If you want to watch someone’s eyes glaze over in dreaded anticipation of being bored out their minds, I suggest using the phrase: “In the good old days”, or “When I was young”. After you say these phrases, you can say almost anything, because no one will be listening to you. But, when it comes to food, some things really were better in the past.
I preach today about the connection between food and the health of our planet. Just as walking or bicycling, recycling, and carrying your own shopping bags, are all things an individual can do to help the planet, what we eat, and when we eat it, has a huge impact on sustainability.
In the very old days, you ate what you grew, and you ate only what was in season. You couldn’t get watermelon in November, or asparagus in February. You didn’t eat strawberries all year round.
The four seasons included more than the changing weather. It included changing your diet based on which foods were in season. Winter food was what you had stored or frozen because even city folk know that nothing grows through snow. Here in the Northeast, autumn brings apples and squash, replacing the watermelon, tomatoes and corn that have been so abundant in the summer. In the fall there are farms where you can choose your pumpkin when it is still on the vine. After Halloween, you can bake your pumpkin in the oven, and have one of the most delicious soups you’ve ever tasted!
But most of us don’t think about what food is in season. In the United States, consumers want to be able to buy every fruit and vegetable grown anywhere on the planet, and we want these things conveniently located at the nearby grocery store, four seasons of the year. When we insist on buying peppers or tomatoes before they are in season, they are shipped from as far away as Mexico. The snap peas I gave the children are from Guatemala, and the avocado was most likely from California. Flying or trucking our food to where we live has grave consequences. Even worse is our insistence on eating a lot of meat.
On the Credo blog (Earth Week Climate Challenge #1) Daniel Tien tells us “about a study published in March that shows that a global shift to a vegetarian diet would cut food-related greenhouse gas emissions by nearly two-thirds. This clearly demonstrates the huge—and hugely damaging—impact that intensive meat production has on our climate. Of course, no one expects that the entire world will go vegetarian overnight. But if the world simply switched to a mostly vegetarian diet and reduced meat consumption to fit within current health guidelines, that could reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by nearly a third.”
I like grilled steak and the occasional hamburger and hotdog in the summer. I am not suggesting that we all become vegetarians. But even making one or two meals a week meatless would have huge consequences. The website for the World Resources Institute also emphasizes the importance of reducing consumption of meat and dairy. The website offered this startling data: “Beef production requires 20 times more land and emits 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions per unit of edible protein than common plant-based protein sources such as beans, peas and lentils. Chicken and pork are more resource-efficient than beef, but still require three times more land and emit three times more greenhouse gas emissions than beans. When it comes to resource use and environmental impacts, the type of food eaten matters as much, if not more, than how that food is produced. Beef production requires large quantities of land and water per unit of protein or calorie consumed.”
While I would never presume to tell anyone how or what to eat, this website indicates that there are millions of us eating more protein per day than we need, and most of it comes from animal proteins rather than plant proteins.
If 2 billion so called high consumers cut their meat and dairy consumption by 40%, we could save an area of land the size of two Indias! (from the World Resources Institute website)
Imagine the size of the forest!
There are other consequences of consumers’ needs for a variety of fruits and vegetables all year round, and an insistence on eating meat. Most of us know very little about our food, and most of us don’t feel that this kind of learning is important.
The book that the mornings’ readings come from is called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and it was published after Barbara Kingsolver and her family spent a year committed to eating food that they grew themselves, or could buy locally. I am never going to be a farmer myself, and I will probably continue to treat myself to the occasional artichoke, but the book made a lasting impression on me; it made me want to know more about the food I eat.
Barbara Kingsolver writes that “knowing how foods grow is to know how and when to look for them; such expertise is useful for certain kinds of people, namely the ones who eat.” (p. 10). Ms Kingsolver relates a conversation she has with a friend living in a city: Her gourmet chef friend asks, “What’s new on the farm?” As the call came in early Spring, and Kingsolver and her family live in Virginia, Kingsolver tells her what’s up in the garden: peas, potatoes, spinach. Her very bright friend asks, “Wait a minute. When you say the potatoes are up, what do you mean? What part of the potato comes up?” The plant part, Kingsolver answers. The stems and the leaves. Wow, says the friend. I never knew a potato had a plant part.” (p. 11) To be clear, I was as clueless as Kingsolver’s friend. I knew potatoes came from the ground but I never imagined stems and leaves came with them!
