To Till and to Tend

The list of concerns when food shopping just keeps lengthening. Once upon a time, I simply bought on the basis of price, kashrut, and perceived quality but over time, my definition of quality has evolved. Price is actually much lower on the list of consideration.
Some of the concerns are:
1) ingredients. If there are too many, or I don't recognize them as actual food, I don't buy the product.
2) packaging. Is the packaging recyclable? If not (hello, hummus!), is it at least minimized?
3) extra points if the product is organic.
4) deduction of points if the product is from too far away. In many cases you can't telll where the product is from, of course, but now we have to pay attention to food miles, how far the product has shipped.
5) extra points if the product has a hashgachah. But since I'm primarily vegetarian, I'll go with a vegan or reliable vegetarian designation. (Obviously there is a wide range of observance on this issue.)
6) cost. It's hard, but not impossible, to find extremely expensive vegetarian food.
7) size. It's more resource efficient to buy a larger size of a product, providing you can use up the contents. (Like a plastic half gallon vs. a quart - they each have one cap, so buy the bigger one. Unless the milk will sour before you finish it.)
8) is the product Israeli? This used to be a big plus, since I felt like buying Israeli was virtuous. Now I'm coming around to it being a minus, since it's shipped such a long distance.
Like I said, oy vey. This is hard. My personal compromise is that I buy light weight items from Israel, such as tea. (Which is only packaged in Israel; the tea is imported from Asia, I presume.) And Israeli wine. The studies that came out awhile back about wine showed that wine miles are counterintuitive. East coasters are better off, ecologically, by buying wine from Europe than California. In any event, I don't buy that much wine, so have permitted myself to indulge in Israeli wines. My favorite was one we found last summer, organic wine from the Galil, named "Barn Owl" in honor of the barn owls which eat so many of the critters that do wine in that the vineyard can eschew pesticides. I wasn't able to find it on line for this post, so perhaps it was a special edition wine.
How do you work your way through the food purchasing decision tree?

I just returned from Israel where I spent the week with family and friends, absorbing the realities of a Jewish state. Some aspects of a Jewish state elicited a guffaw (see articles on Mikvah ladies and chametz), but some I found to be insightful, meaningful and even useful. For now, I will focus on the commandment of shmita,which is taking place this year, 5768. Leviticus 25:3-4 explains the mitzvah of shmita.

Six years you may sow your field, and six years you may prune your vineyard and gather in the yield. But in the seventh year the land shall have a sabbath of complete rest, a sabbath of the Lord: you shall not sow your field or prune your vineyard.

Torah doesn’t talk science, but in this case, the spiritual tradition is right on target. The text continues with the ramifications of fulfilling and ignoring the law. If you fulfill: “then shall the land make up for its sabbath years (26:34).” But, “the land shall be forsaken of (those Israelites who did not practice shmita), making up for its sabbath years by being desolate of them (26:43).” This isn’t just God having fun with random laws.

Scientifically speaking, when one plot of land is used in the same fashion, year after year, the soil becomes depleted of its nutrients. Eventually, crop yields weaken until the land is so depleted that it must be deserted.* On the opposite end, when a farmer allows land to lay fallow, nutrient balance is naturally restored, allowing for endless use and production.

Science and Torah take it one step further. Though the owner is not allowed to work the land, the naturally growing fruit remains available to people, wild animals and livestock. By allowing animals in the fields, they naturally fertilize it (think feces), enabling greater yields.

Michael Pollan, author of Omnivore’s Dilemma, spotlights a modern farmer who, by using methods similar to those demanded in Leviticus, manages a model sustainable farm.

It’s rare when Jewish law and modern science lead to a uniform conclusion - hopefully we’ll eventually get the message.

* Today, many farmers “solve” this problem with intense (oil-based) fertilization, an energy-intensive endeavor that, due to chemical run-off, is the source of a whole range of other environmental problems.

The sustainable farming vision of the Torah is still alive:
Jewish Farm School
Adamah, The Jewish Environmental Fellowship