Organic, bio-dynamic and fairtrade. What's the difference and why does it matter?

Northey St City Farm has organic markets every Sunday.

All the stall holders are certified organic, but some of them have also suggest they are bio-dynamic or that their produce is grown to classical music. I bought some bio-dynamic eggs from one stall holder and it made me think about all the different terms that surround the notion of eating more sustainably. Or, I guess at least being more conscious about where the food we eat comes from and how it is grown and manufactured.


So what does it mean to be certified organic? What is bio-dynamic and why would food grown that way be better for us? How would bio-dynamic practices promote a better life for the chickens that lay the eggs?

We've started to unpack some of these terms on the Words section of our blog. If you are as confused as we were, check it out as a starting point.

Organic vs Non-organic

I'm struggling a bit with the results of my fair test so far. I was really expecting that the organic lettuce would do just as well, if not better, than the non-organic one. But the one I have been feeding the chemical fertiliser is doing twice as well as the other two.

It looks healthier, greener, bigger and more appealing. If I was just going on looks to suggest which method of gardening was better - I'd have to go with the non-organic one. But that just doesn't feel right to me. The lettuce may look fantastic, but the fertiliser I've been putting on it to help it get there is not quite so appealing. It's bright blue! It looks like something you would find in the bottom of a plastic fish tank.   I can't imagine eating something that colour, but it's things like that that go into the food that I eat.

I have gone through stages of trying to eat only organic because I have read that it's better for me and I don't like the idea of putting chemicals in my body. But until I started this experiment, I didn't fully understand how the use of chemicals could actually make things that may not be good for you, look so good. It's amazing  how doing something yourself helps you to understand a concept.

That's why doing Inquiry-based activities are so good for kids' learning, I guess!

Welcome to our blog!

We've created our blog to document our learnings, findings and research about sustainable food.

Our key question framing our investigation is: How will an understanding of the issues surrounding food sustainability affect our every day food choices?

We're trying to find out what sustainable food is and how we can make better choices that will sustain our future. More so though, we want to find out what sustainable food means to us.

But who are we?

We are a group of three pre-service teachers from Brisbane who are undertaking an inquiry-based project about how we can empower ourselves (and our future students) to make sustainable food choices. Essentially this blog about our journey will inform a resource that we can each use in our future classrooms; but more so than that, it really is about our own learning experiences and how these will impact our day-to-day choices about food sustainability. If at all.

We hope you enjoy the journey as much as we do!