What I think about while I eat...

So, the ponderings I was considering as I sat down to supper this evening:
I had a simple supper of some fresh, organic rosemary bread eaten with home-made raspberry jam, a spinach salad with almonds and organic grape tomatoes, and then some fair-trade chocolate. How yuppie! How granola! How so-like-Julia!
That being said, however, I was considering the various issues around each course that I was eating, as I was eating them...
My bread: most of the ingredients were, in fact, from Canada, and local, however, I was thinking about how world-wide wheat crops have actually done disastrously over the past two years, and world supply is, in fact, getting to critically low levels, spelling disaster for the developing world, and increasing pasta and bread prices for us in the near future. Sigh... I wondered about how North Americans were going to accept increasing bread and pastry prices, and I worried about those who are dependent on couscous, pasta and various breads as their staples around the world...
My jam: Well, that was mainly a warm, fuzzy feeling, thinking about the person who made the jam, just for me! And knowing that they had used raspberries from their own backyard!
My salad: Now it starts getting complex - I was certainly thinking about how all the components of my salad came all the way from California, and how out-of-season spinach and tomatoes are, but then I started thinking about the almonds.
90% of the world's almond supply comes out of one very large and vast tract of land in California. This is a problem, in terms of monoculture and intensive agriculture. It is likely one of the major causes of this collapsing colony disorder that is wreaking havoc amongst honey bees throughout the United States. It is thought that these poor bees, due to being forced to work, in stressful situations, in AND out of season, dealing with only one type of plant, and not being allowed to eat anything else, or diversify their diets, are causing them to die with disturbing alacrity. This is demonstrated in the California almond harvest - the trees are in bloom only for a few weeks every year, and almond growers are heavily dependent on proper pollination of the almond trees within these few short weeks in order to ensure adequate almond production. There are not enough honeybees, even before CCD was a problem, in California, to pollinate all these trees. For years, honeybees have had to be imported to California, just for this huge, four week almond orgy. However, until recently, they were able to deal with exclusively American bees. Because of CCD, bees are starting to be imported all the way from AUSTRALIA to help with the pollination. Changing their time zones, having them wake out of hibernation (if they are not from California) in order to force them to work - it's just too much for a poor little bee to handle. Sigh... I felt sorry for the bees, and wondered how the future of the almond industry, as well as most agriculture, is going to survive without them...
My dessert: Well, it was fair-trade chocolate - there's not really much else to say, except for then I thought about how far it had to come in order to end up on my plate. Admittedly, not quite as far as the Ivory Coast, which is good, but still from Central America, which is still quite a ways away...
This is usually what I end up pondering while I eat; what about you?