The Sustainable Future

Genetically modified food: Pros and cons

I've never been a big fan of the idea of GMO's (genetically modified organisms), but if I'm honest, I have to say that has been more of a knee-jerk opinion than a well-informed view.

I'm reading Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply right now, which is offering up a generous helping of the cons of GMO's. I wanted to start getting a better picture of what both sides of the argument are saying so I can develop a better-informed opinion, so I started doing some research.

Here are some of the articles I ran across with outlining the pros and cons of genetically modified food.

Genetically modified food: Pros and cons

GM Crops: The arguments pro and con

The Risks and Benefits of Genetically Modified Crops: A Multidisciplinary Perspective

Genetic engineering: The controversy

BBC: Food under the microscope

Genetically modified food: Pros and cons

Pros and cons of genetic engineering

The pros and cons of GM food

GM Products: Benefits and Controversies

Weighing Pros and Cons of Genetically Modified Crops in Africa

Pros, cons of modified food

The pros and cons of GE food

Pro-GM

GM benefits outweigh risks

Study finds benefits in GM crops

A report on genetically engineered crops

Monsanto video gallery

The Alliance for Better Foods

The benefits of GM crops

Anti-GM

Who benefits from GM crops?

Genetically engineered food

Genetically engineered (GE) food - safety problems

Bio-technology myths

Statements on the dangers of GM by scientists

Debunking the myths of genetic engineering in food crops

The risks of genetic engineering

Myths spread by the pro-GM, anti-organic movement

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Seasonal eating guide

If you're in the US and you want to try your hand at both eating local and eating food that's in season, here's a great seasonal eating guide on The Sustainable Table that maps out in-season produce by state.

Why eat local and in-season? As the site puts it...

By purchasing local foods in-season, you eliminate the environmental damage caused by shipping foods thousands of miles, your food dollar goes directly to the farmer, and your family will be able to enjoy the health benefits of eating fresh, unprocessed fruits and vegetables. Buying seasonal produce also provides an exciting opportunity to try new foods and to experiment with seasonal recipes. And it simply tastes better!

What's not to love about that?

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Which is better...organic or local?

Have you ever been at the grocery store and felt that little pang of guilt for buying those organic bananas from thousands of miles away? Would it be better to buy something from closer to home, even if it wasn't organic?

Sure, organic is better for you and better for the environment, but what about the fossil fuels burned up in transporting those organic bananas to your local grocery store? Does that offset the positive environmental impact?

If you've ever gone in circles thinking about questions like that, you'll find this article interesting. It takes on the question, which is better, organic or local?

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Vermiculture: Apartment composting with worms

One of the downsides of living in an apartment is a lack of yard space to compost food scraps. Well, fear not! All is not lost. All you need is a plastic bin, a drill, some shredded paper, and a bucketload of red wrigglers (that is, worms).

Add your food scraps and voila! In a matter of weeks you've got compost fit for a king's (or queen's) garden. Give it to your green thumb friends. Use it on your plants. Whatever you do with it, it's better than adding your food scraps to our ever-expanding landfills.

Here's an excellent video giving you a vermiculture how-to.

If you want to dig even deeper (pun intended, though probably not terribly funny), here are a couple articles for you to read:

Cheap and easy worm bin

Composting with red worms

Off the shelf worm bin (pdf file)

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US organic chocolate sales booming

Did you buy any organic chocolate last year? If so, you're part of a trend that saw organic chocolate sales soar.

Chocolate is the largest growing snack segment in the U.S. organic market, according to an industry study, with organic sales tallying a 49 percent increase in sales in 2006.

Not that there isn't still a lot of room to expand...

Organic chocolate sales totaled a still small $70.8 million fraction of the market in the year, according to a Euromonitor report cited by the Dagoba Organic Chocolate company, compared with total U.S. chocolate sales in 2006 of about $6 billion.

And here's an interesting factoid I couldn't resist including...

The average American consumes about 12 pounds of chocolate per year, said Cathy Strange, global chocolate buyer for Whole Foods Market Inc.

