Essay Questions

Why is "farm to fork" an unsustainable way of feeding the population?

From a health perspective, farm to fork is the most sustainable way to feed the population, and it also does the least harm to the environment. If you have ever gone to a "pick your own fruit" farm to pick strawberries, for example, then you will know that they are so much tastier than strawberries purchased from a grocery store; they have not been jet washed, frozen or transported half way across the nation, and this is obvious in the way that they taste. However, rotating the fields in the way that Joel Salatin does is not easily replicated on a large scale. There is also insufficient available agricultural land to make farm to fork production implementable on a larger scale.

Is there a difference between consumer perception of organic, and the actual organic product available in retail stores?

There isa huge difference between our perception of organic food and the product we are actually being sold as being organic. There is also a small area of alignment; we believe that organic food is pesticide and chemical free, and this is the case; however, the organic movement originally believed that organic food would also be kind to the planet. This is where the public perception of organic food, and the finished product available for purchase, diverges greatly. For example, due to the fact that chemicals are not used in the production of particular organic vegetables,they are not available out of season. This means that in order to enable consumers to eat certain vegetables all year round, produce has to be transported from another region, and in some cases, another country, entirely. This involves a transportation process that dumps enormous quantities of fossil fuels into the atmosphere, doing irreparable harm to the environment, and going against the original ethos of the organic movement.