Newsletter Week 17

On the day of this writing, it has officially become Autumn.  Soon there will be that cool bite in the milky air and the sky will be filled with the treetops' fireworks of red and yellow.  It's that transition time when your CSA boxes are full of early Fall Harvest treats and last of the summer goodies.  It's a time for new beginnings and tying up loose ends.

Part of the new beginnings for this year in particular is that of election time.  In November we will have a new president elect.  A key issue for many people that has had a looming presence over the election this year has been that of climate change.  How can we alleviate our dependence on fossil fuel?  What alternative forms of energy are best to invest in?  By now, many of us know it is not just enough to screw in CFL light bulbs.  We need to do more than that, and a big issue people need to talk more about in terms of combating climate change is food.  What we choose to eat is every bit a part of fighting climate change as the daily bike ride to work.

According to the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, one-third of the world's human made greenhouse gas emissions stems from food and agriculture.  This includes industrial farms' pesticides, herbicides, and factory farm runoff.  Even many packaged "organic" foods are part of the culprit.  How much energy did it take to process that organic General Mills' cereal, and how long did it take to assemble that lengthy list of ingredients into one final product?

Eating local and whole foods is a crucial way of fighting climate change.  For many of us, by being raised on a steady diet of fossil fueled food and media-driven images telling us what we want to eat, the consumption of meals throughout the years has been a confusing journey.  But the vegetables in your CSA box are not only local and grown organically, they're also 100% whole.  So rest assured: there is no maltodextin in your kohlrabi, nor is there any dextrose in your   tomatoes.  What you have in your box has not been processed and has never seen the light of a factory's interior.  Its purity intact, there is no energy required to develop such food into a final food "product," unless you count the energy of one of our hands picking it from the vine/ snipping it from the plant/ pulling it from the earth.

How does one begin to counter our damaging mainstream food system?  Joining a CSA is a great start, but don't stop there: shop at your local farmers' market.  Rip up your lawn and grow your own mini-farm or get a plot at a community garden.  If you eat meat (or cheese or eggs), buy locally-raised, grass-finished meat from family farms.  Minimize the amount of frozen food that you buy in cardboard boxes with huge paragraphs of ingredients.  Preserve your CSA or garden veggies for the winter.  Also, compost your kitchen scraps instead of just throwing them out in the garbage; the food that ends up in landfills is a big emitter of greenhouse gases.  

These food choices are not just for personal health's sake, but for the planet's health as well.  There are many things we can do and need to do about climate change.  Food choices are just the tip of the melting iceberg.  And, on the brighter side of things, it's also a delicious starting point.

-Alison Parker