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“This fall, I bought a share in a CSA [“community-supported agriculture,” a kind of farm co-op]. Every week, I get a box of whatever produce the local farmer is currently harvesting. Here’s the problem: It’s nice to get fresh vegetables, but I often don’t know what to do with the full haul—and end up throwing a good chunk of it in the trash. If I can’t eat my share, is a CSA still an environmentally sound choice?”
That statistic’s courtesy of Michael Pollan’s sobering open letter to the president-elect in the New York Times mag’s food issue Sunday. As he points out, though neither candidate has been campaigning on the issue of food, it’s inextricably tied to some of the most pressing problems facing us: national security, the health care crisis, energy dependence, pollution, climate change, and now economic hard times the likes of which we haven’t seen since you-know-when.
