instead of Uggs, mukluk boots

[lph]

But isn't what the Arctic can support based on traditional hunting lifestyles with a tremendous emphasis on meat? Hard to replicate these days.

If I were to base my intake of food on local produce it would be severely limited. Potatoes, onions, cabbage, beets. I'm not saying I couldn't, and I do try to keep my intake of off-season and greenhouse vegetables to a reasonable level.

[OakLeaf]

Here in PA, Black Bears and Coyotes are significant predators of fawns. They might not pull down an adult deer on a regular basis, but they do target fawns. And we have a lot of bears, last year's harvest was over 3500 statewide.

3500 bears vs 390,000 deer taken by human hunters in Pennsylvania last year? Sorry, I'm not seeing how that bear population is enough to balance the deer population without human predation.

And @lph - I know - I'm far, far from the ideal myself, but living where I do, it's just a different equation. Sustainable food is fairly easy, but sustainable transportation is hard. We all do our best as individuals, but I'm talking as a matter of policy, to what extent unsustainable lifestyles should be supported and encouraged.

The first chapter or so of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - the chapter(s) where Kingsolver talks about her motivations, first for moving out of the desert and second for her family's yearlong effort - are what I'm talking about.

I'm not expecting everyone to make that kind of effort; she herself did it only for a year. But for what our policymakers ought to be encouraging, I don't see it as any different from building more and more narrow, busy, sidewalk-free roads, instead of investing in public transit and bike/ped facilities.

[roo4]

Oakleaf,

I was responding to this post:

"Something like 120,000 white-tailed deer are harvested each year in each STATE. I'd be surprised if black bears hunt deer - are you sure of that? They're not much bigger than deer ..."


In fact, black bears do prey on deer and a significant amount of fawns are killed each year by bears.

As for this comment:

"3500 bears vs 390,000 deer taken by human hunters in Pennsylvania last year? Sorry, I'm not seeing how that bear population is enough to balance the deer population without human predation."

I never said that the bear population was enough to balance the deer population and in fact I agree that hunting is necessary to keep the deer numbers down to a sustainable level.

[Irulan]

I've been looking up a lot of hunting info as this thread goes along. In some areas back east, and UP MI, blacks bears ARE considered a deer predator, primarily of fawns but also others. Enough that it was noted in numerous places on the web: various state fish&game sites, university studies and so on. I was surprised also as that is not the case out West. It was consistently stated that bears don't run deer down, but they have other ways, especially the taking of fawns.

[Crankin]

We have had black bears running through people's yards in the summer, though not a huge amount. There were some seen on the trails in Estabrook Woods a few summers ago, which necessitated some of the local schools to change their training routes for the x country running teams.
It would be really hard for me to eat totally local in the winter, in terms of fruits and veggies. I eat a ton of fruit, out of season fruit, and I am not going to stop. I always have said it benefits my health and i would rather pay the prices than pay for medical bills. However, I know the carbon footprint aspect of it isn't good, but... as soon as the many local farms start selling their stuff, I only buy from them, and I guess that lasts about 5 months of the year. Been going to a winter farmer's market, but there isn't actually much there, in terms of veggies, except kale and potatoes. The other foods are unhealthy!

[Jolt]

We have had black bears running through people's yards in the summer, though not a huge amount. There were some seen on the trails in Estabrook Woods a few summers ago, which necessitated some of the local schools to change their training routes for the x country running teams.
It would be really hard for me to eat totally local in the winter, in terms of fruits and veggies. I eat a ton of fruit, out of season fruit, and I am not going to stop. I always have said it benefits my health and i would rather pay the prices than pay for medical bills. However, I know the carbon footprint aspect of it isn't good, but... as soon as the many local farms start selling their stuff, I only buy from them, and I guess that lasts about 5 months of the year. Been going to a winter farmer's market, but there isn't actually much there, in terms of veggies, except kale and potatoes. The other foods are unhealthy!

You might be surprised...here is a list of 20 local foods in Maine that the state can supposedly produce for its residents to have year round: http://www.mofga.org/Publications/Ma...0/Default.aspx. It's a pretty decent variety, and doesn't include the many other things that are readily available for part of the year. I'm sure a lot of the same would be true for MA. The only thing is that in the winter there would not be nearly the amount of fresh products available as in the summer--lots of frozen/canned.

[TrekDianna]

I've been looking up a lot of hunting info as this thread goes along. In some areas back east, and UP MI, blacks bears ARE considered a deer predator, primarily of fawns but also others. Enough that it was noted in numerous places on the web: various state fish&game sites, university studies and so on. I was surprised also as that is not the case out West. It was consistently stated that bears don't run deer down, but they have other ways, especially the taking of fawns.

Here in my part of Oregon it's the coyotes, cougars and bobcats that take down the fawns. Cougars also take the grown deer. We've only seen one bear locally so I would think there are more that we don't see. We do see evidence of them.

