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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Peak Oil? Peak Soil!

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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Peak Oil? Peak Soil!
  • Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:58:27 -0600


I've seen 1400, 1500, and so on. Not sure but it may be an estimate from
different sources. I'm sure it's impossible to be more exact, even for a
single household buying hundreds of food items over time, much less a
national average. Bear in mind what this figure involves. Your bottle of
ketchup or can of soup can easily contain dozens of ingredients that come
from many places and is shipped back and forth across the country or the
globe several times before being combined into the finished product. This is
true of most processed food items. With so little cooking from local basics I
can easily agree with 1500 miles. It may be a lot farther.

Which brings up an interesting point. The more processing - they call it
"value added" - and packaging and advertising, the less nutritious and more
expensive the food item will be. Frozen dinners and specially packaged and
prepared foods easily cost TEN TIMES what the same food would cost if you
cook from scratch. Study the store items. How many different ways do they
process and package and advertise potatoes? Why? Value added items make more
money - for them. Which explains why they spend millions to advertise the
latest Frosted Garbage instead of fresh, unprocessed broccoli or apples.
Essentially, nine tenths of the average household food budget is wasted on
middlemen, processing, shipping, packaging, store overhead, and advertising.
And with recession deepening, more and more people have to choose between
buying food, gas, and prescription drugs. All of which makes them sicker and
sicker.

Enough reason to produce more of our own?

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

I march to a different kettle of fish

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

On 3/10/2008 at 2:00 PM David Inglis wrote:

>> to transport food from field to fork, a journey of 1500 miles for the
>> average forkful.
>>
>Does anyone know the origins of this often sited food mile figure? It seems
>to me a rather complex thing to have to figure out and would also be rather
>site and season specific.
>
>
>Dave Inglis
>Mahaiwe Harvest C.S.A.
>Berkshire County
>Massachusetts
>
>






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