Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Diet for a Fragile Planet

Sustainable Tarpon Springs - Diet for a Fragile Planet

Since my high school years, (let’s just say a while ago) I chose to become a vegetarian.  Without even being aware of the health benefits, my motivation was acknowledging that I was not capable of personally killing any animal.  In fact, as a kid who owned dogs, cats, birds, guinea pigs, ducks, chickens, goats, and horses - who were my best friends - I started asking myself how different a cow or chicken was from any of the beloved pets I doted over.

In 1971 a great vegetarian starter book, Diet For a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, hit the NY Times Best Seller list.  Reading it furthered my understanding of the enormous land and water issues around raising animals for dietary protein.  Lappe pointed out that we could easily be getting plenty of protein with far less resources by combining specific percentages of vegetable foods - such as rice and beans. 

About a decade ago, I became a vegan after hearing the author of The Food Revolution, John Robbins, in an interview on the radio.  At that point, I was only eating parmesan cheese on rare occasions so it was hardly any loss at all, and most importantly, this was a decision led by my conscience.

I’m not blogging to convert anyone to veganism.  Diet ignites a lot of emotional attachments, so it has to be a matter of deep personal desire to change, so don’t feel guilty if you never want to give up meat eating.  From a sustainability perspective, there’s lots of controversy about what kind of diet is best for the climate, water resources, and available land.  The biggest issue is learning about how our food is being raised more than what we eat.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan (2006) gave a broad overview of the environmental implications of our diets due to industrial agriculture.  Most of the American food chain has become highly dependent upon corn, mostly grown GMO (genetically modified organisms).  Pollan discusses everything from inorganic monoculture, to the way cows are fed, the impact of added hormones, antibiotics, and the environmental disaster known as ‘feedlots’.

Pollan also criticizes the false perceptions we might have in buying food grown more accountably and consciously.  It’s not always what we might hope for when we hear ‘free range’ or ‘grass-fed’ in the larger health food chains.  We’re not talking about happy animals bounding freely through green fields until the day they are slaughtered.  This can only be accomplished realistically in small, local farm settings.

There is far less environmental degradation buying meat that is truly grass-fed, with only minimal and necessary medications.  For more information on the impact of antibiotics on us and our food, here’s an article that recently appeared in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/28/opinion/antibiotics-and-the-meat-we-eat.html?_r=0

Beyond how our food affects our health is how agricultural mismanagement affects the health of our ecosystems.  The global livestock industry demolishes rain forests to clear land for growing livestock feed and for feedlots.   This ‘industry’ is manufacturing as much as one third of total greenhouse-gas emissions, more than all of the world’s transportation sector combined according to a study done by the United Nations.  Chew on that for awhile. 

So, hopefully, this offers some ‘food for thought’.  Each and every choice we make is an opportunity to vote with our dollars.  A big chunk of our hard earned money goes to the food we buy, and how our food is raised or grown plays a very big role in the sustainability of our entire planet.  

Right now, we can support local micro farmers through joining Suncoast Co-op in New Port Richey or Dunedin Harvest in Dunedin.  If you know of others, please share.  Grower’s collectives are organizing everywhere, even in Tarpon Springs!  There are even public properties available for community gardens, if we so desired.  

To put our money where our mouths and our hearts are may take time, but directing as much as we can to locally grown food is the beginning of truly becoming more sustainable in Tarpon Springs!