[Irulan]

We have had black bears running through people's yards in the summer, though not a huge amount. There were some seen on the trails in Estabrook Woods a few summers ago, which necessitated some of the local schools to change their training routes for the x country running teams.
It would be really hard for me to eat totally local in the winter, in terms of fruits and veggies. I eat a ton of fruit, out of season fruit, and I am not going to stop. I always have said it benefits my health and i would rather pay the prices than pay for medical bills. However, I know the carbon footprint aspect of it isn't good, but... as soon as the many local farms start selling their stuff, I only buy from them, and I guess that lasts about 5 months of the year. Been going to a winter farmer's market, but there isn't actually much there, in terms of veggies, except kale and potatoes. The other foods are unhealthy!

I'm not totally sold on the local concept. I heard a really interesting thing on NPR the other day that was talking about some of the nuances of localvorism. One example that was given was that it takes more of a carbon footprint to bring locally grown product into Manhattan, than it does to bring it it from farther away on more efficient transport than small trucks. Granted, that is a really narrow example but I thought it was a good one.

[shootingstar]

A difference between Inuit meat-based traditional diet and if they were to have it now (instead of more veggies), is that they used to burn their energy, hunting, fishing and ranging the land in the cold.

Not anymore. I was told a lot of the Inuit have lost skills in way finding on the snowy tundras even by snowmobiling, much less by husky dog sledding and kayaking. So more sedentary like other parts of very cold Canada. And going jogging even if you wanted: some the temperatures are the same as Calgary but they have less roads, paths and clear sidewalks. When I was Iqaluit I did see jogger...@-20 degrees C.

I was seriously looking at the cost of living...I was there for a job interview. Years ago.

Even Calgary, the middle of winter, a lot of our fresh veggies and fruits have to be shipped from outside of Alberta. In our region, doesn't seem have major greenhouse operations like B.C. or even Ontario. Yea, sure talk about preserved veggies: I guess for some veggies. But honest, I'm not really into canned veggies much at all nor flash frozen veggies often at all.

I guess there are frozen Chinese leafy veggies...but it is not the same. Let's see, once upon a time, my mother tried drying bok choy. Just too labour intensive for a family of 8 ...it would have to be ALOT of dried boy chok to satisfy a large family. Let's not get into salted veggies....kinda unhealthy.

I'm not going to kid myself: I am not a gardener/natural green thumb. It doesn't interest me. I've done other DIY stuff- sewing my clothing, cook from scratch all my dishes for most of my life so far. (Helps I have a mother who is like this also.) I rarely buy prepared frozen food from store.

[Catrin]

I buy locally where I can and when I can afford it. Am more concerned with helping to support the small local businesses rather than anything else. Also, I really like being able to visit the farm(s) where most of my meat and poultry come from so I KNOW how they were raised. I tend to know the farmers that provide my animal protein rather better than those who produce my vegetables. My food budget is only so large, and it is larger than it once was, but I prefer this approach.

[Crankin]

Jolt, I guess the point I was trying to make, is that I am eating fresh (and flown here) blueberries and oranges, etc. year round. I can't do frozen. I buy locally when I can. Like Shooting Star, I am not a gardner, in fact my thumb is brown. I find it frustrating as hell! So, I am lucky there are at least 5-7 small farms within 10 miles of my house. When I can't go there, I go to a gourmet farm market, which grows stuff that is local, but also ships stuff in. I have never gone there and not found what I wanted, in terms of weird ingredients. They started as a farm, and now they are a market that has baked goods from local bakeries, wine and beer, locally grown meats, and a selection of cheeses I could die for. Thankfully, when I moved, it was further away from this place.

[OakLeaf]

Well, leaving aside for the moment, repeating that I was talking about policy choices and NOT individual choices ...

you gotta love these industry-funded "studies" that compare half of one thing with all of another. Yeah, you know in California, vegetables just magically transport themselves from the farms onto the big trucks that take them to New York ... while vegetables that are going to the farmers' market instead of the industrial depot, have to rely on small trucks ...

[malkin]

Jolt, I guess the point I was trying to make, is that I am eating fresh (and flown here) blueberries and oranges, etc. year round. I can't do frozen...

Why not frozen?

[Crankin]

You mean fresh veggies that are canned and frozen, or the frozen packages?
If I grew my own, I guess I would can and freeze. But, I can't stand the frozen veggies you buy at the store.
I guess I'm spoiled.

[lph]

We tend to eat a mix. We have bags of frozen vegetables in the freezer, they're not like fresh but I'm told the the nutritional value is pretty good actually. They're easy to put into stews and stuff like that. I prefer fresh, but they're more hassle and time to prepare, keep for shorter time, and then there's the environmental impact. We stock up on local in-season vegetables when possible, but the season is short. There's absolutely nothing like fresh local ears of corn in september. Only canned corn available for the rest of the year.

It can be hard to know how to shop groceries sustainably. Apparently the carbon footprint of greenhouse-grown vegetables up here can rival that of air-transported stuff. I try to find a reasonable balance between a varied and healthy and enjoyable diet, and one that isn't based on an outrageous use of natural resources. The biggie when it comes to carbon footprint is of course reducing meat intake, from farmed animals.

I'm curious as to how gardening came into the discussion. There's no way I could garden more than a tiny fraction of the food I eat, not without giving up either my job or most of my free time in the growth season. I have friends who have small vegetable gardens, but it's mostly for fun. Even family who own a dairy farm and have plenty of land only produce their own potatoes.