EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

During my third year at UC Berkeley, I took an introductory environmental science class. As we discussed greenhouse-gas emissions, I remember one student who would not budge on his belief that he needed to drive. His car allowed him to live his lifestyle, and he had no desire to give that up. Driving was an efficient way to go many places in a short amount of time—and with little effort, of course.

Well, it’s a time- and human-energy-efficient way, but what about the many costs of gas and emissions, or the alienation of being in traffic? While driving a car may be more time-efficient than walking, it is neither more fuel-efficient nor cost-efficient. When we conceptualize a practice as efficient, we privilege one type of efficiency over another. For example, privileging cost-efficiency makes riding a bike a no-brainer.

But how is it more cost-efficient to buy tomatoes from Mexico, grown with costly inputs, than it is to buy a dry-farmed organic tomato grown 30 miles away? Efficiency and cost are bound up in their own systems and perspectives. Cost of what and in what unit of measurement? Time? Money? Health and well-being? What about the quality of the soil, the quality of life of the children of farm workers spraying my bell pepper with pesticides so that the cultivation of that pepper can become more efficient, so I afford to buy it after it has been wrapped in plastic and shipped halfway around the world?

If I want to grow my own kale, for instance, it may take more of my time and energy to start my own seeds, to dig the soil outside my house, to water and watch my kale plants grow, and to cook them with the gas I pay for. More time than it would take to go to out for a burrito or to eat cheese and crackers. But as I work in my garden, it becomes easier and more efficient every season. With each planting will come fewer weeds, more nutrients in the soil, and in no time I’ll have strapping green leaves just begging to be plucked and chomped on.

[This piece was written by Lulu McClellan and provided courtesy of the Society for Agriculture and Food Ecology. – Ed.]

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