Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] Greens are the beef of vegetarianism

market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Market Farming

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: KAKerby AT aol.com
  • To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Greens are the beef of vegetarianism
  • Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 12:20:27 EDT

For the record, I wasn't agreeing with the author.  And also for the record, I think those cradle-to-grave analyses are instructional when applied to anything - our cars, our homes, our electronics, our livestock, and yes our greenhouses.  Often the "costs" of some item extend back a long ways prior to our usage, and extend a long ways forward past its useful life in service.  That's all.  And finally for the record, like many others here we grow a wide variety of greens using unheated hoop houses and we harvest wild edibles.  We plant as early in the year as we can get away with, and we hope to be harvesting well into winter.  That'll be thanks to a combo of plant hardiness and various season extenders, some of which are plastics and metals.  We can't claim to have done all that careful analysis for the total tally of costs for every item we use.  But we've done some of that analysis and made decisions accordingly.  We try to provide as much goodness at the least resources "cost" as we can.  And I can offer the resulting produce with a clean conscience specifically because we believe the local foods movement has a net positive impact even when you consider those season extending costs.  I wasn't arguing against that part at all.  Just saying that the cost of operating a greenhouse goes well beyond the heat bill.
Kathryn Kerby
frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA
 
In a message dated 6/17/2010 6:09:25 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, maurysheets AT verizon.net writes:

Kathryn,

 

In that case, are we all going to live in mud huts?  The cost involved in a single family dwelling (not to mention the McMansions being built today) far outweighs the cost of building a greenhouse in environmental terms.  That has to be taken into consideration when thinking along those lines.

 

Maury

 

From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of KAKerby AT aol.com
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 11:05 PM
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Greens are the beef of vegetarianism

 

Not to enter the fray on the bad-guy side, but perhaps he's referring to the total cost of building and operating a greenhouse - the energy required to create the plastics and metals to build that greenhouse, then deliver those components to the eventual production site, then put them up, and then keep them heated.  Not to mention all the plastics required with the drip lines, the seedling trays, the hoses, etc.  If we're only counting the cost of heating a greenhouse, or writing off the nonexistent cost of an unheated greenhouse, then sure it's a relatively small number.  But toss in all those other numbers, and suddenly that's a whole different picture.  Granted, the longer those materials are in service before they are retired from duty, the smaller the "share" that cost would contribute to any given head of lettuce.  But let's not forget how energy-intensive those manufacturing processes are, and that both metals and plastics are essentially non-renewable resources.  Also, those materials must be recycled via energy-intensive processes to divert them from land-intensive landfills.  Another cost, either way.  If we're truly doing cradle-to-grave analysis, all those costs must also be included.

Kathryn Kerby

frogchorusfarm.com
Snohomish, WA

 

In a message dated 6/16/2010 7:15:24 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, maurysheets AT verizon.net writes:

This just goes to show you that there are a lot of quacks out there that call themselves scientists and because they are on the ”internet” that makes it gospel.  A bunch of crap!  My greens grow all winter in the greenhouse and the house can go below freezing and they still turn out fine.  You couldn’t drive a truck to the California border, much less to the East Coast,  and only produce the same amount of carbon my greenhouse uses all winter.  Some of these people need to get a life.  He would be right if he was talking about tomatoes.

 

Maury Sheets

Woodland Produce

South jersey

 

From: market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:market-farming-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of John Paul Endicott
Sent: Wednesday, June 16, 2010 3:36 PM
To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [Market-farming] Greens are the beef of vegetarianism

 

Interesting article.  I can't say I'm surprised:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/06/16/arugula-the-beef-of.html

Depending on where you live, eating baby spinach or arugula is almost like eating a burger, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. It's that intense. Sure, if you live in the Central Valley of California, or in Florida, not so. But most people live very far from those places. If you live east of longitude 100 [Draw a line through the middle of the Dakotas—MKB] and north of, say, Jesse Helms country, you have no business eating greens at all between October and June. Again, you know, you're free to do whatever you want, but if you want to be really careful about your greenhouse gas footprint, this is what you should do.



_______________________________________________
Market-farming mailing list
Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming

Market Farming List Archives may be found here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/market-farming/
Unsubscribe from the list here (you will need to login in with your email
address and password):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/market-farming



_______________________________________________
Market-farming mailing list
Market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming

Market Farming List Archives may be found here:
https://lists.ibiblio.org/sympa/arc/market-farming/
Unsubscribe from the list here (you will need to login in with your email
address and password):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/options/market-farming



Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page