Alonso |1 Christina Alonso L&CS 122 Monica Fitzgerald Final Research Paper May 19, 2011 Eating Locally Grown Organic Food

One of the main concerns Americans have today is, “what should we eat?” This is sometimes a question of calories, health, a question of money and worth, a question of taste, and usually a question of quickness and speed. While we usually ask ourselves what we feel like eating, how much it costs and how long it takes to make, we rarely ask ourselves where this food came from, what it took to get it to the grocery store, what pesticides it has on it, or whether or not it is good for us. These however, are questions we need to be asking ourselves regularly. Many problems stem from not knowing where our food comes from, including harming the environment by eating produce grown in distant countries, neglecting our local economy, eating pesticides, and not having a connection to land or food. Being smart consumers and knowing where our food comes from will not only benefit our own health, but our environment and our economy as well. Buying organic food keeps our bodies free of toxic pesticides that we should not be ingesting because they carry potential dangers for our bodies. Buying foods locally grown cuts the negative environmental factors of pollution in shipping and supports our local farmers and local economy. It is our responsibility to be smarter consumers and think twice before we pick up produce at the local super market.

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Part I: Problems and Issues To understand the impact of non-locally grown produce items, we need to first understand where the majority of our food comes from. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture provides meticulous answers for this question. From their website I found that a majority of the fruits and vegetables in our supermarkets and restaurants come from all around the world. For example, when looking at the shipment of bananas alone, there was 87,985,000 pounds of bananas shipped from Hawaii in the year 2007 alone, and another 24,055,000 pounds shipped from Guatemala. Many other products are the same in that they do not come from California and are therefore shipped from distant places as far as Florida, Mexico, Puerto Rico, even Turkey and Italy (“Where do your…”). The United States Department of Agriculture provides records and charts of shipments, exports and imports made in the year 2007. Looking at these charts we can see that tomatoes are the most popular commodity shipped and a majority of all commodities are shipped by air or boat. While some items are shipped within our country, and some are actually grown in California, a majority of them are shipped from incredibly distant places (“Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Shipment”). This as we will see, is a problem for both our local economies and for our environment.

Not only food, but ninety percent of our world’s goods are shipped by sea, which is dangerous to our environment as it emits double the carbon dioxide emissions as cargo planes do. Despite the negative effects, popularity of shipping is unfortunately growing. This in turn directly impacts our environment and the prevalence of global warming. Emissions from

Alonso |3 shipping range between 600 and 800 million tons, and this type of emission is not covered under the Kyoto Protocol (which means nothing is being done to lessen its negative effects). If we as Americans were able to supply our own food and not ship food from thousands of miles away, we could save 800 million tons of CO2 emissions (Vidal). According to the Global Forum on Transport and Environment, “Recent studies indicate that the emission of CO2, NOx and SO2 by ship corresponds to about 2-3%, 10-15% and 4-9% of the global anthropogenic emissions, respectively” (Endreson). This is a great deal of harmful emissions that we can at least partially prevent with simple changes to where we are growing and getting our products from. It was also found that “Direct emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2 and small amounts of N2O and CH4) change the radiative balance of the atmosphere” so even these seeming smaller amount of emissions have a huge negative impact on the environment around us (Endreson). These are significant numbers and even if we were to cut emissions in half by purchasing in season foods from the United States, it would make a huge difference in emissions and global warming. Global warming does not only effect the environment, it in turn affects us as we try to live in a clean, safe world. The numerous effects of global warming are well known, and if we do not want to be depleted by the severe weather and rising sea levels, we need to act now. This is something to think about next time you are buying produce at the grocery store.

