Mount Pleasant Don Thurston

Geraldine writes about locally grown produce

Two thousand and twelve marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Mount Pleasant Spring Celebration. Citizens mark the season with the zeal that accompanies the spring equinox and the beginning of a new growing season. Activities are as varied as outdoor- concerts, live theatre, horticultural events, baseball and kite flying. The skateboard park is full. Throwbacks to earlier days include games of marbles, sidewalk art, and rope skipping. Mount Pleasant comes alive.

A creative initiative this year is building a community garden. New at least to Mount Pleasant but a proven community builder elsewhere as citizens organize to cultivate common ground, enjoy the camaraderie and relish the prospects of a bountiful harvest.

Seemingly innocuous, Mount Pleasant’s community garden represents the central theme in Jeff Ruben’s book “Why Your World Is About to Get A Whole Lot Smaller”. By now you will be familiar with the concept that long distance transportation will decline, given increasing costs and environmental issues.

Emerging economies, particularly agricultural based, rely on exporting food and other products This cycle is no small matter. Honey from Zambia, flowers from Guatemala, melons from Ecuador and tomatoes from Mexico are all part of a complicated and interdependent world economy. At the marginal level, a farmer must grow not only for personal use but realize a surplus and the resulting disposable income. Extra funds are just what are needed to educate the children, a much sought after objective.

So here is the conundrum: Access to global markets for producers in emerging economies requires expensive, complicated logistical systems. Their decline will be counterproductive to poverty reduction.

The good citizens of Mount Pleasant are certainly not overtly involved in an effort to restrain trade or to deny opportunities to small producers in developing countries. Too dramatic? Perhaps but never the less a far reaching example of the consequences of unsustainable shipping in the global economy

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