We feel blessed to be able to continue our CSA all year round. Spread the word to your neighbors and friends. The benefits are great: you can eat the freshest and healthiest DEO-food available.

We have been hosting tours on a regular basis. If you have never been here or haven’t seen the gardens for awhile, come and enjoy the changes of the season and sense the excitement in the propagation greenhouse in the planning for the coming spring and summer season.

Thanks again for being pioneers and supporters of this local organic food movement,

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Butternut Squash 
• Collards- good for cooking, steaming or stir frying
• Arugula- new tender baby size cutting
• Lettuce- several heads/varieties of green and red  
• NEW:  Garden Cress- spicy addition to your meals, in salad or garnish
• Swiss Chard- Rainbow colors
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Garlic

Vegetable of the Week:  Garden Cress

Origin

Wild cress extends from the Sudan to the Himalayas. Most authors consider it to be a native of western Asia, whence it passed very quickly to Europe and the rest of Asia as a secondary crop, probably associated with cultivars of flax. Vavilov considers its main centre to be Ethiopia, where he found the widest variability; the Near East, central Asia and the Mediterranean are considered secondary centres. It is now naturalized in numerous parts of Europe, including the British Isles.

Cultivation of this species, which is native to Southwest Asia (perhaps Persia) and which spread many centuries ago to western Europe, is very old, as is shown by the philological trace of its names in different Indo-European languages. These include the Persian word turehtezuk, the Greek kardamon, the Latin nasturtium and Arabic tuffa’ and hurf. In some languages there is a degree of confusion with watercress.

Properties, uses and cultivation

Xenophon (400 _BC) mentions that the Persians used to eat this plant even before bread was known. It was also familiar to the Egyptians and was very much appreciated by the Greeks and Romans, who were very fond of banquets rich in spices and spicy salads. Columela (first century) makes direct reference to the cultivation of garden cress. In Los doce libros de Agricultura, he writes: ” …immediately after the calends of January, garden cress is sown out… when you have transplanted it before the calends of March, you will be able to harvest it like chives, but less often… it must not be cut after the calends of November because it dies from frosts, but can resist for two years if it is hoed and manured carefully… there are also many sites where it lives for up to ten years” (Book XI). The latter statements seem to indicate that he is also speaking of the perennial species L. Iatifolium, as L. sativum is an annual.

Almost all of the Andalusian agronomists of the Middle Ages (Ibn Hayyay, Ibn Wafid, Ibn al-Baytar, Ibn Luyun, Ibn al-Awwam) and many of the doctors, such as Maimonides, mention garden cress. Ibn al-Awwam also includes references from Abu al-Jair, Abu Abdalah as well as from Nabataean agriculture and, among other comments, he says: “Garden cress is sown between February and April (in January in Seville). It has small seeds which are mixed with earth for sowing to prevent the wind carrying them away…. It is harvested in May and is grown between ridges, in combination/conjunction with flax cultivation.”

Many of the authors of the old oriental and Mediterranean cultures emphasized the medicinal properties of cress, especially as an antiscorbutic, depurative and stimulant. Columela notes its vermifugal powers. Ibn al-Awwam refers to certain apparently antihistaminic properties, since it was used against insect bites and also as an insect repellent, in the form of a fumigant. It was perhaps Ibn al-Baytar, an Andalusian botanist (eighth century), who collected most information on its properties, summarizing the opinions of other authors such as El Farcy, who says that it incites coitus and stimulates the appetite; Ibn Massa, according to whom it dissipates colic and gets rid of tapeworms and other intestinal worms; or Ibn Massouih, who mentions that it eliminates viscous humours. Ibn al-Baytar also says that it is administered against leprosy, is useful for renal “cooling” and that, if hair is washed with garden cress water, it is “purified” and any loss is arrested.

In Iran and Morocco, the seeds are used as an aphrodisiac. In former Abyssinia, an edible oil was obtained from the seeds. In Eritrea, it was used as a dyestuff plant. Some Arab scholars have attributed garden cress’s reputation among Muslims to the fact that it was directly recommended by the Prophet.

Garden cress’s main use was always as an aromatic and slightly pungent plant. Not only in antiquity but also in the Middle Ages it enjoyed considerable prestige on royal tables. The young leaves were used for salads. The ancient Spartans ate them with bread. This use still continues and they are also eaten with bread and butter or with bread to which lemon, vinegar or sugar is added. However, it is mainly used nowadays in the seedling stage, the succulent hypocotyls being added to salads and as a garnish and decoration for dishes.

A Fork in the Road for Slow Food

By Twilight Greenaway, Twilight is the food editor at Grist.

This Slow Food Eat-In in Highland Park, Los Angeles, was part of the 2009 Time For Lunch Campaign, SFUSA’s first major attempt to combine food and advocacy on a national level.
Photo: Lee Zamastil

When Slow Food came to the United States in 2000, it appealed mainly to people who could already tell their arugula from their radicchio — those who knew both farmers and chefs before the phrase “local food” implied anything more than the sum of its parts.

In the late ’90s, when chef and Slow Food New Orleans chapter founder Poppy Tooker first got wind of the Italy-based organization, which had formed in opposition to the globalizing fast food industry in the ’80s, she felt right at home. “When I read about this movement, I thought, this was what my life’s work had always been about: preserving foodways, valuing the food producers, closing the ties between chefs and farmers. And now there was an international organization out there ready to help me!”

Cut to 12 years later. Slow Food USA has 225 chapters in cities and rural communities across the nation. The term “slow food” has come to be synonymous, in some cases, with a much broader philosophy of eating, farming, and thinking about food. And the national organization has become a kind of conceptual hub for many divergent aspects of today’s food movement.

That’s why the movement took notice recently when Chow.com ran an article titled “Cheap Drama at Slow Food.” Author John Birdsall described a crisis at Slow Food USA (SFUSA): “Its most prominent members — famous cookbook authors, chefs, and leaders in the food movement — are embroiled in a bitter squabble stoked by angry emails, hurt feelings, accusations.”

As a follow-up to Birdsall’s piece, a vocal group of SFUSA critics, including Tooker, have published a document called “10 Things Slow Food USA Can Do To Gain Direction as it Sees its Way Into 2012.” The group believes the Brooklyn-based national office is too reliant on technology, not as connected with its constituencies in other parts of the country, and no longer aligned with the core vision, mission, message, and activities of Slow Food International. They say they worry that the organization is moving away from biodiversity work and direct support of farmers and artisan food producers by adopting a more populist big-tent approach and advocating national policies. And they point to a recent round of layoffs at the Brooklyn headquarters as proof that the organization is in trouble.

Meanwhile, SFUSA’s Executive Director Josh Viertel and his current staff say they are merely keeping up with the times — and the changing food landscape. No matter how you slice it, the conflict speaks volumes about the challenges that face every effort to build what Slow Food calls a “good, clean, and fair” food system.

As part of the $5 Challenge, Slow Food members threw potlucks around the country with the goal of spending less than $5/person on ingredients. This one is in Huntington, W.Va.
Photo: Slow Food USA

Change of course or evolution?

