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"Eat Here" (eat Local Organic Food and support Local Organic Farmers)
Por: Sakuntala Narasimhan
Friday, Jun. 17, 2005 at 4:52 PM
How the environment and eating "Local Organic Food" is linked to Gandhi's ideology for transforming the world.
traduzca: inglés => Español http://babelfish.altavista.com
June 5, observed annually as World Environment Day, turns the spotlight on issues like deforestation, pollution, climate change and global warming, but these discussions seldom make a connection with Gandhian ideology which offers a simple but powerful answer to the environmental ills that beset the earth today. Now validation of what Bapuji advocated, comes from an unlikely source -- the Worldwatch Institute, a research organization based in the USA.
Although Gandhi is remembered for his espousal of non-violence as an effective strategy for conflict resolution, his philosophy covered a much wider canvas and included a vision of development based on small, self-sufficient communities that grew their own food, in a sustainable model with decision-making vested at the grassroots level. The same idea of local self-sufficiency, particularly in food, is the central theme of the Worldwatch Institute's publication titled "Eat Here", which describes the enormous environmental price that modern societies pay, in terms of transport costs (and the pollution that millions of trucks and lorries cause, leading to widespread increases in respiratory illnesses around the world), the tons of chemical preservatives that get added to food products to prevent spoilage in transit across long distances, and the health costs that the community ends up paying under this global supermarket pattern of development.
Only 6 per cent of what one pays for a supermarket loaf of bread, Eat Here points out, goes to the farmer who actually grows the wheat.The rest goes into the pockets of middlemen, transporters, and oil companies. It is the same with perishable fruit and vegetables hauled over long distances. No wonder farmers, who feed the country, remain impoverished and contemplate suicide, while mammoth agribusiness corporations rake in earnings greater than the GDPs of some nations.
It is considered an 'improvement in the quality of life' if a community can enjoy out-of-season fruit or exotic vegetables imported from thousands of miles away, but what about the costs involved in packaging, refrigeration, the huge amounts of waste and pollution? Who pays? Also, if the availability of Washington apples (or Australian butter) in Bangalore is construed as 'progress', what about accountability when problems arise? An outbreak of mad cow disease saw millions of cows being burnt on massive pyres in England recently (causing dioxin scares from the smoke) and the slaughter of millions of chicken worldwide in the wake of a fear of bird flu. When food comes from far, it becomes impossible to trace the trouble spot in the long chain from producer to importer to retailer to buyer. Whereas, with food grown locally, consumers know what they get, where it was produced, with what inputs, and who sold it. The supermarket model of food retailing defaults on accountability and dehumanizes the community links between buyer and producer. The non-quantifiable costs are huge.
No wonder then, that initiatives for small community level food production and sales, are growing all over the West, as part of a "healthy, holistic model of living'. "The food tastes fresher, it is tastier, there is less processing and less of additives, and less chance of contamination between farm and plate, so it is healthier," say members of this growing movement for 'eating local'. It is described as "food democracy" (because there is less dependence on huge companies that can dictate monopolistic terms, to suppliers as well as buyers) and a movement against "culinary imperialism" (protesting against mass promotion of invariant fast food items that over-ride the attractions and advantages of local, culture-related eating traditions in the name of 'novelty' or 'modernity' especially in the developing countries).
Gandhi's protest was against another kind of imperialism, but his ideology encompassed a pattern of local self-sufficiency that is exactly what members of the 'local foods' movement in Europe and USA are promoting. Some of the shelf food is actually described by these groups as "embalmed food", because of the enormous amounts of synthetic chemicals that go into them.
Food trucks account for 40 per cent of road freight in the UK. In the US, food travels on average 2,400 km from farm to plate. That calls for enormous amounts of oil for transport - and oil becomes the reason for even going to war, because without oil the nation starves. Under the Gandhian model of local self-sufficiency, not only is dependence on extraneous factors (oil imports) reduced, the costs too get reduced. Imported foods, Eat Here estimates, costs four times as much as local food if the environmental costs are added. There are also the additional bonuses of better human relations within the community, cultural cohesiveness, and the dignity of individuals that comes with self-reliance that Gandhi valued so highly.
From consumer activist Ralph Nader, to the president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy in the US, and professors of bio-ethics and nutrition at Princeton and Columbia, praise for Eat Here's focus on 'reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket' has flown instintedly from different quarters of the West. Farmers' markets are burgeoning, and even American school cafeterias are choosing locally grown foods. While we, in the developing countries, scurry to adopt the dehumanized, cost-ridden, environmentally unsound models of supermarket retailing of food, in the name of 'progress'.
by Sakuntala Narasimhan
Snail Mail: 217, block 3, 27th cross, Jayanagar,
Bangalore, India 560011
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Eliminate Hunger:
http://www.thrive.org.uk http://www.greenthumbnyc.org http://www.yesmagazine.com/article.asp?ID=576 http://www.communitygarden.org http://www.permaculture.org.uk http://www.camphill.org.uk http://www.neemfoundation.org http://www.treesforlife.org http://www.livingnutrition.com http://www.carbon.org http://www.growingsolutions.com http://www.emnz.com http://www.acresusa.com http://www.growbiointensive.org http://www.tilth.org http://www.naturewise.org.uk http://www.echonet.org http://www.biodynamic.org.uk http://www.healthmasters.com http://www.wattsgardenclub.org
http://www.seattle.gov/neighborhoods/ppatch Luke 10:29 http://www.seattletilth.org http://www.greengridroofs.com http://www.ecoroofsystems.com http://www.miller-roofscapes.co.uk http://www.zinco.de
Organic Farming will Feed the World:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92739.php
Organic Technology for Gardeners and Farmers:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92738.php
Waste not, Want Not:
http://www.wormwoman.com http://www.zeri.org http://www.oceanarks.org http://www.wolvertonenvironmental.com http://www.emtech.org http://www.bokashi.co.nz ..
Allotments UK:
http://www.organicallotment.co.uk http://www.allotments-uk.com http://www.allotments4all.co.uk http://www2.eng.cam.ac.uk/~tpl/allotmentkids.html ..
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA):
http://www.cuco.org.uk/index.php?page=3
Please support LOCAL Organic FAMILY farmers. Thank you!!!
http://www.localharvest.org
Training for people in developing countries and for emergency response teams:
http://greendragonenergy.co.uk http://www.rpc.com.au http://www.solarenergy.org http://www.scoraigwind.com http://www.homepower.com http://www.journeytoforever.org http://www.rainwaterclub.org ..
Renewable Energy:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92743.php
Sustainable Technologies for Real economic Progress:
http://melbourne.indymedia.org/news/2005/06/92735.php
Keep our country and community strong like a rock. Please ban all GM foods from our country. Please refrain from purchasing or consuming any product containing GM materials. Please support LOCAL Organic FAMILY farmers. Please use sustainable technology. Please help disabled people, older people and poor people to grow their own organic food. Luke 10:29 THANK YOU for your help!!!
"THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE."
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