Thanks to friend and neighbor Charlie Hosford for bringing this interesting article from the New York Times to my attention.  Here is a "taste" of the article.

April 26, 2008
THE FOOD CHAIN
Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Cod caught off Norway is shipped to China to be turned into filets, then shipped back to Norway for sale.

Argentine lemons fill supermarket shelves on the Citrus Coast of Spain, as local lemons rot on the ground. Half of Europe’s peas are grown and packaged in Kenya.

In the United States, FreshDirect proclaims kiwi season has expanded to "All year!" now that Italy has become the world’s leading supplier of New Zealand’s national fruit, taking over in the Southern Hemisphere’s winter.

Read more...

You know those pictures you've seen on TV of the third world aid workers in trucks loaded with bags of rice carefully handing them out to the starving masses?  Well, now you can see a similar picture right here in the US!  Today Wal-Mart announced that sales of rice at Sam's Clubs will be limited to four bags at a time.  While this rationing is not being extended to Wal-Mart stores at this time, it is telling that the world's largest and most powerful retailer cannot get an adequate supply of rice to meet the needs of its shoppers. 

However, we are not to be concerned about this according to Tim Johnson, president and chief executive of California Rice Commission, "Bottom line, there is no rice shortage in the United States. We have supplies." 

I am in Florida visiting my family and heard a horrifying story on Florida Public Radio today.  It was about how a company, Ag-Mart, settled a lawsuit with a couple who worked in Ag-Mart tomato fields in Florida and North Carolina.  The worker couple sued the company after their son was born with no limbs.  The Mexican couple said that the fields were sprayed with pesticides and the workers were sent back into the fields immediately after spraying and on some occassions the company even sprayed while the workers were in the fields.  The mother testified that she was sprayed two to three times a week with pesticides that turned her clothes green and caused her headaches, sore throats and rashes.  The radio story said that there was a gag-order as part of the settlement and did not disclose terms of the settlement.

As a good Irish girl, once a year on St. Patrick's Day, I cook up a corned beef dinner with cabbage, potatoes, carrots...the works (although I don't color my beer green, but I don't think that they do that in Ireland).  This year I decided to make my own corned beef so a little over a week ago I bought a brisket from our local farmer and started the brining process.  The end result was okay...not great.  But, let's think about what the good that came from this experiment:

Last night I had the honor of having Jon Steinman as a guest on my radio show.  Jon is the host of a radio show called Deconstructing Dinner where each week he uses a documentary format to take a close up look at some aspect of the North American industrial food system.  When I asked him what we "the little guys" can do to change our food system, he said the first thing that he thinks everyone needs to do is grow some of their own food.  As a beginning gardener, this past year Steinman grew enough potatoes to carry him through most of the winter.  Jon said that growing your own food enables one to disconnect from the industrial food system.  That comment resonated with me.

I don't know a single person who doesn't think that the economic stimulus package just signed by the President isn't absolutely ridiculous.  I was listening to a radio show the other day where an economist called the "package" a behavior modification program - we have not been good little consumers so the government is giving us some money that they want us to go out and spend.  Mark Johnson on WDEV radio likened the package to giving a kid who is hungry a candy bar.  How can "we the people" be so much smarter than the people running this country?