Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Journal 1

While reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I’m initially inspired to improve my eating lifestyle. All the benefits of eating locally Kingsolver provides are extremely appealing: reducing use of nonrenewable energy sources, savoring foods rather than having access to all kinds of food, all the time, and, of course, not consuming dozens of chemicals that allow us to eat any kind of food we want whenever we want it (even when it’s unnatural to have it). Additionally, the emotional benefits of eating the fruits of your own labor seem nice; it must be extremely self-empowering. However, this eating lifestyle she provides is also extremely unrealistic. First off, we don’t all live in areas that are easy to grow in. Kingsolver herself started off in Tucson, where it would certainly be difficult to grow your own food or access locally grown food; if she tried her experiment there, her diet would probably consist of dirt (literally). Additionally, how many of us have the time to grow our own foods? My dad, for a couple summers, spent hours babying his precious tomato plants; when the squirrels got to them later in the season, he would give up. The time it required to get what few tomatoes he could eventually wasn’t worth it, and he gave up growing his own tomatoes. Finally, if we all gave up our lives and devoted ourselves to farming (as Kingsolver suggests) how would all of our other businesses be maintained? How would our technology improve, how would we get from point A to point B, how would our government function? She’s probably going to eventually argue that we don’t need all that stuff… but that’s a little bit too primitive and granola for me. I do see the benefits of shopping locally and supporting your town’s market, but giving up all processed and exported foods, all of the sudden, would be too challenging for me. I think I could mentally do it, I have no problem with self control, but the effort to only obtain food locally would be too time consuming to commit to.