Question

8. One way to go green in the city of New York would be to eat locally grown organic foods. Why would eating local and organic foods be Earth friendly? Please note that organic foods are not necessarily locally grown. Do some research and make a list of the local organic food suppliers in your neighborhood.

9. Typically, the money paid for organic foods is higher than for those grown by conventional intensive agriculture. However, the prices in the store currently do not reflect the environmental costs of production and potential health risks of conventional methods of farming. These economic and potential health care costs are considered “economic externalities”. If these hidden costs of conventional growing methods were added to the price of conventional foods, do you think they would still have a lower price than organic foods? Give your reasoning for your answer.

Answer 1

8. Local grown foods and organic foods are indeed Earth friendly. The way to understand this would in terms of carbon footprint. Carbon footprint refers to the amount of CO2 released into the environment as a part of various processes like industrialization, transport, etc. The global carbon footprint is a sum of individual carbon footprints. Hence the best way to reduce the global carbon footprint would be ensure that each of us work on to reduce and minimize our individual carbon footprint.

Foods that are grown using intensive agriculture involve use of lots of pesticides, fertilizers and other harmful products which can contaminate the soil, the local wildlife and the environment in general. Organic farming uses organic fertilizers and pesticides which work by increasing crop yield whilst also not affecting the environment negatively. Hence if people shift to organic foods, all of these devastating effects can be combated,

Additionally, most of the food items are cultured elsewhere, processed, preserved and transport across large distances. Each of these steps involves utilization of a large number of resources in terms of fuels, energy supply, preservatives etc. which in turn increases the carbon footprint. Hence if local foodstuffs are chosen over food items grown elsewhere, the carbon footprint can be controlled,

Adding both points together, local organic foods can be a huge motivation to decrease the net carbon dioxide output and hence serve being Earth friendly.

There are several organic food suppliers in and around New York. These include Zaproduce, Acenatural, Tresomega and many more.

9. Organic foods, even though, environmentally friendly are highly expensive. This is due to the high processing cost and lower net yield in contrast to the intensive farming. Naturally, the prices of the farmed products would appear less compared to the organic foods. However, if the factor of health risks and environmental risks are pitched in, the costs of conventional foods will be much higher. Clearly, markets will not mention this as a price tag and hence this leads to economic externalities.