Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
While not everyone can afford a steady grocery-store organic diet, most of us can
afford one local meal a day. Experts say if once a week every American ate a meal
that was produced within one hundred miles of his or her home, the food industry
would be forced to change dramatically. Organic wouldn't bust the budget, it would
be normal. Start however you can. Get some cheap local oats for oatmeal at the farm-
ers' market, and you've just eaten a breakfast that can change the world.
Unfortunately, most people don't want to think about where their food comes
from. They don't care about local farmers. They don't want to buy healthier meat for
more money and eat less of it. They don't process how recalls of poisoned peanut but-
ter and salmonella outbreaks relate to their buying habits. Life is complicated enough
and hard enough without having to think about where to buy food. But it really does
come down to consuming meat, eggs, and vegetables that won't make you sick—and
that also won't consume natural resources. If we are what we eat, let's be something
better.
A New Edible World
Get a few layers in the garden, and things gradually change. You'll notice your ideas
about food evolving as you progress from consumer to producer. It gets harder to pull
up to drive-thru windows and easier to cook at home. Food-shopping trips lead you to
farmers' markets instead of fluorescent-lit grocery aisles. Opt out of the normal route to
eggs, and suddenly other paths to homegrown and homemade foods reveal themselves
to you. Once I began collecting eggs from nests, I learned to bake piecrust, make cheese,
and grow my own pizza toppings in my organic garden—a feat I would have never con-
sidered before homegrown scrambled eggs were on the plate first.
Once you start picking up eggs off the lawn, you let the food chain into your life—and
you start wanting more and more. Soon tomato plants are yielding fruit where frilly an-
nuals used to bloom, raspberry plants supplant the perennial garden, and simmering to-
mato sauce on the stove and canning homemade jam become the norm. You might start
reading about dairy goats or learn to churn your own butter.
This may sound slightly ridiculous, but just wait and see. Chickens make any homemade
food adventure seem possible. Once you see how easy tending them is, you'll start plan-
ning for next spring's beehive or next fall's apple trees. Rabbits could be next, or ducks.
You'll have crossed over to the farming side of the road. Sustainability is the best kind
of addiction—one that doesn't require weekly meetings to overcome.
