I didn't taste my first strawberry until I came to America.
That should not surprise anybody. I grew up in a HOT near-equatorial place. The fruits that I ate were mostly bananas and mangoes and guavas and jackfruits. On the other hand, an overwhelming majority of Americans, who were born and raised far away from the tropics, would not have even heard of something called a jackfruit, leave alone tasting the awesome fruit or the sweet that mothers like mine made.
We ate fruits and vegetables (and animals) that were obtained locally. Living such a locavore life is what we humans did until very, very, recently. Growing up, we called carrots and cauliflower, for instance as carrots and cauliflower because there was no Tamil word for either one, and there was no Tamil word because people hadn’t seen carrots or cauliflower until Europeans brought them over.
As I blogged a few days ago, we live in a world of abundance that makes us forget that not too long ago, humans had to make do with whatever their neighborhood provided. Through most of our existence, we humans were locavores.
In contrast to all our collective history of eating locally sourced food, grocery stores now sell fruits and vegetables from all over the world. I am yet to try out a few strange looking produce items that are on the shelves in my grocery store simply because I have no idea what to do with them, nor do I have the remotest idea of how they might taste.
Strawberries I came to appreciate. The sweet/tart taste with vanilla ice cream, I came to find out, is heavenly on a hot summer afternoon. I then started buying ice cream with strawberries.
After the move to Oregon, a student remarked when we were chatting in my office that it is easy to distinguish between strawberries from California versus the Oregon produce. The topic highly excited him. The ones from California are bloated, full of water, and tasteless, unlike the Oregon strawberries, he swore.
I started paying attention. He was correct.
And then when I tasted strawberries that I grabbed right off the plant, I knew that I might never ever go back to the old days of buying them at the grocery store.
(An aside: Botanically speaking, strawberries are not berries, but bananas are berries. Go figure!)
Over the past few years, I have been thinking more and more about the fact that the stores always have most fruits and vegetables, as if there is no seasonality.
Even in India there is no seasonality anymore. When we were young, mangoes were available for less than half a year. Now, whenever I go to the old country and I am out buying vegetables, I am able to buy green mangoes even in the wet and cooler months.
The Japanese take this to a whole new level with when and how they grow strawberries. The New York Times reports that “in Japan, the strawberry crop peaks in wintertime — a chilly season of picture-perfect berries, the most immaculate ones selling for hundreds of dollars apiece to be given as special gifts.”
In winter!
To recreate an artificial spring in the winter months, farmers grow their out-of-season delicacies in huge greenhouses heated with giant, gas-guzzling heaters.
“We’ve come to a point where many people think it’s natural to have strawberries in winter,” said Satoko Yoshimura, a strawberry farmer in Minoh, Japan, just outside Osaka, who until last season burned kerosene to heat her greenhouse all winter long, when temperatures can dip well bellow freezing.
But as she kept filling up her heater’s tank with fuel, she said, she started to think: “What are we doing?”
Yes, what are we doing?
The Japanese strawberry production comes across as nothing but insanity that is fueled by affluence. And kerosene is the literal fuel behind strawberries in winter. So much so that “in summertime Japan imports much of its strawberry supply.”
So, why the strawberry production in the winter in artificially heated greenhouses?
Up until several decades ago, Japan’s strawberry season started in the spring and ran into early summer. But the Japanese market has traditionally placed a high value on first-of-the-season or “hatsumono” produce, from tuna to rice and tea. A crop claiming the hatsumono mantle can bring many times normal prices, and even snags fevered media coverage.
As the country’s consumer economy took off, the hatsumono race spilled over into strawberries. Farms started to compete to bring their strawberries to market earlier and earlier in the year. “Peak strawberry season went from April to March to February to January, and finally hit Christmas,” said Daisuke Miyazaki, chief executive at Ichigo Tech, a Tokyo-based strawberry consulting firm.
Now, strawberries are a major Christmas staple in Japan, adorning Christmas cakes sold across the country all December. Some farmers have started to ship first-of-the-season strawberries in November, Mr. Miyazaki said.
I should contrast this strawberry madness in Japan with the empty produce shelves in Britain, about which I blogged a few days ago.
The UK imports 46% of its food, with self-sufficiency at about 54% in fresh vegetables (tomatoes, though technically a fruit, count as a vegetable here) and just 16% in fruit. This is highly dependent on the season: From December through to March, the nation imports 95% of its tomatoes and 90% of lettuce.
The main reason for the bare produce shelves was a bad harvest in Spain and Morocco, from the UK imports a lot of winter produce. Imagine greenhouses across the English countryside with kerosene burners providing the warmth for tomato plants!
Transportation of food often has less of a climate impact than the way in which it is produced, said Shelie Miller, a professor at the University of Michigan who focuses on climate, food and sustainability. One study found, for example, that tomatoes grown locally in heated greenhouses in the Britain had a higher carbon footprint compared to tomatoes grown in Spain (outdoors, and in-season), and shipped to British supermarkets.
So, yes, “it’s ideal if you can eat both in-season, and locally, so your food is produced without having to add major energy expenditures.” But, we can certainly avoid growing and eating strawberries in wintertime, correct?