July 2009
By Andrea Fox, Ms. Green Quick Fixes
Know what you're getting: Buy local
After reading first-hand accounts of poor environmental and social practices of American businesses that supply New England with fresh produce, I was moved to take the opportunity to help readers find local choices.
I also took Foodandwaterwatch.org's Global Grocer quiz, which concluded that the conventional vegetables and fruits I might buy at the grocery store are imported from Mexico, China, Peru, Argentina, Spain and elsewhere. Good thing my CSA (community supported agriculture) has begun.
While many of you probably missed the boat on joining a 2009 CSA, you can still eat local.
By doing so you not only reduce your carbon footprints—less fuel is required for delivery—but you also support small farming practices. For those who want control over what they put in their bodies — i.e., less pesticides and fewer genetically modified varieties — it's just easier to investigate local practices.
The following Green Quick Fixes will help you learn why local is best and which fruits and vegetables are grown in New England.
Why Local?
By selling locally, farmers pay more attention to crops rather than packaging, shipping, and shelf-life issues. Small farms supported by locally tend to focus on a wider variety of crops, which improves biodiversity in soils and supports a wider gene pool amongst crops — both of which reduce pesticide reliance.
It's an Earth-friendly situation because, as research shows, single crop factory-style farming tends to sap the life out of soils, damaging environments and hurting the long-term viability of a crop because genetic altering methods designed to create crop consistency often end up being its undoing.
For example, you probably don't realize that typical bananas, the Cavendish variety, are a dying breed. I didn't until reading Fred Pearce's Confessions of an Eco-Sinner. Many older people may remember the death of the Gros Michel banana variety to Panama Disease, which brought the economies of many banana republics to their knees in the 1950s.
Seedless bananas are sterile, genetically mutated fruit that are unable to fight off certain diseases like Black Sigatoka fungus and tropical race 4, even when doused with the world's strongest pesticides (which causes sterility in one in every five banana workers). Pearce reports that as a result of this recent banana cancer, millions of plants in China, South Africa, and Australia have died.
Often, and for various reasons, mass-produced fruits and vegetables fail to be sustainable.
Summer’s Delights
Many from Spring (see the end of this list), apricots, basil, blackberries, blueberries, carrots, celery, cherries, cilantro, cucumbers, eggplant, endive, fennel, garlic, green beans, melons, nectarines, new potatoes, onions, peaches, peppers, plums, radicchio, rosemary, sprouts, summer squash, sweet corn, tarragon, tomatoes, and more.
Apples, arugula, beets, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, bok choy, cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, chard, collard greens, cranberries, fennel, garlic, grapes, kale, leeks, lettuce, mushrooms, mustard greens, onions, parsley, parsnips, pears, potatoes, quince, raspberries, rutabaga, scallions, shallots, sprouts, sweet potatoes, turnips, winter squash, and more.
Apples, beets, cabbage, garlic, Jerusalem artichoke, kale, leeks, mushrooms, onions, parsnips, pears, potatoes, shallots, sweet potatoes, turnips, and winter squash.
Apples, asparagus, beets, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, chard, chives, cilantro, dandelion, fiddleheads, kale, lettuce, marjoram, mint, mushrooms, mustard greens, parsnips, peas, radishes, rhubarbs, scallions, spinach, strawberries, turnip, and much more.
- In the North Shore, see GoGreen’s list of Farmer’s Markets.
- In Metro Boston, see GoGreen’s list of Farmer’s Markets.
- In the South Shore, see GoGreen’s list of Farmer’s Markets.
For a list by county, see this Massachusetts Department of Agriculture list and The Federation of Massachusetts Farmers Markets.