Green Tucker

I never expected to be eating strawberries in late April but we are! In fact, we have been feasting on locally grown, organic strawberries for months now. We found out about Ladybird Organics back in December through Grasslands, the co-op that delivers our weekly box of organic produce. I had seen their organic salad leaves, packaged in corn starch bags in our health food store, but had no idea that Ladybird Organics had a shop open to the public at their market garden in Keilor. Before this discovery I had never considered market gardens as a source of organic certified produce nor had I thought that I would be able to access them directly.

The strawberries are sold in 800gm containers and have been sensational in flavour. We end up eating a lot of them fresh for breakfast but have also used them to make low sugar jam, a method of jam making which allows the flavour of the fruit to shine through. For more information on this type of jam making, see Jude Blereau’s second cookbook, “Coming Home to Eat, Whole Food for the Family”. We also tried freezing them in their natural state but they were very rubbery when thawed and lacked flavour so have since coated them in sugar as Janet Chadwick suggests in “The Busy Person’s Guide to Preserving Food”.

We’ve just started visiting regional farmers’ markets to see if we can make any new food discoveries, like the market garden strawberries mentioned above and the biodynamic kiwis that featured in my earlier post, Kiwis are Back 28/7/08. Where possible we are intending to travel to these markets using the country trains and taking along our bikes. And I’m hoping that I’ll learn of new sources of local, organic produce in the updated edition of the Victorian Organic Food Products Directory. It is due to be re-published this year, however you can have a look at the 2007 edition here: www.business.vic.gov.au/busvicwr/_assets/main/lib60010/organicfooddirectory.pdf

I love strawberries and they are back in season. I know this because they appeared at the Farmers Market. The suppliers of strawberries at the FM makes no promises about organics, or low use of chemicals in the production of their strawberries. So as I had heard some less than savoury (or sweet!) things about the pesticides/herbicides used on strawberries I decided to ask the question of the strawberry man at the FM stall. I was told that they only spray the flower, not the fruit. A fellow customer chimed in with “of course” as if the whole world knew that except me. As this was contrary to what I had heard I decided to find out what the ‘typical’ treatment of strawberries was.

I tried contacting the Strawberry Industry association of Victoria and got a less then satisfactory answer. I will need to follow that one up. So I went to other sources.

Choice Magazine found higher than acceptable pesticide residues in strawberries from
conventional farms (Choice magazine, February 2008). Their research found almost all conventionally grown strawberries contained some residues. They analysed strawberries from 31 growers across most states in Australia and found three contained pesticide residues at levels above the acceptable MRL’s (maximum residue levels), three had pesticides that regulations don’t allow, two contained more fungicide than is acceptable under stringent EU regulations, and seventeen strawberries had combination residues of more than one pesticide. And washing did not remove all of the pesticide residue!

A worrying thought…………so now I am only going to eat organic strawberries!

With all the discussion around the Emissions Trading Scheme there have been figures bandied about regarding the carbon emissions of the different sectors. Agriculture is initially going to be left out of the trading scheme even though it is a significant contributor to Australia’s emissions.

It is fairly clear that a meat free diet has less impact on the environment, and is less carbon intensive, than a diet containing red meat, but how much so?  In 2005 CSIRO and Sydney Uni published a report called  Balancing Act: A triple bottom line analysis of the Australian Economy which compares the costs and benefits - including water and land use, and carbon impacts - of 135 different sectors of the economy ranging from barley through to wool production..

It also covers the employment and % of GDP the different sectors contribute to the Australian economy, which gives you a good indication on how hooked on a particular sector we are. If you love facts and detail I recommend you have a look at the report.

