tinted green

The answer is both simple and complicated.  Each year we grow less of our own food while almost every other country picks up our slack. There is an article in the last issue of body+soul titled “where does our food come from?”  That article prompted me to write to this blog. 

Please read the full article or look for it on the website www.wholeliving.com.  In the mean time here are some kind of scary numbers from both the article and my own research.  We import at least 15 percent of our food or food products.  Some of the websites I looked at put the number at 20 percent.  As a country we are now considered a food importer and not an exporter.  Meaning we now import more than we export, for the first time ever.

The European Union, Canada, Mexico, China and Brazil are the top five importers of food to the United States, but the USDA website lists 34 countries that import beef, lamb, goat, pork, poultry and eggs alone.  But the town I live in won’t let me have chickens in my backyard so I can get my eggs from them. 

In 2007 we imported more fresh juice from Iran than we had since anytime before 1970.  I got this bit of information from the USDA website at the import/export section.  And I thought we didn’t like Iran now.

We import 20 percent of our bell peppers from Canada and the Netherlands where they are grown in greenhouses.  Are we not capable or not willing to build our own greenhouses to grow our own bell peppers?

Seventy three (73) percent of our fresh garlic comes from China.  How exactly fresh is the garlic if it comes all the way from China?

In 2007 we got 2.5 million heads of cattle from Canada.  Have we paved over so much of our pasture land that we now have to import cattle numbering in the millions?

Not upset yet?  Just wait a minute.  Less than one percent of all of these imports are inspected by a federal agency at the port.  Not to mention the fact that the more times a food item is handled the more likly it is to be contaminated by humans. 

Okay so what can you do about all of this?  Eat local and seasonal.  Organic if possible.  Find out as much as you can about where your food is coming from and how it was grown.  Plant a garden and grow your own.  If you can, buy a chicken and raise your own eggs.  Follow all food cleaning and cooking safety guidelines.  Join an organization to lobby lawmakers to make your food safer.