Audubon at Home Web Exclusive:
When Conservation Meets Cuisine

Jennifer Bogo

Sitting down to dinner may not spring to mind as environmental activism, but in truth the act of eating is one of the most powerful ways we affect the environment—for better or worse. Everybody eats, every day. What we choose to put on our plates and in our mouths can either help the ecosystem around us or hurt it.

“A Taste for Conservation,” the cover story in the May-June 2004 Audubon, takes a look at how America’s top chefs are leading a culinary charge for sustainable cuisine. Through an organization called the Chefs Collaborative (www.chefscollaborative.org), a growing number of chefs are beginning to examine the origins of the ingredients they purchase and the effect these have had on the environment. The result can be found on the menus of more than 160 restaurants nationwide—food that’s good for both the body and the earth.

You don’t have to eat out to eat well, however. There are simple decisions you can make at home to greatly ease agriculture’s effects on the environment. Buying locally grown foods, for instance, is one of the easiest and most direct ways to preserve family farms and reduce the use of polluting fossil fuels. It’s also a great way to add fresh, seasonal items to your diet. Today most produce travels 1,500 to 2,500 miles to reach your supermarket, a hefty price to pay for being able to eat grapes in winter.

Choosing to support an alternative farming system also ensures your food dollars don’t contribute to the further degradation of ecosystems. Modern agriculture, which concentrates large acreages in single crops and crowds livestock into tight structures, causes billions of dollars worth of environmental damage. Pesticides alone harm air, water, and soil to the tune of $10 billion each year, according to Cornell ecologist David Pimentel. WorldWatch Institute estimates that cleaning up after these collective insults costs more than $50 an acre, an expense that isn’t reflected in the price tag of conventional foods.

Organic products may cost a little more at the checkout, but they don’t contribute to the hidden, societal expense of water and air pollution, or to that of medical care by further compromising human health. Organic farming, which is strictly regulated by national standards, also focuses on building up the soil without chemical pesticides or fertilizers—a practice that ultimately reduces topsoil erosion and protects water quality.

You don’t need to overhaul your entire diet at once to start eating sustainably. Introduce organic squash here, grass-fed beef there. Buy milk from a farmer in your state. Each week or month, add a few more sustainably produced foods to your shopping list. Every purchase will help promote a form of agriculture that protects watersheds and wildlife. Read on to learn more about what constitutes sustainable cuisine, and why supporting it is one of the most important—and pleasurable—decisions you can make.

ORGANIC FOODS

The $9.5 billion organic food industry is the fastest growing segment of the food market. As soon as you sink your teeth into an organic tomato—ruby red and dripping with flavor—you can probably taste why. Organic growers also provide a slew of subtler benefits: They don’t use chemical pesticides or fertilizers (which in conventional agriculture, according to the USDA, reached 500 million pounds and 21 million tons respectively in 2002); they don’t apply sewage sludge to fields or use genetically engineered seed; and they don’t give growth hormones or antibiotics to livestock. A study released by the University of California, Davis, confirms that organic fruits also have higher levels of natural cancer-fighting compounds than those conventionally grown and sprayed with pesticides—so it’s becoming increasingly clear that organic foods are better for your body, too.

As the demand for organic food continues to grow, finding it becomes easier than ever. Today most supermarkets carry organic milk in the dairy case and vegetables in the produce aisle. You can look to your local farmer’s market, food coop, or natural foods store for a wider selection.  

SUSTAINABLY CAUGHT SEAFOOD

Poor fishing practices are not only wiping out the populations of target fish, but also those of other marine animals caught and discarded as bycatch, including sea turtles, sharks, and many thousands of seabirds. These species constitute up to 25 percent of what is caught by the world’s fisheries—in the early 1990s that was estimated to be about 60 billion pounds of bycatch each year. Some fishing equipment, like heavy metal dredges, can also destroy important feeding and breeding habitat along the ocean bottom.

In today’s $55 billion U.S. seafood market, consumers wield a lot of influence in increasing or reducing the demand for overfished species. When looking at a menu or a fish counter, it’s important to ask questions and then weigh your decision carefully—choosing a sustainably fished species like wild Alaskan salmon over farm-raised salmon, which pollutes watersheds, or wild Atlantic salmon, which is at historic lows, for example. There are a lot of choices out there, but there are also many groups that have already helped you to determine which ones are safest.

