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Organic and Locally Grown Food May Not be Humanities Answer
By Mark Schauss | March 11, 2009
Mother Jones is one of those cutting edge journalism magazines that uncovers truths in the world that are not so apparent. In a brilliantly written article by Paul Roberts, he makes the case that buying organic and locally grown foods while noble ideas, may not fix the food problems our world has. One quote from the article I love is “Our industrial food system is rotten to the core. Heirloom arugula won’t save us.”
We presently have 6.5 billion people on our planet with estimates that 2 billion are starving. It is a reality which we must face. Somehow we muct feed everyone yet do it in a sustainable, ecologically intelligent manner and frankly, after reading the article, organic and locally grown foods don’t fit the bill. This is not to say that eating organic and buying locally grown foods are bad, I actually prefer eating and buying my family’s food this way. We just need to understand the realities of our broken down system and what is best for our planet and for us as citizens of the world.
Now I know that this will anger some purists but let me quote Mr. Roberts again, “…the risks of pragmatism must be weighed against the risk of perfectionism. We can’t wait for the perfect solution to emerge; we need to start transforming the food system today….” We need to act before it becomes critical and so much of a problem that only drastic measures are available. An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of intervention.
Topics: Environment, Food, Life, Our World | No Comments »