If I want to buy pistachios at Albertson's, I can't buy what is grown just up the street in Alamogordo. I have to buy nuts grown in California, shipped to New Jersey for packaging and distribution, shipped back to the regional Albertson's warehouse in Phoenix and finally shipped to their Kern Place store. I'm not going to take the time adding up the mileage. However, to go back and forth across the country a couple of times is nearly 6,000 miles! 6,000 miles when pistachios are grown 90 miles away in Alamogordo. (By the way, I recently emailed Eagle Ranch in Alamogordo and asked them why they didn't sell directly to retailers in El Paso. I never got a reply; so, the next time I'm up there, I'll stop by and ask someone in person.)I can never buy apples grown in Cloudcroft at Albertson's - but I can get plenty from the State of Washington or from Chile in South America. The orchards in Hillsboro, NM are in the process of being dug up and destroyed.
There is dairy cattle in our area - but Price's milk often costs more than Sarah's from Arizona or the store brand which probably comes from the Northwest. There are good local cheeses made in and near El Paso. But 99% of the cheese at Albertson's is from faraway.
Fortunately, most chilies I find are locally grown - but the corn from corn tortillas is definitely not local although it could be.
Albertson's has plenty of Australian wine - but only a few bottles from Fort Stockton, Texas - 238 miles down the road. It does have a few local New Mexican wines from near La Union. But it has more Californian and Washington wines. (If it is going to ship wine from the Northwest, I wish at least that they would get a decent Pinot Noir. There are many good ones made in Oregon.)
I made a pumpkin pie today. The evaporated milk comes from faraway. The cage free eggs came from the Midwest and were shipped to California for distribution before wending their way here via that warehouse in Phoenix. Certainly the spices and the sugar did not come from around here. (Next time I'll try honey from Las Cruces, New Mexico or Clint, Texas.) I could have made my own crust - but even if I could - the flour definitely is not local. Only the pumpkin pulp was truly local. The pumpkins were locally grown. I bought them last fall, baked them, and froze the pulp in packets of roughly 1-1/2 cups pulp each.
We spend a lot of money to package and process and ship food hither and yon. (Energy independence? Don't expect it any time soon as long as we have the food system that we have.) We live in a system dominated by major food corporations and factory farms and vast commodity farmers, subsidized by the federal government. The small farmer just raising food crops has virtually disappeared in our neck of the woods (desert?) even if there is a renaissance of small farmers across the country - farms subsidized by a non-farm income by the farmer or his or her partner.
Processed, shipped food is not as nearly nutritious as the food itself. As we are far removed from the source of our food and food production is in the hands of a few, breakdowns can be devastating as we are seeing currently with a salmonella outbreak from the Peanut Corporation of America - a company that handled less than 3% of the peanuts in the country. 3%! Yet, nine dead, hundreds sick and more than 2,000 product recalls.
No wonder interest in local food has recently increased. No wonder locovore is the newest word in the dictionary. No wonder why there are those promoting 100-mile diets or even debating local food versus regional food and not even considering national/international food.
Question is: How are we doing in El Paso. Not well, I'm afraid to say. Not well at all.
BTW - the picture above is one of those gigantic Albertson's regional warehouses - this one in Oklahoma.
No comments:
Post a Comment