Where is your food coming from?

By: Bruna Faria

 

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been focusing on the topic of "food" in Sustainable Agriculture. Learning about where our food comes from, the main ingredients, how methods of growing food are unsustainable, and discovering ways we could improve this very broken system.

After researching deeper into my specific food, I found that most of the foods we eat on a daily basis are very unsustainable, whether it's the ingredients that are used to make it, the ways its packaged, or the distance it has to travel in order to get to you. My food was "pao de queijo" a traditional Brasilian snack. I grew up eating this but never went into looking at the things I was consuming. I researched a brand of Pao de queijo called Fogo de minas which are imported from Brasil and sold as a frozen item at supermarkets across the U.S. The brand itself is very environmentally friendly, using ingredients grown near them, and reusing all the water used for gardening. For people living in Brasil, this snack is pretty sustainable, but for us that are here in the U.S., it's not as much. As an alternative, many Brasilians living in the united states prefer to make their pao de queijo from scratch, adding more of a "home-y" feel to it. 

Throughout discussions in class, we all came to an understanding that there is a lot we can do to help make our diet more sustainable. Buying more local products is something many people have the opportunity of doing, buying local foods grown and made near them. Here in Marin, there are lots of ways of getting these local products, whether it's at the supermarket or going to the farmers market. Making food at home as frequently as possible, using those products. Even though the cost may rise a bit with local products, it will definitely taste amazing, and make a difference for the environment. Getting more people to understand this concept of food miles will help us as a community to become more sustainable as a whole.