Big Box Stores - An Industrial Dilemma

I’ve been avoiding thinking about this, much less discussing it. At the risk of sounding somewhat melodramatic, I have to say that I hate the big W. It is the ultimate representation, in my mind, of what ails our society: consumption, consumption and over-consumption of cheap crap that you won’t care about tomorrow. Montana has been slow to get on the W wagon but a Super W just opened in Kalispell and I finally went shopping there last week. Usually, I only buy prescriptions or health and beauty items (toothpaste, shampoo, etc.) there, but after seeing the prices, I did my grocery shopping there. Here’s the thing: I can’t afford not to. In the past three years, my income has decreased by 2/3rds and I was barely above the poverty line before then. I receive food assistance from the government, go to the local food bank and apparently, food shop at the Big W. I could kick myself now for every time I’ve shopped at W without giving it a second thought. Before my education.

I don’t want to support W with what little money I now make. I do want to eat. I will eat healthy. There’s no way I can afford food shares from a local CSA and W has beautiful produce with an organic selection that someone on such a limited budget simply can’t pass up.

The food I bought at W would’ve cost me over twice as much at my local grocery; close to three times as much at my local health food store, both of which I would much rather support. I would boycott W if I could. But for our household I have to make decisions and obtain the best food at the best price that I possibly can. So I’m presented with a major ongoing dilemma.

Last year I joined a club store so I could afford to purchase items like wild salmon, nuts, bulk olive oil and a peach mango salsa that I became addicted to. Then I worked at that store for two days. I didn’t work for that store because I worked for the contractor that handles the flowers sold there – or rather the contractor that the contractor that handles the flowers hired to maintain the flower display. My first day after a 6-hour training 4 weeks earlier was Mother’s Day weekend, the second largest floral holiday of the year. I arrived at 7:00 on Saturday morning and met up with 10 pallets of flowers to be stocked, restocked, maintained, displayed and sold on my first day of work. Nice. Workers are hired through a system whereby the employee is completely dispensable unless they're part of “corporate.” At the end of the day, all the flowers that weren’t sold and were showing the slightest bit of age were required to be thrown in the dump with a club store employee present. And that’s just the beginning. Air miles, ground miles and despicable waste is being produced to get those stupid flowers into that stupid display so stupid people can buy them at the least cost. Only people aren’t necessarily stupid – just very uninformed, dulled by the promise of more of the best and always for less no matter what – no matter the cost to our planet and millions of people in third-world countries who can’t afford not to produce the food for the conglomerates. Now it’s time to re-up with the store and while I hate it, I will probably do it because otherwise I will not be eating those items, only one of which I consider a complete luxury.

I guess the best advice I have if you find yourself in a similar predicament - not wanting to buy from the big stores, but unable to afford not to, is to do what you have to do right now. Don't feel guilty about it, but be very aware of all the social consequences you're supporting that you would rather not. Become more conscious and start small to empwer yourself away from the corporate food grid for the long-term.

On the positive side, my permaculture campaign with the cowboy is slowly but surely making progress. I hope that by next summer we will at least have a goat, some chickens, a worm farm and share a garden like I’m doing this year. We’ve also decided to store some dry items like rice, beans, salt and grains. Following the links will show you how each one of these things is not only fairly simple, but healthier for humans and the planet. I believe that for the planet to heal, food production needs to go as absolutely local as possible: like your back yard. Don't forget good dirt: an acre of organic cropland can take approximately 7,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year.

Meanwhile summer just can’t quite get here this year. We built a fire for warmth on the 5th of July. But last Saturday it was 80 degrees and we kayaked McDonald Lake in the Mission Mountains. That's where the picture above was taken. I'm so fortunate to live in a place that still retains remnants of wildness.

Carbon Sequestration aka Good Dirt

I read something recently that seems very important and I wanted to re-print it here. It's from Delicious Living magazine which is offered free of charge at my local health food store, Mission Mountain Natural Foods. The article is entitled, In Defense of Organics, and was written by Radha Marcum. The section of the article that interested me most is about something called "carbon sequestration." Here it is:

Food miles are on everyone's minds these days. On average, food travels 1,300 to 2,000 miles from farm to plate. But choosing local alone can't solve our fossil fuel and CO2 woes, say researchers. Only 11 precent of a food's carbon footprint is tied to transport. The remainder is almost entirely associated with growing, processing and packaging the food.

Organic farming take those nonrenewable petroleum products, such as synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, out of the equation. Instead, it relies on cover crops and organic fertilizers to boost productivity, along with nonpetroleum-based pest and weed management tools. And newly published research from the Rodale Institute points to an even bigger potential environmental benefit of organic farming: carbon sequestration.

Looking at nearly three decades of research, Jeff Moyer, farm director of the Rodale Institute and chairman of the National Organic Standards Board, and other scientists, such as Cornell's David Pimentel, Ph.D, have found that healthy, microbe-rich soil bolstered by organic farming methods has the ability to remove CO2 (the most prevalent greenhouse gas) from the air - and lots of it. "By increasing and relplenishing biodiversity in the soil we can sequester carbon at a greater rate than we originally thought possible," says Moyer. An acre of organic cropland can take approximately 7,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year. Multiply that by the 434 million acres of U.S. cropland and it's the equivalent to eliminating emissions from 217 million cars (nearly 88 percent of US cars today).

How does dirt become a carbon sequestering tool? By using cover crops, organic compost, and chemical-free pest and weed control practices, organic farming actively builds biodiversity in the soil. In fact, if you took the microscopic fungi living in a teaspoon of soil from organically managed farmland and placed them end to end, the resulting chain would stretch hundreds of yards, says Moyer, many times more than those in conventionally grown soil. The fungi and other living organisms abundant in organic soils naturally pull carbon from the air and store it in the soil, where it is retained for decades. Scientists have found that, at worst, some Midwestern soils have gone from 20 percent carbon to between 1 and 2 percent carbon in the last 60 years alone.

So you mean we have a tool to sequester carbon and improve the soil and the food we eat and bring people together to get it done? All those sweet little microscopic fungi will take care of all that carbon? Incredible. So simple. So obvious. I'm working my little patch of ground; how about you?

If you think this is important, pass it around. And don't forget to link Delicious Living and Eclectic Recovery.