Grow up toward the sun

I love good food. Lately I've been fighting gray weather and massive computer time (school and work) with the gym and better eating habits. Last night I made a salad with cubed beef tenderloin, spinach, baby greens, cauliflower, blue cheese, a diced date, tomato and green onion; it was fantastic.

Where did all of those ingredients come from? I've heard bits about food sources so I dug around and found research on "weighted average source distance" or WASD. This 2003 study by the Leopold Center at Iowa State University looked at; apples, beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, corn, garlic, lettuce, onions, peppers, potatoes, pumpkins, spinach, squash, strawberries and tomatoes. They found that conventional sourcing averaged 1,494 miles or 25,301 miles total. Local sourcing averaged 56 miles, or 716 miles total. Why the heck do I want food that has sat in a truck for 1500 miles? Not to mention distribution centers and the many hands it passes through, preservation, cost increase from all those miles and hands. And that's without thinking about local economy or environmental impact. yuck.

I've been thinking more about urban farming. After all why shouldn't food be grown in the city? Mithun did a prototype of an urban farm that I think looks both amazing and realistic.



On a similar note, urban farming is also a great thing for building design, as shown by the vertical gardens of Patrick Blanc.