My Three Little Boys: Sustainable Families for a Sustainable Future

The world around us is changing before our eyes. Our children seem destined to live in a world dependent upon non-renewable resources for its survival. According to Steven L. Hopp, as published in Barbara Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, “Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen—about 17 percent of our nation’s energy use—for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use.” [1] With the price of gas becoming a financial nightmare for most families, what is the future of our fossil fuel dependent agricultural market?

As we all watch in horror, the earth herself is protesting the wrongs that have been committed by humankind. The oceans are rising as the polar ice sheets are retreating. Polar bears, penguins and other Arctic animals are threatened with extinction. “The vast majority of scientists agree that global warming is real, it’s already happening and that it is the result of our activities and not a natural occurrence.” [2] As we each sit in our small corner of the globe it seems impossible to conquer the road ahead; it seems unlikely that anything we do, insubstantial as we seem, can make any difference at all. Realistically, we ask ourselves, can the food we eat really make a difference? Despite this mentality small pockets of people all around the world are rising up against the tide of corporate dependence and learning how to sustain life independent of the tyranny that has overtaken what should be a simple, graceful, and somewhat independent dance for survival. These people are focusing their eating habits on their local community and teaching their families to examine and value the path that food takes to get to the table. In the San Francisco Bay Area a group called “Locavores” formed with a focus on eating only food grown within a 100 mile radius of their homes. In 2005, Jen Maiser, Jessica Prentice, Sage Van Wing, and DeDe Sampson challenged Bay area residents to attempt to live as locavores for one month. The movement has continued to grow and the word “locavore” was the 2007 word of the year for the Oxford American Dictionary.[3]

We as a society, and none of us can truly claim innocence, have come to accept the creature comforts promised by the advancement of technology, agricultural industry, and fossil fuels. We start our car each day and think only briefly, if at all, about the true price of the fuel it will take to carry us from point A to point B. We wander the grocery store aisles never doubting for a moment that whatever we desire will be waiting somewhere in the fluorescent lit building of wonder, carried there through the infinite power of fossil fuel. It is easy, in a day and age such as this, to assume that these are simply the rights and privileges we have earned through innovation, creativity, and intelligent invention. We, as a species, have obviously dominated the globe. We seem to control every aspect of life that sustains us, and we assume the sky is the limit. The glass ceiling is not shatter proof; nothing should hold us back from exerting our power and control over what once seemed insurmountable odds.

I think back to the days of my ancestors, both European and Appalachian striving to live in a new world, and I try to imagine life as they knew it. When I do so, I see scenes from a historical fiction novel. I see their struggle as Hollywood projects it onto the big screen, and only sometimes do I hear the stories my grandmother tells. When I really strive for understanding, however, I realize I have none. In all truth, I cannot even begin to understand the struggle of my ancestors just to put food on the table. I, who buy bananas from the tropics, tomatoes from California, apples from New Zealand, and fish from Chile; I, who surf the Internet, and check e-mail hourly; I, who complain about the time it takes me to prepare a meal each night... How can I ever truly understand? Yet I want, more than anything, for my children to understand where the luxuries on which they thrive are coming from, and, more importantly, what we are truly paying for them. Do I want to deny them these luxuries? Yes, I have recently decided, there are some of them that I do want to deny them. But there are others I want them to appreciate and understand before they enjoy them. I want my sons to participate in the process of making responsible decisions, not just for their individual welfare, but for the welfare of all human beings on this earth, and all future generations to come.

This lesson I want to teach my children must begin with an understanding of my own. Slowly, as I read and research, reduce, reuse, and recycle, I am beginning to see the answer. I am not insubstantial. What I do can make a difference. Each choice I make not only sets an example for my sons, which will affect the men they become, the children they raise, and the world they live in, but it also begins a ripple effect that can, and hopefully will, change the face of our planet. By choosing to buy local foods that are grown humanely and without the use of harmful chemicals, I am choosing to support a movement that can effectively rip a hole in the unhealthy trend of corporate agriculture in the same way that starting my car each morning puts a little more strain on the tattered edges of our ozone layer. It is not possible for me to completely eliminate my carbon footprint on this earth, but I can do my very best to walk softly.

Change must start slowly. I know from experience that any attempt to blindly jump into something as challenging as eliminating dependence on the comforts considered a birthright by most Americans will only result in failure. So I begin to consider where I will start, and the answer is in the bounty that is all around me in the state in which I live. By growing food of my own, as limited as I might be by my urban landscape, I can teach my sons to respect the food we eat. Together as a family we will sweat and strain to produce whatever small amount of food we can, and in doing so my boys will learn about the cycle of life. When I take my sons to local farms or farmer’s markets I will be teaching them to support the community in which they live; I will be teaching them to honor the path of life that takes our food from the ground to our belly. With these simple changes in our day to day life I can begin a cycle of change that will not only make my family healthier, but can improve the health of the planet on which we live.

If this is not empowerment then I don’t know what is. These choices I am making will take me back to the roots of my existence, back to a time when people grew their own food, and, if they didn’t, they shook the hand of the farmer who grew it for them. What I am doing by choice is nothing more than my ancestors did out of necessity. The lessons I will pass on to my sons are the lessons that my ancestors passed on to theirs. Somewhere along the way we have lost sight of the lessons of our ancestors. Life, as always, has taken us full circle: in order to continue, we must go back to the beginning. We must look at life as our ancestors did so that our children and our grandchildren can have a future.

For more information on how to practice sustainable living in your area check out these websites:

www.ediblecommunities.com
www.eatwild.com
www.sustainabletable.org
www.locavores.com

In Oregon:
http://www.oregonfarmersmarkets.org/

[1] Kingsolver, Barbara, Steven L. Hopp, and Camille Kingsolver. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Harper Collins Publishers, 2007.

[2] www.climatecrisis.net/thescience: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this era of global warming “is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin” and “ the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence of the global climate.”

[3] www.locavores.com. April 2008.