Below is a tiny snapshot of some of the facts from this report to give you a feel for the impact of meat versus other foods (on a national level, and based on $1 of final demand):

Beef

• ghg emissions are 26 times the economy wide average
• Beef sector is responsible for 2% of water use & nearly 4% of ghg emissions
• Two thirds of our beef production is exported
• This sector ranks 38 out of 135 in terms of value adding in the economy

Wheat & other grains

• Comes in with average ghg emissions
• Responsible for 1% of water use & less than 3 tenths of 1% ghg emissions
• This industry is half the size of the beef industry
• This sector ranks 61 out of 135 in terms of value adding in the economy

Dairy cattle & milk

• Responsible for 4 times the average ghg emissions
• Responsible for 1% of water use and about 1 tenth of 1% of ghg emissions
• The overall diary industry (all the downstream stuff included) is responsible for nearly 17% of national water use!
• This sector ranks 64 out of 135 in terms of value adding in the economy

Vegetable & fruit growing

• Responsible for 1.4 times the average ghg emissions
• Responsible for 5% of water use, and nearly 1% of ghg emissions
• This sector ranks 34 out of 135 in terms of value adding in the economy

Pigs

• Responsible for 3 times the average ghg emissions
• Water use is 4 times the average
• This sector ranks 130 out of 135 in terms of value adding in the economy

Poultry & eggs

• Responsible for 2 times the average ghg emissions
• Water use is 2 times the average
• This sector ranks 106 out of 135 in terms of value adding in the economy

I could go on (there are some great graphs in the report if you are like me and love a bit of a visual aid!) Interesting that beef is so ghg intensive, especially compared with the other meats. And I thought diary would be more carbon intensive (don’t those cows fart methane?). What would be interesting to know is the ghg intensity for free range chicken and pork production?

For some time now I have been looking around for some figures on organic vs locally grown ie delivered to your door which results in the lower amount of greenhouse gases (ghg).

I recently came across some reverence to this issue in the September 13th edition of New Scientist. An article on food miles highlighted the large impact food had on the amount of ghg produced but food miles were not the main culprit.  According to New Scientist 83% of the ghg from food came from food production, with only 11% coming from transport (this is US figures).

The article went on to say that the most emissions-intensive food is red meat and one solution to this as the world’s consumption of meat increase is in-vitro meat.  This sounds a bit icky to me but the first In Vitro Meat Symposium has been held this year in Norway!

And finally the article discussed organic vs conventional, and unfortunately came to no great conclusions. Does anyone out there have any details on organic vs conventional vs food miles or is it all too variable?

My partner and I went to our first food swap a couple of Saturdays ago. The Western Urban Orchard Swap Meet was organised by Neesh (from WeCAN) and Lucy (from Maribyrnong Council) with support from Grasslands and VicHealth. The idea is to bring along any excess produce that you’ve grown at home. It could be vegetables, fruit or herbs - anything that is edible. This food swap will be ongoing, scheduled for the first Saturday of each month from 10am to 12pm.

We took along bunches of silverbeet, oregano, parsley, lemon balm and sorrel. We added these to the large table of produce, which included oranges, beetroot, lemons, loquats, spring onions and celery. We then helped ourselves to some of the produce already on the table. This communal method is a good way to organise a food swap, because you don’t have to do a direct swap and it allows you to choose something that you know you can use.

The swap was inspired by the Urban Orchard Project, which has been running for some years out of the CERES Organic Market on Saturday mornings. Brad Shone and Chris Ennis kicked off Urban Orchard with a focus on unused fruit, which spread to all things edible. Other versions of Urban Orchard have sprung up including Neighbourhood Orchard Produce which takes place on the first Saturday of the month next to Fitzroy Pool.

We found that taking part in a food swap was a lovely way to connect with other growers in our community, and we’ve already marked down next month’s exchange in our diary. The food swap makes use of edibles that might have become waste otherwise, and provides easy access to a variety of locally grown produce. It also inspires you to grow more edibles when you see what others are already growing in your local area. And it gives you the opportunity to share knowledge and experiences about growing edibles. I’m motivated to start one in my neighbourhood area. You could extend it to include seedlings and preserves made from local produce. The project could also offer support to older residents who have fruit trees that they were unable to harvest due to all the physical effort involved.

