Get Closer to Your Food

No, I'm not suggesting that you snuggle up with some broccoli, a chicken breast or bag of flour. But how far did all of those items travel to your dinner table? How many gallons of diesel fuel were burned so you could eat your last meal? How much have all of us contributed to global climate change simply due to the travel cost of the food we eat? For those of us in the continental US, have you ever eaten an apple grown in New Zealand? Grapes from Chile? Strawberries from Mexico? All of these foods incur high fossil fuel emissions in order that we can eat fruit in the winter.

A common message to reduce this burden on our global climate is "eat local, eat seasonal". This is a great idea for several reasons. Not only does it reduce fossil fuel emissions but you get fresher and most of the time better tasting produce with higher vitamin content and nutritional value. But can you get more local than your backyard? Is it really possible to reduce your fossil fuel emission burden for the food you eat to nearly zero? Let's see what that might look like.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that our food is produced via biological systems. Plants do not grow in isolation. They are dependent upon a host of beneficial organisms and nutrients from nitrogen in the air to the bacteria that converts it into ammonia (nitrogen fixation) in symbiosis with some plant roots (primarily legumes), to the nitrifying soil bacteria which convert the ammonia into nitrates and nitrites which are absorbed by plants as natural fertilizer. The cycle continues as plants die and decay with the help of more kinds of bacteria and fungi which create more ammonia, nitrates and nitrites to start the cycle again. In addition, animals that eat and digest the plants (again with the help of beneficial bacteria in their digestive tract) produce more ammonia in their droppings (manure) which in turn adds to this never ending cycle.

The reason for the detailed lesson in the nitrogen cycle is to reinforce the notion that whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we and the food we eat are part of this cycle. In order for us to produce food in the most efficient manner (e.g. with the least amount of resources) we have to be both cognizant of this fact and take advantage of it to the fullest extent possible.

So what might this look like in a home garden? First, it means committing to a fully organic gardening philosophy. This is important for two reasons. First, because our goal is to reduce our reliance upon and consumption of fossil fuels. This is not possible if we buy and consume man-made fertilizers, pesticides or herbicides, most of which are either direct petroleum products or require large amounts of energy (derived from some fossil fuel) for production and transportation. Secondly, if our goal is to produce healthy food, why would we contaminate it with chemicals which in the very least have unknown health effects and in the worst case are known carcinogens or toxins (for a scare, read the label of any pesticide in your garage or garden shed).

Keeping in mind all the parts of the nitrogen cycle and our commitment to fully organic practices, a small kitchen garden should have the following components:

• Compost pile - made up of all vegetative matter collected on your property. Be wary of taking in compost or vegetative matter from other sources due to the possible contamination of persistent herbicides. Keep a small bucket under your sink and throw in all fruit and vegetable scrapes (no meat products) and add to the compost when full.
• Cover crops - nitrogen fixing plants such as clovers or hairy vetch to suppress weeds, improve soil quality and used as in-place compost when it is tilled under before planting edible crops.
• Rich soil - created by use of compost, cover crops and ample use of mulch to both hold in moisture and deter weed growth.
• Chickens - OK, this is probably optional, but consider this. Four laying hens will produce about a dozen eggs a week. In addition, let them into your garden before planting and after harvesting to eat bugs, till the soil and add fresh manure. Taking care of four hens is no more work than a dog, and few of us hesitate bringing one of them into our lives.
• Crop rotation - use a three session rotation, planting your veggies in a different bed to reduce disease and recurring pests. When selecting a crop to plant make sure it is from a different plant family than the previous crop in the same bed (e.g. broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and Brussels sprouts are all in the family Brassica and should not be rotated in the same bed as common pests and disease afflict them all).
• Beneficial predators - encouraging or adding beneficial insects, spiders and other pest predators (e.g. birds and bats) is a low cost and low maintenance way to suppress pest species
• Pollinators - encouraging pollinators (insects, birds and bats) by planting inviting flowering plants (which don't have to be edible and add color and beauty to the garden), creating nesting sites and planting shrubs and other perennials for shelter as well as another source of food.
• Food storage - when a harvest is ready, you will probably have more to pick than you and your family can eat before the produce goes bad. Learn how to preserve fruits and veggies via canning, drying, or low energy cold storage such as a root cellar.
• Mindfulness - walk your garden daily and simply observe. Is the soil too wet or dry in some areas? How do the leaves of the different plants look as they grow? Do you notice indications of any pests or disease? Are certain plants thriving or suffering? Research problems before they become to difficult to remedy.

Don't fall into the trap that unless you grow a big garden, you won't be doing enough to make any difference. Even if you live in an apartment or condo you can grow in a window box, on a patio or even a rooftop. Start small, a few tomato plants or a few red peppers. Follow all the techniques and increase your plot over several seasons. Let your garden grow with your experience and you will see it as a source of joy and relaxation, not one of toil and labor. Anything that you grow on your own, no matter how small, will bring you closer to your food. And that is good for all of us.

Wasting the Abundance

How much food have you thrown away today? Didn't quite finish that second or third bowl of cereal and dumped it down the garbage disposal? Tossed the last two bites of that sandwich? Scraped the remains of dinner into the kitchen garbage? Did you go shopping today and clean out your refrigerator by throwing away all that food from last week that had gone bad? How about those leftovers from the restaurant three nights ago that you never ate? We all do it. I did all these things in the last week. We usually don't even think about it.

