SUSTAINABLE LIVING, LLC

The past few years have brought the term “organic” to the mainstream. It used to be considered the realm of hippies and health nuts, but these days everyone from Oprah to school lunch dieticians are discussing what it means and how it affects us. While the benefits of organically-grown food have been touted on the nightly news and national magazines, there’s always room for more education.

The obvious reason for buying organic is the personal benefit—better flavors for the palate, higher nutrition for the body. The naysayers want you to believe that the science isn’t there, yet 2010 from Washington State University shows that organic strawberries contain more anti-oxidants and higher vitamin C than conventional strawberries. Also, the absence of cancer-causing pesticides on organic produce reduces the risk of carcinogen exposure. As for which tastes better, all you have to do is bite into an organic tomato and compare it to one that’s been picked before it was ripe, sprayed for bugs and increased color then trucked across the country.

For me, an even stronger reason for buying organic is that it supports the overall health of the planet. This is more of a behind-the-scenes way of thinking about food—not something we’re necessarily taught in school—but the difference between organically-farmed foods and conventional agriculture has and will continue to have an enormous impact it on our quality of life.

If you were able to make it to any of the Real Food Film Festival movies like Fresh, Ingredients, or Dirt, you’re already privy to what an inefficient, wasteful and unsustainable food system on which we currently depend.  Mass amounts of genetically-modified corn, soybeans and wheat are produced on hundreds of thousands of mono-cropped acres—all which depend on petroleum-based fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. But wait, I went into those statistics last month…

Let’s just say when oil prices soar, food prices soar. Then we’ll either be unable to afford buying foods produced in this oil-dependent way or our tax dollars will subsidize this method of farming even more than they already do. Some still think that organic food costs too much, but the true cost of organically-grown food versus conventionally-produced food is actually much cheaper if you really trace the money back to how much our government subsidizes these unsustainable farming practices. (The real price of a pound of conventionally-produced beef is $70 if you account for government subsidies!)

The alternative is to divide up these vast acreages into sustainably-managed, diversified farms that provide plenty of jobs in the agriculture business and food security for our country.

Some may argue that we’re not really running out of oil, that there are still plenty of untapped resources to be drilled, mined or extracted. That may be true, but the fact is those oil reserves difficult and incredibly expensive to get to, like the Gulf of Mexico where the oil is miles under the surface, in Canada in the form of tar sands or in the West in shale oil. The ratio of energy spent to extract it to the energy of return isn’t worth the environmental costs of extracting it from these wilderness areas. This doesn’t even take into account that continuing to burn fossil fuels is affecting climate change and rising sea levels, a fact that should especially concern coastal dwellers like us. (Think global warming is still a theory? Speak to Dr. Alexander at the Skidaway Marine Science Center for documentation. He recently gave a thorough presentation on local sea level changes thus far, and predictions for the future levels of the Georgia Coastline will be presented at the Strategic Planning meeting hosted by the Metropolitan Planning Commission March 22 & 24, 2011.)

Then there’s the pollution factor of modern chemical-based agriculture. Agricultural activities that cause agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution include confined animal facilities, grazing, plowing, pesticide spraying, irrigation, fertilizing, planting, and harvesting. According to the most recent National Water Quality Inventory[PC5] , agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution—the chemical runoff from conventional farms—is the leading source of water quality to impact surveyed rivers and lakes, the third largest source of impairments to surveyed estuaries, and also a major contributor to ground water contamination and wetlands degradation.”

It’s a problem that seems vast in scale, right? Is buying organic celery from the local farmer’s market really going make a difference? But consider the story of the hummingbird as told in the film Dirt: 

When the forest was on fire, the tiny hummingbird rushed back and forth from the river to the fire dropping a beakful of water at a time to put it out. All the other animals stood by watching in fear and denial. The elephants, with their big trunks that could hold gallons of water, told her she was wasting her time. The other animals told her she couldn’t make any difference with her small efforts. She turned to those doing nothing and replied, “at least I’m doing the best that I can.” 

So I encourage each of us to do the best that we can every day in easing the impact we have on our earth, which is the only home we have. Drive less. Turn off lights. Put tvs, computers and stereos on power strips and flip the switch to off when not in use. Flush less. Install water-saving features on your faucets. Don’t use chemicals on your lawn and gardens. Grow your own organic food in community gardens, school gardens, urban farms and backyard gardens.  

Just think what a huge impact this could have if everyone made these simple changes. Stores would have to stock according to the new demand, entrepreneurs would pop up to fill the gaps, more organic farmers would be needed and job opportunities would increase. Less coal would be burned to generate electricity, fewer mountain tops would be blown up to mine coal and our air quality would improve.

And yes, buy organic food and local products from people who live close by because every small, sane choice matters. Buy organic because you are supporting our local economy as well as a global movement to do things differently.

Let’s ALL be hummingbirds and see what happens to the fire!