Viertel sees SFUSA as work in progress. In many ways, when he talks about it, he sounds like he’s running a start-up — a stance that inspires and invigorates a portion of his audience, and no doubt alienates others. He doesn’t deny the organization has been financially stressed this year. While SFUSA’s membership has grown from 14,000 to 25,000 members during his tenure, he says “the gift amount has gone down. Those who were giving us $60 gave $45, those who were giving us $45 gave $25, and so on.” Since SFUSA receives half its revenue from members, he chalks up the drop to the pain of a now-three-year-old recession. This year, he says, “it was important to get out in front of it and get the organization in a stable place.”

At the same time, SFUSA has begun reaching thousands more people via email and social media; its mailing list expanded from 24,000 to 250,000 in the last three years, and its very prolific Twitter feed now reaches 200,000 followers.

Viertel has also worked toward creating an organization that can function as an umbrella for the food movement in America — one that can “pick up on all the energy, anger, frustration, etc. that people feel after reading [Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma],” the book he sees as the Silent Spring of the food movement, “and turn that into actual power to make change.

Viertel says he saw a groundswell of people who “wanted to find an organization that would give them a pathway to do something about [their food system]. That something could be working to get a garden planted in your kid’s school, it could be getting connected to a farmer, or it could be getting involved in a legislative fight to end farm subsidies.” While Slow Food has long held “good, clean, and fair” as its motto, Viertel believes that SFUSA’s recent emphasis on fairness has attracted a new following of enthusiastic food novices eager to share recipes, talk about the challenges of food access, and sign online petitions.

How political is too political?

It’s this last part — the fact that the organization has waded, swum, and is now diving deep into advocacy — that most bothers Tooker.

“There’s really been a confusion of the message,” she says. For one, the new SFUSA has been “trying so hard to redefine the identity and get rid of this air of elitism they believed existed.” It also used its blog to talk about food safety (including the giant egg recall linked to Jack DeCoster’s Midwest CAFO dynasty in 2010), led a campaign against the proposed ag-gag bills, and sent out action alerts about last fall’s “Secret Farm Bill.” In other words, the organization has adopted what Tooker calls “a political stance.”

Meanwhile, she says, the current Brooklyn-based SFUSA office “doesn’t even have a kitchen!”

In 1999, while the World Trade Organization’s Seattle meeting faced mass protests, Tooker heard Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini speak at an early stateside gathering. “He said it was not our jobs to march in the streets and protest. Carlo said the work of Slow Food was in the kitchen. And over the long range we would eventually win this fight with a smile in our hearts.”

Cheap for whom?

This mentality, and the organization’s heavy focus on biodiversity and heirloom varieties, might never have changed if it weren’t for Slow Food Nation — a 50,000-person event initiated by Chez Panisse chef and Slow Food matriarch Alice Waters that took place in San Francisco in 2008. Not only did this event position SFUSA as a leader, perhaps the leader, of today’s sustainable food world, it also provided a brief but important opportunity for food justice advocates to make their case to the Slow Foodies.

Some advocates believe that a food-justice panel during Slow Food Nation that Viertel attended helped move the issue onto his agenda. Hank Herrera, an Oakland, Calif.-based food-justice advocate, recalls: “We spoke plainly about the issue of food justice and the exclusion of communities lacking access to healthy food and food justice. Josh took the challenges seriously and from that point has worked vigilantly to bring food justice into focus for Slow Food.”

But to hear Viertel tell it, his interest in food justice began much earlier. Before he began working in the food movement, Viertel farmed vegetables. It was a meager living, and he and his partner (now his fiancee) sold their produce at farmers markets “to people who could pay a lot.”"We didn’t think twice about charging what we did, because we knew the work that went into it,” he recalls. “At the same time people would come to the stand who were shopping with WIC [federal aid for women, infants and children] coupons and we’d charge two for one.” That year, he and his partner earned only $12,000 between the two of them. He says he began to see “this false choice between paying the farmer what they deserve and actually creating a world where both [the eater and the farmer] can afford real food.”

That awareness was likely part of the impetus for SFUSA’s recent $5 Challenge, a direct response to the fast food industry intended to show a meal can be prepared using “Slow Food” or sustainable ingredients bought directly from local farmers for under $5 per person (roughly the cost of a value meal).

Author and native foods expert Gary Paul Nabhan, a critic of Slow Food USA who coauthored the “10 Things” document, takes issue with the $5 Challenge, which, he argues, does a disservice to food producers by discouraging eaters from paying the “true cost of food.” In a recent essay on the Edible Communities website, he suggested that efforts like the $5 Challenge “assum[e] that food justice is only about aiding and empowering low-income consumers.” He asked: “If food production costs have risen 20 to 40 percent for many grains, vegetables, fruits, and meats over the last year, who should shoulder the costs: the producers, or the so-called ‘end-users’ of the food system?”

Slow Food USA board member (and occasional Grist contributor) Kurt Michael Friese counters that $5 per person for ingredients is not very cheap at all.

“You can pay the farmer a fair price and still make really good food and have it be under $5 per portion. That doesn’t rule out heritage breeds in any way. In fact it helps to support them. I think it’s fine for the people who can afford to buy some expensive heritage turkey or some rare pig breed. It’s important valuable stuff. But it’s not the only way people can support Slow Food,” he says.

In response to accusations that efforts like the $5 Challenge don’t support farmers, Viertel is adamant that a just food system include both ends of the food chain: the eater and the producer.

“Talking to a dairy farmer in Vermont and a working parent in Queens isn’t very different. They both have crushing debt. They both get up really early in the morning. They both tend to have a hard time affording real food. And they both are controlled by a really consolidated corporate food system,” he says. From distribution to retail to corporations involved in meatpacking, “there are a lot of companies that wedge themselves in between the producer and the consumer. So the way this debate sets them up against one another is really problematic.”

While Viertel sees Slow Food’s original work as important, he also wants to serve those who can’t — by necessity — support heirloom varieties or shop in farmers markets. “No movement I have ever seen can go forward without the people who are hurt most at its core,” he says.

The SFUSA Ark of Taste has provided a way for enthusiastic chapters to catalogue and protect forgotten and neglected heirloom fruit and vegetable varieties (like these Hauer Pippen apples).
Photo: Slow Food USA

The biodiversity issue

Tooker has long been involved in the North American chapter of the Slow Food USA’s Ark of Taste, the national portion of an international effort to catalogue, bring attention to, and therefore preserve endangered heirloom and place-based foods. Earlier this year, she says the Ark of Taste committee was “given a stop work order,” and Tooker worries about the future of the effort. One of the SFUSA staffers laid off in November was the last contact for the Ark work, and she says, “If you were to propose a food to be accepted onto the SFUSA Ark, there’s no methodology in place to do that right now.”

But Friese says it is alive and well, despite being put on hold briefly this year for a reorganization. “We’ve turned the whole thing around from being centrally located, with the work being run entirely from the national office, to being something where we support what various chapters are doing with native foods in their specific locations.”

Rather than host a committee that votes on which foods are worth preserving, SFUSA will allow local chapters to put forward food they’re excited about in a more “open-source” manner, and SFUSA will give them a platform to do that work.

The organization has moved in a similar direction with disaster funding. After Katrina, SFUSA set up a disaster fund that was administered by a national committee, but they now plan to support individual chapters that rally around farmers in their area. “The idea is to be able to point our growing network toward their effort and help them fundraise,” says Viertel.

