Americans Want More Fruits and Veggies for Everyone
from Civil Eats:
Americans Want More Fruits and Veggies for Everyone
May 30th, 2012
By Twilight Greenaway
If you’ve noticed more carrot-crunching, more orange-peeling, and an abundance of leafy green salads lately, it’s probably not a coincidence. As The Washington Post reported last week, Americans eat more fresh foods than they did five years ago.
The WaPo story was based on a national phone survey conducted by the Kellogg Foundation, which found that the majority of Americans are trying to eat more fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, are shopping at farmers markets at least on occasion, and say they know “a lot or a little about where their fresh fruits and vegetables come from.” These findings are interesting—and they speak to the success of a whole array of efforts to get more of us cooking, examining what we eat, and honing in on the place where healthy and truly delicious foods intersect.
Less visible in the media landscape is the fact that the Kellogg Foundation survey also suggests that all this healthy eating has Americans looking outside themselves.
For one, they’re considering the environment—64 percent say it’s “very important” that produce be grown in an “environmentally friendly way.” And the same number of people say it’s “very important” or “somewhat important” that produce be organic. ...................(more)
The complete piece is at: http://civileats.com/2012/05/30/americans-want-more-fruits-and-veggies-for-everyone/
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Yes that is what they say. And then they turn around and buy based on price, not having any idea what the growing conditions were. Go to Costco and observe. Look where the stuff is coming from. Organic - ha! Doesn't mean it was produced in an "environmentally friendly way." Completely mechanized production of organic spinach on a mega farm in California and shipping it to a Costco on the east coast is environmentally friendly? Okay if you say so. There were probably no non-organic approved pesticides (not the same as no pesticides) used, I will grant you that.
Just to clarify a bit. To produce spinach this way, the fields must be perfectly level. So they are graded to be perfect. This takes a lot of horsepower and a lot of fuel. The spinach is direct seeded with large drills - more horsepower and fuel. The spinach is irrigated several times with overhead sprinklers to make sure the seeds germinate. Several more irrigations will be needed before harvest. All these irrigations use copious amounts of scarce water. You can't depend on rainfall with this kind of production in California. Weeds are a problem so either mechanical tillage is used and/or propane weed burners are used since there are virtually no organic herbicides. The spinach is sprayed with organically approved pesticides - more horsepower and fuel as well as possibly killing off what few beneficial insects were there, given that what you have is a monoculture of spinach. When it is ready for harvesting a "self propelled bulk loader" is run over the field which cuts off the spinach at near ground level (hence the need for a level field) and transports the spinach into large containers. The spinach is washed using more copious amounts of water and boxed up into plastic boxes, cooled, and shipped in refrigerated rail cars to the east coast and elsewhere. But thank GAWD that organic spinach was produced in an environmentally friendly way! Spinach is just one example. Every crop is different but many of the methods are similar, whether organic or conventional production.
Self Propelled Bulk Loader Used for Harvesting Leafy Green Vegetables
