us fat and unhealthy. Not only that, huge corporations act as middlemen getting more of the money spent than the small family farmer. Roughly 20% of your dollars spent on food goes to the farmer.
So what can we do? Plant a garden. Grow as much of our own food as possible and buy from local farmers, reducing the petroleum costs of transportation. Buying organic foods reduces the carbon costs of producing and shipping chemical fertilizers and the production of pesticides. But organic food costs more at the cash register. And in winter, much of our organic fresh produce, like conventional produce, comes from California, Florida or South America.
So let’s look at gardening. A very small garden, say 10 feet by 12 feet in size, can produce a lot of vegetables, including some that can easily be stored and used long past summer. I planted 12 tomato plants in a 10 x12-foot garden last summer, and each plant produced – by my estimation – 5 to 8 pounds of tomatoes. I ate some fresh, made sauce, but I also froze many tomatoes whole in zipper bags. That’s quick and easy. I am eating and using those right now- I run the tomatoes under hot water, rub off the skin, cut them up to use in soups and stews as I would a canned tomato.
Potatoes are easy to grow and keep. A 3-foot wide bed 12 feet long can accommodate up to 24 plants, each of which will produce 2-5 pounds of potatoes, depending on the soil, variety of potato, and amount of sun and water the plants receive. At the top end of production, one small bed can produce 120 pounds of good organic food! Stored in buckets in a cool spot with high humidity (35-50 degrees with 90% humidity), potatoes can be stored 6 months or more.
lettuce
I≠ve been growing lettuce all winter in pots on my windowsill and have to admit that the production is minimal. Right now my lettuce, which I started outside in September and potted up and brought inside in late October, is reaching for the sky. The plants are not getting enough light. Since I want to eat with little impact on the environment, I have avoided using artificial lights. There are such things as LED grow-lights which use a fraction of the energy of fluorescents, and I am investigating those.
So why bother with a garden? I want to eat pesticide-free food that I grow myself. Pesticide use on farms affects most severely the people who work in the fields. I care about that. But I also know that washing off fruits and veggies does not eliminate all chemicals, not since 1998 when systemic poisons were introduced. These are chemicals that are sprayed on the soil, seeds or leaves and are incorporated into the plant tissue, killing insects that take a bite.
We can scrub and peel, but if your lettuce or tomato has been treated with a systemic pesticide, you are going to ingest it. Even though the government allows this treatment, I don≠t want to eat those pesticides. No one knows how these chemicals will affect us in 20 years. Remember: DDT was approved for use in the home and garden for many years before the government banned it.
As I plan for my garden now I am keeping in mind what I grow best, and what I can save for next winter. Vegetable gardening, for me, is about eating good food that is healthy, and also about inflicting minimal damage on the environment.