The food-justice generation?

Viertel says he has never intended to do away with the group’s biodiversity work. And given its history, it’s unlikely that SFUSA will ever become a full-fledged food-justice organization, says People’s Grocery Director Nikki Henderson.

But Henderson isn’t surprised that Viertel and the younger generation of SFUSA staffers see food in an inherently political light.

“The last 30 years have wreaked havoc, and I feel like those of us who grew up in that don’t feel as separate from those who are struggling in the streets every day. Our generation is sicker, poorer, and more diverse that any generation in recent history — so of course we’re going to feel that way!”

And while Viertel is clearly uneasy about all the attention this conflict has brought to the organization, Henderson thinks it’s about time the food movement recognize SFUSA for being brave enough to attempt to make space for two efforts that can appear contradictory at times.

“SFUSA has tried to negotiate a minefield,” she says. “And they’re setting off mines. That’s not a bad thing.”

Gary’s Vision - The Big Picture: Caring Capacity versus Carrying Capacity

Re-Designing Borderland Food Systems for the Health of the Land and the Health of Its Multicultural Communities

by Gary Paul Nabhan, Kellogg Chair in Food and Water Security for the Southwest Borderlands, University of Arizona

THE CHALLENGE

More than seventy years ago, Aldo Leopold first compared wholeness and health in the human body with those attributes in farmscapes. In a prophetic essay entitled “The Farmer as a Conservationist,” Leopold (1939, 1999) offered this analogy:

“It seems to me that the pattern of the rural landscape, like the configuration of our own bodies, has in it (or should have in it) a certain wholeness.”

“It seems to me that the pattern of the rural landscape, like the configuration of our own bodies, has in it (or should have in it) a certain wholeness.” He spins out this analogy be taking us to an imaginary farmscape where fertile fields, orchards and pastures are situated amidst hedgerows, ponds, woods, and wildflower beds. There, Leopold suggests, “The fields and pastures of this farm, like its sons and daughters, are a mixture of wild and tame attributes, all built on the foundation of good health. The health of the fields is their fertility.”

Leopold then compares “the removal of any natural feature from a rural landscape” to be equivalent to the amputation of someone’s leg, asserting that it cannot be considered good conservation, good taste or good farming. Our collective task as a rural community, in Leopold’s mind, should be the quest for “wholeness in the farm landscape” and by analogy, a quest for health in our community of humans mixed together with the other-than-human world.

As I ponder Leopold’s vision, I take a break from planting wildflowers, winter greens and pollinator-attracting perennials on the edge of a small orchard in the U.S./Mexico borderlands where Leopold and his family had many of their most formative experiences.

I wonder what Leopold think about these two occurrences since his death in 1948: 1) the Southwest Borderlands have suffered the highest rates of farmland loss and rural landscape fragmentation of any region in North America; and 2) over that same period, the Native American and Hispanic inhabitants of this region have suffered steeper rises in adult-onset diabetes and other nutritionally-related diseases than any other ethnic populations on the face of the earth. For our purposes here, I will not dwell on whether these two occurrences can be statistically correlated, or whether cause-and-effect can be discerned. Instead, I hope to use these startling trends to launch our quest for healing solutions by asking a question as large as those which Leopold asked three-quarter of a century ago:

Is it possible to redesign our food systems in the U.S./Mexico borderlands so that they enhance the “caring capacity” of our lands and its communities? Can we increase that capacity so that we will be less apt to impoverish both the health of the land and the health of its multi-cultural communities than they currently do?

Ultimately, the answer we choose depends upon whether we merely wish to increase our carrying capacity in order to feed a world of nine million people (Godfray et al 2010), or whether we wish to truly focus on the caring capacity of the land and its biotic communities so that all will be more fully nourished and sustained.

By the long-term health of the land and its biotic community, I mean the ecological health as Aldo Leopold sensed it” as a diverse, dynamic and resilient community that has “the capacity of self-renewal” in working landscapes, both for the humans and other-than-human beings in its membership.

By the health of the multicultural community, I mean not only the physical, mental and spiritual health of its individual human members, but the diversity and resilience of those multiple cultures in communities in our foodshed on both sides of the border. This might include everything from the reducing the “relative deprivation” experienced by unemployed or underemployed people who formerly worked in the food system, to ensuring the persistence of and access to culturally-appropriate food traditions, to maintaining the diversity and resilience of the microbes within our kitchens and in our guts.

The problem with most current systems of food production, distribution and use in our region is that they were not necessarily designed with both of these goals (land health, human health) in mind. This may simply be because our brains and hearts sometimes seem aversive to simultaneously holding onto two goals such as land health and human health. Perhaps it is easier (and lazier) to think oppositionally, rather than integratively. Nevertheless, it can be done and should be done.

We may already be witnessing massive failure of our regional foodsheds to sustain both the health of our residents and of the land. As former farmer Sergio Robledo Zepeda told journalist Juliana Barbassa (2011) when she visited him in Estación Ortiz, Sonora, “la tierra ya no da.” The land no longer gives and can no longer nourish his family.

This may be because our food systems have been incrementally “formed” by default or by disproportionately shaped by the efforts of a few food corporations and government agencies, rather than being intentionally designed through the processes of a true food democracy. Whatever the causes, our borderland food systems now exhibit certain dysfunctions that have kept them from best serving the health needs of our peoples, and from sustaining the land, water, plant, microbe and animal resources upon which we depend.

THE PROBLEM

Since World War II, urban growth in the Sun Belt of both countries has dramatically changed the availability of water and land for producing food. But within the half-century of the Sun Belt boom, the rural economy of the borderlands had become so dysfunctional that today, borderland counties suffer from a severity of poverty that is twice as high as the U.S. national average.

There are not only dramatic disparities between U.S. and Mexican citizens, but also between indigenous minorities.

Briefly, let us consider just a few of those dysfunctions, setting aside the causes of the various dysfunctions for the moment. There have always been enormous disparities in access to land, water and food in the bi-national region of Southwestern North America, but since World War II, urban growth in the Sun Belt of both countries has dramatically changed the availability of water and land for producing food. Since 1982, the U.S. border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas have lost a significant portion of their food-producing capacity, with over 6 million acres of farm and ranch lands being developed and rendered unavailable for crop or livestock production. According to the American Farmland Trust, that constitutes one fourth of all the farmland loss in the United States over the last three decades.  In northern Mexico, there are no equivalent figures available for the same time period, but we do know that 70% of Mexico’s agricultural lands suffers from land degradation, including 30% from salinization. In the last two decades, hundreds of thousands of acres have been taken out of crop production in Baja California and Sonora as a result of groundwater depletion, salinization and urbanization.

The remaining arable lands in the eight border states are now facing unprecedented water shortages, due to both groundwater depletion and surface water overallocation, and climate change. There are already signs that we must reduce our water budget by 40%, for if our population ever doubles again, all our rivers will be sucked dry.  In addition, the rising prices of other inputs—from a tripling of fossil fuel costs in less than a decade to a tripling of hay prices in west Texas in less than year –have dramatically increased production costs and limited crop and livestock yields, putting many farmers and ranchers on both sides of the border at financial risk. These trends are outlined in our recent report, State of Southwestern Foodsheds (Nabhan and Fitzmorris 2011).

