Gardens: Where does your food come from?

One of the topics I discuss with my 8th grade students is “Where does your food come from?”.  I begin by informing them that everything we eat had an agricultural beginning of some sort.  The sugar in soda’s, the crunch in your Cheetos, and most especially the meat, vegetables and fruit you eat.  (Unless it was grown at home of course) With every period, we end up at the same conclusion; for the most part, we don’t know where our food comes from!

The easiest answer they always provide is, “It came from the store”.  Their eyes begin to widen as we explore exactly where “that store” purchased their produce.  We carefully traced a box of tomatoes being sold in any grocery store to a wholesaler who imports a container of tomatoes and distributes that among the grocery stores.  Then we find a potential farm in the U.S. that the wholesaler might have ordered it from.  I then show a short 5 minute video on how some commercial farms mass produce tomatoes.  Acres and acres of tomatoes planted, irrigation system installed, as well as how they apply pesticides and fungicides.  Then they watch as giant harvesters plow the field and deposit the tomatoes behind what seems to be a “dump truck”.  From there the tomatoes are transported to a packaging facility where they are washed, sprayed again with something that supposedly helps them keep their color, and slows down the ripening process.  Then they are dried off and packed in boxes, layered on pallets, and then placed in a container.  That container is then delivered to the shipping company which places it on a cargo ship headed for the Marianas.

At this point, I go into further discussion with them about the harmful effects of all the pesticides not only to us humans, but to all other insect life on and around their farm.  Pesticides that leach into the soil can either be partially absorbed by the plants or washed away into a water system.  In some cases, water wells several miles away from these industrial/commercial farms, have tested positive for pesticide residue.  In the past, farmers would apply excessive amounts of fertilizer that would end up being washed away by heavy rains into nearby streams and rivers.  Of course, this all ended up in other water systems.  Over the past 40 or so years, the Gulf of Mexico has literally become a dead zone.  The coral are smothered by excessive amounts of algae which grow at an alarming rate thanks to fertilizers that run down from rivers and streams and enter the Gulf.  That in itself is a discussion for another time.

Now let us go back to that container that is headed towards the Marianas.  It will take anywhere from a week to about three weeks to arrive.  Most of the time, the containers holding fresh produce have a built in refrigeration system that keeps the produce chilled and prevents it from further ripening or spoiling.  This in itself changes the quality of the fruit.  Although the ripening process has been halted, the fruit now begins to change some of its sugars into starch.   For those of you who have lived in the United States, you know exactly what I’m speaking of when it comes to a fruit’s freshness and sweetness.  It’s just different.  So by the time it arrives, it’s anywhere between a week to three weeks since that fruit/produce was harvested. 

Ok, now let us take a look at what is grown and sold locally.  Do you know the farmer who grew it?  Does he or she practice safe handling processes?  Do they use pesticides or fungicides?  Are the fruits or vegetables washed before they are sold?  Is the farmer certified by BECQ or any other regulating agency to handle pesticides?  These are just a few valid questions that we should always ask whoever is providing us produce that we will consume.  The local Farmer’s Market in Garapan works closely with many of our local farmers.  When you walk in and ask about any of the produce they happily tell you the name of the farmer, and sometimes even the location of the farm on island.  They know which farmer is certified to handle pesticides, and which farmers are either growing organically or naturally.   It’s comforting to know not only how your produce was grown and handled, but who grew it as well.  For the most part, it only took a few hours to harvest, process, and deliver your produce to the Farmer’s Market.  

So how much exactly is being imported and how much is being produced locally?  My students took the safe route and said their best “guestimate” is 50%.  For the most part, they are not completely wrong.  It just depends on which store you shop at.  If you walk into the Garapan Farmer’s Market, I seriously doubt anything there is imported other than the bottled water in their refrigerators.  Now if you walk into any of the bigger grocery stores, you may find those numbers change significantly.  At this point, the blame game arises when my students start pointing fingers to the store owners for not buying locally.  Sadly, that’s not the case though.  Ask yourself this, how many farmers on island do you know that grow cabbage?  I myself, haven’t met one farmer who does!  Our climate here is just not suitable to grow cabbage and even when it does grow, it is just not as healthy as it should be.  Based on personal experience, pests here seem to love cabbage plants and are highly attracted to them as soon as they sprout.  Inevitably, there are certain types of vegetables and fruits that we simply must import as they don’t grow well here.

We end our discussion with hope that importers/wholesalers are choosing produce from responsible farmers who practice safe handling, fertilizing, and pest control practices that are not only safe for us but the environment as well.  The fruits and vegetables that are produced are only as good as the environment in which they were grown.  I can only hope that through our activities in the classroom and the projects I assign my students, which is to grow certain vegetables at home, that we can begin to build an awareness of how important it is to know where your food comes from.  Nothing can ever be as fresh as from your garden, straight to your table.  You know how the plant was grown, and the satisfaction of harvesting your own produce is something you will never find in any grocery store.  In my years of teaching Agriculture, I can only hope that more and more of our youth may become interested in starting even a simple garden.   This way at least we will know where some, if not most, of where our food came from.