We ended up coming home with a bag of shiny orange cumquats and some eggs. The cumquats are now marinating for a couple of months in brandy with sugar and a vanilla bean. Just in time for Christmas!

See www.ceres.org.au for more information on Urban Orchard or email urbanorchard@ceres.org.au

Trying to eat locally to reduce food miles can seem difficult at first; however, here are a few of the guidelines that Kate and I have found to be useful. We are aiming to put together a more comprehensive list but this current list is enough to get you started.

Farmers’ Market
You can safely assume that all the fresh fruit and vegetables you see on the stalls at the credible farmers’ markets are in season and locally grown. (See Australian Farmers’ Market Association website www.farmersmarkets.org.au for guidelines on what constitutes a genuine farmers’ market.)
An exception to this might be something like nuts in their shell, which may have been harvested a few months before and which the farmer is just continuing to sell at the farmers’ market until their stock runs out. By talking to the farmer you can find out when a particular fresh food item will become available or when your favourite item is going to disappear as it goes out of season!

Miranda Sharp provided some interesting statistics about locally grown produce at a talk held as part of ‘A Taste of Slow’, the Slow Food festival held in Melbourne earlier this year. At Collingwood Children’s Farm Farmers’ Market, 75% of stalls are run by producers located within 200 km of Melbourne and 50% are within 100 km of Melbourne. The furthest anyone came from was Mildura (500 km from Melbourne). And most of the fresh food items were picked no more than 24 hours before appearing on the market stalls.

Organic Foodstores
Lots of these stores now indicate where their fresh produce comes from, which is a fantastic customer service. A few weeks back I left my local organic foodstore with lovely bunch of kale, a big bag of blood oranges and another of brussels sprouts, all wonderfully Victorian! You’ll find that the people who work in these foodstores are a great source of knowledge. The owner of one of stores that I frequent is very knowledgeable about the workings of the wholesale market at Footscray and his answers to my endless stream of questions have substantially contributed to my understanding of our food system. I didn’t realise that any ripe, conventionally grown tropical food from QLD, was automatically dipped in a solution to ensure the removal of fruit flies. Organic-certified, tropically grown fruit bypasses this requirement by exporting the fruit unripened because the fruit flies aren’t interested in the fruit until it is ripe.

Knowing what is in season
Knowing when things are in season can help you work out if something has a good chance of being locally grown. This knowledge makes me aware that I would never be able to source organically certified, Victorian-grown tomatoes in the middle of winter. Nick Ray, from the The Ethical Consumer Group ( www.ethical.org.au ) advised us that The Digger’s Club (a gardening club: www.diggers.com.au ) produce a great ‘Sow What When’ poster for all of Australia that also indicates the growing days to harvest. So it can give you an idea of what is grown when. Using tomatoes as an example, the Digger’s Club poster advises that tomato seeds can be sown in Victoria from August until December and that it will take between 3 to 4 months to produce a tomato, which confirms that I won’t find any organically certified tomatoes grown in Victoria in the middle of winter. Growing edibles at home will also help to connect you to what is in season.

What is your definition of local eating? Mine has been shaped by the different choices I have made along the way since we commenced this project. My approach is very different from the Canadian couple who kicked off the ‘100 Mile Diet’. They sourced conventional food from within a 100-mile limit of their home in Vancouver. I’ve decided that, where possible, I’ll purchase seasonal, organic or biodynamic Victorian produce. Then, within this boundary, and if the choice is available, I choose the produce that is grown closest to Melbourne. If I’m unable to source the produce I require from Victoria, I’ll then purchase it from the closest interstate source. So when I need unsalted butter I currently purchase a brand that comes from a biodynamic farm across the border in Meadows, South Australia, because I have been unable to find organic, unsalted Victorian butter.