[via The Sustainable Table]

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Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) a growing trend

Community Supported Agriculture - or CSA - is a growing trend. You subscribe with a local farm, and each week you get a box o' goodies.

It can be a cardboard box overflowing with green onions, pea tendrils, lettuce, spinach, radishes, strawberries and rhubarb.

You can pick it up -- if it's not too heavy for you -- at the farm where it was raised. Or the farm can deliver it to you on a regular, usually weekly, schedule. You and other "subscribers" in the community prepay to be members and receive your "shares," thus sustaining the farm while it sustains you.

And if you're thinking about a CSA subscription, now's the time to get off the fence and do it.

...Farmers who offer CSA subscriptions, as they're called, need to plan their planting and distribution.

"It's time," says Don Kretschmann, whose Kretschmann Farm in Beaver County was one of the first hereabouts to offer CSA, in 1993.

Today he has "hundreds" of subscribers and says business has boomed, despite no advertising. "The huge change in the last three to five years is that people are suspicious of the normal sources of food, and they want to have as much knowledge and control over that as they possibly can. That's really taken off."

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Eat local: Food canning basics

A while back I was reading an article on eating locally year round. It pointed out that canning seasonally available food makes it available all year.

With that in mind, here's a web site with step by step basics on how to can various kinds of foods (the Canada option has temperatures in Celsius for those of you outside the US).

[via Green Trust]

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Organic food demand outstrips supply in US

In a good news / bad news situation, demand for organic food is greater than supply in the US, and  organic manufacturers are turning abroad for what they need.

America's appetite for organic food is so strong that supply just can't keep up with demand. Organic products still have only a tiny slice, about 2.5 percent, of the nation's food market. But the slice is expanding at a feverish pace.

Growth in sales of organic food has been 15 percent to 21 percent each year, compared with 2 percent to 4 percent for total food sales.

...The number of organic farms — an estimated 10,000 — is also increasing, but not fast enough. As a result, organic manufacturers are looking for ingredients outside the United States in places like Europe, Bolivia, Venezuela and South Africa.

It's good news, of course, that the demand is growing like that. Bad news, on the other hand, that some of that organic food needs to be transported thousands of miles to pick up the slack (not to mention the missed opportunity - it least in the short run - to support local small farms).

It also makes me a little wary that it might lead to more of a push on what organic actually means (easier standards = easier to meet the standards = more "organic" product on the market).

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Organic but eco-unfriendly

I typically buy organic apples when I go to the store.  Living in Washington state, I've always made the assumption that the apples I'm buying are from this neck of the woods. The other day I actually looked at the label I was peeling off the apple and much to my chagrin, I discovered it was from someplace in Latin America (I don't recall exactly where).

So here I am, a stone's throw from a major apple growing center - a couple hundred miles, tops - and I have to buy apples from maybe 5,000 miles away if I want them to be organic.

So the big question is, which is the lesser evil? Buying un-organic and reasonably local (in the global scheme of things), or going organic and burning through fossil fuels to get them here?

I'll probably buy organic just because of health considerations, but it still rubs me the wrong way that I have to choose to begin with.

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Proposed grass fed beef label

OK, set aside for a moment the fact that beef isn't a particularly sustainable food source to begin with, with the enormously lopsided ratio of energy required to produce it to actual food energy produced.

If people are going to eat it regardless (which, for the immediately foreseeable future, seems like a safe bet), doesn't it seem like the more sustainably it can be produced, the better?

Enter the proposed grass fed beef label currently under consideration by the USDA.

The Center for Rural Affairs along with the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and other organizations are urging the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) to approve the proposed rule requiring that animals certified as grass fed receive a minimum of 99 percent of their lifetime energy source from grass or forage. There are only 30 days left to make comments supporting the proposed standard.

If the issue hits a hot button for you, it is open for comment until August 10th.

The public is encouraged to voice support for this movement. For a sample comment letter those interested can go to www.msawg.org and review the action alert on the grass fed beef label. The letter may be adapted to add whatever other comments one may wish to make about the proposed standard.

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