The volume of food still produced in states on both sides of the border might be sufficient to hypothetically supply borderland populations with enough calories and protein to fend off hunger. Nevertheless, it is not currently distributed, processed and consumed in a manner that strategically reduces food insecurity and hunger in the very states where it is produced.  There is an increasing frequency of reports of outright hunger and food insecurity within poverty-stricken communities along the border. But there is also a growing evidence of malnutrition and over-nutrition in other sectors of borderlands society.

For instance, a 2007 household survey in Sonora found that 41% of households surveyed experienced severe food insecurity, and another 34% experienced moderate food insecurity (Trinidad 2007). These levels probably worsened since the 2009 economic downturn and return migration from the U.S. Because over 60% of the fresh vegetables eaten in Arizona and the U.S. as a whole come from Sonora and Sinaloa in the winter and spring months, the impaired health of their people is, in a very real sense an indicator of the ill health of our foodshed. Massive (forced) migrations of populations as a result of economic downturns, catastrophes such as Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Ida and Jimena and immigration policies such as Arizona’s Proposition 1070 have put food-insecure children, elders and unemployed at further risk.

Oddly, a tremendous volume of nutritious fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy products moves across the international boundary, primarily through Nogales, but also through Mexicali/Calexico, McAllen/Reynosa and Tijuana/San Diego. However, little of it leaves the NAFTA food superhighways at exit ramps that help nourish the most marginalized peoples in border town communities. As a result, food banks, “food stamp” (SNAP) programs, soup kitchens and other agencies of “band-aid” food relief are being utilized by an unprecedented number of border states residents, and stretching their human and financial resources to the limit.

In short, our current borderlands food system can be considered to be ailing, if not broken, in the sense that land health and human health have been seriously impaired. That may be true of many food systems in North America, but one factor makes the borderlands somewhat unique: the U.S./Mexico border may be the  international boundary with the greatest economic disparities of any border region in the world. There are not only dramatic disparities between U.S. and Mexican citizens, but also between indigenous minorities (O’odham, Cucupa, Papai, Kickapoo, Apache, Yaqui, etc) and the dominant, more Westernized societies which now surround them.

We now understand that these disparities are exacerbated by the marginalized feeling “relatively deprived” by their perceptions of the lavish consumption and unbelievable waste of food and land resources by the more privileged who live in close proximity to them. Many of these people may have a fatalistic attitude, for they have been denied access to even the most basic resources and educational opportunities. (Casasidy 2004)

THE NEED FOR A COLLECTIVE VISION

If we wish to do anything to recover its capacity to feed our bi-national, multi-cultural citizenry, we can no longer assume that a piecemeal approach will suffice. It will do no good to merely tack up new wallboard on a structure with a foundation that is eroding, uprights that are rotting, and support beams that are splintering. We need to collectively redesign and rebuild a structure which can adequately shelter and buffer our citizenry from further displacement, hunger and disease in the face of mounting political, economic and climatic uncertainty.

It may therefore be worth focusing our attention on forming a collective vision of land health and community health that may inspire us to deal with the underlying causes of these dysfunctions. We need to re-design food systems to correct the damage they have done, and redirect our efforts towards engaging a larger constituency of our society in participating in the democratic practices that may ultimately lead to both human healing and land healing on a significant scale.

For the seeds of such a vision to plant for the future, consider the values embedded in this poem by Ranier Maria Rilke (1996):

All will come again into its strength:

The fields undivided, the water undammed,

The trees towering and the walls built low.

And in the valleys, people as strong

And as varied as the land.”

First, let us focus on the power of that initial phrase: all will come again into its strength. This implies that we restore the resilience of our land, water and biodiversity resources in food-producing “working landscapes” so that they may weather climatic uncertainties, economic uncertainties, and the impending scarcities of fossil groundwater fuel and fossil fuels. But we also want to develop and maintain people as strong as varied as the land, who are assured their rights to satisfying livelihoods, education, occupational health, and affordable, nutritious, culturally-appropriate foods that boost rather than impair their immune systems. As a broad brushstroke prescription for the health of the land and its people, Rilke’s five lines may be as good as it gets. They link environmental health to human health, but also hint at the social justice issues which we now know to be plaguing the well-being of people on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border. In other words, we will ultimately all benefit from living in a landscape where “the fields and are undivided” and the “walls can be built low.” In general, they speak to integration, durability or resilience, lowered artificial barriers, and heterogeneity as some of the potential means for achieving resilience.

It has become clear that we need to embrace a vision far more complex paradigm than most soundbyte guidelines for either optimal diets or for agricultural sustainability. It must move us toward providing food for various diets which offer a diversity of species, varieties and nutrients produced and prepared in our communities by a diversity of peoples. Such diets will nearly always more healthful than one based on a few of these items provided by a few agribusinesses with headquarters remote from our region. Such diets are potentially better for land health as well, depending upon how that diversity is situated in a working landscape. And the availability of a diversity of foodstuffs may better accommodate the food security of the diverse cultures of our region—Native American, Hispano-Arabic, African, European and Asian in origin—which should be assured affordable access to foods which are suited to their metabolisms, their culinary traditions and their cultural identities.

THE RATIONALE FOR DIVERSIFYING OUR BORDERLANDS FOOD SYSTEM

We need to design food systems that more fully take into account our current understanding of the relationship between diversity and health. Over the last decade, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization has corrected its long-standing assumptions that all apples (of more than 18,000 varieties) are nutritionally the same and that all beef (grass-fed or otherwise) — is essentially from the same beast. In other words, numerous nutritional studies of food biodiversity now suggest that this diversity tangibly and positively benefits human health as much as wild biodiversity and crop biodiversity benefits land health. 5Just as certain components of food diversity boost our immune system function, biodiversity on the land benefits the resilience of its habitats.

In his anthology, The Essential Agrarian Reader, social scientist Norman Wirzba (2003) has aptly summarized this principle:

“The old adage that one should never put all of one’s eggs in one basket is especially true here. A stable food system, much like a stable and resilient habitat, depends upon a diversity of crops grown over diverse landscapes. Food diversity attuned to regional ecological possibilities, rather than the massive monocultures of today, is our best defense against foreign attack, whether it comes from pests or terrorists. History has shown repeatedly that as regions grow and consume their own food and rely as little as possible on food imports, their food supply becomes more secure.”

Once FAO’s food chemists began to look at variations in the nutrient density among the varieties of a single fruit species, they realized that eating seven kinds of apples a week may well keep the doctor away with a higher probability than eating the same apple variety once a day. And once other nutritional chemists began to evaluate the  same livestock breed grown under different conditions—as well as various breeds grazing together in the very same pasture—they realized that these breed-environment-forage interactions offer enormously different contents of nutrients,  flavors and ecological footprints. As the grass-fed beef industry has expanded from $5 million/yr sales in 1988 to $1.5 billion in 2010, many ranchers, chefs, nutritionists and marketers realized (read: “remembered”) that there really is no single flavor or nutritional composition that characterizes all grass-fed beef. Perhaps a half century of dominance by corn-fed feedlot-finished beef had simply masked the degree of variation we’ve always found within and between herds.