Again, neither our author or your preacher expects anyone to turn in your computer for a rake and a hoe. But what we eat, and when we eat it, is very significant. Shouldn’t we know what is in season? With that knowledge, you wouldn’t buy tomatoes in February. You would wait for August, when you can get them at a variety of local farms here on Cape Ann, or grow them yourselves. Eating a freshly sliced tomato with salt is one of the great joys of August. Eating one from the grocery store in March delivers no such joy.
When so many wisdom traditions point to living in the present as a spiritual practice, why can’t we extend this to eating in the moment? I can’t eat corn unless it’s in the summer; it just doesn’t feel right.
We will be helping the planet as well as our local economy if we buy our food at the Rockport Farmers market when it reopens or at Marshalls farm near Wingershake beach. We can go to Alprilla Farms in Essex and support a local farm. I’ve heard that someone named Farmer Dave comes to Lanesville once a week in the summer. He brings the produce he has grown on his farm in Dracut.
Over the past 20 years, there are increasing numbers of restaurants that offer really great vegetarian meals. There are vegetarian cookbooks galore. Even if you don’t like to cook, you can eat raw carrots and peas and cucumbers locally grown.
Recently I read a sermon written by Leah D Schade, who offers a theology which includes ecology. She writes:
(Excerpt from “An Earth Day Sermon,” written by Leah D. Schade, published in her book Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Planet)
“Why does God curse the ground in Genesis 3? Do you remember? It’s because Adam and Eve ate fruit from the tree of knowledge. Most [Christians] see this story as the explanation for the concept of Original Sin — the doctrine that all human beings are born into a sinful state because of the fall of Adam and Eve.
But there is another way to view this story. This story in chapter 3 shows us that God set out limits for human beings in how they were to exist in the garden. For the good of Adam and Eve, for the good of the tree, for the good of the entire garden, God essentially said: “This far and no farther.” God established a boundary for the mutual protection of the relationship between humankind and the created world…
Did the original humans respect these boundaries? No. They did not obey the limits God set for them. They ignored the warnings, flouted the rules, and crossed the line. There’s almost a feeling of entitlement you sense from Eve and Adam’s rationalization of their disobedience. It’s as if they’re saying, “This is our garden after all. We should be allowed to do anything we want with it.”
…And because of this arrogance, there is an immediate cascade of events that shatters the relationships of paradise. The humans hide from God, and are not honest with God or themselves. They blame each other, and they blame one of God’s creatures for the temptation. They refuse to accept responsibility for what has happened, but the consequences are unavoidable. From that point on, their relationship with the earth is cursed: “Cursed is the ground because of you; / in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.” [Gen. 3:17b]. All because of human beings’ insistence that we can have whatever we want whenever we want it, no matter what the cost or consequences.”
Whether or not we believe that God created us or we created God, whether or not this Creation story is one that resonates with us, I think Rev Schade understands human beings.
She continues: “Do not continue to pollute the air and the water and the soil. You’ll learn good and evil the hard way when your children die from strange diseases and you can’t swim or eat fish from the poisoned waters. Do not continue burning fossil fuels. You’ll learn good and evil the hard way when the gasses trap heat within the atmosphere and melt your icebergs and flood your islands and coastlands and whip up catastrophic weather events. Do not continue to clear-cut the earth to make way for one more shopping mall or housing development. You’ll learn good and evil the hard way when species die out and invasive plants and animals prey on your weakened natural habitats.”
Our Earth, like its inhabitants, is not without limits. Its resources are not infinite. Please remember our beloved planet the next time you are shopping for food. Please remember our beloved planet when you are planning your meals. Where has the food come from? Is your dining pleasure worth the cost of the trip? Is your dining pleasure worth the cost to our atmosphere?
Let’s make this Earth Day the one where we decide to eat well, for ourselves and for our descendants.
Let it be so. And let us say Amen.
Rev Susan A Moran
UU Society of Rockport