6.4. Write an essay of 300-500 words on the food problems Russia comes across.

FOCUS 7. Discussion

7.1. These are extracts from a number of letters about organic/ethical food (the produce – crops, fruits and vegetables – grown in any country only during the agriculture season). Look into the following statements and express your point of view. Name as many pros and cons of organic food as possible.

Organic Matter

The billions of individual choices that consumers make each day do have a cumulative impact on the well-being of people and the planet. We cannot make large-scale improvements without involving popular majorities and one of the best ways to do this is to invite people to think about their decisions and vote with their wallets. Shopping for ethical-food labels is just one of many types of individual actions that make a difference and the impressive growth of such products is evidence that this is working. Sustainable consumption involves balancing the impacts of our lifestyles—recycling, conserving energy, reducing our travel—as well as participating in elections. Certified-food products may be no panacea for the world's problems, but our members are helping to set the agenda for widespread change while producing goods that are certified to the highest social and environmental standards.

Recent research by Danish and American scientists suggests that if all agriculture was organic, the slight decrease in yields in the northern hemisphere would be more than matched by overall increases elsewhere, leading to a slight increase in total food production. Long-term trials in the United States show organic yields matching those from non-organic systems, with organic farming outperforming non-organic in drought years. The fact is that in a world of increasing scarcity of fossil fuels, organic farming provides the only environmentally, or economically, sustainable system for feeding the world.

Ethically minded consumers can best save the planet by avoiding meat, the process of which, such as providing food for livestock, uses energy and resources. Researchers from the University of Chicago have found that the average American meat-eater generates nearly 1.5 tonnes more carbon dioxide per person per year.

Allow green groups their moments of hyperbole. By exaggerating the social and environmental benefits of ethical production they provide some much-needed balance to big food and drink companies, which have shown remarkably little leadership on such critical social issues as consumer health and global warming. The food zealots provoke these lumbering companies into action. One result is that the clear blue water between organic and “conventional” farming is narrowing.

Not once did you mention “taste”. Have you considered that people might buy local strawberries because there is a better chance that they will taste like strawberries and not like cucumbers?

It is not clear to me why anyone needs to eat a tomato in winter, whether it is from Spain or from a local greenhouse. Eating with the seasons used to have meaning, but seems to have been lost in our current hurried, global approach to life. We view the ability to eat any food at any time of year, irrespective of its natural season, almost as a birthright. But as many of us have experienced, tomatoes in winter never quite taste the same as those in summer.

An important element motivating acolytes of the ethical-food movement is snob appeal. Now even something as prosaic as grocery shopping can display someone's financial and educational status.

Source: The Economist, 2007, January 13

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