Saturday 27 August 2016

Turnips! Turnips For All!


That it's revolting, greasy and tasteless?

Well, no. Hipsters seem to like that, after all...
But what seemed a crisis in the long term now presents as a clean-eating emergency here and now with urgent warnings that in Mexico, the unprecedented international appetite for this unique fruit is indirectly fuelling illegal deforestation and environmental degradation. Those oblivious to such things in far-flung places will no doubt carry on regardless. But what are those who view the avocado as a basic food group supposed to do?
Beats me...
It’s a moot point whether the Mexicans who actually grow these on-trend fruits eventually harvest their fair share of the economic benefits. This lucrative trade is increasingly controlled by a drug cartel known as the Caballeros Templarios (Knights Templar). So when you buy a Mexican avocado, a greedy share of revenue may well accrue to criminals.
Wow! I thought the Knights Templar had bigger ambitions than that..!
You might think, OK, I’ll buy avocados from some other less problematic source then. But would an avocado from Chile, Peru or the Dominican Republic automatically be more sustainable or equitably produced? The fact of the matter is that we know pitifully little about the environmental and working conditions of faceless people in faraway places who grow fruit for our tables, but I have seen enough of foreign fruit “farms” to suspect the worst.
Oh, dear. What to do?
The fact of the matter is that the further away from home our food comes, the less chance we have of interrogating its origins and its impact on its native environment and workforce.
There's nothing for it. Hipsters will have to start eating turnips.

13 comments:

Lord T said...

It is so sad. SJWs meet facts. It won't be easy.

Woman on a Raft said...

It would not be a bad idea to aim for greater food security i.e. first eating what we grow here but carefully balancing agriculture against other land uses.

Mixed farming but with the addition of the technologies which have been developed over the last 200 years should at least be discussed. Using mono-crops and advanced distribution feeds a lot of people but it is a fragile system if the distribution breaks down. However, the economies of scale which come from specialization are the keystone of modern profitability. What is not so obvious is that this trades long term security and social stability for immediate dinner. I like dinner so I can see how this feels like an urgent and obvious choice.

I like avocado as well but if growing it is causing the air-making lungs of the planet to collapse, maybe the price ought to rise or the source be better documented or perhaps, if the temperature is rising, Cornwall could be the new avocado orchard? We have learned how to turn disused clay pits in to giant green houses by putting Buckminster structures over them and there are cold hardy avocado plants available.

Nobody has to starve or eat shoes. All we have to do is use our intelligence to stablize the population relative to the food supply. There was a time when many more of us took part in food production. Perhaps we should think about that again.

Ted Treen said...

But have you seen the living conditions and working conditions of East European turnip-pickers?

Demetrius said...

Roderick Spode, later 6th Earl of Sidcup, as in "Jeeves and Wooster" leader of The Black Shorts, was very keen on turnips. His National Plan included the proposal that Gloucestershire should be given over to their production. Any day now one or other of our major parties will come up with the same idea.

Tim Newman said...

"There was a time when many more of us took part in food production. Perhaps we should think about that again."

I practically grew up on a farm, and worked on the UK's largest vegetable farm. It is miserable, back-breaking work unless you are a teenage boy with lots of energy and without anything else to do. No, we really, really do not need to all starts scrabbling around in the fields.

L fairfax said...

Swedes are much cheaper than turnips and very similar in taste. So would be a better choice.

Flaxen Saxon said...

Avocados are straight from Satan's arse. For some reason they are very popular in my adopted country of New Zealand. Nasty, tasteless and oily.

Greencoat said...

‘Faceless people in faraway places..’

Ah, so that’s what the Guardian REALLY thinks of johnny foreigner. How awfully racist of them, darling.

Curmudgeon said...

Always amusing how lefties agree with the BNP on the need to eat British!

Michael said...

The only interesting thing about the Avocado is that it shows parallel evolution. Over tens of millions of years, the Prawn has evolved to fit exactly into the hole left by the Avocado pip. Beyond that it has no virtue at all except that it presents the possibility of poisoning every single Hipster in one fee swoop...

Budvar said...

Well I happen to quite like avocados. Pick a nice ripe squishy one, mash it up, add crispy bacon bits, diced tomato and a squirt of siracha sauce, top with lettuce and a dash of mayo.
You people are Philistines..

ed butt said...

I can promise you that I have never aided and abetted a Mexican drug cartel my voluntarily eating avocado. But the funding of said criminal enterprises by hipsters is entirely consistent with their moral relativism. They lecture us on human rights but are quite happy to gain social kudos by waving their iPhones or iPads around in public or wearing clothes that display trendy logos externally even though the manufacture of both genres of status boosting products involves the use of slave (indentured) labour.

JuliaM said...

"It would not be a bad idea to aim for greater food security i.e. first eating what we grow here but carefully balancing agriculture against other land uses. "

Agreed. When we Brexit, rape oil subsidies should be the first to go - hayfever sufferers will be eternally grateful.

"There was a time when many more of us took part in food production. Perhaps we should think about that again."

But in that time, we were much more resilient. I give you the last post's puppy huggers. You think they can work in the fields?

"Avocados are straight from Satan's arse."

I'm told I make great guacamole. I have to be told that, because I'm never tempted to sample it, even to check seasoning!

"Over tens of millions of years, the Prawn has evolved to fit exactly into the hole left by the Avocado pip."

LOL!

"You people are Philistines.."

When I come to power, you will be Official Avocado Taster...

"But the funding of said criminal enterprises by hipsters is entirely consistent with their moral relativism."

Damned good point...