When you go to Europe look for Eosta

Let me write about food again because we all love eating.  Daniel Goleman writes in his book Ecological Intelligence about Eosta, Europe’s largest distributor to retailers of organic produce. I had not heard of them before but then again, when did I shop the last time in Europe ...  Anyway, Goleman spoke to Managing Director Volkert Engelsmann and found out that every product has a 3-digit code. This code will give the consumer details on the farmer and a profile of the farmer's operations when entered on www.natureandmore.com! That's pretty awesome, similar to our Organic Box which tells us the originating farm of every product. Engelsmann believes in the power of a transparent market place. - Knowing the background of a product wins more and more importance amongst Canadians too according to a new study. Instead of complaining to a company about their "bad" product (from sweatshops etc.) though Canadians simply don't buy it and find something else. I hope so.     

Back at Eosta, Engelsmann also says: “We serve an awareness elite, people who are concerned about health, the environment, social issues.” I don't like that "awareness elite". Dave & I think of ourselves more as hippies than an elite. We simply want to eat well and we are willing to spend a little bit more money on food, if that keeps crap off our table. We are not keen on picking up one of those Western diseases either. For Engelsmann the term elite justifies high prices that only the "high-income elite" (I made that up) can afford. Great for the farmer but only to the point where you have enough rich people to afford your food. The Organic Box always aims to pay a good price to the farmers too but once they are way better off then we are I am not sure I want to give them that extra money. Even buying organic food I do compare prices. If I can get my cereal at one organic store for $20 per kg and at the competition for $12 per kg, guess where I will buy.  

Back to Eosta again:  Products are rated by independent experts for healthiness, social qualities, and ecological impact. Environmental aspects include for example water consumption and composting. Eosta does a full Life Cycle Analysis on all greenhouse gas emissions throughout the supply chain, from farm to plate, supervised by Germany’s national certification agency. Eosta supports innovation to reduce methane, a greenhouse gas. The reason is simple: If you compost organic waste instead of adding it to the landfill, and keep turning it properly, it will not produce any methane. It will turn into a stable compost that increases soil fertility, which in return erases the use for mineral fertilizers, and increases the soil’s water holding quality (less runoff). Crops are also more pest resistant. Much to the contrary, nitrogen fertilizers popular in common farming cause greater yields but crops are more susceptible to pests. That's why farmers then need pesticides. Producing and applying conventional fertilizer contributes 16% of all greenhouse gases, especially nitrous oxide which is 300 times more aggressive than CO2.      

Also let's not forget that “most agriculture takes place near rivers and in deltas, where chemical fertilizer runoff causes eutrophication", meaning the growth of algae explodes, the water is depleted of oxygen and other forms of wildlife lose their habitat. Engelmann continues with, "The World Bank has financed a program to hire people to cut back the algae this causes before it chokes off the oxygen aquatic life need. But we said, instead of burning the algae and other alien vegetation, we’ll use it for compost and gradually replace the need for mineral fertilizers that cause the problem in the first place.”  Pretty good, eh. There's such a (seemingly) simple way of dealing with the damage our modern society creates. If only the made the farmer clean up the algae who used the fertilizers in the beginning - he might rethink his agricultural practices. Learning by doing - you are in for a lesson.

The last two paragraphs make me think that there lies the reason for the high prices - Eosta does an all-around-job which I much appreciate. The consumer might need to know all of this though to accept the high prices, and still have the money to pay for it. When a friend of ours joked he needed a mortgage to pay for his organic beef, I thought we simply eat vegetarian instead. And I for my part will keep comparing prices of organic products and chose the cheaper one, and keep receiving the Organic Box so I don't have to buy the not-so-fresh organic produce at our closest supermarket.