Sunday, May 17, 2009

HOMEWORK 18/05/2009

How exactly do our choices of food purchases affect the food system?

4 comments:

  1. I think this question can go back to buying local or global. It can bring down farm productions in a country. I also think buying a cheaper brand or a store brand can bring down a company's business but then again I don't know how your choices can affect food purchases affect the food system

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  2. I think in the diagram you see very well how different things on the topic of global and local food go together. Organic food has to be local otherwise it doesn't make sence. As you can see in the diagram, global food often goes together with long shipping distance and that wouldn't make sence to produce organix food and then ship it around the world. That's not ecologicly thinking. So organic food is mostly local. But also non-organic food can be local. You can go to a market in your hometown, buy different vegetables and fruits and you normally don't know whether it is organic or not. But you are shure that it is local.
    Personally I think that we never know 100%shure where our food is from and whether it is local or not local produced. If I'd pay attention I would plant some things myself and just buy fruits and vegetables from farmers who I really know very well.

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  3. In order to answer this question, we should make a difference between organic and non-organic - and local and not local food.
    If we buy organic food it does only make sence to buy it locally because otherwise the organic food must be transported by long-distance shipping and this causes also CO² emissions.
    Of course there are some fruits/vegetables which can only grow in other countries/climates, but i think we shouldn't buy them if we want to support organic food.
    To get to know where the food comes from and wheater it's organic or not is very difficult, but there are some signs and also brands like " demeter" etc.

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  4. I don´t really understand why there isn´t a direct connection between non-organic and not local food in the food diagram. I think most non-organic food is produced not locally. In my opinion most local food especially on the farmer´s market is organic. Not all, but you can get sure if it´s not organic it´s grown up under circumstances. The real problem for me is that much organic food isn´t produced here. Since some years there´s a trend of eating organic food. Every supermarket sells it and it comes from everywhere in the world. I ask myself why do we need this if we have local so many organic products. It isn´t necessary to import organic food which needs many “food-miles” and produces new pollution when we have so many products here. And if they are not organic, they are as is already said grown up under good circumstances. We could help many local farmers and reduce pollution.

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