I have also made a deliberate choice to include a component of organic, fair-trade produce in my version of our local eating project, so I can support communities in the Global South. I’m bulk-purchasing grains such as quinoa and amaranth that are organic, fair-trade certified and grown and processed by farmers in Bolivia. Kate has sourced a fair-trade, organic range of chocolate that is available in large slabs, which I now purchase for cooking my favourite cake recipes. With cocoa powder I have actually had an additional choice : whether to purchase an organic, fair-trade version from a brand owned by a multinational company or fairly traded, organic cocoa imported from Peru by a much smaller, Melbourne-based company. I’ve recently switched to the latter since coming across it at an organic foodstore.

With rice, there is an additional consideration that revolves around water. I want to purchase rice that is grown in countries where the climate is more conducive to this crop in comparison with Australia. I have reduced my consumption of rice and what rice I do eat is certified fair-trade and grown by a cooperative in Thailand. That said, I’m still purchasing Australian-grown organic rice milk for breakfast! I haven’t found a suitable replacement that is non-diary and gluten free (our household became gluten free eight months into this local eating project).

There are a number of products that I choose to buy from overseas as I have been unable to source an Australian equivalent. This was the case for polenta until very recently. Before I came across organic, certified Australian-grown polenta from Gunnedah in NSW, I was purchasing organic Italian polenta. I am also buying a lot of my spices from overseas.

Yet another consideration for me has been our weekly vegie box. Before I started on this local eating project our household supported a local, community-based organisation that home-delivers a box of mixed organic produce. The assorted organic fruit and vegetable box that we receive each week contains a mixture of Victorian and interstate produce. It is possible to regulate the contents somewhat by requesting that certain items are left out. At the moment I have requested that we don’t receive any tomatoes, zucchinis or eggplants, as they had been occasionally turning up during winter. This means you have to actively adjust the list as the season changes to avoid receiving out-of-season produce, purchased from the wholesale food market at Footscray. I am considering asking for a purely Victorian box of produce in the summer, to see how that goes before I attempt doing the same next winter. We supplement this weekly box with local produce from various farmers’ markets and with what we grow.

So eating local is not perhaps as simple as it seems from the outset. There are loads of choices to be made. And I think that a project of this nature will always continue to evolve as you become aware of different issues associated with the food you consume. At this point in time I am wondering if any of the food I consume is grown without irrigation. I haven’t started any research in that area, but it is something that this project and an awareness of the state of the Murray-Darling system is forcing me to consider.

It is definitely more practical to gradually source appropriate produce to replace former choices. This allows you more time to research and make considered, informed decisions. You do develop an intimate connection with your food - never before have I been able to identify where most of the food on my plate came from!

As a meat eater trying to reduce their impact on the environment one of the first things I committed to was reducing my meat consumption and when eating meat to only eat free range, and where possible, organic meat. Reducing consumption started with me only eating vegetarian lunches. This killed two birds with one stone, as most lunch places don’t use free range meat…trying asking at your local cafe!

I find free range meat a lot easier to source at the Farmers’ market.  Mainly because I can have a conversation with the farmer, and really trust the ‘free range’ part of the label. One example at the Gasworks Farmers’ Market is Gypsy Pork (www.thegypsypig.com.au) Besides free range it is also rare breed pork -  so, rather ironically, by eating it you are helping to preserve the breed (and reduced diversity in farmed animals and plants is a HUGE issue  but that is another story!!).

While it is more expensive than ‘unhappy’ pork it tastes fantastic, and you can be assured the pigs are living happy lives. Unlike the commercial products where the pigs lead horrendous lives and the environment suffers as well (check out Peter Singers book ‘The ethics of what we eat’ for some detail on both intensive pork and chicken farming, which should turn you of EVER eating intensively farmed meat again!!!)

As I live with a committed carnivore other ways of reducing meat consumption are done through sly and devious means. Try just buying less per serve.  This is very hard to detect in stir-fry meals or pies!  Also soups are fantastic for using a tiny bit of meat, loads of vegetables and still getting the thumbs up for taste!

