Tag Archives: locavore

Why I’m Grateful For Mainstream Organics

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Zhong Xin Organic Farmers Market

We visited the Zhong Xin organic farmers market in Taichung.

Is this all they have? There were only a handful of vendors that morning, and the limited produce they carried was heavily-packaged and overpriced. After traveling half-way across the city, I was shocked to discover how small the farmers market was. I tried to act nonchalant, but deep down I was incredibly disappointed.

That Sunday morning, Hsinya and I visited the organic farmers market at Zhong Xin college. I was excited to see the city and taste some good food. Hsinya told me that the famers market was located in the heart of campus. What better place, I thought, for a social gathering and for delicious, wholesome food?

My first experience with an organic farmers market was in Irvine. Each Saturday morning, almost a thousand foodies showed up to enjoy a lively shopping experience accompanied by live folk music. Some were there to strike up conversations while munching on hot, toasted kettle corn. Others were there for the roasted almonds or freshly baked bread. On both aisles, vendors would hand out free samples of sweet peaches, apricots, and strawberries. It was here where I fell in love with dried dates and figs, and it was here where I first sampled fresh goat cheese mixed with chives and jalapenos.

Perhaps my expectations were too high when I arrived at Zhong Xin. I brought my camera that day, all too eager to blog about the fantastic experience I was anticipating. I never expected that at Zhong Xin, the vendors would outnumber the customers, and that some displays would even be empty.

I surveyed the entire market twice. They had a few batches of veggies, some Asian pears, and a few tiny bags of brown rice—little else. There was no meat, dairy, or legumes. Forget about the artisan-crafted bread and aged cheddar cheese; they hardly had any fruits. At Irvine, I could buy organic dragonfruit, but here, I couldn’t even find oranges. If I wanted to stick with a pure organic diet, I’d either have to scavenge other markets, or just suffer from malnutrition.

Their organics resembled gifts more than they did food. They were sold in tiny packages for display purposes. They sold gift tea leaves, but not soybeans. Sure, the food was technically pesticide free, but it probably wasn’t sustainable, and it definitely wasn’t affordable.

When I saw the organic coffee beans, shrink-wrapped in endless layers of plastic, I snapped at my wife. This is just marketing gimmicks targeted at rich people.

Hsinya returned an irritated, resentful stare. Buying organic was your idea, anyway. Don’t you blame me for this.

She was right. So I did what I could that day: I picked a few package-free veggies, mumbled some broken Chinese, packed the produce into my reusable bag, snapped a few photos, and headed home.

On the way back, I realized how ungrateful I had been for what I had in Irvine. Organic produce might have been slightly more expensive, but at least it was affordable and easy to find. Hopefully, it’ll be the same for Taichung someday, too.

It’s been tough buying organic while traveling, but I haven’t given up on organic just yet. Zhong Xin did have a few package-free veggies, so I might visit again in a few weeks. In the meantime, I’ve been shopping package-free produce from local, traditional farmers markets.

Growing My Own

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Our first garden plant is a strawberry.

I’ve been thinking about farming my own food. I think I’ll start small, maybe with a vegetable garden, with some tomatoes, kale, and zucchini, and eventually work my way up to fruit trees. If I get the chance, someday I’d like to grow my own wheat and rice. I’ll get to enjoy fresh baked bread and homemade strawberry jam. Ultimately, of course, my goal is to have a flock of chickens and a dairy goat to produce milk, yogurt, and cheese.

I spent the last month dreaming about homesteading. Historically, a homestead was a free plot of land granted by the US government to pioneers who settled in the West. Since there were no cities in the frontier, these pioneers had to be entirely self-sufficient. They built their own homes and produced their own food by farming and raising livestock. Eventually, the term homesteading came to refer to the pursuit of a self-sufficient lifestyle, a lifestyle which included growing your own food and living without public utilities. Since 1976, the government has stopped offering free land for homesteaders, but that hasn’t stopped many would-be homesteaders from pursuing a life of self-sufficiency.

In fact, there’s a new wave of 21st century eco-conscious pioneers who are giving the old-fashioned idea of homesteading a second look. One family converted their home in Pasadena into a small-scale farm to create an Urban Homestead; it’s been self-sufficient for several decades now. I plan to homestead as well, but on a smaller-scale at first. Homesteading fits within my larger goal of achieving a zero waste lifestyle, since any food I grow won’t use gasoline and won’t produce packaging waste. Hsinya has started experimenting with simple home-making skills like culturing yogurt. But if I can go even further by raising my own dairy goat, I can truly achieve a zero-impact lifestyle.

