What started as a community idea for Earth Day has now grown into a multi-faceted project focused on reducing food waste and is explored in this webinar by Amy Rowe, Associate Professor/Count Agent affiliated with Rutgers Cooperative Extension of Essex and Passaic Counties in New Jersey. By following the journey of an apple from orchard to consumer, the webinar examines in detail where excessive water, energy, and fossil fuels are often wasted. With practical at-home tips such as understanding labeling, expiration dates, and composting, Amy’s informative webinar is a great place to learn more about how you can fight food waste.
Is a CSA for Y-O-U?
There’s nothing more basic that the food we put into our bodies. It’s personal and you do it every day. If working toward sustainability is a personal goal of yours, that might extend into the food you eat. By joining a Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) program in your area, not only are you supporting a farm or farms in your area, but you’re also helping to reduce food waste, fuel and energy consumption, and pollution.
CSA’s are a great way for people to support their local farmers. Members of a CSA buy shares that entitle them to products from the farm in the coming season. This financing model was set up originally to support growers in the spring, when costs associated with growing season are high, but income is limited. In return, members receive fresh farm products all season long, often at a drastically reduced price. By selling to the local community, farmers use less fuel and energy to transport their products, and those savings can be reinvested in the farm. Less time on a truck is better for the consumer, the product, and the environment.
From summer until early fall, CSA members will receive a box, crate, or cooler with the farm’s offerings that week. Most shares include an array of fresh local fruits and vegetables, others include add-on products like meat, dairy, herbs, and flowers. Some CSAs offer home delivery, and others distribute from a designated spot (such as a community garden or farmer’s market), where members can pick up their farm-fresh items. Some even allow you to select your own items from that week’s offerings, which is a plus for persnickety snackers.
Purchasing a share in a CSA is a seasonal commitment and does require a bit of faith. You may find produce in your weekly crate that you’ve never seen or cooked with before. That’s why many CSAs provide information in their newsletters about unfamiliar ingredients, as well as recipes and fun facts. By joining a CSA, you commit to standing by your local farm and farmers for the whole season, and that means that local weather can sometimes be a factor. Too much or too little rain may occasionally limit available varieties, but the opposite is also true! A stretch of ideal weather sometimes results in bumper crop yields. The beginning of the season usually offers lots of leafy greens and quick-growing root crops like turnips, kohlrabi, and radishes. As summer rolls in, the shares begin to fill with familiar favorites like corn, tomatoes, and broccoli. Some farms even extend their CSA shares into the autumn months, featuring late-season produce like apples, squash, pears, potatoes, and pumpkins. Taking part in a CSA requires some flexibility and willingness to take things as they come, knowing that it’s all in support of your local farm.
The rewards of taking part in a CSA are multifold. Not only is the food fresh, local, and delicious, it doesn't have to travel very far to get into customers’ hands. This reduces fuel usage and pollution, as well as the excess use of energy needed for refrigerated transport. A CSA membership is a great way to connect to your local food system and an excellent step toward your personal sustainability goals. Check out to www.localharvest.com to find a CSA near you!
How Climate Change Impacts Food Insecurity
We all know climate change has impacted our lives over the decades—from delaying when the leaves change each season to the erosion of magnificent places like the Arctic and the Rockies. But you may not have considered how climate change will impact our food options.
However the long term effects of climate change will likely leave us with less food options—or worse—without a source of food.
Climate change communications specialist Danielle Eiseman says that currently climate change has already played a role in our diet. Harvests are having to be pushed due to late planting and late planting is happening due to floods or droughts or a host of other environmental issues plaguing farms across the globe. She added “...a lot of research has shown that the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is really changing the protein levels of a lot of staple crops, such as rice…[which] for billions of people that rely on rice as part of their daily diets, that can have a huge impact on their overall health.” Another major staple in society’s diet is wheat which, according to a research article published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), is responsible for 20% of the Earth’s protein and calories. In order to meet the increasing demand of a population expected to grow to 9.6 million by 2050, production would have to ramp up to at least 60% to meet demand.
With a continued increase in population and a society used to a certain way of life, it seems like it would be hard to combat the effects of climate change enough to reverse food insecurity, but a paper released by Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future believes there are some policy changes that could be made in order to help alleviate the problem. In a scenario where society moves away from coal and natural gas and transitions to cleaner energy like hydroelectric, solar, and wind, public policy and infrastructure investments can be made to make walking, cycling, and public transit both more accessible and popular forms of transportation, with air travel as a last resort. In addition, a reduction in dairy and meat consumption would be necessary. The paper notes that “changing diets on an international scale will require more than just educating consumers—national policies will need to shift in ways that support more plant-centric diets.”
With the decrease in food growth and production exacerbated by climate change, supply chain issues have escalated as well, which has led to sourcing and procurement executives, consumers, and the like to question some of their sustainability practices. The good news here is that the disruption has sparked a conversation among giant corporations about their sustainability practices as it relates to sourcing their products, environmental preservation, and reconnecting corporate goals with these sourcing practices. Perhaps this growing crisis is making way for a better solution.