So let's stop for a second and do a little bit of that thinking. My cereal was mostly corn, wheat and sugar. All are grown, harvested and processed many miles from the store in which I purchased the cereal. Taking into account the production of the packaging of all the ingredients before they arrive at the cereal plant and all the packaging to get the cereal to my kitchen, not to mention the production of the cereal itself and we can quickly see that there are many very complicated processes involved. Each of them consumes energy which usually comes from some fossil fuel like diesel for the trucks and coal to generate the electricity.

When I pour that last bowl, eat only half of it and dump the rest, I'm also wasting some of that energy that went into getting that cereal into my bowl. It doesn't seem like much when considering a bowl of cereal. However, recent studies have indicated that in industrialized nations like the US 30 - 50% of all food produced is thrown away before it can be eaten. This means that up to 50% of the carbon emissions related to food production and transportation are causing global climate change for no benefit. I don't know how you feel, but that sounds really stupid to me.

The irony, or perhaps the underlying cause, of all this waste is that we do it because our food supply is so abundant. We grow and produce so much food in the US that we can throw away half of it and still suffer an epidemic of obesity caused mainly by eating too much (or at least too much of the wrong kinds of food). The true tragedy is not the cost of the waste or even the distasteful moral issue of so much waste in the face of so many struggling with food security or even starvation in other parts of the world. No, the tragedy is that while we are wasting this colossal abundance we are lulled into believing it will continue forever.

The belief in never ending abundance causes us as a society to be wasteful of all the limited resources that are consumed daily to produce this amazing bounty which we discard without a second thought. Our modern farming practices are heavily reliant on the consumption of water for irrigation, diesel for production and transportation, petroleum for pesticides, other fossil fuels like natural gas to produce fertilizer and the land on which to grow it all. Supply of all of these resources are beginning to be challenged and will be more so in the near future as world-wide demand for food continues to increase partly due to population increase and partly to the rest of the world wanting to eat what we do.

Before a crisis looms caused by a shortage of any of these resources upon which our farming practices rely, we need to supplement our food supply with crops grown in ways that are not reliant on these limited resources. Many organic farming practices can produce the same yield per acre with no chemical fertilizers or pesticides and a fraction of the petroleum. The problem is that all of these practices are only successful on a small scale so that more people have to practice them to support the same sized population.

We won't get there overnight, but we can each make a small contribution by being more mindful of how much food we buy, eat and throw out. We can also support local farmers who practice organic techniques which have a lower impact on the environment, our bodies and our limited resources. If we don't we may be staring into the first of many crises regarding our food production sooner than we want to admit.

The Cost of Mordern Farming

Current farming practices allow humans to produce more food per acre than was even imaginable 50 years ago. However, this huge gain in food production has a tremendous cost. Not only are these practices incredibly energy intensive but they rely on many toxic herbicides and pesticides which find their way into both our food chain as well as the environment at large.

Why is this a problem? In addition to the obvious issues with ingesting toxic substances, some of these chemicals are indicated as hormone mimics which can contribute to a whole host of issues from infertility to obesity to some forms of cancer. Moreover, the amount of fossil fuels required to grow a pound of food accounts for almost half of all costs considering the production, transportation and distribution of everything from the pesticides, to fertilizer to seed applied to an acre of a crop. Add in the tilling, plowing, seeding, watering, harvesting, processing, packaging and transporting of the crop itself and you can see that humans pay a very heavy price in energy consumption to achieve the fantastic levels of food production we currently enjoy.

But that is not the only cost incurred by our factory farming and mass food production practices. Most agriculture in the U.S. is now irrigated, and a significant amount by non-renewable aquifers like the Ogallala in the central plains. This one aquifer irrigates 30% of all irrigated land in the U.S. By the latest estimates, the deepest wells will start running dry in 25 - 30 years at current pumping rates. This is in an area that is already semi-arid and supported only a fraction of the amount of current agriculture before the massive pumping and irrigation from the aquifer.

Another hidden cost is the effect of both fertilizer and livestock excrement runoff into our nation's waterways. The excess nitrogen and other nutrients in this runoff causes excessive algae and bacterial blooms in rivers, streams and eventually the ocean. These blooms deprive the waterways of oxygen resulting in the die-off of whole ecosystems, from the micro-organisms all the way up the food chain to the fish and the mammal and bird predators who eat the fish.

Finally, in return for this incredible production of food, we have given up the two most important aspects of the food itself; its taste and nutritional value. Almost all fruits and vegetable hybrids sold in grocery stores today are bred for neither their taste nor their nutrient value but for their shelf life, color and hardiness for shipping and transport from the field to the store aisle. Unfortunately, taste and nutritional value are usually sacrificed for these other attributes. Like the large, beautiful rose hybird that has not even a hint of fragrance left, our fresh fruit and vegetables pale in taste and nutritional value compared to that which our grandparent's generation were accustomed.

Ultimately, the biggest problem with all of these practices is that they are not sustainable. Not just because we are using up all the water in the aquifers or all the oil to power the farm machinery and trucks, but the arable land whose topsoil is eroding away due to the very practices that squeeze so much food out of each and every acre. We have to try something different before we are forced to do so by the constraint of our limited resources.