What is the world comming to

[homegrown]

Check out this story and reveal your thoughts, mine arn't printable.




http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3457/fe ... _food.html

[Durgan]

Well, I for one don't want to go back to the Winter months of old, where we ate potatoes, turnips, parsnips, carrots, onions, garlic, pickled beets, and sauerkraut. This was because these were the only produce that we could reasonably store.

Today from any supermarket in the city, all year around every fruit and vegetable grown in the world is available, and usually in good condition. Thanks to transportation.

Today I ate avocado, dates, walnuts, sunflower seeds, milk, oats, soybeans, blended: pineapple, melon, carrots, lemon, oranges, lime, kiwi fruit, cranberries, blueberries. Many of these were very fresh. In day of yore these or many of them would not be available. Whether our general health is better because of the variety I don't really know.


Modifying produce to have longer shelf life appears to be a worthwhile aim.

[contadina]

It's not until you start growing your own fruit, veg and nuts that you appreciate just how tasteless most of the stuff you can buy in supermarkets really is. Buying stuff when it's in season also makes you appreciate food a lot more and you learn to be a lot more creative in the kitchen, so you don't get bored. Here in southern Italy most people grow their own and the shops and markets only stock local produce, and I must say I find it infinitely preferable to the cosmopolitan selection of goods I could buy when I lived in London - food has so much more flavour! Oh and it's not all root veg and preserved goods in the winter - there are many cabbages, lettuces, chard, spinach, chicories and types of rapa which grow well when the temperature drops. If you must eat fresh tomatoes during the winter months, get yourself a polytunnel.

[homegrown]

I agree contadina, especially when seen producers like Kings seeds in New Zealand are stocking sub artic plenty a tomato that does not mind colder temps

[JulieSherris]

I have to disagree with Durgan here - quite a lot actually!
I'd much rather eat cabbage every day from my own garden, or from a local supplier than have runner beans from Kenya.

I pretty much subscribe to the 'eat local & in season' way of life. As a kid, it was magical to see the strawberries appearing in the shop & dinners were beautiful when the royal jerseys hit the shops fopr the few weeks they were available!

As for long-life veg.... oh why don't they just stop buggering about with our foods? Have they not learnt anything over the past 50 years?
How much more can obesity/diabetes/cancer grow in our society before someone realises that good health should start in our locality, with our own foods & not some heavily processed, hormone induced crop?

I'm off to make my to-do list for the day before I get myself tangled in knots with general anger......

[Durgan]

My main point is during the hard Winter months growing anything is very expensive due to heating requirements.
Preservation or long storage life of produce at least gives some "fresh" items.

[Odsox]

Sorry Durgan, I just have to disagree with your opinion.
It's probably a "good thing" for the vast majority of the population who don't give a toss where there food comes from or what resources are used to get it to them. Surely what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico is a stark warning that we just can't keep on using oil to ship/fly your avocado pears from South America just to satisfy a food whim.
It's certainly it's not for me anyway as I for one enjoy flavour of food above variety and knowing for certain what exactly was used to produce that food. Commercial crops as hinted at in that news item, are not produced for their flavour .. far from it. The carrots you buy in supermarkets for instance, the variety is chosen for their strong top growth (not flavour) so that they can be mechanically harvested by gripping the foliage and pulling them out of the ground.
The variety of peas and beans are grown commercially for their ability to all be ripe at the same time (not flavour) so that they can be mechanically harvested in one go.
I could go on, but I'm sure you can see my point.

I can see that this is just another angle to make GM food acceptable as a "good thing" and maybe it will go down the path that irradiated food did a few years ago.

[MKG]

When I was a lad (shortly after the Iron Age) we had very little choice - it was seasonal stuff or nothing, apart from frozen peas. But I liked it. Thick root crop based stews in winter, the anticipation of new potatoes or strawberries, spring cabbage - a welcome change from what my Mum used to do with the older stuff!!!!! All in all, I thought (and still think) that seasonality is a joy.

Mike

[oldfella]

What the hell is wrong with Nature, that we as "THE SUPEIOR SPEICES" feel that it is necessary, to correct its shortcomings by buggering around with something that has served mankind and and all the other species for the last few million years,

"Oh stupid me" I forgot Mr Slainsbury and Mr Testoe, are short of a few bob, sorry lads, carry on after all you need another few noughts behind your profits numbers, so with this great invention you can screw the farmers even harder and, and cut back on staff as you can buy your veg once a year stack it in the warehouse and do it in one hit using only Temp staff.


