Going Green in Australia

A lovely warm cup of organic green tea, with Australian native ingredient lemon myrtle, keeps me warm tonight. I sit outside in the garden with a refreshing bit of wind cooling down the air that has been hot and steamy today. It actually still is about 18 degrees, but after the 30 degrees earlier today it feels cool... refreshing... very pleasant!

I has been a long time since I actually sat down behind my laptop to write down some thoughts about life in Australia or new discoveries about food and eco-gastronomy in the big land Down Under. This is not to say that food and sustainability is no longer part of my life. Quite the opposite really! Every day the Drover and I try to make the best choices in our food consumption and especially the Drover dedicates quite a few hours of the week to our beautiful organic veggie garden. Spring is in full swing and potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, green beans, and much much more is growing like crazy.

I can't wait for the day that I can eat the first fresh tomato out of our own garden, combined with some Australian made buffalo mozzarella and basil leaves from our veggie patch, for a delicious insalata caprese. I get very excited every day I see the potato plants grow and think back of the first time I grew potatoes in my Mum's garden and the satisfaction I felt when I harvested the first lot of piepers... There certainly is nothing more satisfying than growing your own food and while cooking just walking into the garden for some fresh salad leaves, herbs, lovely veg and maybe even an apricot or two!

Growing your own food is one of those great ways of reducing your 'food-print' on the planet. The food you are eating did not first travel half the world before it ended up on your plate after all, and you know exactly what you put into your body - hopefully chemical free deliciousness because you decided to go organic! No unnecessary packaging or refrigerating was required before you decided to cook with your fresh produce and you saved on emissions and fuel costs by not having to drive to the supermarket (going by bike is a lot less common here in Oz - a potential topic for another item on my blog!). Another great advantage of growing your own is that it just tastes so good! A refrigerated and transported vegetable that was picked a few days earlier never seems to taste just as good as your freshly picked little loved ones out of your own garden.

Since I moved to Australia a lot of my ideas of what are 'good, clean & fair' food choices to make have been tested a little. I thought I knew quite well how I thought about what to eat and what not to eat to make sure that my environmental impact is limited. Eat as much as possible locally produced food, always from the right season, choose organic where possible, go for the Fair Trade and organic option when food is only available from far (coffee, tea, chocolate, for example), try to support small shops and producers more than supermarkets and massive companies, etc...

Part of my upbringing has been to eat vegetarian, with a limited amount of fish and seafood in my diet (so actually pescotarian), believing that eating animals out of the meat industry is both not good for me, the environment and the animals involved. Because I have been raised this way by my parents and because this way of eating is what is normal to me, I never really considered myself whether eating meat from local, small-scale and free-range or organic farms would be a good alternative. But this questions has been going through my head lots in the last months - being challenged by my very analytical and only (limited amounts of) ethical/free-range/organic meat eating boyfriend.

I believe, like him, that you can vote with your fork, and your wallet. By buying the products that you believe are the right ones to choose, you make a clear contribution towards the type of food production that you would like to support. Every time you buy and you eat, you make a powerful choice. By eating vegetarian, the Drover argues, you decide to step back completely from any form of meat production, instead of supporting the right type of meat production from local, small-scale farmers where animals have plenty of space to move around freely, eat fresh grasses and flowers and don't get treated with antibiotics or growth-hormones as happens in the meat industry. Instead you might support the production of soy, as an alternative source of protein for a healthy diet. But there are a lot of environmental and social issues involved with soy as well... I do keep on thinking that the limited amount of soy that I consume as an alternative for meat is nothing in the scale of things, compared to the 60-70% of supermarket products that contain some form of soy. But how bad is it really?

We often have heated debates about the pro's and contra's of eating vegetarian, eating the 'right' meat, supporting the production of soy, and all issues that are related to these topics. While both the Drover and I have the bad characteristic of being stubborn, we do not easily admit that the arguments of the other might be quite good, and we can keep on trying to convince each other of the opposite argument. To be able to win my argument ;-) I will have to get more informed about the most recent information available about meat production, soy production and all the rest. Of course, things are different here in Australia compared to the Netherlands (much more space in this country, so animals in general tend to have a lot more space to live for example), and I might come to the conclusion that eating meat could be a very green choice to make... We'll research and find out. But one thing will remain 'a problem'... The idea of eating a cute little lamb, a jumping kangaroo or beautiful cow makes me feel very sad. So for now I think I just stick to those lovely fresh veggies from our kitchen garden!

What do you think is the best choice to make for a smaller impact on the world around you? Vegetarian, pescotarian, carnivore?