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Savants, gardeners and happiness
Bertrand Russell, Wordsmith
I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.
-Bertrand Russell, philosopher, mathematician, and author (1872-1970)
(12 December 2007)
Tip of the hat to John R. of Master Gardeners.
Oxford Word Of The Year: Locavore
OUPblog, Oxford University Press
t’s that time of the year again. It is finally starting to get cold (if you are worried about the global warming maybe you should become carbon-neutral) and the New Oxford American Dictionary is preparing for the holidays by making its biggest announcement of the year. The 2007 Word of the Year is (drum-roll please) locavore.
The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.
The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.
“The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”
“Locavore” was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.” However it’s spelled, it’s a word to watch.
(12 November 2007)
If it’s fresh and local, is it always greener?
Andrew Martin, New York Times
I’VE been feeling pretty smug lately about zipping over to the farmers’ market or the local Whole Foods for some New York apples or New Jersey spinach and ferrying it home in my reusable grocery bags.
Take that, petrochemical cabal!
I’m not the only one feeling so righteous. Unless you have been stuck in the processed-food aisles of your local grocery store for the last couple of years, you have probably noticed that local food is all the rage.
… But now comes a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, who have started asking provocative questions about the carbon footprint of food. Those questions threaten to undermine some of the feel-good locavore story line, not to mention my weekend forays for produce. (A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact of human activities on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced.)
While the research is not yet complete, Tom Tomich, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, said the fact that something is local doesn’t necessarily mean that it is better, environmentally speaking.
The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.
Consider strawberries. If mass producers of strawberries ship their product to Chicago by truck, the fuel cost of transporting each carton of strawberries is relatively small, since it is tucked into the back along with thousands of others.
But if a farmer sells his strawberries at local farmers’ markets in California, he ferries a much smaller amount by pickup truck to each individual market. Which one is better for the environment?
Mr. Tomich said a strawberry distributor did the math on the back of an envelope and concluded that the Chicago-bound berries used less energy for transport. Maybe. Regardless, the story raises valid questions.
An Iowa State University study in 2003 found that most produce travels about 1,500 miles before it arrives in Iowa homes. But as the strawberry story suggests, some of it creates higher amounts of greenhouse gases than others. Transporting food by container ship or rail is relatively energy efficient. Shipping it by air or a 25-year-old pickup is not.
It gets stickier. If a low-carbon diet is your goal, Mr. Tomich suggests, it may be more effective to change your diet than to focus on eating local. After all, a plant-based diet tends to have a much smaller carbon footprint than a diet that includes meat.
(9 December 2007)
Eating + Ecology = Locavore
Mark Neuzil , MinnPost
The word “locavore,” which at first listen sounds like the name of a prescription drug, is the New Oxford American Dictionary 2007 word of the year. In reality, it is a noun defined as “a person who endeavors to eat only locally produced food.” Two San Francisco-area women came up with the term a couple of years ago in describing their notion of the 100-mile diet.
With nearly 50 farmers’ markets or co-ops in the region – and many of them have miles-away rules for sellers – the Twin Cities is no stranger to the local food movement.
…”The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press, on his blog. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”
Oxford won’t revise its dictionary until 2009, and it is not a sure bet that locavore (sometimes spelled localvore) will be included. This is the second year in a row that an environmentally tinged phrase has been word of the year: last year it was “carbon neutral.”
Some of the runners-up in the 2007 competition show the influence of an environmental consciousness on the language: “colony collapse disorder” (the unexplained disappearance of honeybees from their hives) and “upcycling” (making use of waste materials).
(3 December 2007)
Related: Are you a locavore?.
Eco-friendly kangaroo farts could help global warming: scientists
AFP
Australian scientists are trying to give kangaroo-style stomachs to cattle and sheep in a bid to cut the emission of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming, researchers say.
Thanks to special bacteria in their stomachs, kangaroo flatulence contains no methane and scientists want to transfer that bacteria to cattle and sheep who emit large quantities of the harmful gas.
While the usual image of greenhouse gas pollution is a billowing smokestack pushing out carbon dioxide, livestock passing wind contribute a surprisingly high percentage of total emissions in some countries.
(5 December 2007)
Growing Food When The Oil Runs out
Peter Goodchild, Counter Currents
Most people in modern industrial society get their food mainly from supermarkets. As a result of declining hydrocarbon resources, however, it is unlikely that such food will always be available. The present world population is nearly 7 billion, but food supplies per capita have been shrinking for years. Food production will have to become more localized, and it will be necessary to reconsider less-advanced forms of technology that might be called “subsistence gardening.”
…Subsistence gardening might be defined as having three characteristics. In the first place, as much as possible it involves less-advanced technology; reliance on machinery and chemicals will not be possible without a global economic network to support them, whereas a shovel, a hoe, and a wheelbarrow (with a non-pneumatic tire!) are probably a once-only purchase.
Secondly, it is water-efficient. Without a municipal water supply or a motorized pump, water for agriculture will no longer be abundant.
Thirdly, subsistence gardening entails a largely vegetarian way of life: the growing of crops takes less land than raising animals (although some animals can make good use of less-fertile land), and it is less complicated.
(12 December 2007)
We Are What We Eat
Jamey Lionette, South End Press via AlterNet
Mass production of food is ruining our health, environment, and taste buds. How did this happen?
—
I am not a scientist, journalist, or other specialist. I sell food. I help run a family-owned and operated neighborhood market and café that buys and sells predominantly local, clean, and sustainable food. I cannot speak about the reality of our food supply around most of the world. I can only can speak of what is happening in the first world, where, unfortunately, only the privileged elite can choose to put real food on their dinner tables.
Lately it seems every mass media newspaper or magazine, from the New York Times to Rolling Stone, has an article digging into the true filth that most food in the U.S. really is. Some people are actually questioning mass produced and monoculture organic food. Even Time magazine proclaimed “Local Is the New Organic” on its cover. Everywhere I turn people tell me that there is a new wind in the U.S.; that people are now concerned about eating local, clean, and sustainable food. From my vantage point in the market, behind the counter, I just don’t see it. Yes, in Massachusetts there are more farms today than in the last 20 or so years, but fewer total acres than ever recorded. Farmers markets are becoming popular or perhaps trendy. Chain supermarkets are “listening to their customers” and capitalizing on cheap “organic” food. But the chain-supermarket owners are some of the same people who screwed up our food supply in the first place. How can we trust them?
Excerpt from “Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed” edited by Vandana Shiva (South End, 2007). More at original.
(11 December 2007)
