Flaws Build Character

Imagine that you were an alien visitor to an American grocery store and you step into the produce section.  I think you would honestly believe that tomatoes only grow 16-18 cm.  Or that corn is always about 8-9 inches.  And that carrots are always straight and in a bunch.

You would actually have a lot of data to prove your point.  Each grocery store you went into would look exactly the same, with the fruits and vegetables always meeting those expectations.

However, you would be wrong.

In fact, the truth is that a lot of fresh, edible produce is thrown away because it does not meet standards set by the FTC and the Grocery Manufactures Association.

On average, U.S. farmers are forced to dispose of approximately 1/5 of their entire harvest because it does not fulfill visually uniform and blemish-free criteria set forth by the FTC, modern advertising imagery and consumer desire. Other resources cite that figure being as high as 50%. That means that every twisty-goateed-carrot, two-headed eggplant, and eyeball-ridden potato that they encounter is either left on the fields to rot before finally being tilled underground or immediately carted off to the dumpster. Remarkably, the UK has followed suit for decades with the EU-imposed regulation of 26 varieties of fruit and vegetables that must be banned for sale if they are under-sized and/or misshapen – resulting in an annual crop loss for British farmers of 20%.

But during this time of an economic recession, as well as concerns about global warming, is this really a good practice to keep in place.  There are estimates that with minor changes to the United States system of throwing out flawed produce, we could save tens of BILLIONS of dollars.  And, this

Right now, I am thinking about the ridiculousness of the Monsanto campaign…”Helping Farmers Produce More”.  Their claim is that with a looming 9 Billion people… they will need to assist farmers to produce more.

It seems that if they are throwing away 20-50% of edible, nutritious food, the need for technological advances seems unwarranted.  But, maybe I am missing something.

I was happy to read that the UK recently changed their food policy to allow for “flawed” produce to hit the store shelves.  However, there are stipulations as the product must be labeled “Product Intended for Processing”.  This is fruit that does not meet visual standards, but is perfectly nutritive and can be used for things like preserving into jams and jellies or used in fruit salad.

Does the ridiculousness of this strike anyone else?  Do you think our ancestors, in the African desert, would have passed by fruit because it crooked?  The fact that we have these standards should be a sign of how out of control the food system has become. This mask of perfection that is created is distancing ourselves from the value of real food.  It is a sign of the elitism that we have created in this country surrounding food.  We are saying, loud and clear, that it is better for you to be starving on the street than eat an imperfect apple.  (I wonder what the apple looked like in the Garden of Eden.)

I think that this policy needs to change.  Food is a gift we have been given, whether you believe through evolution or divinity.  The more we get detached from the variations in food, the more we ensure the growth of huge corporate entities that create our food.  But more importantly, I feel it places the last nail in the human coffin.

by Shelley Boyle

recession… good?

Over the last few weeks, there has been report after report on how the recession is going to be bad for the “green” movement. Slate magazine begs to disagree.

The Green House: The recession is the best thing that could have happened to Barack Obama.

The feeling amongst many is that Obama believes that the “green” movement and setting the economy back on track go hand in hand. By tackling things like the infrastructure and energy, there is a double benefit of saving money due to efficiency, while also creating “green jobs” and getting people employed, again.

Newly Nobel-ed economist Paul Krugman has taken the lead in arguing that “the usual rules of economic policy no longer apply.” Normally, if you wanted to retrofit a building or weatherize a home, you’d have to get the money from somewhere. The usual way is to increase revenues or reduce spending. No longer. With the economy in freefall and interest rates as low as they can go, the only hope for recovery is to spend—and to err on the side of spending too much.

The best part: Even though we have to borrow money, eventually the government can pay itself back by printing more. Yes, that would devalue the currency and therefore would not be, to use a technical economic term, free. But the way Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research sees it, we have to spend the money now, anyway, to stimulate the economy: “It’s like what Keynes said: Even if we pay people to dig holes and fill them up again, it’s still good.” And if we’re going to spend, we might as well spend on something that’s going to save us—both economically and environmentally—in the long term.

The argument against all of this… spending more and deflating the value of the dollar may lead the way to the Amero and there is always the backlash of a growing economy hurting the green movement.

You can read the article from Slate Magazine, HERE

america in transition

As we all know, we are in the process of transitioning from one president to another. In this case, we are also transitioning from one political climate to another.

Barack Obama has spoken many times about his concern for the environment and his plan to commit the United States to a green policy. In a move that supports what he has been saying, there was an announcement today about how his stimulus package will include a heavy dose of spending on environmentally friendly projects that will create “green”-collar jobs.

“Clean energy is going to be a foundation for rebuilding the American economy,” said Bracken Hendricks, an analyst at the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress and an adviser to the presidential-transition team. Generating jobs in concert with cutting pollution will be “a major component” of any economic-recovery plan, Hendricks said.

The plan outlines many things, including a greener infrastructure and public transportation. The hope is that with new policy, the creation of new jobs will follow. Jobs that cannot be outsourced, since the idea is being green and being local.

You can read the whole article HERE, via Bloomberg News

babysitting 101

Paul Krugman won the Nobel Prize in Economic Science today for his work on international trade patterns.

Slate Magazine re-ran an article published in 1998 called “Baby-Sitting the Economy” about how learning from a babysitting co-op going bust, could give us information to save the world.

Click HERE for the article.

“If you think this is a silly story, a waste of your time, shame on you. What the Capitol Hill Baby-Sitting Co-op experienced was a real recession. Its story tells you more about what economic slumps are and why they happen than you will get from reading 500 pages of William Greider and a year’s worth of Wall Street Journal editorials. And if you are willing to really wrap your mind around the co-op’s story, to play with it and draw out its implications, it will change the way you think about the world.”