Low Carbon Foot Print Products: Made in Haines

The Haines Farmers Market is gearing up for it’s third season. Check the dates to the left. Any day now, potential vendors will be able to pre-register. Look for forms in all the usual places: Howsers, Mountain Market, Library, PO. This year, the Market has some support from the Alaska Division of Agriculture, Alaska Grown program.

Any grower with a business license can get certified to use the Alaska Grown logo. Certification is free (a business license, of course, is not. It costs $100/year. It’s worth it. )

You can download an Alaska Grown application and mail it to the address on the form, or you can attach it to an email sent to kirk.brown@alaska.gov. I had to call for that information. Mr. Brown’s email is not on the form.

I wish more growers in Haines would participate in this program. For one thing, retailers that sell Alaska Grown products are listed on the Alaska Grown website. That’s nice. Free advertising. I'd love to see Alaska & Proud, Howsers, and Mountain Market listed here.

For another thing, in this carbon conscious time, consumers are more and more anxious to buy good products that haven’t traveled half way around the world to get to them. Stop Global Warming hypothesizes, “If we ate locally produced food only one day a week, 5000 pounds of carbon would be saved each year.”

Calculating carbon footprints is tricky. Just check out all the calculations that go into figuring out the carbon footprint of a bag of Walkers Crisps potato chips. The Carbon Trust, a private UK company, spent months coming up with the figure of 75g of greenhouse gases given off in the production of one 33.5g bag of Walkers. They took into account the energy used in farming, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, and finally – disposal.

So, reduce your own carbon footprint by eating local produce sold at the Haines Farmers Market this season. Buy lettuce grown in the Chilkat Valley instead of lettuce flown from Chile. Bring your own bags!