We also need to sustain microbial diversity in our soils, in the fermented foods and beverages in our kitchens, and in our gastro-intestinal tracts.

The seldom-stated but inherently obvious reason that food diversity benefits our physical health has more to do with the health benefits of secondary chemical compounds in fruits and vegetables (such as phenols) than with their balance of macronutrients such as protein, fat, carbohydrates and dietary fiber. Ironically, some of these secondary chemicals (such as phenols in red or purple grapes and  prickly pear cactus fruits) play key roles in reducing  metabolic stress in humans as much as they do in the reducing drought and heat stress in the crop plants themselves. In addition, the anti-oxidant-rich essential oils of Mexican oreganos not only reduce the damaging effects of high solar radiation and herbivory in the plants, but also reduce the risk of developing certain kinds of cancerous tumors among their human consumers. Because many of these secondary compounds trigger interactions between co-evolved genes, foods, environments and diseases in certain ethnic populations, access to them may be particularly important in multi-ethnic populations such as the ones situated along the U.S./Mexico border. Today, of 1.8 million “Mexican” people who have recently gravitated there, many are from the diverse indigenous communities of Mexico and Central America, and may not metabolically respond to fast foods in the same manner as Euro-Americans.

Redesigning our food systems for this region, we must go beyond assuming that a diversity of livestock breeds and seeds are the only components of biocultural diversity that we need.

But in redesigning our food systems for this region, we must go beyond assuming that a diversity of crop seeds or livestock breeds is the only component of biocultural diversity that we need to foster. We also need to sustain microbial diversity in our soils, in the fermented foods and beverages in our kitchens, and in our gastro-intestinal tracts. Beneficial components of this microbial biodiversity have been knocked back by the indiscriminate use of biocides in our fields, antibiotics in our livestock and in our own bodies. It may well be that these seldom-seen microbes play a disproportionately important role in sustaining the health of our agricultural soils and our bodies.

Let me highlight two food producers in the borderlands who are already paying attention to such issues: Ivan Aguirre of Rancho Inmaculada of Northern, Sonora Mexico, and Ken Singh of Singh Farms on the Salt River Indian Reservcation near Scottsdale Arizona. Ivan Aguirre has virtually taken a devastated ranch in the arid heart of the Sonoran Desert, and within two decades has transformed it into a lush mesquoite grassland that produces microbially-rich soil, grass-fed beef, huntable wildlife, mesquite flour, mesquite firewood and charcoal, biochar, mesquite parquet floors and other non-timber forestry products. Ken Singh has taken irrigated farmland in the heart of Metro Phoenix and developed extraordinarily deep topsoil from composted materials and microbial cultures that now support a diverse food forest that directly serves the Pima Indian community a variety of nutritious fruits and vegetables. These p[rojects have created land health, jobs and nutritious food in areas where others said it could not be done.

As Ivan and Ken have done, we all need to pay greater attention to the structural diversity of our food-producing landscapes, developing a richer patchwork of orchards, mixed forage pastures, vegetable and grain fields across any particular food-producing landscape. This may not only offer us a more ecological resilience, but economic resilience as a well, especially during an era of volatile food markets.

As Aldo Leopold urged us to do decades ago, we must also restore the wild biodiversity of our farms, orchards and ranches, in particular, through creating better habitat for a diversity of native bees, to assure pollination services during an era in which we have suffered devastating declines of honeybees in the U.S./ Mexico borderlands. Estimates vary, but we may now only have 15 to 40% of the honeybee colonies which we had available for crop pollination prior to 1985. It is important to foster the recovery of honey bees but it may be just as important to invest in nesting habitat and nectar corridors for the diverse set of native honeybees, butterflies and hummingbirds in southern Arizona, which has the potential to be “capitol” for  native pollinator diversity in all of North America.

If we extend our diversity-for-health metaphor to other realms, we need to see farmers and ranchers drawing upon a greater variety of renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc) and water sources (concentrated rainfall and captured runoff, restored stream flows and treated effluents) than in the recent past. We need to foster a greater variety of size classes or farms and ranchers, as well as greater access of arable land and potable water by a diversity of cultures and classes within our communities. We need a greater variety of outlets for their fresh and value-added products, so that we can employ a larger number of people in direct-marketing them to residents and tourists in our region.  And finally, we need to foster a greater range of community-based support services that aid in food production, processing, distribution and nutritionally-oriented preparation and consumption of locally-produced foods. Some of this infrastructure—such as community-based health services—should be supported by our tax dollars through government programs, but government-subsidies cannot and should not drive the trajectory of these operations. We also need to foster private entrepreneurs and co-ops to invest in strategically-placed meat processing plants, community kitchens, food hubs, farmers markets, alternative health therapies, locally-owned restaurants and groceries.

The same is true with the assessment of access to health-promoting foods in low income communities. We’ve gotten what we measured. This last spring, the USDA released maps of where “food deserts” are located among American counties and cities, but failed to explain that its primary criterion for defining a food desert was the absence of a full service chain grocery store within close proximity of a population of consumers. In essence, if you don’t have a Food City, a Safeway, an Albertson’s or  Super Wal-Mart in your neighborhood, you are categorized as living a food desert even if you have a two-day a week farmer’s market, a CSA, five roadside stands, and a locally-owned bakery.

 When Kelly Watters and I pointed this out in blog in Grist, we were critiqued by those who get funds from the USDA to start farmer’s markets and community food kitchens in these designated food deserts (Nabhan and Watters 2011). But within a month of my op-ed, a consortium of Wal-Mart, Walgreens, SuperValue and other big box grocery chains announced that they would work with Obama’s Feed America program to newly locate 3500 big boxes in food deserts “to help the poor with their food access problems.”

And yet, what I have documented in the Nogales, Arizona area is that the Wal-Mart there currently provides just 43 varieties of fresh produce (none of it local) in any given week, compared to 72 varieties in the Arizona-owned Food City nearby, and 98 varieties in the locally-owned Red Mountain Foods in nearby Patagonia, Arizona. If one were to objectively select allies in the private sector with which to effectively reduce food insecurity, Red Mountain Foods and Food City would make far more rational choices Wal-Mart.

Despite its hype, Wal-Mart is still far from bringing much nutritional density or diversity to low-income neighborhoods and rural counties. As it provides easy access for low-income households to high fructose corn syrups and other foods high on the glycemic index, it turns food deserts into food dead zones, where caloric over-enrichment depletes health. Even though Wal-mart’s executives have pledged to increase access to “cheap” fresh food, they are still deferring the real costs of that cheap food so that they will need to be paid for by society later. Again, Norman Wirzba (2003):                       

“Above all we need to get past the idea that cheaper food is better food, especially when we remember that the cheapness of food is made possible by the externalization of many ecological and cultural (especially health) costs, costs that we will end up paying in some other way.”                                                                                                               

In my mind, we’ve been training nutritionists, dieticians, food justice advocates and even agricultural scientists in the wrong manner. We need to train them in ecological, agricultural, medical and socioeconomic sciences under the paradigm that ecosystems health and human health share many of the same principles and pathways. We need to engage them in inquiries about the nature of health and resilience in whole systems. And they need to become competent in facilitation of collaborative design processes that some architects and community planners have used for over thirty years.

