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Written by Serena Weaver
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Friday, 12 December 2008 |
Just last week, the mega-chain fast food establishment Subway signed a contract to increase the welfare of its workers. Through an agreement with the Florida’s Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Subway will now pay a greater wage and better the working conditions of these southern state tomato growers.
-Serena
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Written by Jessica Meehan
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Thursday, 11 December 2008 |
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Another great place for Denverites to go to: Rioja restaurant. Right in Larimer Square, this eating establishment is absolutely amazing and its menu features several local, organic, and seasonal dishes. In fact, the restaurant has sustainability among its main tenants and its staff is in full support of the concept. Heading to Rioja is a must if you anywhere in Eastern Colorado.
-Serena
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Written by Jessica Meehan
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Thursday, 11 December 2008 |
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 Feeling a glass of beer? Want it to be locally brewed? If you’re in Denver, try going to Rock Bottom Brewery. They brew a fantastic collection of beers in house and let you taste as many as you’d like before choosing a full portion to drink. I was just there a few weeks ago with my father and could not have had a better time.
-Serena
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Written by Jessica Meehan
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Wednesday, 10 December 2008 |
In a recent posting here on Locallectual, it was written that a group of serious “foodies” has appealed to Obama with its top choices for his Secretary of Agriculture. To find out who this group selected as Agriculture Secretary, read here.
-Serena
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Written by Serena Weaver
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Wednesday, 10 December 2008 |
Think that tomatoes, so appropriately red and green as Christmas approaches, would be the perfect items to pick up at the supermarket? Think again. The effects of eating produce that is so largely out of season makes them not worth the buy. Steven Garrett, in his article, “Tomatoes in December,” explains the reasons why:
“Tomatoes should have many qualities, but bouncing is not one of them. The modern, season-less tomato has been bred for two purposes, to ship well and to look good. Flavor is not a part of that equation, which is reason enough to leave them alone until summer.
However, there is another reason why buying jet-lagged tomatoes in the middle of winter is not such a hot idea. It takes more calories, from fossil fuels, to grow and ship a tomato than we get from eating the tomato. The world’s oil supply is running out; we have probably seen the last of cheap oil; and all but a handful of old-guard climate scientists agree that fossil fuel burning is creating global climate change. Everyone needs to be concerned that there nothing waiting to take oil’s place in our economy.
Shipping water, in the form of tomatoes, around the planet is not the only way that we expend fossil fuels in order to get those crunchy tomato-like facsimiles to your local grocery store. The nitrogen fertilizers and toxic pesticides used on the bouncing tomato are also made from fossil fuels.
Then there’s the big machinery. Hightower wrote about that wonder of agricultural science, the tomato picker, developed by the University of California . These machines require that fields be leveled with bulldozers using lasers. Farmers without laser-levelable fields are out of luck, and of course so are the human pickers. In just two years after the release of this machine, 900 farmers and 9,000 farm workers lost their living.
All that machine leveling and picking takes fossil fuels, but so does maintaining the infrastructure used to transport produce everywhere. It takes fossil fuels to pave highways, ports and airport tarmacs. Besides the machinery needed to build these surfaces, the surfaces themselves are solidified oil.”
-Serena
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