Food

Energy Factors Methods of Production Regional Food Seasonal Food Composting

Food may seem a small player next to the major emitters like coal burning power stations. However according to one paper which is the first link on the side panel. The CO2 equivalent emission due to animal livestock production dwarfs the contribution of electicity production in terms of megatonnes of CO2 equiv and is nearly equal to electicity and vehicle usage combined.
If you have visited the energy page before coming here, you will see I am repeating myself. This is partly because I was so staggered by these figures but also because it highlights for me, that if I wish to make a major change in my behaviour to limit my contribution to CO2 emissions it would be through me giving up animal products totally. I already did this with meat itself about 8 years ago, but I still eat butter, milk, eggs, cheese and cream. This is my challenge.

How we produce our food, vegetable or mineral has a bearing on the environment. Organic, Biodynamic and Permaculture means aim to minimise fossil fuel inputs in terms of fertiliser, weedicides and insecticides, which in fairness GM crops also claim to do with respect to insecticides too. Conventional agriculture has a high usage of all three and some claim that we will never feed the world without these inputs.

It has been claimed that as short a time as 20 years ago, most Australian communities got all their food supplies from within an average of 200km. Today that is said to be 2000km. This of course has huge climate significance.
A recent news story told of a scottish seafood company was stopping having a certain crustacean catch being processed in Scotland, but in stead air-freighting it to Malaysia for processing and then back again for markenting, because it was cheaper. No tripple bottom line accounting there.
Orchards and market gardens which might be border line in our community now could again become profitable and a community asset if a true carbon price is established and Californian cherries or Brazillian orange juice become priced out of the market.
A vibrant local industry means more jobs locally, means a happier and healthier community.
Such is my dream.

Seasonal food, a catch-cry of the Slow Food movement also urges us to eat what is in season in our own particular area. The world's great cuisines grew on the need to deal with the surpluses of the season.
Some may recoil in horror at giving up their winter tomatoes( and I know several friends who take their food seriously and insist on having tomatoes in Bathurst in winter - heathens).
Winters in Bathurst with potatoes, pumpkin, parsnips, cabbage, caulis, etc. need not be a cause for lament - to say so is a failure of the imagination.
Many say that eating food in season, means we are getting food which is fresher and this is a great boost to our health.

I have placed a section on composting here as I believe it to be the primal base to a good food production and healthier communities. It also allows us to deal with our organic waste at huge benefits to ourselves and stopping it going to landfill.
The Chinese have know of the benefits of compost for millenia. Modern western agriculture has come to rely on synthetic fertilisers applied to a dead soil as short sighted means to produce food at an economic benefit to them. Partly we as consumers are to blame. Our sense of taste is diminished over time when we eat tomatoes grown many miles away and can be almost shocked by the taste of a fresh tomatoe from our own garden in February in Bathurst. Many city dwellers may never have tasted such a delight. When that tomatoe is grown in soild enriched with compost which encourages the microbial life of the soil as well as supplying the essential mineral content, that taste is a small miracle in itself. I must stop now as the saliva on the keyboard is making it difficult to type.