Build the soil, harvest the plants, feed the people, heal the planet. by Pat featherstone

A recent edition of Time magazine carried an interesting article on how to reduce your carbon footprint. You can choose to do it the costly way by purchasing the latest hybrid vehicle, or installing rows of solar panels on your roof, or burying a bio-digester in your garden to process the household effluent and produce gas for cooking. Planting a tree for every flight you and your family make to overseas destinations is another option. But what about the simple first step of weighing up the carbon merits of eating at home?

There are not many of us who can afford costly ‘green’ additions to our homes but, fortunately, there are many other choices we can make to fight the ‘carbon battle’. Two that come to mind immediately:

Look at what you eat. A 110g serving of steamed vegetables has a carbon footprint of 0.08 kg. The same size portion of pasta – 0.18 kg; grilled chicken – 0.6 kg, cheese – 1kg and beef (the worst by far) – 4.8 kg. The figures speak for themselves. One of the most important ways to shrink your carbon footprint is to eat less meat, especially beef. Rather eat plenty of fruit, vegetables and grains, but most importantly vegetables.

In this way you not only reduce your impact on global warming, but improve your health and well-being.

Use earthworms to turn your household waste into life-giving, water-conserving humus to improve your soil, and at the same time reducing the impact on land-fill sites that belch out methane in alarming volumes when organic waste is broken down in the absence of oxygen.

Most important of all, choose to join the food-growing culture and grow your own ‘good, clean’ vegetables using simple, low-cost, water-wise methods. For weekend workshop information email info@soilforlife.co.za

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