Eating Oil
No, the title of this post is not about that clunker of a car in your driveway, nor the greasy french fries you had for lunch yesterday. It is about the actual good stuff you put in your mouth every day that you might have purchased at the local farmers market.
A community with a local farmers market is a stepping stone on the path to community sustainability. In addition to the opportunity markets provide for social interaction, they offer excellent sources of food diversity, nutrition, and local employment. I especially value them because locally grown food generally requires less energy than imported food.
Juxtapose the status of farmers markets in your community with the statistic that 90% of the food consumed in Illinois is imported. Illinoisans spend millions of dollars for food and most of that leaves the local economy. An enormous portion of the family food bill is actually for the fuel to transport food to market. When you eat “foreign food” you are essentially eating the oil needed to get it to you.
A benefit of farmers markets is the savings they create in energy consumption. One way to measure that benefit is the ratio of energy outputs (the energy content of a food product) - to the energy inputs needed to produce, package and transport the food. Does it make sense to consume 127 calories of fuel to deliver 1 calorie of food? That is the energy ratio to ship iceberg lettuce to Great Britain. Where are the origins of your last banana, head of lettuce, pint of strawberries, and salmon steak?
With the coming of Peak Oil Illinois needs to do everything it can to transition to locally grown food sources.
The transition must begin now. Before the Illinois legislature is House Bill 1300 - The Illinois Food, Farms, and Jobs Act of 2007. HB 1300 proposes to:
A community with a local farmers market is a stepping stone on the path to community sustainability. In addition to the opportunity markets provide for social interaction, they offer excellent sources of food diversity, nutrition, and local employment. I especially value them because locally grown food generally requires less energy than imported food.
Juxtapose the status of farmers markets in your community with the statistic that 90% of the food consumed in Illinois is imported. Illinoisans spend millions of dollars for food and most of that leaves the local economy. An enormous portion of the family food bill is actually for the fuel to transport food to market. When you eat “foreign food” you are essentially eating the oil needed to get it to you.
“Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase.In a multitude of ways locally grown and consumed food is the benchmark of a sustainable community.
Moreover, at a time when we should be making massive cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in order to reduce the threat posed by climate change, the food system is lengthening its supply chains and increasing emissions to the point where it is a significant contributor to global warming.” (source)
A benefit of farmers markets is the savings they create in energy consumption. One way to measure that benefit is the ratio of energy outputs (the energy content of a food product) - to the energy inputs needed to produce, package and transport the food. Does it make sense to consume 127 calories of fuel to deliver 1 calorie of food? That is the energy ratio to ship iceberg lettuce to Great Britain. Where are the origins of your last banana, head of lettuce, pint of strawberries, and salmon steak?
With the coming of Peak Oil Illinois needs to do everything it can to transition to locally grown food sources.
The transition must begin now. Before the Illinois legislature is House Bill 1300 - The Illinois Food, Farms, and Jobs Act of 2007. HB 1300 proposes to:
“assemble a task force from diverse Illinois constituencies that are necessary to construct and maintain a complete in-state food system for the production, processing, storage, distribution, sale, and preparation of local and organic foods.
The Task Force’s objective is to identify barriers to Illinois creating locally grown and organic food system. The legislation calls for:
- Farmer training and development
- Helping farmers to transition to locally grown foods, USDA organic, and specialty crop production
- Improving consumer access to fresh and affordable Illinois-grown foods in both rural and urban communities (farmers markets, roadside stands, and new and existing groceries)
- Removing barriers separating landowners, farmers, businesses, and consumers desiring to participate in local and organic food networks
- Constructing a local food infrastructure (processing, storage, and distribution)
- Developing new food and agriculture-related businesses, such as on-farm processing, micro-markets, incubator kitchens, and marketing and communications businesses
- Research into best practices and opportunities for local and organic food production and handling.”
Communities should support such legislation as part of The Ultimate Answer.
1 comment:
As we're moving back to local food production, we should keep in mind some of the better reasons we originally moved away from local food production. For example, there are practical limits to which foods can be grown in certain areas of the world, and dependency on fewer food sources makes us more susceptible to famine. We're lucky in Illinois to have a climate and soil that can support a wide variety of crops, but peak oil will effect New Mexico just as much as Illinois. Local food production is great for Illinois, but if we want to maintain the same stability in our food supply we enjoy today, it seems we'll need to make food transportation more efficient in addition to making it less necessary.
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