Archive for the ‘Climate Change’ Category
The Discrepancies Between Eating Local and Eating Sustainable Food
There are a myriad of reasons for choosing to eat locally-farmed foods. Some prefer to grow their own sustenance to save on their grocery costs. Others buy locally in order to support their community’s economy. Others still (in addition to any of the aforementioned reasons) eat as a political act, and to combat climate change.
This article by Sarah DeWeerdt, one of our regular contributors, delves deeper into how local food choices fit in with a sustainable lifestyle. She grapples with the nebulous definition of local, and explains that the mere miles from farm to plate don’t account for the entire carbon footprint of our meals. Other aspects to take into consideration when calculating the true cost of food include the mode of transportation, the growing methods, quantity of water, amount of electricity used, and where that particular food product resides on the food chain.
In the end, she concludes that local food is not inherently the greener option. “But look at the question from the opposite direction: if you’re a consumer interested in greener food, the local food economy is currently a good place to find it.”
Read the full article by Sarah on the Worldwatch Institute website.
Smaller Animals: The Sustainable Meat Option
When I was younger, deciding on dinner usually revolved around the question: “Pork, beef, chicken or fish?” Not only did this imply that meat was the main focus of the meal, it also offered a fairly limited selection. The variety of edible meat out there expands far beyond these four options. However, I assume this is a pretty typical situation for most American families. (Except some may not throw fish into the mix.) And many grocery stores don’t offer much more than that, unless, of course, it’s nearing Thanksgiving and the Butterballs roll out into the freezer aisles for a couple weeks. More…
Seattle Seeks to Reduce Food System’s Impact on Climate Change
In June, City Councilmember Mike O’Brien invited attendees of the Seattle Good Food Network meeting to collaborate with community organizations and residents to develop a set of recommendations on what Seattle should be doing to continue on the path towards carbon neutrality within the food system sector.
Earlier this year, the Seattle City Council announced carbon neutrality as one of its sixteen Council priorities. This commitment builds on Seattle’s history of environmental leadership, including efforts in 2000 to create the first carbon neutral electric utility, and the 2005 effort to get cities across the nation to commit to meet the Kyoto Protocol targets for greenhouse gas reduction and Seattle’s Climate Action Plan. To learn more about the Seattle Carbon Neutrality Initiative, click here. More…
TDR Programs: Protecting Rural Farmland to Supply Food for Urbanites
Though there’s some debate about whether local food is better for the environment, I think it’s safe to say that all else equal (farm practices, mode of transportation, amount/type of packaging, etc.), a food product traveling 50 miles as opposed to 1500 miles is responsible for less greenhouse gas emissions. Preserving and promoting local food has many other benefits as well, such as increased transparency of the food supply as consumers can visit the farms their food comes from and chat with the farmers. For these reasons and many more, it is important that we protect local agricultural land. More…
Fighting for Sustainable Food One Mouth At A Time
Marra Farm harvest, photo by Steve Tracy
The following is an article from the Civil Eats blog by Helene York who is responsible for enforcing the purchasing policy of food service company Bon Appetit. Not only must she make the difficult decisions about what “sustainable food” actually is, she also has to defend that position tooth-and-nail against skeptics and at least one of the company’s gourmet chefs who has an affinity for bluefin tuna (a fish population that’s rapidly spiraling into extinction).
Bon Appetit’s stringent purchasing policy and campaign for low-carbon diets demonstrates the company’s commitment to sustainable food. And those decisions matter. Feeding thousands per day, the company is helping consumers make more responsible choices. Just imagine what would happen if other large food suppliers held the same standards and what impact that would have on our food system. More…
Tips on Reducing Food Waste
As mentioned in an earlier post, when food is wasted, so is energy. By making the best use of your foodstuffs, you could be reducing the more than 90 billion pounds of food tossed in the trash every year, which uses up to 4 percent of all U.S. oil and more than 25 percent of our fresh water to produce and transport to consumers.
Sometimes it’s hard to eat a fresh, “mostly plant“-based diet without wasting food along the way because, unlike burgers from fast food joints, real food spoils. So here are some tips to help you prevent perfectly good food from going bad:
- Draft a menu – Plan what your family will eat for the week. Focus first on ingredients you already have in the house that are getting close to their expiration dates, and buy the ingredients you need to turn it into dinner.
- Make a grocery list – Making a list while you’re at home will help ensure you don’t buy what you already have lurking in the back of the pantry. And sticking to a list ensures you won’t spend extra on impulse purchases that may not be on the menu that week. More…
Social Change and the Food Movement
From Grist, here are some thought-provoking comments from food journalist Michael Pollan. Do you agree with Pollan that “The health care crisis probably cannot be addressed without addressing the catastrophe of the American diet, and that diet is the direct (even if unintended) result of the way that our agriculture and food industries have been organized.” As for climate, Pollan states that “It will be difficult if not impossible to address the issue of climate change without reforming the food system.” What do you think? More…
Is This Compostable??
Not only does it take energy and resources to create the boxes, containers and plastic wraps that cover our food, packaging also contributes to climate change when it breaks down in landfills. Composting diverts this food-related waste from the landfills, and turns it into a new product that can be used to nourish crops, thereby closing the food cycle and preventing greenhouse gas emissions.
Seattle residents are able to put their food waste (vegetable and meat scraps, dairy products, pizza boxes, etc.) out on the curb for collection for Cedar Grove to compost, and last July restaurants were required to provide compostable to-go containers. Coffee shops now pour iced lattes into clear containers made of corn, not plastic. More…
The Bounty of Biosolids: The Responsible Choice
No fertilizer needed here. Spinach, herbs, lettuce and radishes growing in one of my veggie boxes using biosolids compost.
In the last few weeks several people have come to me asking about the safety of biosolids-use in their home gardens, and moreover, have asked why I advocate the use of biosolids. In short, biosolids composts are safe, highly-regulated, sustainable, climate-friendly products, that your plants will LOVE. They are high in nutrients, support healthy soil microbial communities, and improve the tilth (physical attributes) of soil. Farmers around the world, including US farmers, have known this for ages.
This is the last of a series that will hopefully shed some light on the biosolids controversy. (See the first and second ones.) More…
The Nitty Gritty of Seattle’s Urban Ag Code Changes
Marra Farm Harvest, Photo by Steve Tracy
Seattle City Council unanimously voted to pass the urban agriculture land use code amendments yesterday (with the exception of Councilmember Jean Godden who was not present when the vote took place). These amendments were drafted in response to the Local Food Action Initiative’s call on the Department of Planning and Development (DPD) to find ways to promote growing food in the city.
Throughout the process, the largest debate on these code amendments swirled around chickens. At first, it was proposed that roosters be banned in the city. But an appearance by a local urban farmer, her children and her rooster at a council meeting seemed to sway councilmembers to drop that part of the proposed legislation. (Council President Richard Conlin and Councilmember Mike O’Brien seemed to be convinced that the problems some roosters present were covered by the noise ordinance.) More…
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