Greenwashing, local-organic, and carbon footprints
Local organic food and farming are the gold standard. Organic farmers gladly adhere to a set of regulations, use non-toxic products, and accept the need to be scrutinized by an independent third party inspector. Why? Because, regulation of food safety is essential to guaranteeing consumers that the farmer has their health and well being at the center of his or her business plan. The organic regulatory process is neither easy nor happily anticipated by the farmer. But it is necessary! It is our covenant with our customers.
This article says a lot about greenwashing terms like “local and organic.”
I’d add my two cents by pointing out that for most people I see around me these high-unemployment days, they’re not all that interested in paying that extra money for either. The poorer you are, the greater the percentage of your total budget goes to put food down your neck.
We are still in that stage where the exemplary behavior of some is a rehearsal for what will become necessary behavior for most in the future. Local is not available here right now, because we are covered in white stuff, and that canning thing hasn’t caught on with overworked, stressed out, minimum-wagers.
Prioritizing ways to cut back might be more helpful than hectoring people, I don’t know. But one of our fact sheets from Ann Arbor points out that:
18% of the world’s greenhouse gases emitted are due to cattle production. Cattle’s digestive system released 139 million metric tons of CO2e of methane in the U.S. in 2007, consequently giving dairy and beef a high carbon footprint.
One study found that eating all locally grown food for a year saves greenhouse gases equivalent to driving 1,000 miles, but eating a vegetarian meal once a week saves the equivalent of driving 1,160 miles.
A vegetarian diet greatly reduces one’s carbon footprint, but simply replacing all beef consumption with chicken leads to a carbon footprint reduction of 882 pounds CO2e. Most dietary emissions come from red meat and dairy.
Organic food typically requires 30-50% less energy during production and requires one third more hours of human labor compared to typical farming practices.
So there are little ways people can wade in on this, and be commended on it until they are in a position to do more.
And the struggle to expose greenwashing looks like it will be long slog.
Just a coupla thoughts on the fly.
Michael Smith Jr:
i apologize that this part of my comment has nothing to do with said blog. i want to thank you, as well as those like you, for speaking up. good men and evil, that old chestnut. For i am to angry to care. thank you.
otherwise…. lots of money in mass food prodction. make it cheaper to have a destructive diet, as long as it doesn’t kill you immediately, and the dollar menu looks great with two kids. capitalism and information are the double edged sword. sorry stan, i’m a terrible story teller.
25 February 2011, 4:32 pmWaldow:
“In other words, our living soils can save us—but only if we stop the widespread use of nitrate fertilizers, GMO crops, and pesticides and replace these deadly chemicals and mutant organisms with organic compost, compost tea, and cover crops, augmented by the biological power and fertility generated by organic, carefully planned, high-density rotational grazing of animals.”
There’s no way to grow large amounts of wheat, soy, beans, ect. year-after-year for vegetarian consumption without the application of one of two things, either: 1)Fossil-based fertilizer 2)The bi-products of milk and meat production. Also, annual crops by their nature reduce drastically the carbon sequestered in a natural system not only in the plants themselves, but in the soil beneath them.
Therefore a weekly vegetarian meal serves more to make the person eating it feel like they are doing something noble (I agree with the goals), rather than actually making change we need to have local, closed-loop systems with mostly perennially carbon sinking plants, meat, eggs, and milk. It also happens to be the most practical way to homestead. Tastes good.
25 February 2011, 6:48 pmCharles:
^^^^^^^
Maine town becomes first to declare food sovereignty
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031667_food_freedom_Maine.html#ixzz1GlqXA1d4
^^^^^^^
16 March 2011, 8:57 amCurt:
I am guilty! I never buy Bio. I could easily afford to buy bio but I do not. I doubt that I ever will, UNTIL I HAVE NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER. Bio is not just a little more expensive it is usually between 30% and 120% more expensive. That to me seems like a lot. I am suspicous that these large price differences are not justified. I have absolutely no reason for this suspicion. If a kilo of “industrial” carrots or bananas cost 99 cents a kilo I have no idea how much of that 99 cents goes to whom for what so how could I compare that resource mismanegement against the mismanagement of how the proceedes of the 1.30 carrots or bananas is divided up.
25 April 2011, 5:47 pmThere is yet another reason that I do not buy bio. I see every dollar as a vote or a tool or a weapon. It would seem logical then that I should give my votes to the bio producers and the companies like Fair Trade Chocolate. Yet I like to hoard my weapons (Euros and Dollars). It is seems to be a stupid habit. It is not like I am going to do anything with my horde of weapons. My horde of weapons will not be used to fight a Battle of Stalingrad against a ruthless and powerful army of Barbarians trying to exterminate me. Yet I know that when I have 100,000 instead of 10,000 I have a lot more options of how to DEPLOY my weapons.
I can imagine that to be able to deploy critical mass at the decisive time and place to achieve the desired goal is one motivation of those who are already wealthy to keep accumulating money. Am person never knows what the future will bring. Having more money rather than less money could come in very handy in a few years. Of course even not spending every thing that one makes is risky. The value of ones savings could be decimated by inflation, currency devaluations, a stockmarket crash, a commodities bubble bursting, or even theft. I should be able to lighten up and say OK if I pay more for food it will benifit me in the long run yet knowing the risks of saving does not scare me away from it it causes me to want to save even more to account for the losses that will be suffered as a result of economic turmoil.
Now a friend of mine might say, but Curt you are not telling the truth because you can not walk past a bakery with out buying a pastery. What my friend says is true. I think that I can justify that though by saying that a pastry is a small one time expense. If economic conditions change I can easily start detouring around the bakeries. Could the same not be said for buying Bio? Well the difference must be that the pastery gives me an immediate reward and the bio reward is much more subtle.
I can not make the change alone. New conditions have to be imposed from above. Would up to date studies on game therory validate my stubborness?