The Sandwich That Inspired A Project
One evening after school, my dad and I went to Straw, Stick and Brick Delicatessen and got a sandwich and bacon for Saturday morning. We went in and sat down while we waited. The owner, a good friend, came out and we started a conversation. She told us that she was planning a bio-dynamic intensive micro-farm on her property.
What is a bio-dynamic intensive micro-farm?
It’s a type of farming that is done in hexagons, not rows. Each plant in every hexagon benefits another one, creating an ecosystem for every plant. She told us that she had started planning and said that her possible end goal was to grow 80% of the food she consumes in her yard. This was intriguing because my family used to have a garden but eventually we stopped. I said I would help and he gave me a compost container with a carbon filter to start collecting compost.
Not only was I interested in helping this garden, but we had been learning about food waste in another class. After learning about it in class I realized how much of a problem it was.
- 25% of food in homes in the U.S. is thrown away
- 40 to 60% of all fish is discarded
- There are 1 billion people who are hungry, yet there is enough food thrown away to feed 4 times this number
- In developed countries food waste is created on 3 main levels: Manufacturer (20–25%), Distribution (15–20%) and Consumer (55–65%)
The two reasons that I decided to compost are to help a friend with a garden and because we learned about how big of a problem food waste was.