Two weeks ago, I checked out The Backyard Homestead to see what it takes to get started. According to the book’s estimates, I could feed our entire family of two with as little as 1/10th of an acre (4300 sq. ft.), an area the size of a basketball court. The harvest would include not just vegetables and fruit, but grain, meat, and milk as well. If I had a large backyard and a front lawn, that might be enough to achieve total self-sustainability. In the meantime, however, I live in an apartment without any land.

My current strategy is to rent a community garden right after we come back from traveling in Taiwan. I want to test out the idea with just a small 100 sq. ft. garden plot, which is about the size of a walk-in closet. Most importantly, I’m going to update a financial spreadsheet to keep track of costs, labor spent, and the value of harvest (1). After I post the spreadsheet, you can calculate whether farming is cost-effective for you, given the value of your time. I’ll count the cost of seeds, gardening tools, and labor spent gardening, and compare it to the market price of organic food. I’m curious whether growing my own food will turn out to be a profitable investment. Perhaps someday my homestead dreams will become a reality.

Do you think homesteading is practical in the 21st century?

  1. Getting Rich Slowly has a great financial spreadsheet on gardening: http://www.getrichslowly.org/blog/2008/01/06/year-long-grs-project-how-much-does-a-garden-really-save/ One difference between their blog and ours is that we’re going to practice organic farming techniques, which means the food would normally cost more than conventional food.

[[Travel Update: Hsinya and I will be boarding our plane to Taiwan tomorrow afternoon. As we mentioned before, we’re going to bring only carry-on luggage to demonstrate the benefits of minimalist travel. We’ll keep you posted with updates on the blog.]]

Our Frugal Organic Budget

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Aaron at Tanaka Farm's Pumpkin Patch.

If you can spare $3 for a hamburger and french fries, you can afford to eat healthy, sustainable food. Hsinya and I spend $2.65 per person per meal.

Here’s a sample estimate of our weekly budget:

Food (1) Where we get it Cost
Vegetables and Fruits (About $1.50/lb.) Community Supported Agriculture $56
Cheese (1lb. at $10/lb.) Farmer’s Market $10
Beef (2lb. at $8/lb.) (2) Farmer’s Market $16
Milk (1 gallon at $5/gallon) Grocery Store $5
Almonds (1lb. at $5/lb.) Farmer’s Market $5
Raisins (1lb. at $7.50/lb.) Farmer’s Market $7.50
Lentils (2lbs. at $2/lb.) Grocery Store $4
Rice (4lbs. at $2/lb.) Grocery Store $8
Total $111.5

Each week varies, but we spend roughly $110 a week for two adults. It therefore only costs $2.65 per meal per person (3). Food prices vary by location, but eating real, healthy food is almost always cheaper than greasy, sugar-laden fast food. To keep organic affordable, we avoid eating packaged food and eating at restaurants. Organic food gets expensive when you buy packaged, processed food like pizza from the supermarket, but it can be affordable if you make the pizza from scratch. We make almost everything ourselves, and we don’t waste time driving to a restaurant or waiting for delivery. We roll our own tortillas, bake our own bread, and mix our own salad dressing; we’ve even experimented making our own soymilk and tofu from organic soybeans. Hummus costs $6 at the grocery store, but raw ingredients cost only $2, so I prepare it at home. It saves me the hassle of constantly having to shop at the grocery store, and our food is fresher and preservative free.

We purchase in bulk wherever possible to save money. This also helps the environment by avoiding unnecessary packaging. Generally, we found it cheaper to purchase dried food than canned or frozen. Dried food is an incredible value because you’re not paying for water. After the food is re-hydrated, it weighs twice more than what you paid for. When you buy canned food, you’re wasting money on water and aluminum. We purchase rice and beans in 20lb. bags, which we use to cook a tasty meal for less than fifty cents per person. Lastly, we purchase our produce in bulk from a local farm to get lower prices.

We don’t eat too much meat in our family. We buy free-range eggs and pastured meat in moderation since they are more expensive than produce. A little meat is good for you, but if you eat more than half a pound of meat each day on average, you’re risking heart disease, diabetes, and breast and colon cancer. We spend more than half our budget on fresh fruits and vegetables; they’re three times cheaper and better for our health.

If you’re used to eating processed food, eating organic will actually save you money. Organic food is more nutritious and cheaper than frozen dinners and fast food. Instead of purchasing processed cereal with artificially injected vitamins and minerals, you can choose real food with naturally-occurring nutrients at a lower cost. Let eating organic be the way to help you eat healthier, fresher, and cheaper.

Is my food budget too expensive for you?

  1. All of the food in this budget is either certified organic or purchased from local farms.
  2. We actually don’t buy beef every week because 2lb can last us one month.
  3. $110 per week, for 3 meals a week, 7 days a week, for two people: $110 / (3 * 7 * 2) = $2.65