Hello everyone, and welcome to my blog! I am super pumped to do some research into where my food comes from.
Ever since the agriculture unit of this course I’ve been trying to have a more environmentally conscious diet, but I have found that a lot of times that it’s been difficult to measure how much of a difference these changes make. From the get go I wanted to start with only a moderate change in my diet and then re-evaluate to see how it was working out, both on my body as well as the impact of the diet. I would still eat meat but I would eat less, and the meat that I did have would be more fish and chicken rather than meat from ruminating animals. I would try to have the large component of my meal consist of grains, vegetables and fruits, and when I could I would make an effort to buy more local and organic.
My thought process behind this was environmental as well as health related. I agree with the point that Wendall Berry brought up in “the Agrarian Standard” about the merits of being more connected and agriculturally accountable to the food a person consumes. I wanted to eat a less carbon and land intensive diet, in the hopes that I would bring my food consumption closer to a responsible level for one person. I figured that the best thing to do was change my habits in baby steps and not make a big change right at the start, because I would probably get discouraged quickly and give up on it. Plus, less red meat and more fresh vegetables and grains I would more closely align my diet with the one that Nutrition Canada purports is the healthiest balance, especially when substituting red meat for fish.
However, with only a vague idea (let alone a plan) on how specifically I would alter my diet to reflect this, I had a lot of questions about what the best way of meeting my agrarian goals would be. What is an acceptable fossil fuel and arable land level that I can strive to be under with my food consumption? How much fossil fuels did organic products use as opposed to non-organic? How many of my favorite foods, such as avocado and pineapple, would I allow myself to “cheat” on my goal of eating local?
Was a diet of mostly fish really less impactful on the environment? I had banked on the fact that if I bought fresh, wild seafood that was ocean wise, then it would use less arable land and still be an improvement from other forms of meat. Plus, I’m all for increasing the demand for the fishing industry in BC. In my opinion it is an important business alternative to the oil and pipeline projects in terms of jobs and money for the province, because the seafood industry relies on having clean oceans and rivers and a strong aquatic habitat. However after a while I started to wonder how much fossil fuel the fishing industry uses to fish and transport their catch. This could change my views on how relatively sustainable I assumed local fish was.
Keeping the original goal of this blog in mind, I hope that I can answer all of these questions at least somewhat while still answering the main question of how much oil I have eaten in a given day. More details about my 24 hour food consumption to come.
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