The Humvees of the food world

I recycle. I don't eat meat. I take the bus. I rarely drink bottled water. I take my own bags to the grocery store, reuse containers when possible and often wrap gifts in newsprint. (Hey, I work for The Enquirer. It's fitting and environmentally friendly!) And I often eat organic produce. It hadn't occurred much to me how that produce is affecting my carbon footprint.
Then I started reading "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life," by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver.
Kingsolver, her husband and two daughters decide to move from the Arizona desert to a farm in Virginia that Hopp had bought years before. The mission: To remove themselves from the gas-guzzling mass market food web for a year and rely solely on home- or locally grown, organic food -- with a few key exceptions. The book doesn't lecture or take the moral high ground; rather it is part memoir, part novel as you follow the family's gastronomic journey.

Six eyes, all beloved to me, stared unblinkingly as I crossed the exotics
off our shopping list, one by one. All other pastures suddenly looked a lot
greener than ours. All snack foods come from the land of Oz, it seems, even the
healthy ones. Cucumbers in April? Nope? Those would need passports to reach us
right now, or at least a California license. Ditto for those make-believe baby
carrots that are actually adult carrots whittled down with a lathe. And all the
prewashed salad greens emanate from California... As fuel economy goes, I
suppose the refrigerated tropicals like bananas and pineapples are the Humvees
of the food world.

Kingsolver, a lifelong foodie and avid gardener, writes chronologically, from the family's last day in Tucson to their enjoyment of their first asparagus of the season. Though the family's diet is limited by the season, they eat meat they and their neighbors have raised, along with local eggs and dairy. The book includes essays by biologist and college professor Hopp, which expand on and reinforce with scientific fact the topics Kingsolver addresses. Camille adds her own thoughts and recipes.
The book has topped countless best-seller lists, including ours.
Kingsolver points out that "The average food item on a U.S. grocery shelf has traveled farther than most families go on their annual vacations (4)." Kopp, her husband, adds: "If every U.S. citizen are just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country's oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels (emphasis added) of oil every week. (5)
U.S. farmers now produce 3,900 calories per U.S. citizen a day, twice what we need and 700 calories more than in 1980 (14)... mostly in the form of soybeans and corn.
I'm only a few chapters into the book, but already I'm hooked -- and I'm conscious of my own food-buying habits. I've got two brown thumbs and an apartment, so growing my own nourishment is out of the question. But I did consider this: If I'm buying lettuce from California and organic red peppers from Chile, how good should I feel about that? In the long run, is organic produce really that much better for me if it's increasing my carbon footprint?
I plan to blog more about this as I keep reading. Have you read the book? What did you think? Do you pay attention to where your produce originates?
Later this week, I'll write about how produce has been selected and cultivated for better transport and appearance with little regard for taste, along with the story behind heirloom vegetables. I love this illustration that Kingsolver offers to show the growing season. It's a nutritional pyramid but in calendar form.