Oops!

I forgot all about the fact that it was Blog Action two days ago and now I'm feeling guilty. But, as my mom has taught me, better late than never. (I'm proving that point extra well today, I overslept and got to work late.) So, in honor of being slow, I present the Slow Food Movement portion of Blog Action Day. What is Slow Food? Is it extra dumb cattle? Or a dim cucumber? According to Slow Food USA we are participating in the Slow Food Movement when we shorten the distance that our food travels to get to us. It's good, clean and fair food. By being informed about how our food is produced we are taking responsibility, not only for how our planet is used, but also for what goes into our bodies. We become a part of the production process, instead of mindlessly consuming our food. It's not just about the environment, but also about what we eat, for our own health, but maybe more importantly, for our own enjoyment.
Ever wonder how we have strawberries in December? Or vine ripened tomatoes when everything else is brown? That's because we rely on our modern methods of transportation to get ripe food here fast, but somethings aren't meant to be enjoyed in winter, they aren't meant to be served fast. Strawberries, for example, have become less flavorful because they must now be produced in a way that makes them heartier, and able to withstand the long distance that they must travel to get to our grocery stores.
Most fresh market tomatoes are grown hydroponically, which enables greenhouse growers to have a longer growing season and produce an average of 15 times more per acre with a greater percentage of marketable fruit (because who's going to buy a tomato that doesn't look bright and red, despite its flavor?) but the taste of these tomatoes are mealy and bland. Think of the tomato you get in your QuarterPunder. You'd hardly know you were eating one. Why are things like this? Two reasons; we want cheap food and farms want cheap labor. Another blogger, at Gristmill says this about why it's so easy for us to ignore the probelm:

"We need our food supply as cheap as possible to feed low-wage people; we need
lots of low-wage people -- farm worker,s slaughterhouse workers, clerks at our
number-one grocer, Wal-Mart, and so on -- to sustain our cheap-food system.
Whatever else it does --and it works pretty well, if you're a major shareholder
in transnational corporations --this cycle consumes enormous resources and, yes,
severely damages the environment."

AND

"Last year the federal government cut checks to commodity-agriculture producers
amounting to $23 billion -- roughly equivalent to Bolivia's GDP. In those terms
alone -- never mind steep environmental and social costs -- cheap food is
actually a pretty pricey proposition. "

He goes on about some more stuff too and I know that's a lot to read, especially if you're not an
amateur chef like me, who cares about the flavor, but even if you just care about the environment, or the people who labor to bring you the cheapest foods possible. If you don't really care about all that above you should still check out The Sustainable Table for ideas about how you can make changes in small ways, like learning how to 'eat seasonal'. When we 'eat seasonal' we're not only cutting down on the damage done by shipping this food all over the country, we're also supporting our local farmers, people who in turn invest in other aspects of our communities. Most of those food subsidies that Gristmill talks about above aren't going to the organic farmer hippies you see at the farmer's market, they're going to major agri-business farmers, like the ones who had the E. Coli epidemic last summer.

I'm guilty of this stuff too, sometimes it's hard to remember the larger costs when faces with the grocery store budget, but in the end the cost is going to be much greater. I just have to keep telling myself that. We're not going to solve this environmental crisis tomorrow, it's going to take little steps from millons of people. We should probably start right now.