Not only are shipping costs of non-local foods great, the costs to the economy are also severe. By purchasing foods in supermarkets that are shipped from out of the country, we are not supporting our local farmers or our local economy. One article from Wild Oats, a market of natural foods and farmer’s markets, breaks down where our money ends up and shows that “A

Alonso |4 dollar spent at a locally owned store is usually spent 6 to 15 times before it leaves the community. From $1.00, you create $5.00 to $14.00 in value within that community. Spend $1.00 at a national chain store, and 80% of it leaves town immediately” (“Why Shop Local?”). With the large economic crisis we are facing now in 2011 we should be constantly concerned with our local economy and ways to better it and get it “back up and running”. One great way to do this is buying local, starting with our food!

There are also many disadvantages and even dangers of buying foods that are not only not grown locally, but that are not organic. The common definition of an organic food is one that is “raised, grown, and processed without the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides, antibiotics or hormones” (Beattie, 2009). Each one of these pesticides is designed to alter the natural state of the grown fruit or vegetable, kill bugs that try to eat it, and/or keep the product fresher for longer. However, these are not at all healthy for the human body, and are in fact partial cause to the great deal of health issues we carry today. Leanne Beattie, a health and wellness writer, discusses the benefits of buying organic foods and the dangers of non-organic.

Non-organic foods lack flavonoids, which are the plant’s natural

defense against disease that actually contain high amounts of antioxidants and help us fight diseases. They lack a great deal of vitamins as well. Scientists have proven that exposure to toxins and pesticides directly impacts our health and have been linked to breast cancer, hormone imbalance, uterine cancer and asthma.

Darcy Bonfils adds to this that “scientists have shown

that children age 5 and under ingest an average of eight pesticides a day” (Bonfils 2011). It is obvious these pesticides are a serious problem and we should avoid them as much as possible.

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However, as Helena Norberg-Hodge describes in her article, buying organic produce can also be a problem in some cases if it is transported long distances and not grown locally. As demand for organic foods has recently increased, a high percentage of our foods are imported, meaning even though they are organic, they are destructive to the environment. Buying organic food used to mean that you really were supporting the small diversified farms, but that has changed today. Organic today has changed to mean we are actually now supporting many large companies and buy foods incorrectly labeled “organic.”

So now buying organic is not

necessarily as good as we all think it to be as “it doesn’t tackle the really big issue: the global economy itself” and the growing environmental concerns. But don’t give up on buying organic just yet, there is a solution.

Part II: Proposed Solutions The proposed solution to each one of these problems is simply to buy produce that is locally grown and organic, such as at a Farmer’s Market. This is a systemic solution that will last us long term as there are only benefits to Farmer’s Markets seen thus far.

In order to address the negative environmental impacts of excessive shipping of produce from distant countries, we simply need to buy our produce from local markets as much as possible. The best way to do this is through Farmer’s Markets. The harmful impacts to our economy from buying products from outside sources can be addressed by purchasing our food from local farmers as well. Benefits to choosing local in general include: cutting CO2 and other

Alonso |6 greenhouse gas emissions that harm our air, supporting local farmers, and investing in local communities. One way to buy locally is to purchase in season locally grown produce in stores, but even better, we can purchase all of our produce from farmers markets. Helena NorbergHodge suggests this as the best solution as well. She states that “If we want to tackle all this, far more can be achieved through campaigns to buy locally grown food from shops, farmer’s markets or directly from farmers, than we can ever hope for through buying from a supermarket’s range of organic vegetables” (Norberg-Hodge, 2000). She also explains how these campaigns to buy local and organic would benefit us in many other ways including reducing our chemical use, cutting packaging, processing and transport of food, and strengthen our local communities and economies. As we can see there are numerous benefits to consider, too many to not place buying local, organic produce as a priority (Norberg-Hodge, 2000).

Using estimates from 2002, it was found that farmers markets have grown seventy nine percent since 1994 and over 3 million people visit a farmers market each week (“Wild Oats”). Farmer’s markets have been growing due to the available public information on their benefits and it is necessary that they continue to grow. From the earlier seen Wild Oats research on where our money winds up, we can see that from buying locally grown food from at our farmers markets, almost all of our money will be recycled back through our own community. This can greatly benefit our current economic situation, so it seems imperative that the option be considered by more and more people.