At the same time, they need to do tangible sweat equity work in these systems to feel how they function and know how they don’t function. In short, we need to train a whole cadre of food system design team members that include farmers, ranchers, nurserymen, butchers, bakers, chefs, nutritionists, health educators, restoration ecologists and community-oriented economists to build food supply chains or trophic structures that have smaller ecological footprints and greater social equity built into them.

Further, we’ve been training agricultural scientists (but few urban farmers) and chefs (but few community kitchen managers). Rather than thinking that the number of farmers is going to instantly rise from its dismal 1.5% level to something more substantial within our fleeting lifetimes, we need to build communities of professionals and citizens with many skills that can be positively employed in redesigning our food systems for land health and human health.

But to even begin to achieve that, we need to humble ourselves enough to do what every drunk must do who enters an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting: to admit that our current modus operandi is NOT working and that we are not in control… What is needed most in the borderlands region and North America at large is the kind of multi-cultural community-level and landscape-level effort now being fostered again in both rural and urban areas through the likes of David Sloan Wilson’s Neighborhood Project in Binghamton, New York, the Neo Food Web around Cleveland, Ohio, the Intervale Foundation initiatives around Burlington, Vermont,  Transition Boulder in Boulder County, Colorado and Roots of Change in California.

None of our ideas will hold any water or health if they are on the results of a single individual innovator, non-profit, or institution and not the entire community. Our proposed solutions need to emerge from community members, who then need empowered and supported by our institutions, and not the other way around.

Our new initiative in Southwest Borderlands Food and Water Security will move toward these ends by:

1. Restoring the health of the land through regenerating ecosystem services, first by restoring the flows of irrigable streams and secondly, by restoring pollination services to formerly-depleted farm- and ranchlands.
2. Providing training for the unemployed, underemployed and students of several borderlands cultures so that they might become co-designers of future food systems, in addition to farmers, foragers, gleaners, ranchers, farmers market managers, food hub managers, chefs and community cooks.
3. Addressing the health of the most at-risk marginalized peoples through restoring connectivity between emergency food relief organizations and local food-producing farms and ranches to offer both fresh food and employment.
4. Supporting “foodshed community fellows” from non-profits, farmer’s alliances and private businesses to advance micro-enterprises and start-up projects that help redesign our food systems.
5. Engaging students in in-service learning opportunities with these fellows to make tangible projects work on the ground.
6. Co- seed, fruit or grain schools, foodshed cafes, workshops, forums and “food wagon” exhibits to broader the discussion on the future of our food systems to include people who have only been marginally involved in those discussions to date.
7. Changing the current dynamics bi-national foodsheds, by proposing policy reforms and best practices to allow nutritious food from regional producers to reach a wide range of constituencies in our region for affordable prices, while minimizing our foodprints.

Ultimately, we must find tangible ways to implement cohesive vision of carrying capacity that bridges land health with human health in a manner which remembers the lessons of history summarized here by agrarian philosopher Norman Wirzba (2009):

“Agrarianism tests success and failure not by projected income statements or by economic growth, but by the health and vitality of a region’s entire human and non-human neighborhood. Agrarianism, we might say, represents the most complex and far-reaching accounting system ever known, for according to it, success must include a vibrant watershed and soil base; species diversity; human and animal contentment; communal creativity; responsibility; joy; usable waste; social solidarity and sympathy; attention and delight; and the respectful maintenance of all the sources of life.”

Thanks again for being pioneers and supporters of this local organic food movement,

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Spaghetti
• Daikon Radish
• New: Kale  - good for cooking, steaming or stir frying
• several heads/varieties of green and red Lettuce
• New: Celery stalks
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Garlic

Recipe: Sunchoke Soup

Sunchokes, potatoes and apples make this soup a unique addition to any menu.

The Jerusalem Artichoke (also called a sunchoke) is neither from Jerusalem, nor does it look much like an artichoke — it’s actually a type of sunflower that grows in the eastern U.S. and is cultivated for its tuber which is used as a root vegetable.

Ingredients

• 2 ounces olive oil
• 2 onions
• 6 cloves garlic
• 2 pounds sunchokes
• 2 potatoes
• 1 apple, peeled and cored
• 5 sprigs thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 3 quarts water
• 1 cup cream
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• salt and pepper to taste

Cooking Directions

1. In a large pot on medium high, add the olive oil, onions, and garlic. Cook gently for about 3-4 min.
2. Add herbs, sunchokes, potatoes, and water, simmer until veggies are very tender.
3. Add the cream and bring to boil, then remove from the heat.
4. Puree in blender until smooth. Pass through fine strainer. Season to taste.

Recipe: Sunchoke Puree With Apple and Spices

This dish is an excellent topping for game, fish or vegetarian dishes.

Sunchokes, apples and potatoes make this puree a unique addition to any menu.

Jerusalem artichokes, or sunchokes, contain vitamin C, phosphorus, potassium and are a very good source of iron.

This dish is an excellent topping for game, fish or vegetarian dishes. It also uses the same ingredients as the Sunchoke Soup.

Sunchoke Puree With Apple And Spices

Ingredients

• 1/2 pound sunchokes, peeled and cut into small pieces
• 3/4 pound potatoes, peeled and diced
• 1 apple, peeled and diced
• water to cover
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1/2 cup cream
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic
• pinch of sugar
• pinch of salt
• freshly ground pepper to taste

Cooking Directions

1. Place sunchokes, potatoes and apple in a sauce pan and just cover with water.
2. Bring to a boil and cook until both potatoes and sunchokes are tender.
3. Drain and mash together with butter, cream, spices, garlic and seasonings.

Carrots in the car park. Radishes on the roundabout. The deliciously eccentric story of the town growing ALL its own veg

By Vincent Graff

Admittedly, it sounds like the most foolhardy of criminal capers, and one of the cheekiest, too.

Outside the police station in the small Victorian mill town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, there are three large raised flower beds.

If you’d visited a few months ago, you’d have found them overflowing with curly kale, carrot plants, lettuces, spring onions — all manner of vegetables and salad leaves.

Today the beds are bare. Why? Because people have been wandering up to the police station forecourt in broad daylight and digging up the vegetables. And what are the cops doing about this brazen theft from right under their noses? Nothing.

Well, that’s not quite correct.

‘I watch ’em on camera as they come up and pick them,’ says desk officer Janet Scott, with a huge grin. It’s the smile that explains everything.

For the vegetable-swipers are not thieves. The police station carrots — and thousands of vegetables in 70 large beds around the town — are there for the taking. Locals are encouraged to help themselves. A few tomatoes here, a handful of broccoli there. If they’re in season, they’re yours. Free.

So there are (or were) raspberries, apricots and apples on the canal towpath; blackcurrants, redcurrants and strawberries beside the doctor’s surgery; beans and peas outside the college; cherries in the supermarket car park; and mint, rosemary, thyme and fennel by the health centre.

The vegetable plots are the most visible sign of an amazing plan: to make Todmorden the first town in the country that is self-sufficient in food.

‘And we want to do it by 2018,’ says Mary Clear, 56, a grandmother of ten and co-founder of Incredible Edible, as the scheme is called.

‘It’s a very ambitious aim. But if you don’t aim high, you might as well stay in bed, mightn’t you?’

