Entry #6- ECHO Field Trip & Some Other Thoughts...

When you go to the store to buy something, it doesn’t ever really cross your mind on how it ACTUALLY got to your table. A lot of effort from many, many people goes into getting you the good you need and live off of everyday. Let’s start at the beginning. It all starts with farming. For example things needed to farm would be land, seed, soil, water, pesticides, the people actually farming, and much, much more. You then have to harvest the goods and ship them off to be transported to the stores. This includes travel time, the things necessary to keep the goods at a high level quality for consumers. Then you have to deal with packaging, distributing, then finally consumers buying it and bringing it home to the table. It’s a long process that can take lots of time and energy.

When we went to ECHO they were really trying to take learning about sustainable farming methods to a different level. What they did to help others really left me in awe. Since ECHO has many different climates and things going on within technology plays a big role in helping them learn. It helps with trial and error methods and just learning what works and what doesn’t. Florida is the best state in the US to really test what works in different climates considering we have beautiful weather year round. The soil, water, and climate all interrelate to create a learning cycle. It’s key to know what works in each specific climate and what types of soil they have to work with. Also if it’s a dryer area that doesn’t get rain nearly as often that’s something that you need to take into consideration when finding out what you can grow. Since we live in an area that we really can flourish off the land, we need to think more agriculturally about how we can live more sustainably and what we can do to nourish ourselves. ECHO’s methods to me are very sustainable not only for us in this area, but also to help people around the world in countries less fortunate how to live sustainably off the land. They use a lot of natural resources while still using basic technology as well and I think they do a great job and they helped me to learn a lot while I was there.

Organic is a term used a lot more often now, but what does it really mean? When it comes to fruits and veggies the term organic means they are grown with no chemicals, no pesticides, and they do not involve anything synthetic. When I see a fruit that’s organic and one that isn’t, I really can now tell the difference. Take an apple for example. The organic apple has a rough skin that you can tell is fresh. If you look at a non-organic apple you can see it has a wax like skin and really looks like its fake from all the chemicals that are put within. When it comes to meats that are organic, it simply means that the animals are fed in a pasture with no pesticides or anything not naturally grown, and they are never given any sort of antibiotics or any growth hormones. I’ve really tried since taking this class to try eating more organic and so far I really have come to like it!

Here are some pictures below that I took at the ECHO field trip! They show some of the different climates and land set ups they try to re-enact, and a few other neat things we got to see!