Great Green Idea: Green Eating: A Green Way to Get Greens for the Dinner Table

A Green Way to Get Greens for the Dinner Table

By Jillian Fellows

For years now, people have been trying to make adjustments in their lives to lead a greener existence. Recycling is now the accepted standard and buying organic food products is the popular thing to do. But buying organic is perhaps not the green thing to do, not if it's being distributed by industrial agriculture firms and sold in giant supermarket chains that is.

The greener choice is to buy produce grown and sold locally. There are a number of benefits to picking up a bushel of apples from a farmers market rather than at the nearest superstore, and the benefits are not just to the environment.

An obvious reason for choosing locally grown produce is that it tastes better. Want to know why? Because it's fresh. The reason it's so fresh? The product's travel time has been significantly shortened. Mandarin oranges flown from China means that that food has been sitting in an airplane or in factories for days and weeks before it finds its way to a store shelf. Rich Pirog of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture reports that the average fresh food item travels 1,500 miles to get to the store. An orange grown locally only has the travel time from the groves to your hands.

Shorter travel time not only improves the freshness and taste, it also cuts down on fuel emissions. Shipping food across the country and across the world takes fuel, and the waste from that fuel creates greenhouse gases, which contribute to climate change. If you thought buying organic products from a large retailer would counteract the environmental consequences of transporting the food, think again. In a March 2005 study by the Journal Food Policy, it was found that the miles that organic food travels creates environmental damage that outweighs the benefit of buying organic. Industrial food production is dependent on fossil fuels. One-fifth of all petroleum used in the U.S. is used in agriculture. The less distance food has to travel, the less fuel is needed to transport it.

Buying locally grown food is not only easy on the taste buds and the planet, but the wallet as well. Yes, supermarkets may have extremely low prices and buying local from independent growers can be expensive but buying local means buying direct from the farmer. That money doesn't leave the community, the farmer re-invests it. In a 2009 Time magazine article New Economics Foundation researcher David Boyle said, "Money is like blood. It needs to keep moving to keep the economy going." Boyle goes on to say that when people spend money at non-locally owned businesses, "it flows out, like a wound."

Other benefits to the community from buying locally are maintaining the use of land for farming, keeping development in check while preserving open space. When you buy local, open spaces, such as farms and pastures, have an economic reason to stay operating. Buying local also promotes variety in products. Because locally grown food has a shorter shelf life and does not have to travel far, farmers have the opportunity to grow and sell crops that aren't available in supermarkets because they aren't name brand products. The variety of crops preserves a wider agricultural gene pool, which is important for long-term food production.

The final benefit of buying local is perhaps the most important. The food is safer. For every E. coli or salmonella outbreak, the culprit is usually a big agricultural firm with very little accountability. By cutting out the middlemen in processing, packaging, and shipping you cut down on the chance of the food being contaminated. Small, independent farmers are also far less aggressive than their big business counterparts in chemical use and if you buy from a farmer practicing sustainable, organic farming, there are no chemicals at all. It's important to know where your food comes from, what's in it, and how it was grown. That's how to keep your family safe when they sit down at the dinner table.

Now, all of this is well and good, but let's be serious. Expectations of people fleeing in droves from big name stores and flooding farmers markets are not realistic. People are not going to change their habits overnight. Small steps are the key to gradual change. When grocery shopping, try and seek out local markets, products that have very little packaging, are grown locally, and is in season. Making these little changes can lead to a truly green way of eating and have a very big impact on your community.