So what’s to stop me turning up with a huge carrier bag and grabbing all the rosemary in the town?

‘Nothing,’ says Mary.

What’s to stop me nabbing all the apples?

‘Nothing.’

All your raspberries?

‘Nothing.’

It just doesn’t happen like that, she says. ‘We trust people. We truly believe — we are witness to it — that people are decent.’

When she sees the Big Issue seller gathering fruit for his lunch, she feels only pleasure. What does it matter, argues Mary, if once in a while she turns up with her margarine tub to find that all the strawberries are gone?

‘This is a revolution,’ she says. ‘But we are gentle revolutionaries. Everything we do is underpinned by kindness.’

The idea came about after she and co-founder Pam Warhurst, the former owner of the town’s Bear Cafe, began fretting about the state of the world and wondered what they could do.

They reasoned that all they could do is start locally, so they got a group of people, mostly women, together in the cafe.

Incredible Edible is about more than plots of veg. It’s about educating people about food, and stimulating the local economy (pictured Vincent Graff and Estelle)

‘Wars come about by men having drinks in bars, good things come about when women drink coffee together,’ says Mary.

‘Our thinking was: there’s so much blame in the world — blame local government, blame politicians, blame bankers, blame technology — we thought, let’s just do something positive instead.’

We’re standing by a car park in the town centre. Mary points to a housing estate up the hill. Her face lights up.

‘The children walk past here on the way to school. We’ve filled the flower beds with fennel and they’ve all been taught that if you bite fennel, it tastes like a liquorice gobstopper. When I see the children popping little bits of herb into their mouths, I just think it’s brilliant.’

She takes me over to the front garden of her own house, a few yards away.

Three years ago, when Incredible Edible was launched, she did a very unusual thing: she lowered her front wall, in order to encourage passers-by to walk into her garden and help themselves to whatever vegetables took their fancy.

There were signs asking people to take something but it took six months for folk to ‘get it’, she says.

They get it now. Obviously a few town-centre vegetable plants — even thousands of them — are not going to feed a community of 15,000 by themselves.

But the police station potatoes act as a recruiting sergeant — to encourage residents to grow their own food at home.

Today, hundreds of townspeople who began by helping themselves to the communal veg are now well on the way to self-sufficiency.

But out on the street, what gets planted where? There’s kindness even in that.

‘The ticket man at the railway station, who was very much loved, was unwell. Before he died, we asked him: “What’s your favourite vegetable, Reg?” It was broccoli. So we planted memorial beds with broccoli at the station. One stop up the line, at Hebden Bridge, they loved Reg, too — and they’ve also planted broccoli in his memory.’

Not that all the plots are — how does one put this delicately? — ‘official’.

Take the herb bushes by the canal. Owners British Waterways had no idea locals had been sowing plants there until an official inspected the area ahead of a visit by the Prince of Wales last year (Charles is a huge Incredible Edible fan).

Estelle Brown, a 67-year-old former interior designer who tended the plot, received an email from British Waterways.

‘I was a bit worried to open it,’ she says. ‘But it said: “How do you build a raised bed? Because my boss wants one outside his office window.”’

Incredible Edible is also about much more than plots of veg. It’s about educating people about food, and stimulating the local economy.

There are lessons in pickling and preserving fruits, courses on bread-making, and the local college is to offer a BTEC in horticulture. The thinking is that young people who have grown up among the street veg may make a career in food.

Crucially, the scheme is also about helping local businesses. The Bear, a wonderful shop and cafe with a magnificent original Victorian frontage, sources all its ingredients from farmers within a 30-mile radius.

There’s a brilliant daily market. People here can eat well on local produce, and thousands now do.

Meanwhile, the local school was recently awarded a £500,000 Lottery grant to set up a fish farm in order to provide food for the locals and to teach useful skills to young people.

Jenny Coleman, 62, who retired here from London, explains: ‘We need something for our young people to do. If you’re an 18-year-old, there’s got to be a good answer to the question: why would I want to stay in Todmorden?’

The day I visit, the town is battered by a bitterly-cold rain storm.  Yet the place radiates warmth. People speak to each other in the street, wave as neighbours drive past, smile.

If the phrase hadn’t been hijacked, the words ‘we’re all in this together’ would spring to mind.

So what sort of place is Todmorden (known locally, without exception, as ‘Tod’)? If you’re assuming it’s largely peopled by middle-class grandmothers, think again. Nor is this place a mecca for the gin-and-Jag golf club set.

Set in a Pennine valley — once, the road through the town served as the border between Yorkshire and Lancashire — it is a vibrant mix of age, class and ethnicity.

A third of households do not own a car; a fifth do not have central heating.

You can snap up a terrace house for £50,000 — or spend close to £1 million on a handsome stone villa with seven bedrooms.

And the scheme has brought this varied community closer together, according to Pam Warhurst.

Take one example. ‘The police have told us that, year on year, there has been a reduction in vandalism since we started,’ she says. ‘We weren’t expecting this.’

So why has it happened?

Pam says: ‘If you take a grass verge that was used as a litter bin and a dog toilet and turn it into a place full of herbs and fruit trees, people won’t vandalise it. I think we are hard-wired not to damage food.’

Pam reckons a project like Incredible Edible could thrive in all sorts of places. ‘If the population is very transient, it’s difficult. But if you’ve got schools, shops, back gardens and verges, you can do it.’

Similar schemes are being piloted in 21 other towns in the UK, and there’s been interest shown from as far afield as Spain, Germany, Hong Kong and Canada. And, this week, Mary Clear gave a talk to an all-party group of MPs at Westminster.

Todmorden was visited by a planner from New Zealand, working on the rebuilding of his country after February’s earthquake.

Mary says: ‘He went back saying: “Why wouldn’t we rebuild the railway station with pick-your-own herbs? Why wouldn’t we rebuild the health centre with apple trees?”

‘What we’ve done is not clever. It just wasn’t being done.’

The final word goes to an outsider. Joe Strachan is a wealthy U.S. former sales director who decided to settle in Tod with his Scottish wife, after many years in California.

He is 61 but looks 41. He became active with Incredible Edible six months ago, and couldn’t be happier digging, sowing and juicing fruit.

I find myself next to him, sheltering from the driving rain. Why, I ask, would someone forsake the sunshine of California for all this?

His answer sums up what the people around here have achieved.

‘There’s a nobility to growing food and allowing people to share it. There’s a feeling we’re doing something significant rather than just moaning that the state can’t take care of us.

‘Maybe we all need to learn to take care of ourselves.’

