gardening, food, and other things.
I didn't think I had much planning to do about the garden, but I'm finding myself thinking of things anyway. I want to move some of my perennials around, so the decorative ones can be outside the food garden (read: in the polluted soil). I also wonder about the mint. Somewhere I heard that peppermint needs new soil every few years because of how much it grows, and I'm wondering if I need to seperate and replant it, but at the same time I'm worried that would just make it more weedy and taking up way too much room. I wouldn't mind doing it if I could get it fully out of where it is now, but I don't want two big patches of it. Maybe I'll just dump another bag of manure on it and hope that feeds it.
I found a bag of frozen basil in my fridge today. The smell is so wonderful. I can't wait to cook some up in an omlette tomorrow.
I was reading from the book Empires of Food, and there's a section that mentions oranges. The line that hit me was: "In 2004, orange groves covered 3.6 million hectares. If every country in the world drank as much orange juice as, say, Germany, we'd need 32 million hectares." (164). Wow. Orange juice is an unnecessary item, with little nutritional value. It is one we don't buy much here. (We buy about two jars of concentrate a year to use in making cream-cheese icing for cakes.) But the thought that really, it is those extra items that take land away from better use... clearing land for orange plantations (like most plantations) is ecologically unsound. when I think of how abundantly and wastefully some people consume fruit juices. I'm not thinking that people should never drink them, but we should do so reverendly, aware of the luxury of it.
You know the whole "clean your plate, there's starving children who would like it" never made sense to me because of course my left-overs weren't going to them. Yet when I think about the worldwide trade in food, there is some truth in it. Many places plant foods to sell to wealthier countries and themselves starve. There is the argument that if we don't buy their foods then the prices go lower and they lose out even more, and after all, they choose to sell the stuff, right? But that is faulty on two parts: one, it ignores the land grabs and the fact that much of the food is grown on corporate land already stolen (or, umm, bought) from the people and they don't have the choice of growing food on it. Two, it ignores the fact that the countries are busy paying off national debts to our countries, and thus they need our money to pay us. They can't just stop growing commodities and grow their own food.
Food justice makes sense.
1)a) Organic food avoids a lot of pollution.
b) Buying local means accepting the ecological costs of our food. If watersheds are depleted, we deplete our own, not someone elses. If soil is eroded, it is our own, not someone elses. If water is polluted, it is our own, not someone elses. And we have more incentives to fix the problems.
c) Buying fair trade means that when we have to buy international foods, we do so knowing that the farmer benefits and the money isn't all lost in the pockets of multinational corporations.
2) By reducing our food footprint (the amount of land and/or water that goes into producing our food) we leave more for other people. This is important. What little natural land is left in this world is being destroyed.
3) By keeping our food choices moderate we can buy good quality food without spending too much. We give up luxuries but we can buy all organic locally produced grains, beans, meat, vegetables and eggs. We get the best quality food without overspending. The costs is few luxuries. But then we know that we are paying the costs of our foods. We aren't relying on exploited labor, polluting farm practices, etc.
4) Hopefully by keeping our food choices moderate we can also use extra money towards supporting causes we believe in. As long as people are constantly struggling to be able to buy more and more luxuries... then we can't change the system and the system needs to change. We need to stop externalizing the costs of our own decisions, and we can only do that if we believe ourselves capable of doing so. If we believe it would all be way to expensive to pay the real costs of our food (and goods) then we fight against doing so. Only by reducing our desires to what we can afford to pay the true costs of, can we really start to change things.
I found a bag of frozen basil in my fridge today. The smell is so wonderful. I can't wait to cook some up in an omlette tomorrow.
I was reading from the book Empires of Food, and there's a section that mentions oranges. The line that hit me was: "In 2004, orange groves covered 3.6 million hectares. If every country in the world drank as much orange juice as, say, Germany, we'd need 32 million hectares." (164). Wow. Orange juice is an unnecessary item, with little nutritional value. It is one we don't buy much here. (We buy about two jars of concentrate a year to use in making cream-cheese icing for cakes.) But the thought that really, it is those extra items that take land away from better use... clearing land for orange plantations (like most plantations) is ecologically unsound. when I think of how abundantly and wastefully some people consume fruit juices. I'm not thinking that people should never drink them, but we should do so reverendly, aware of the luxury of it.
You know the whole "clean your plate, there's starving children who would like it" never made sense to me because of course my left-overs weren't going to them. Yet when I think about the worldwide trade in food, there is some truth in it. Many places plant foods to sell to wealthier countries and themselves starve. There is the argument that if we don't buy their foods then the prices go lower and they lose out even more, and after all, they choose to sell the stuff, right? But that is faulty on two parts: one, it ignores the land grabs and the fact that much of the food is grown on corporate land already stolen (or, umm, bought) from the people and they don't have the choice of growing food on it. Two, it ignores the fact that the countries are busy paying off national debts to our countries, and thus they need our money to pay us. They can't just stop growing commodities and grow their own food.
Food justice makes sense.
1)a) Organic food avoids a lot of pollution.
b) Buying local means accepting the ecological costs of our food. If watersheds are depleted, we deplete our own, not someone elses. If soil is eroded, it is our own, not someone elses. If water is polluted, it is our own, not someone elses. And we have more incentives to fix the problems.
c) Buying fair trade means that when we have to buy international foods, we do so knowing that the farmer benefits and the money isn't all lost in the pockets of multinational corporations.
2) By reducing our food footprint (the amount of land and/or water that goes into producing our food) we leave more for other people. This is important. What little natural land is left in this world is being destroyed.
3) By keeping our food choices moderate we can buy good quality food without spending too much. We give up luxuries but we can buy all organic locally produced grains, beans, meat, vegetables and eggs. We get the best quality food without overspending. The costs is few luxuries. But then we know that we are paying the costs of our foods. We aren't relying on exploited labor, polluting farm practices, etc.
4) Hopefully by keeping our food choices moderate we can also use extra money towards supporting causes we believe in. As long as people are constantly struggling to be able to buy more and more luxuries... then we can't change the system and the system needs to change. We need to stop externalizing the costs of our own decisions, and we can only do that if we believe ourselves capable of doing so. If we believe it would all be way to expensive to pay the real costs of our food (and goods) then we fight against doing so. Only by reducing our desires to what we can afford to pay the true costs of, can we really start to change things.