Green Options

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

More than four million acres of American farmland have already been dedicated to organic farming, helping our health and our future. That’s four million acres farmed without the use of toxic pesticides or other toxic chemicals; four million acres nurtured with both ancient and modern techniques that are in balance with nature, helping to reduce the production of greenhouse gasses and reduce the threat of global warming.

Growing our foods organically has proven to be one of the hottest, fastest-growing movements of the twenty-first century. When Congress passed the Organic Foods Production Act in 1990, there were fewer than one million acres of organic farmland. In just twelve years, by 2002, that figure had doubled. Then the pace of progress picked up. Within just three more years, the amount of organic farmland doubled again. In 2005, we saw, for the first time, certified organic farmland in all fifty states. There has been exceptional progress, but we need to do more.

If organic cropland continues to double—and it can!—we can expect to see a revitalization and renewal of our streams and our soil as we build a smart, sustainable future. I can remember drinking stream water in our national parks when I was a child. I can remember catching and eating fish from our local streams. Today, all of the streams surveyed by the U.S. Geological Survey and more than 90 percent of fish tested in farming regions are polluted with pesticides.

The jury is in: the most sustainable way to feed yourself is to grow your own food.

There are many factors considered when evaluating food sustainability.  The primary concern is: what is the ratio between how much land is used, and how many calories are produced?  

In asking this question, we can immediately eliminate meat from our sustainable diets.  Pigs and cows are extraordinarily “inefficient converters of grain energy to calories,” as put by the executive director of Steel City Biofuels, speaking generally about fuel efficiency.  In her presentation about Organic Farming during Pittsburgh’s Farm to Table Conference 2008, Dr. Patricia DeMarco, executive director of the Rachel Carson Homestead, noted that raising meat in the U.S. comprises 79% of all agricultural resource usage.  While the health benefits of going vegan will be endlessly debated, at least doing so will be much more healthful for our environment.

The next question naturally becomes: how can we grow food in a way that nourishes the soil, produces a vast yield in a little space, and is maintained by nature?

Surprisingly, all of the above is easy to do, if you’re using the right methods.  John Jeavon’s book “How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible” describes the biointensive method: growing food tightly together in ways that foster symbiotic relationships between plants, like those that would organically occur in nature.  For instance, marigolds ward off common insect pests for their companion plants, tomatoes.  But biointensive gardening is more than just knowing companion plant lists and spacing maps.

Lose ten pounds in just three weeks!

What does it take to get results like that? Trying to live in harmony with the Earth!

Today marks the 24th day I have attempted to live environmentally sustainably. I sleep in a used tent, bike anywhere I want to go, volunteer biweekly at Landslide Community Farm, and eat wild edible greens, farmer’s market fare, and dumpster-dived goods.

When my parents learned that I was going to try such an “extreme” experiment as trying to live 100% sustainably in urban Pittsburgh, they did not try to dissuade me. However, I began receiving e-mails and calls from them, saying: Did I go to the doctor yet for my poison ivy? Am I checking for ticks regularly? How about I don’t eat food out of dumpsters? While all good-natured questions, they expressed a typical parental concern that the situation I am currently in, while important, actually jeopardizes my health.

Despite intense debate surrounding the growing global food crises, the European Union today defended expanding the use of biofuels in all 27 member countries. Part of the EU’s climate change package, the current proposal sets a target of meeting 10% of transportation fuel with biofuels by 2020.

As I reported last week, Europe’s EPA advised suspending the EU’s biofuel targets until a comprehensive environmental analysis could be completed. Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas, said no way is that going to happen:

“You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other objectives,” meaning that changing biofuels targets could lead to questioning the entire climate change package.

Adding to the ongoing discussion about biofuels affecting worldwide food prices (see Biodiesel Is Raising Food Prices), NPR’s Morning Addition briefly interviewed World Bank President Robert Zoellick last Friday.

Zoellick called it a “perfect storm of things coming together…” and listed 7 different issues contributing to the increasing cost of food, which led to rioting in Haiti and Egypt last week, along with a general strike in Burkina Faso:

So, when Michael Pollan set forth his short mantra on food, what did it all actually mean when you go to fill your dinner plate? For starters, we eat too much in general, and too much of the wrong things. Following are some very specific guidelines on actual portion sizes, and tips on eating right without dieting. I hate dieting.

First, some general “gut checks” you should keep in mind daily:

• How many servings of each type of food we should eat each day
• All the different colors and kinds of veggies, and if you are eating a variety
• Small meals and healthy snacks work best for moderating blood glucose levels
• When is best to eat, and what combinations of foods are best for you (eating proteins with carbs to balance sugars for diabetics, for example)
• The true size of a portion, and sticking to it
• The tremendous amount of healthy food you can eat for the same amount of calories as a small bit of unhealthy food

We all know buying fresh is best, but when it comes to shopping for fresh produce, it is not always easiest. In fact, it is a little tricky and can be time consuming. Here are a few of our secrets to shopping smart for the fresh stuff in the produce aisle.

Buy produce that is in season: Foods that are in season are at the peak of freshness, flavor and affordability. If you don’t know if an item is in season, ask the producer manager.

Buy locally grown produce: Even the big grocery stores buy local produce, and you can also buy local produce at the farmer’s market or straight from the farm. Depending on where you live, transportation from the farm to the market takes quite a long time and often does the most damage to produce.

My hubby has long had a taste for sparkling waters. Considering that the average 12 oz soda has 150 calories, 10-15 grams of sugar/high fructose corn syrup and drinking one can a day can lead to a 15-pound yearly weight gain (and diet soda isn’t much better) …I’m glad he likes the clear, slightly lemony stuff.

However, I always feel a pang of  ’green guilt,’ as I dutifully return the plastic bottles for recycling.  I had to consider that the plastic was made from petroleum, the bottles had to be shipped and it was all for an unneccessary food item. I found a brand of bubbly in glass containers, but the travel costs of our simple treat still nagged me.

My sister solved my dilemma with the best Christmas present ever! I am loving our new Soda Club Fountain Jet! Our starter kit came with soda flavors to add, but we’ve been happy with our bubbles and a squeeze of lemon or lime.

Image Credit: USDA/Wikimedia CommonsAmericans eat a lot of corn. Sure there's cooked corn and corn chips and corn flakes and cornbread and the myriad other varieties found in the average American market. And, with the arrival of summer, there is now corn-on-the-cob (though here in the upper midwest: the sweet corn at the local supermarket right now is trucked in from Florida, not locally grown).

But in addition

[...]

A lot has been written recently about eating "locally." It’s an interesting concept; eating food that doesn’t have to travel too far, thereby saving energy. But once again, the Man has set himself up to feel good about something that actually harms our fragile globorb. These “locavores” eat foods from within 100 miles of where they live, as if a truck driving 100 miles doesn’t spew tons of carbon into our atmosphere.

I’m [...]