Great Green Idea: Green Gardening: Community Supported Agriculture: Reduce Your Impact on the Planet

Community Supported Agriculture: Reduce Your Impact on the Planet

The need to make changes in our lives as a way to reduce our burden on our overstressed planet is high in the minds of most these days. We know of obvious ways to help the environment such as recycling, using less energy, or even buying a hybrid or all-electric car. But what most of us don't think about is the food we eat and the impact that has not only on the environment, but even our own communities.

The cultivation, production, transportation, storage, and retail processes involved in getting our food from farm to table is one of the biggest stresses our environment faces. It is said that the average dinner has traveled over 5,000 miles to reach your plate. That is farther than a good number of us will travel in our lifetimes, and this is every single meal. Just think about the petrochemical inputs it took to grow the crops, the fuel it took to transport the crops to a processing facility, the energy used to then process the food, the additional fuel it takes to transport the product to its retail location, the energy used by the retail location to store and keep said product in ideal conditions, all before it finally reaches your dinner table.

There are more calories of energy used to produce our food than we can by consuming it. This is referred to as a net energy loss. This is unsustainable and just shows how inefficient, and in need of an overhaul, our food system is.

The above example is a way of showing how our international, whatever we want whenever we want it, real-time, on demand food network is slowly eating away at the core of our planet and emitting noxious greenhouse gases into our environment all the while. The international food market has not only hurt the planet, but it has hurt our nation's farmers. It is no longer an easy thing to run a family farm. You must compete with huge agri-business corporations, or farmers overseas who are willing to sell their product at rock bottom prices. But the cost of ever-necessary farm inputs, farmers are struggling to make ends meet without the need for huge bank loans to cover their initial expenses. This leaves them incredibly vulnerable, as if the season is a poor one, or prices on the crop they grow implode, they may not be able to repay their loans, and this could drive them not only out of business, but deep into debt.

Purchasing locally grown food, in season, is an excellent way to reduce your impact on the planet with regard to your diet, as well as to support your local economy, and local family farmers. Farmers Markets are popping up in more and more places around the country, making it ever easier for one gain access to fresh, quality, locally produced produce, meat, cheeses, and even processed products.

You can take this one step further by purchasing a "share" in a farm through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). The basic concept is that you purchase a certain share at the beginning of a growing season with a particular farmer. Throughout the growing season, each week you will receive a certain amount of produce from your farmer. Generally these shares are sold in "bushels" as this is the common unit of measurement for a farmer. Small families can purchase as small as a quarter share, or a larger family can purchase a full share or more.

This arrangement directly between farmer and consumer alleviates the farmers need to obtain costly loans to get their farm in place for the growing season. And believe it or not, you as a consumer are getting healthy, locally grown food at a very reasonable cost. When you work out the cost per pound of food over the growing season, you will see that you are saving immensely versus what you would pay at the grocery store for comparable, world traveled produce.

A good number of local farmers use no pesticides or other chemicals on their produce, even if they cannot afford the costly process of becoming a certified organic farm. You get high quality produce that changes with the season allowing you a taste of the place in which you reside. This food travels far fewer miles from far to plate and this reduces your impact on the environment greatly. By supporting a farmer and subscribing to a CSA, you are making a big statement that the environment, as well as the health of your local economy is of the utmost importance to you.