> Isn't this all a question of efficiency? And why in the world pick on
> fruit and vegetable growers for THEIR carbon footprint. That seems
> crazy to me.
I have to admit that this carbon footprint stuff has me a bit baffled. One of our new volunteers at the infoshop started talking about this the other day and my brain just froze up. I guess I'm now an old fashioned Midwest environmentalist.
I also couldn't tell you much about this new 100-mile diet thing, but I've adhered to something similar for the past 20 years, although not in some kind of puritan lifestyle. Actually, despite being a vegetarian, I eat alot of food that I don't know where it came from. But I do try to eat foods that are produced locally and in season.
I think this 100-mile diet movement is more important for reasons other than some carbon footprint. The most important thing is that is increases awareness about where our food comes from. I'm skeptical of anybody who tries to live this diet strictly, because so much of our food comes from long distances. I'm reminded of the fact that Kansas City used to be an important stop for freight trains carrying produce from California to New York and the East Coast. Why? Because before refrigeration equipment was invented, they had to put new blocks of ice into freight cars. I actually know somebody who used to do this back in the day.
Eating locally, if you try and do it as much as possible, is important economically in that it supports small family farms. Movements like communisty supported agriculture has been important in sustaining local farms, which are under pressure from suburbanization and big agriculture.
Out here in the Midwest we have this serious problem with factory farms and monocultural agriculture. Iowa is basically planted from border to border with corn, in order to produce feed for CAFOs and corn oil for the American diet. Some researchers recently found that the American body is practically a hybrid with corn, given how much corn oil we ingest from our diet.
Chuck
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