Herbivore Magazine - Editor's Blog

The grocery we go to most is right behind our house. It is a nice place and they have mountains of organic produce. Many mornings on the way out the door to the store/office I go by there first to get some fruit.

It wasn’t long ago I didn’t think twice about where my food came from, in terms of location. I’d just grab what I wanted, make sure it was vegan, and off I’d go. The grocery behind my house changed that forever. They have signs above all the produce that says where it was grown.

It wasn’t long ago I didn’t think much about the environment and just took the positive environmental impact of being vegan as my pass on this issue. “Well,” my thinking would go, “I’m vegan and that alone is good for the environment so that is my activism in that area.” This was my boilerplate text on the issue for years. We do other things that I think are environmentally responsible; we grow food in our yard, we ride bikes, we drive as little as possible, we live close to where we work so we don’t have to commute by car, that kind of thing. But most of that only became important to me after I noticed those signs at the grocery store.

Once I noticed the signs, my response was immediate. It wasn’t total, but it was immediate. I noticed of the 6 or 8 types of apples for sale, several were from New Zealand, several were from Chile, and several were from right up the road in Washington state. Sadly, the ones I really liked weren’t from right up the road. But I started buying the ones from Washington anyway, most of the time. I started buying peaches from close by instead of bananas from “Imported.” (There are myriad problems with bananas and how they are produced, by the way. Look up the history of the United Fruit Company and the military coups involved if you’d like to never feel good about bananas again.)

As often as possible, I’d grab food from close(r) by. Staring at the bananas, and really wanting one, I’d think about the boats, planes, trucks, and labor involved in getting it on the shelf in front of me. Most often, I’d reach for a local apple instead. We still eat bananas and citrus and other non-local stuff, but the shift we’ve made because of those little signs is pretty big. Also, because of those signs, our garden is pretty big. Our lettuce in the summer is transported 12 feet, by foot. The laborer doesn’t get paid, but he/she eats well!

I don’t know if your grocery store has little signs like these, but I think the little stickers on the fruit itself has to say where it came from. Perhaps you’ll find it interesting to look at those stickers and think of the boats and planes and trucks and labor. I used to just pick em off, roll em up, and flick em like boogers.