Alonso |7 According to a journal written by Darcy Bonfils, buying organic is much better for us for and for our environment. By buying organic foods we lower the amount of toxic pesticides we are exposed to that can lead to cancers, neurological damage, birth defects, altering of hormones and many more harmful diseases. This betters our own health. We are helping our environment by aiding the fight of global warming as well because “organic agriculture binds 1000 lbs of carbon per acre, whereas conventional agriculture increases carbon in the atmosphere” (Bonfils, 2011). The article from Leanne Beattie, a health and fitness writer, concludes with seven solutions or reasons to buy organic. They include: protect the health of children, look after your own health, safeguard the health of farm workers, preserve the soil, protect the water from pesticides, conserve resources and fight global warming. Again, with all of the benefits, we need to spread the word and make farmer’s markets the number one place to buy produce for everyone.

Part III: Conclusion and Connections Farmers markets may be considered ineffective in some cases because of the commonly higher prices of their produce. Bonfils points out that organic food can sometimes cost forty or fifty percent more than non-organic, but that this price difference is worth it because of the harsh dangers pesticides present to us and our environment. For those who cannot afford the higher prices, Michelle Obama has recently started a campaign to make farmer’s markets more affordable. Already, a great majority of farmer’s markets are accepting food stamps because of this movement.

Alonso |8 We need to consider both organic and locally grown produce as equally as important and equally as necessary. As Helena Norberg-Hodge stated, “Organic food is all very well, but if it’s not local, it’s still just part of the problem” (Norberg-Hodge). As Michael Pollen proves over and over again in his book Omnivore’s Dilemma, it is important that we know where exactly our food is coming from and what we are putting into our bodies. When we pick up any common vegetable or fruit at the store we are most likely eating produce that is shipped from some distant country, we do not know where. We don’t know what pesticides may have been sprayed on it that may harm us if we are not careful, nor do we know what pollutants were emitted into the air while it was being transported. Whether we have an anthropocentric ethic and only care about buying organic because it will benefit our own health, or a biocentric ethic and care more about the land we are effecting and the environment we are harming, something needs to be done. I strongly believe that if we focus both on buying local and organic foods, we can solve so many problems and really make a difference in the world we live in.

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Works Cited Beatte, Leanne. “Why Go Organic?” Academic OneFile. Web. 28 April 2011. Bonfils, Darcy. “Organic vs. Nonorganic: What Fruits and Veggies Should You Buy?” ABCNews.com. 8 April, 2011. Web. 2 May 2011. “Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Shipments.” USDA. Compiled by Long, Terry C. 2007 http://www.ams.usda.gov/AMSv1.0/getfile?dDocName=STELPRDC5067296 Endresen, Oyvind and Eide, Magnus. “The Environmental Impacts of Increased Maritime Shipping.” Global Forum on Transport and Environment in a Globalising World. Nov 2008. Web. Norberg-Hodge, Helena. "IS ORGANIC ENOUGH?" The Ecologist 30.7: 45. Academic OneFile. 2000. Web. 20 April 2011. Robinson, Kenneth L., Kathleen K. Robinson, Carlos Carpio, and David Hughes. "Linking sustainable agriculture and community development: the Lowcountry food bank's use of locally grown foods. " Community Development: Journal of the Community Development Society. 38.3 (Fall 2007): 77(13). Academic OneFile. 2 May 2011 Vidal, John. “Co2 Output from Shipping Twice as Much as Airlines.” The Guardian. March, 2007. Web. “Where do your Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Come From?” Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture. Web. 20 April 2011. “Why Shop Local.” Choose Local. 2010. Web. 3 May. 2011. "Wild Oats Urges Customers to 'Choose Local'." PR Newswire 17 July 2006. Academic OneFile. Web. 1 May 2011.