The ethics of eating a banana
I've been thinking a lot about the foods I'm eating.
The transportation distance for some items is simply staggering. Bananas from Ecuador or avocados from Mexico are traveling thousands of kilometres to arrive here. The coffee I drink, while roasted locally, was grown in Brazil or Peru or Guatemala. And I'm not sure how far the tea has had to travel.
There are also issues about how agricultural workers are treated in those parts of the world, which means there's a dimension of human rights, justice and mercy at play as well. There are some Fair Trade companies working to ensure the workers who produced the crops are being treated decently. But I also wonder how well that is working when tropical fruit, shipped thousands of kilometres, is still a lot cheaper than the apples and peaches we grow where I live.
We hear a lot about the 100-mile diet, and there is much to be said in its favour. But there are some foods which cannot be produced within 100 miles of here.
Is there an ethical way to eat a banana or drink a cup of coffee or tea? And if not, are there workable alternatives?