Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["E. E. Mitchamore Jr" <emitch@att.net>]

For me, too, fruit is the first thought.  I really love my fruit plate in the AM, but local fruit, though good, is very seasonal.  I'd feel good about Fair Trade organic fruit from Mexico or California when it's not available here.  I think we could  do more to reduce the middleman's portion.

 

E. E. "Mitch" Mitchamore
www.hillcountrynatives.biz

----- Original Message -----

From: TradingPostPaul

To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 9:27 PM

Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] NYTimes.com: Food That Travels Well

That leaves a couple questions, what actual conditions the Mexican farmer
works under and what the food miles and cost of transport will soon do to
the price of bananas. ... though I have a banana first thing every morning.
It's likely it only enriches the Dole owners and impoverishes landless
peasants.

My other thought on it is the diversity of growing zones in this country
and in Mexico. Both countries have every extreme of climate and soil for
growing the widest variety of crops.

And of course we can look at the big picture -  if we took advantage of
what's available locally already, we'd need relatively little of what's
not. And not worry about the bananas!

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 8/6/2007 at 6:42 PM Ken Hargesheimer wrote:

>Excellant thinking.  I had only thought of this in terms of fruits
>[bananas, etc] that we cannot grow.  I think we should not limit marketing
>locally to an exact number of miles.  If we could purchase organic bananas
>from a Mexican farmer banana cooperative, go for it, in my opinion. I have
>to buy Dole.  We ship them a food from this country that they cannot
>produce.
>  
>  Ken H


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