Organic Landscape at your service!

It's difficult to fathom that landscapers, companies who work with nature and the land everyday, can completely separate that from being environmentally-friendly. But it's true: lots of landscapers use chemicals, some of them banned for retail use but through a loophole used for commercial use, that are toxic for people, animals, and the environment.

So what's the alternative? Our very own Andrew Keys has started an organic landscaping company in the Boston area that offers design services, and coaching too, if you're one to get your hands dirty. He's certified organic through the Northeast Organic Farming Association.

Oakleaf Green Landscape is just one of many landscaping companies that are attuned to the link between the land and environmental issues... duh!

Why “local” and “Equal Exchange Fair Trade” are two sides of the same coin

Thank you to Phyllis Robinson at Equal Exchange for this great blog post and the permission to repost it here.

Farmers’ markets are springing up in food co-operative and church parking lots and on Main Streets throughout the country. More people are joining CSAs (community supported agriculture) and choosing locally grown products in their grocery stores. And as this trend continues, more and more consumers are starting to ask hard questions about where their food comes from and how its grown, who is growing it and under what conditions, and equally important of course, who’s making the decisions that control our food choices and who’s making the profits from those purchases?

The “buy local” movement implies that people are acknowledging all the hard work that goes into producing high quality, healthy, flavorful products and they want to support their local farmers. They want to know the farmers, how the food was grown and be assured that it’s both healthy for them and safe for the planet. To me, it says that we as consumers are choosing to re-personalize the food system; that we want to be a part of a movement that supports community and the planet and that we are ever more ready to resist the trend for corporate control of our food system and our values.

But what happens when we want to purchase products which aren’t grown locally - such as coffee, tea, chocolate or bananas? How do we translate “buy local” values for imported products? When I think about this desire for good, healthy food; for connections to the growers; and for honest, transparent business practices where farmers, workers, and consumers are all treated with respect and fairness, it sounds just like what we’ve been talking about and working for at Equal Exchange ever since our co-operative business was founded over 20 years ago.

In fact, it’s exactly the reason Equal Exchange has chosen to partner exclusively with small-scale farmer co-operatives when we buy our coffee, tea, and chocolate products. It may be more difficult to go direct, to visit remote, isolated communities, to communicate long-distance by shaky fax and telephone lines that are often down, across language and cultural barriers and time zones, than it would be to purchase our products through a broker or a large plantation owner with all of modern technology at their disposal.

But we do so, because ironically, although our products come from rural communities in Latin America, Africa and Asia, we share the same interests, values, and principles as the “buy local” advocates. We see our farmer partners as local actors in their own co-operatives and in their own communities, working together to create positive change and to resist agricultural and trade policies that also threaten them. We want to know our partners and we want our consumers to know our partners.

It’s why we lead dozens of trips to source each year so that consumers can see firsthand who the farmers are, how their products are grown, and what the farmers’ dreams and challenges are. Of course, we also want the farmers to know where their products are ending up, who’s enjoying them and how, and to make the notion of foreign “consumers” more real and human to them - this is the food system we are co-creating and the larger community and network that we and our partners and allies are helping to foster.

For more on this and on related topics, visit the Equal Exchange blog: Small Farmers. Big Change.

What Happens within the First Hour of Drinking a Cola?

Here we thought the bad news about buying cola products was the multiitude of maladies wrought by the multinational corporate purveyors of the product. Here's some other bad news about the stuff.

-10 minutes: 10 teaspoons of sugar hit your system, which is 100 percent of your recommended daily intake. You'd normally vomit from such an intake, but the phosphoric acid cuts the flavor.

-20 minutes: Your blood sugar skyrockets. Your liver attempts to maximize insulin production in order to turn high levels of sugar into fat.

-40 minutes: As your body finishes absorbing the caffeine, your pupils dilate, your blood pressure rises, and your liver pumps more sugar into the bloodstream.

-45 minutes: Your body increases dopamine production, tricking you into feeling pleasure and adding to the addictiveness of the beverage.

-60 minutes: The sugar crash begins.

Source- Dr. Mercola: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_9665.cfm

Recap of Local and/or Organic Potluck(with pics!)

We recently held our second event of 2007: Local and/or Organic - a potluck with a discussion of CSA's, Farmers Markets, local agriculture and the implications of buying from factory farms or from places outside of the region.

There were over 30 people in attendance to hear Mark Smith(Brookwood Community Farm and FarmAid) and Danielle Andrews(The Food Project) talk about their work specifically as well as all of the issues in general. The attendees were quite interested in the subject so a lively Q&A session followed the presentations. There were brochures and sign-up forms for various CSA's as well as a guide to buying local(including farmers markets) that is published by The Food Project.

Thanks to Doerte for taking pictures at the potluck! To see all of them, visit our MySpace at: http://www.myspace.com/consciousconsuming

"Local or Organic? It's a false choice"

Even though there is still snow on the ground in New England, it's time to start thinking about your summer menu. If you plan to eat locally grown foods this summer for optimal health and taste (benefiting the planet as well by reducing carbon emissions and fuel use), check out Local Harvest to find farmer's markets, community supported agriculture programs, and farms that sell direct in your area.

If you live in the Boston area, we will be hosting a potluck on March 11th in Jamaica Plain titled "Local or Organic? It's a false choice" to talk about the benefits of both. According to Samuel Fromitz, author of Organic, Inc: Natural Foods and How they Grew, the local and organic markets account for only 2% of total food sales. Instead of worrying so much about whether buying local trumps buying organic (from California), the larger job is to convince the majority of Americans to try either. For more on this topic, see Samuel Fromitz's Grist article. Come on March 11th to hear about the options, opportunities, and obstacles (there is still snow afterall) to eating sustainably in the Boston metro area. An Evite to our event will follow later in the week.

Judging by the growth of farmer's markets around the country (the number of farmer's markets has more than doubled in the past 10 years according to data from the USDA, and has increased more than 18% in the past 2 years), the American public is catching on. As Michael Pollan notes in his best-selling book The Omnivore's Dilemma:

"...a successful local food economy implies not only a new kind of food producer, but a new kind of eater as well, one who regards finding, preparing, and preserving of food as one of the pleasures of life rather than a chore. One whose sense of taste has ruined him for a Big Mac, and whose sense of place has ruined him for shopping for groceries at Wal-Mart."

Won't you join us in becoming a new kind of eater?

Conscious Consuming Events in March 2007

Organic and/or Local?

Join us on March 11th for a presentation on various food options in the local and/or organic scene. We will have representatives from CSA's, Farmers Markets and Boston Organics(as well as their customers) to do a presentation and answer questions. You'll even be able to sign-up on the spot!

This will be another Conscious Consuming Potluck so make sure that you are on our mailing list so you get the final details and invitation!