I am also learning to cook vegetarian meals; it is funny how easy it is to cook when meat is the central thing on the plate, take that away and I struggle.  So I have invested in a vegetarian cook book and am slowly increasing my repertoire.

Recently, one of the ATA team visited a Victorian biodynamic kiwi fruit farm. They brought in a large bowl of kiwi fruit for the office to munch on, which made me realise that kiwi fruits were in back in season. It had been a while since I’d eaten one as I had found it difficult last year to source Victorian kiwi fruit. A lot of the ones I came across had little oval stickers on them to say that they were indeed organic, which was great, but surprisingly they originated from Italy! I wasn’t able to ascertain if they were being flown in or shipped, however it was very shocking to see European kiwi fruit at all the organic outlets last season. (I have since discovered that Italy is a bigger producer of kiwi fruit than New Zealand!) So I was extremely happy on two fronts: kiwi fruits were back in season and they were being grown biodynamically in Victoria.

Then things got even better when, a couple of weeks ago at the Gasworks Farmers’ Market, I came across a stall selling biodynamically grown kiwi fruit. Chatting to the stallholder, I found out that kiwis store really well in the fridge. She was talking months (later I found some of my cookbooks suggested 6 to 8 weeks). This was quite astonishing to me and I started to regard the kiwi in a different light! How incredible that a small, soft fruit can have such an extended storage life without the need to do much more than put them in fridge and make sure they don’t get crushed. By this stage of the conversation I was envisioning my breakfast bowl embellished with kiwi fruits for months on end! The kiwis were very well priced, as they were considered undersized by the stores who therefore weren’t interested in selling them.

This kiwi fruit episode illustrates how valuable (besides enjoyable) it is being able to chat directly to the grower at the farmers’ markets. Kate has already mentioned it in her Farmers’ Market post (3/4/08) but it’s worth repeating. It’s continually amazing what you find out.

So I now have kiwis in the fruit bowl, some in paper bags in the vegetable crisper drawer at the bottom of the fridge and a dozen in an egg carton to see how they go. It will be interesting to see which of those in the fridge mature first. I do wonder how long they would have lasted in our cool cupboard if it was in place and not still an item on our to-do list of environmental retrofits for the house!

Finally, this wonderful, locally produced resource is in print. I have been waiting for it since early February 2008, when I first heard Giselle Wilkinson, from the Sustainable Living Foundation, talking on the conversation hour on ABC 774, about a cookbook that she had written. Not long after I was able to flick through a draft copy at the Sustainable Living Festival, then finally in May a review copy of ‘The Conscious Cook - Sustainable Cooking and Living’ arrived in the office.

It’s a great resource for anyone wanting to look at the sustainability issues around the food they consume and very useful for anyone wanting to embark on a local eating project. The content of this cookbook makes it a unique publication. I haven’t been able to find anything that matches it online in the UK or USA, although ‘Grub ideas for an urban organic kitchen’, by Anna Lappe and Bryant Terry, has a similar theme, but it isn’t as well organized or concise. (’Grub’ does, however, have a useful template for a community food audit at the very end of the book.)

‘The Conscious Cook’ can assist you in making considered, informed decisions around the food you purchase and consume. Insightful commentary about food sustainability issues accompanies the gorgeously illustrated recipes (Richard Hooper, the head chef at the 100 Mile Cafe in Melbourne is responsible for the photographs) and there is also a series of icons that invite you to consider a range of issues including food miles, seasonality, community, justice and biodiversity. Following the recipes, which feature meat, seafood and vegetarian dishes, there are three sections that examine food sustainability in more detail: ‘How what you eat affects you’, ‘How what you eat affects the world’ and ‘What you can do about it’. There is a great list of further reading if you want to delve more deeply into food sustainability issues and an excellent list of websites for related organisations. Enjoy the read and the cooking!