Giving Up Almonds

David Trammel's picture

I love almonds but as of this weekend I'm giving them up.

Our Love Of Almonds Is Seriously Jeopardizing Honeybees

I know many people across both the believe in climate change and don't believe spectrum wonder at times whether anything one individual can do will help but sometimes you just have to make a change you hope will eventually make things better.

I've known for a while that the way almonds are grown is bad, but continued to rationalized that the small amount I eat wasn't that big of a deal. I guess at some point you have to stop rationalizing.

Guess giving up sushi will be next, lol.

David Trammel's picture

This is just not sustainable

'Like sending bees to war': the deadly truth behind your almond milk obsession

Imagine if you were a cattle rancher and you normally had 30% of your cattle die before they could go to market?

alice's picture

Isn't it mostly because of pesticide exposure? One of the problems I know is that the new systemic pesticides are expressed througout the plant tissue. So the nectar, pollen etc all expose the bees to the chemical. If you live in an almond producing region maybe you can make contact with traditional farmers who aren't using the new big pesticides. Small producers are often using methods which are much more sustainable, might even be keeping their own bees too. I have spent a lot of the past few years seeking out local food producers and buying what we eat straight from them, and it's funny, I think our family's diet is edging closer to the 200-year norm for these islands (Britain). Not always more expensive than the industrial option. I like what Sharon Astyk wrote, that every dollar/pound we spend is a vote for the food system we want. Sometimes there is a choice available to put food money towards a better alternative if you hunt around a bit for it.

Blueberry's picture

A lot of what is food is just calories, had a good crop of cold hardy citrus this year gave some to friends and also Orange Juice. People could not believe the difference. Lemons are no longer picked ripe, picked when a certain size and placed in a cooler until needed. So at that point gassed to make them nice and yellow . Ok so my lemons say on the tree until ripe we juice the extras and place in plastic bottles and freeze until summer.

alice's picture

I'm sure there is no comparison possible with your home-grown and tree-ripened. The food we source direct from producers is usually much more delicious as well.

It's also possible of course to make contact direct with growers a distance away -- we have just put in an order for a share of pesticide free olive oil, tree ripened citrus fruits, almonds, and black olives, which will be coming over to England from Spain in Feb, from a partner farm of one of the local veg farms where we buy a veg share. These are definitely not the least expensive but we are trying to see it as partly a charitable donation towards developing sustainable food production capacity.

Blueberry's picture

Link for general citrus info http://citruspages.free.fr/sweetoranges.html 2 links for info in and around Devon some cold hardy citrus grows in Devon. Good place to walk about an look for yourself. https://www.devonlive.com/whats-on/family-kids/30-best-gardens-devon-enj... also https://diedandgonetodevon.uk/2018/02/15/drying-oranges-for-christmas-de...

alice's picture

Yes, citrus have been grown as a novelty in England a long time. Stately homes and castles often still have an 'orangery', now often a sunny tea room, which in times gone by was where the orange trees lived. The trees would be pot grown and wheeled out for sunny days and brought in during colder weather, so you can spot floor-to-ceiling double doors in such buildings for wheeling a massive tree in a pot through the door =D

The link you have about Devon-grown oranges shows the trees in pots indoor during the winter. There are also 'hot beds' in Victorian walled gardens in such places which were/are used for other exotics like pineapple, and the south facing walls of those were used as thermal stores to provide the extra heat to grow things like peaches. A rich lady used to be able to hire a pineapple to decorate her dinner table.

For a commercial scale we have to make links a little further abroad in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece etc. Most of our cooking tomatoes, walnuts, chestnuts, and european rice varieties come from those countries and southern France too, though most English cooks buy cooking tomatoes in cans or bottles. Small salad tomatoes are grown in the UK, as are cucumbers, and some chillies, sometimes in greenhouses heated by waste heat from incinerators and such things.