Ain't I glad that as an Oldfella I won't be around to a two year old Carrot + Additives.

[Green Aura]

I didn't read all this article - I found it too depressing especially when I got to this

We think this could be the way of the future,” says Heyes. “A way of delivering differentiated vegetables to a global market and trying to raise the price above the humdrum where it is at the moment. It’s the big new push.”

So, of course, it's all down to money-making - yet again. The nutritional value, the long of short-term effects on the environment or our health are not even a remote consideration.

The scariest thing is that they're now not even bothering to pretend it's a way of providing cheaper food for the masses - it about raising prices.

We've had so many upheavals this year that I'm way behind with the garden and it looks like we'll be buying a lot more veg than usual. Articles like this give me the determination to make sure we get back on track - ASAP.

[Durgan]

I live in the best growing area in Canada by far. My vegetable garden is about the only one that I know about, with a few exceptions. Some of the properties are huge and all that is growing is grass. Beer, barbecue, pizzas TV are winning the battle.

There are some posts about what one had for supper or similar. I cringe when I read the responses. All great food, if one is doing hard physical work, but not for most of the jobs people do today.

I of the opinion that most people don't care about what food they ingest. The supermarkets are full of prepared food, and semi-prepared. The pet isle takes up about one fifteenth of the store space. All the fast food places are thriving. The effect is clearly visible on the population at large.

We, the people, have given up our own food preparation for convenience. Convenience for what? To watch more TV!

I am afraid the objectors are a voice in the wilderness.

[KathyLauren]

I am afraid the objectors are a voice in the wilderness.

Only until oil is $20 per litre. Then global transportation will not be an option and people will acquire a taste for turnips and an interest in gardening.

[Flo]

Too many people and too much demand for food is the root source of a lot of fiddling with nature. We still have older "council housing" locally here in the UK with large gardens. Why does such housing have large gardens? Because when they were built the families going into the houses expected to grow a fair amount of their own food in said gardens.

I come from a family where that growing food in the garden was quite normal down the generations. My children have the knowledge but now don't have the houses with the gardens. Something lost somewhere.

[MKG]

I think that most people here agree with your basic premise, Durgan, and are just as frustrated as you obviously are. But what do we do about it? Apart from militant enforced garden labour, no-one can be coerced into growing what we think is the best stuff to grow, or eating what we think is the right stuff. All we can do is exactly what we do here - plant, grow, eat, enjoy, and tell anyone else who may be interested all about it (which, to your credit, you do in spades).

The idea presented via Homegrown's post (that of turning the growing of veg. into an upmarket, trendy and monetary business as opposed to an honest endeavour designed to meet human needs) is, I feel sure, repulsive not only to Homegrown but to all Ish members. But Ish doesn't exist in isolation - there are many sites around the net which, although not having quite the same ethic, espouse similar ideals. Not that many years ago, all members of this site would have been regarded as fruitcakes. Now, the opinions of the members are sought after (ask Andy and Dave about that - they have been published, after all). Things are moving in the right direction. Slowly. At some point, though, someone near to you is going to begin to do what you've already done.

Softly, softly, catchee monkey.

Mike

[homegrown]

The problem as we all see it is greed, in New Zealand Christchurch city's original city plan held for all homes to be built on a 1/4 acre section and I grew up on such a section with my own vegetable garden as youing as five. But now poeple are subdividing their section to make more money, so now there are two sometimes three houses on what once served on house, a garden, and a place for the kids to play.

My grandparents original home was on 1a nd a bit acres it had a large house a sleepout a truck port two car garage a barbeque area, play area, large vegetable gardens, coops for guinnee fowl, pheasents, chickens,rabbits, turkeys as well as six sheds of varying sizes and a small orchard. Oh and a 150 year old walnut tree with a huge platform treehouse built for us kids, a developer got hold of it and everyting but the house was torn down, even the tree, so he could fit as many houses on as possble and no one has room for a garden.

It is time that people began to face the facts, no matter when you believe we will hit peak oil it will happen and yes Keith BC prices will rise beyond the ordinary family's ability to run a car. so people will start growing locally and buying locally to keep costs down (infact its happening in many countries already), but if we keep letting scientists and big business screw around with nature, one of two things will happen something will go terribly wrong and nature will be gone... or something will go terribly wrong and mother nature will get pissed off and fight back.

God put a lot of work into designing nature and manking has no business fooling around with it (I say mankind, because its mostly men doing the meddling, women are much smarter)