Costco and Crabs: Day 3 of 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown
Costco and Crabs: Day 3- My Experiments with Food Truth- 60 Days of Eating Locally Grown
Yesterday I bought the “local” local food and today I ate it- my first experience with the local crabs (live on video, below!). Today I took a trip to Costco to pick up some pictures and took the opportunity to check out the local food scene.
Costco, the place where many people (more confessions, myself included) buy a lot of their food, has quite a bit of locally grown vegetables and some fruit.
I did not see any organic local fruits and veggies at Costco and most of the produce was from Oahu, with a few exceptions- the Papayas from Hilo (GMO papaya? I am not sure), purple sweet potatoes from Molokai, Hamakua Springs tomatoes and Hamakua Mushrooms. I am guessing that in order to supply Costco a farm would have be pretty well industrialized and is probably not practicing sustainable and regenerative farming techniques. (I would love to be proven wrong- send examples if you have any!) I think we would all agree that our preferred future would not include adding chemicals to the soil or spraying our vegetables. It would also be ideal, in my humble opinion, if our food was produced on smaller homesteads or diversified family farms- and if this food was more easily accessible. Farmers markets are hot these days, to be sure, but most people still buy their food at the food store or at Costco. Do we need more co-ops? Do buyers need to be more flexible? Do we need more direct farmer-to-consumer distribution systems? Knowing we are currently importing 90% of our food- do we need large scale local farms to tip the import balance? I love the idea that we all produce food and trade…but it is more of an ideal than a reality for me. I am more of a shopper than a grower, more likely to help organize food systems than supply the food. If I had to survive on what I grow in my yard today I would starve. (I did cook up some of my container garden grown kale in my kale, Hamakua mushroom, Puna goat cheese, green onion, Mountain Apple Brand Egg omelet this morning!)
So go ahead blog readers, give it to me...are you pro buying local food in Costco or anti buying local food in Costco? When expressing your opinion, I would like to know how large a family you are feeding and how that effects your purchasing behavior.
Now to the crabs…
By the way- what I ate today:
squid luau
crabs
opihi
cucumber with goat cheese
carrot-ginger soup
omelet with goat cheese, hamakua mushrooms and green onions
mango
banana
Tags: andrea dean, Costco, eat local hawaii, eat local hawaii island, kanu eat local challenge, local food, north hawaii eat locally grown campaign, north kohala eat locally grown day, north kohala food forum
September 7th, 2010 at 10:41 am
Great to raise these issues, Andrea. One exercise that might help people is prioritizing the hierarchy of values one wants to be reflects through one’s purchases: for example, locally-produced, food, organic, cost, locally-owned business, packaging, and convenience. I would imagine that ranking these criteria would yield quite varied results. For me, organic is the #1 priority, so it’s tough for me to shop at Costco, but it certainly is to their credit that they include local products on their shelves. The second priority for me is a locally-owned business, primarily because the local small business economy is critical to our community welfare. When shopping at Costco, after paying wages the money immediately leaves the community to benefit people and communities far away from ours; this economic leakage reflects a missed opportunity to build the local economy. So one consequence of these personal priorities is that I likely spend more time and money on the foods that matter to me, but I am well aware that I’m choosing this path. I think big box retailers will remain popular as long as cost and convenience are the highest priorities for most shoppers, but I hope that we all think about the impact of our habits on the overall health of the communities in which we live .