Name: ____________________________________ Date: ______________ Period: ______
Print pages 1 to 3 for every student. Page 4 is the food picture bank for cut-and-glue and for the grade 6 version. Page 5 is the distance table for the grade 8 stretch.
Part 1. What grows in New York, and when
Key: F = fresh from a New York field or greenhouse. S = stored from an earlier harvest and still New York grown. blank = not available from New York that month.
| Food | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apples | S | S | S | S | F | F | F | F | S | |||
| Asparagus | F | F | ||||||||||
| Beets | S | S | F | F | F | F | F | F | S | |||
| Blueberries | F | F | F | |||||||||
| Broccoli | F | F | F | F | F | |||||||
| Cabbage | S | S | S | F | F | F | F | F | F | S | ||
| Carrots | S | S | S | F | F | F | F | F | F | S | ||
| Corn (sweet) | F | F | F | |||||||||
| Cucumbers | F | F | F | F | ||||||||
| Eggs (from NY farms) | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F |
| Greens (greenhouse) | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F |
| Lettuce (field) | F | F | F | F | F | F | ||||||
| Milk and dairy | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F |
| Mushrooms | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F |
| Onions | S | S | S | F | F | F | F | F | S | |||
| Peaches | F | F | F | |||||||||
| Potatoes | S | S | S | S | F | F | F | F | F | S | ||
| Pumpkins and squash | S | S | F | F | F | F | S | |||||
| Strawberries | F | F | ||||||||||
| Tomatoes (field) | F | F | F | F | ||||||||
| Tomatoes (greenhouse) | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F | F |
Circle eight foods above and write the season for each here:
| Food | Season it is fresh from New York |
|---|---|
| 1. | |
| 2. | |
| 3. | |
| 4. | |
| 5. | |
| 6. | |
| 7. | |
| 8. |
Mark three storage crops on the chart with an S. (A storage crop is picked in the fall and kept in a cool building for months.) Write them here:
- ____________________ 2. ____________________ 3. ____________________
What has to travel to get here? Write four foods that never appear in the chart above, because they cannot grow in New York:
- ____________________ 2. ____________________ 3. ____________________ 4. ____________________
- * *
Part 2. The four trade-offs of buying local
Write one plus and one minus for buying local in each row. A plus is a reason to do it. A minus is a real cost of doing it.
| Trade-off | Plus (a reason to buy local) | Minus (a real cost of buying local) |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | ||
| Taste | ||
| Availability | ||
| Jobs |
Food miles means the number of miles a food traveled to reach you. It stands in for the fuel, the trucks, and the days. Write the honest note your teacher said out loud:
Local is not automatically better, because ___________________________________
Part 3. Build two meals
Use the chart. Every meal needs a protein, a grain, a vegetable, and a fruit. Label every item with its source: L = local (New York), S = state or nearby state, N = national (somewhere in the United States), G = global (another country).
The January meal
| Part of the meal | What I chose | Source (L, S, N, G) |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | ||
| Grain | ||
| Vegetable | ||
| Fruit |
How many items are local? ______ out of 4
The July meal
| Part of the meal | What I chose | Source (L, S, N, G) |
|---|---|---|
| Protein | ||
| Grain | ||
| Vegetable | ||
| Fruit |
How many items are local? ______ out of 4
The hardest item to place in January was ______________________ because ___________________________________________________________________________.
Part 4. Your decision
Pick one food you actually eat. Would you pay one dollar more for the local version? Answer using all four trade-offs.
My food: ______________________________
| Trade-off | My reason |
|---|---|
| Cost | |
| Taste | |
| Availability | |
| Jobs |
My decision: I would / would not pay a dollar more, because ______________
Exit card
3 foods that grow in New York: ____________, ____________, ____________
2 months when almost nothing grows outside here: ____________, ____________
1 question I still have about local food: ____________________________________
Page 4: Food picture bank
For cut-and-glue and for the grade 6 version. Print, cut apart, and glue into the meal tables instead of writing. Each box has the word and a drawing of the food.
| apple | egg | milk | potato |
| cabbage | carrot | onion | squash |
| bread | rice | pasta | oatmeal |
| chicken | beans | cheese | yogurt |
| tomato | broccoli | lettuce | cucumber |
| strawberry | blueberry | peach | banana |
| orange | grapes | corn | mushroom |
Page 5: Grade 8 stretch, the distance table
Rough one-way distances to Long Island. Use them to estimate food miles for three items in your January meal.
| Food | Where it usually comes from in winter | About how far |
|---|---|---|
| Apple (New York) | Hudson Valley or western New York | 150 to 350 miles |
| Potato (New York) | Upstate New York storage | 200 to 300 miles |
| Milk | New York or Pennsylvania dairy | 50 to 250 miles |
| Egg | New York or Pennsylvania farm | 50 to 250 miles |
| Cabbage (New York) | Upstate New York storage | 200 to 300 miles |
| Tomato (winter, field) | Florida | about 1,200 miles |
| Tomato (winter, greenhouse) | Ontario, Canada or Mexico | 500 to 2,500 miles |
| Lettuce (winter) | California or Arizona | 2,300 to 2,800 miles |
| Strawberry (winter) | California or Mexico | 2,500 to 3,000 miles |
| Banana | Guatemala, Ecuador, or Costa Rica | 2,000 to 3,000 miles |
| Orange | Florida or California | 1,200 to 2,800 miles |
| Rice | Arkansas, Louisiana, or California | 1,300 to 2,800 miles |
| Wheat (for bread flour) | Kansas, North Dakota, or Montana | 1,300 to 2,000 miles |
| Coffee | Brazil, Colombia, or Vietnam | 3,000 to 9,000 miles |
My three items and their food miles:
- ______________________ about ____________ miles
- ______________________ about ____________ miles
- ______________________ about ____________ miles
The hard question: Name one case where the food that traveled farther is the better environmental choice. Explain the reasoning in two or three sentences.