By students from “Just Food: Sustainable Food Systems” course at IU South Bend
I bet most consumers at the local grocery store chain have no idea what it takes to get “fresh” fruit to their table. It is startling if you just look in your refrigerator and discover where your fruit has come from. If I look in mine right now I find that my fruit has traveled great distances to get to me and my family.
Distances my fruit has traveled…
- Bananas – Costa Rica = 2189 miles
- Navel Oranges – Product of Chile = 6593 miles , Packed in New Jersey = 633 miles.
- Sunkist Oranges – Sherman Oaks, CA = 1865 miles
- Green Seedless Grapes – Fresno, California = 1818 miles
- Honey Crisp Apples – Berrien Springs Michigan = 25 miles.
So the 5 bags of fruit in my refrigerator needed to travel at least 13,123 miles to spend a week in my home. Is it wrong to feel like if I am involved in participating in world travel – I want to be the one doing it, not my fruit? There are only so many plane trips worth of oil left in the earth, or cross country road trips, or slow boats to China. Many of us have heard that the earth’s oil fields will soon be depleted and some are hoping to find alternative ways to provide energy that will maintain the life we are accustomed to, while others are taking a more home-based approach because they realize that fossil fuel based transportation is not the only dependency humans have. The life we have become accustomed to is not sustainable. I think I am going to try and enjoy the foods of the local markets and save the gas for a trip to remember, like maybe eating a Banana in Costa Rica, or an orange in Chile.
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