Sustainable Food Requires More Than Growing Sustainably

Sustainable food is a complete system. It starts with good soil, enriched by compost and leaf mold, quality heirloom seed, clean water,  and healthy, vibrant sunshine; then food is moved with as little impact as possible, sold, chopped mixed, eaten and composted which goes back to the soil, right?

Commercially, it is possible to reach these growing goals under the organic umbrella, but there's an extra step many producers have involved in the middle part: packaging.

Packaging whole produce does not make sense to me. It feels like the effort of growing organically is going half way just to end up with another notch extending the landfill's belt.

It has become customary to package things like lettuce, spinach, mushrooms; and lately I've noticed a bit of overkill. Last week I went into the grocery and found a bag of lettuce packed inside a plastic clamshell box. I don't recall the exact brand, but I do recall thinking "wow, it's like that now?"

The problem with packaging is two-fold: first, the packaging creates waste that goes directly to landfill (do not pass go; do not collect $200). But maybe even more dangerous is that packaging sets up a number of ideals that may or may not be true:

1. packaging leads the consumer to believe produce is grown in a particular way by use of graphic labels presenting wholesome farms and logos.


2. leads the consumer to believe the produce is washed, clean and ready to eat, removing the responsibility of the consumer to control quality.


3. it creates the produce-as-product dichotomy, further increasing the disconnect between food and land (nothing like a couple of layers of  plastic to remove one's self from the natural world!)

Last I checked (truthfully it was a couple years ago) Trader Joe's didn't sell any vegetables outside of packages. Sometimes one could pick a banana, but I think that was the lone exception. I haven't purchased any produce from Trader Joe's in over 5 years for this very reason.

There is argument that packaging prolongs the shelf life of vegetables, which, if that were wholeheartedly true, I suppose it'd be a benefit to somebody (namely the merchant), but my experiences have left me with the fact that plastic-wrapped vegetables always (always always) have at least one rotting vegetable spoiling their brethren in their little micro-environment. Besides the reasons listed above, I always feel that by packaging the produce, the stores are aiming to sneak in a rotten one to ease up on their profit losses at my expense. It may or may not be true; but that's how I feel about it.

I miss the days where I could pick through mushrooms to find a nice fat one perfect for stuffing with cheese, onions and garlic. But no, now the only mushrooms available are in little Styrofoam (ouch!) containers wrapped in plastic cling wrap - a double no-no to factor sustainability.

The only real option to be truly sustainable is to buy fresh, buy less and buy often. That is how you move product around. I don't want plastic-wrapped apples that have come out of refrigeration (for up to a year) only to find they've been knocked around enough to bruise 25% of the bag's contents, letting off enough gas to soften the rest of the apples, causing me an enormously upsetting bite into mealy, gross apple flesh. Not one part of that experience sounds enjoyable.

Ditch the plastic! Remember the cycle: Heirloom seed to rich soil to luscious fruit (to drop the seed) to stinky compost to enrich the soil; this is sustainable food!

Photo credit: EatDrinkBetter.com