 

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NATURALLY RAISED MEATS

Meat production has come a long way since the bucolic days of farm animals roaming free in barnyards and pastures. Many would argue it has changed for the worse. Large-scale factory farms—which pack thousands of animals into confined areas—have squeezed many smaller, family farms out of business, replacing sustainably produced food animals with unsustainably raised livestock. Between the years 1987 and 1997, for example, the hog population in North Carolina swelled from 2.5 to 10 million animals, and hog waste increased 282 percent to 18 million tons. This waste eventually leaches into surrounding watersheds and emits noxious gases into the air.

Fortunately, there are still farmers who consciously raise pork, poultry, and beef to be healthier for consumers and the environment, and they are gaining a new stronghold. As people begin to recognize the dangers of concentrated waste lagoons, pesticide-laced feed, and the overuse of growth hormones and antibiotics, the market for pasture-raised, organic meat products continues to grow.

A VEGETARIAN DIET

The production of food is an incredibly resource-intensive activity, and the production of meat is the most intensive and polluting activity of all. According to the WorldWatch Institute, one calorie of beef requires 33 percent more fossil fuel to produce than one calorie of potatoes. And a recent study by Cornell ecologist David Pimentel revealed that the production of 2.2 pounds of beef requires 100 times the water that it takes to produce a pound of grain.

Cutting the average household’s consumption of both red meats and poultry in half and replacing it with grains would cut food-related land use by 30 percent and water pollution by 24 percent, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. The good news is that eating a more plant-based diet has never been easier. Vegetarian entrees are becoming regular fixtures on the menus of swank restaurants and fast-food giants alike. And while there’s never been a dearth of good old fruits and vegetables at the produce counter, there are now a lot more tasty meat alternatives—like chickenless nuggets and veggie ground round—at supermarkets, too.

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LOCAL SOURCING

There’s a difference between buying foods in your local grocery store and buying foods that are locally grown. The former probably traveled 1,500 miles and took several weeks to reach the shelves—wasting fuel and losing nutritional value along the way. The latter will be fresh, seasonal, and tasting its best—while using the least amount of natural resources to arrive at your door. Buying locally grown foods also contributes directly to your local economy and helps family farmers, who are struggling in the face of corporate agriculture, to thrive.

Farmers' markets are a great place to shop for fresh produce, not to mention cut out the middleman and make a direct connection with the people who grow your food. From 1994 to 2002 the number of farmers' markets operating in the United States has grown by 79 percent, to 3,100 markets. Look to community supported agriculture (CSA) systems, as well, which enable you to buy a “share” in a farm up front in return for a weekly box of farm products throughout the growing season (see “The New Harvesters,” September 2002, http://magazine.audubon.org/features0209/csa.html). Finally, ask your local grocer or supermarket to provide more food grown in-state, and to label it clearly as such.

FARMLAND PRESERVATION

With a population nearing 300 million, more food is needed in the United States now than ever before. And yet the number of people farming the nation’s land is plummeting. In the U.S. there were close to 6 million farms in the 1930s; by 2002, just 2 million remained. Today, according to the Economic Research Service, there are as many farm households where both farm operator and spouse also work off the farm as there are households where both only work on the farm. As corporate agriculture continues to concentrate larger farms in fewer hands, growing vast fields of single crops, family farms are being unceremoniously squeezed out.

What the country is losing, with these farmers, are professionals who have an intimate knowledge of the land they’ve lived on—its soils, weather, plants, and pollinators. They can grow, on their smaller acreages, several crops at varying heights and root depths simultaneously, efficiently using resources like land and water. Their farms are consequently more diverse, and can support a more diverse community of birds, insects, wildlife, and people in ways that large-scale, highly mechanized farms simply aren’t able to do. And they are also more resilient to climate variations and outbreaks of pests and disease.

These small, diversified operations are quickly and quietly slipping away, though, and the land is being converted to intensive megafarms or succumbing to suburban sprawl. But by supporting the farmers in your state and community—and by voicing your support for fair agricultural policy on a national level—you can help protect the environment, build a healthy regional economy, and preserve a way of life.

For more conservation ideas, visit Audubon At Home

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