Environmental Impacts of my meal

          The thought “where does this food come from?” has crossed my mind many times before. However, I very often stop myself from finding the answer because I don’t think I ever truly want to know. Still, taking this class has given me the tools to think globally about my meal and the impacts it has around the world.

After a little bit of research, including on the grocery store website, I found it kind of difficult to discover where the ingredients were grown. In the vegetable salad, I know that the green beans actually came from my mother’s own garden in our back yard. As for the carrots, which before being cut up were actually ‘baby carrots,’ I have learned that the majority of carrots in the United States are grown in California; these carrots, of Bolthouse Farms, were grown in Bakersfield, California. Once again, the strawberries in the fruit salad were also likely grown in California, though they could have also been from Florida or possibly even Oregon. The only thing I learned from the actual grocery store website was that they “pride themselves on supporting the local Wisconsin farmers in our communities,” so, in terms of the strawberries, they may have even come from Wisconsin!

When thinking about the environmental impacts of each ingredient, we’ll go with the easiest one first, which would be the green beans grown in my mother’s garden. Because they were grown on such a small scale, I do not believe that they would have drastically changed the biodiversity in my backyard. It had probably already been altered when the large structure that is my house was put there…

Anyway! In terms of water, I know my mother uses the hose attached to our house to water her plants, so though it is not necessarily directly affecting groundwater or surface water, it is in other ways. I do believe there were any fossil fuels involved in the process (I sincerely hope not) and I also do not believe that the small amount of green beans grown in her garden are contributing immensely to carbon dioxide emissions. I think most of the impacts would be local, though if she used any pesticides, those effects could become global.

For the other two ingredients, many other factors are involved, particularly for the carrots. For this purpose, let’s assume that the strawberries came from California. As a part of agriculture, both the carrots and the strawberries impact groundwater and surface water in many ways. After all, agriculture in California uses 85% of the water supply, mostly through irrigation. Because they are both grown on such large plots of farmland, the original habitat of that area was changed drastically to become agricultural land, consequently reducing the biodiversity as well. Chemicals, such as pesticides were likely used on both ingredients as well as fossil fuels in indirect ways. Although, according to the California Strawberries, strawberries are picked by hand, the carrots are picked by large agricultural machines, running on gasoline/oil. This doesn’t even cover the entire factory process that regular carrots go through to become what Americans know as ‘baby carrots.’ Much more than the green beans, I think the effects of carrots and of strawberries can be considered local as well as global. The soil erosion from the agricultural lands as well as the pesticides and chemicals used are some of the leading sources of water pollution, which can have negative impacts around the world.

The trip for the green beans, an ingredient I would consider local, was considerably shorter than the trip for the carrots and strawberries. As the former two were bought in supermarkets, they likely ended up there by truck and were ultimately transferred to the house by a rockin’ minivan. The food waste of the green beans actually went into my mother’s compost bin, which will eventually end up back in her garden. The carrots and strawberries both came in plastic, which was likely thrown away and will end up in a landfill (and take 1000 years to decompose…).

It was most definitely a challenge to think about the global impacts of even just a few ingredients in my meal. If everyone knew the entire story of where his or her food came from, I think it would have a major impact on the way we buy/produce our food, hopefully in a positive way. 

Video about how baby carrots are made...