Voting with Our Farms and Forks against Climate Catastrophe

by Will Allen

In the wake of the failed climate talks in Durban, South Africa; a record-breaking 5.9% increase in greenhouse gas pollution in 2010; and recent, extremely alarming reports by scientists of plumes of methane gas gushing up from the thawing sea beds of the Siberian Arctic, we find ourselves standing at the end of the road. 1

If we allow the infamous “one percent” to continue with business as usual, we will soon be arriving at civilization’s last stop, climate hell. If we allow the U.S. and global fossil fuel/military industrial/corporate agribusiness economy to keep turning up the planet’s delicately balanced thermostat, raising average global temperatures by two degrees Celsius or more, we will soon pass the point of no return, detonating runaway global warming. Among the catastrophic consequences of runaway global warming will be the release of a significant portion of the 1.7 trillion tons of deadly methane now sequestered in the shallow Arctic seabeds and permafrost (equivalent to twice the amount of total greenhouse gas pollution currently in the atmosphere). As the International Energy Agency warned on November 9, the world is accelerating toward irreversible climate change. We will lose the chance to avert catastrophic warming if we don’t take bold action in the next five years to sharply reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions; drastically increase energy efficiency in the food, transportation, utilities, and housing sectors; and safely sequester billions of tons of greenhouse gases in our soils, plants, and forests through organic soil management and permaculture practices. In other words we have approximately 1800 days left to avert catastrophe.

One of our major tasks as farmers or food consumers is to educate the public to the heretofore-undisclosed fact that the world’s energy and chemical- intensive industrial food system is the major cause of global warming. That is the central message of this rather detailed essay. We go into depth and explain the details of this deadly state of affairs, because our fate and the fate of the human species depends upon rapidly changing what we farm and what we eat. The good news is that we can stop and reverse this suicidal food and farming system by taking decisive action, not only in the political policy realm and through our growing street protests and occupations; but also by voting with our farms, gardens, and forks for an organic, sustainable, and re-localized food and farming system. This new agro-ecological system will drastically reduce GHG emissions, and at the same time naturally sequester billions of tons of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases, in our soils, plants, and trees. But the hour is late. We must jumpstart this great transition immediately.

Millions of Americans are still in denial about global warming or else waiting vainly for Washington to pass laws and regulations to alleviate the problem. Many of those aware of the crisis are calling for cap and trade, or a carbon tax, or a ban on coal and tar sands, or stronger emissions standards, and energy efficiency. A large part of the agenda for reversing global warming involves reducing fossil fuels use by 90% over the next 40 years. But with non-stop advertising from the polluters and a do-nothing, indentured congress, that gets millions from the fossil fuel industry, the likelihood of federal legislation, at least in the near future, to solve the problem appears remote. Only persistent campaigning and the encircling of the White House by 15,000 demonstrators finally got the President’s attention about the dangers of the Keystone tar sands pipeline.

Of course we must stop the coal industry, natural gas fracking, the nuclear industry, and the tar sands juggernaught. We must unite a critical mass of the 99% to cut Wall Street and the corporate elite down to size and implement a 21st century New Deal that not only brings about full employment and economic justice, but also environmental and climate sustainability. But there’s something else we can do, immediately, and it’s as close as our back yard, our farm field, or the knife and fork in our hands.

The failed climate conferences in Kyoto, Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban have concentrated most of their energy and effort on fossil fuel emissions, but very little on emissions from industrial agriculture, and the demonstrated ability of organic food and farming to cool the planet and sequester climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases. Recent research and reports, however, conclude that factory farming in the U.S. is responsible for more GHG emissions than the entire transportation and industrial sector combined; including cars, trucks, buses, airplanes, trains, boats, and factories.

The main climate and health issues with the U.S. industrial farming system are:

a) Enormous quantities of greenhouse gasses emitted from fertilizers, animals, animal feed production, animal processing, and the shipping, cooling, and freezing of all food products;

b) Huge subsidies to the wealthiest, chemical and energy-intensive farmers for growing unhealthy food;

c) Too much emphasis on meat production and other harmful, fatty foods.

Despite these serious problems, the U.S. government and big agriculture aggressively promote our factory farming system to developing countries as a solution to their hunger problems.

Factory Farming’s Real Greenhouse Gas Emissions

In studies done from 2004 to 2009, the United Nations (FAO) Food and Agriculture Organization, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) all estimated that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. agriculture were relatively low, ranging from 7% (USDA) to 18% (FAO). 2

Unfortunately, all three agencies repeatedly underestimated emissions from billions of factory-farmed animals (burps, farts and defecations) and from fertilization. They also completely neglected to include greenhouse gasses emitted from petroleum-fueled vehicles (trucks, tractors, combines, etc.), freezing, cooling and heating foods, or shipping the foods to market. The fact that transportation and storage emissions were not counted is especially deceptive, since food in the U.S. travels from 1500 to 3000 miles and food must be either cooled or frozen in transit or storage. They also largely ignored nitrous oxide emissions, which are likely the most destructive greenhouse gasses emitted from farming.

In contrast, recent research by scientists at the normally conservative World Bank, concluded that the FAO, U.S. EPA and the USDA greatly underestimated the dangerous emissions from industrial farming. They concluded that animal agriculture alone was responsible for 51% of the world’s greenhouse gasses. 3 Although factory farming apologists argue that 51% is a ridiculously high estimate, significantly more than 80% of U.S. agriculture is devoted to livestock, and hundreds of millions of acres are growing livestock feed. 4

In fact, when we analyze the numbers on land devoted to animals versus land devoted to all other human foods, we find that 92.5% of farm and ranch land in the U.S. is used to grow food for or pasture animals. Clearly, the U.S. form of agricultural land-use is heavily skewed toward animals. Only 7.5% of total U.S. farmland, and only 14% of our cropland, is devoted to non-animal based foods. This data leads us to contend that half of the greenhouse gases in the U.S. are attributable to agriculture and that 80 to 90% of these GHGs come from factory farms that primarily produce meat and other animal products.

Many non-government scientists estimate that from 30% to 40% of U.S. greenhouse gases are emitted from factory farms. This is still the highest for any industrial sector and dramatically higher than the 7% to 18% that the federal agencies and the UN estimate for farming. 5

In fact, even these numbers vastly underestimate the deadly impact of industrial agriculture and factory farms on the environment and climate because they leave out the predominate role of industrial agriculture in global deforestation and wetlands destruction. Industrial agriculture, genetically engineered soybeans, biofuels, and cattle grazing-including whacking down the last remaining tropical rainforests in Latin America and Asia for animal feed and biofuels-are the main driving forces in global deforestation and wetlands destruction, which generate, according to scientific consensus, 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.

In other words the direct and indirect impacts of industrial agriculture and factory-farmed food are the major cause of global warming. No strategy for reducing excess greenhouse gases back to the “safe” level of 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere (or 393 ppm of all GHGs including methane and nitrous oxide) can be successful without drastically reducing emissions from industrial agriculture and sequestering billions of tons of greenhouse gases in the soil through organic and sustainable farming, ranching, land restoration, and forestry practices. And of course this “Great Transition” in agriculture will have to be driven by mass consumer demand for farm products that are organic, locally or regionally-produced, and climate friendly.

Whether agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions hover at 40%, 51%, or more we can be sure after looking at these numbers that most GHGs in the U.S. are attributable to livestock production, at levels much higher than our federal agencies and the UN estimate.

U.S. factory farming emits three greenhouse gases that are especially destructive to the environment and the climate. These three gases are carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O).

Since a significant portion of the carbon dioxide emitted by industrial farming comes from long distance transportation, heating, freezing, and processing; consumers can greatly reduce the CO2 emissions they are responsible for by purchasing their food from local organic growers.

While CO2 receives most of the attention and analysis, scientists have concluded that methane has a Global Warming Potential (GWP) 25 times more damaging than carbon dioxide when measured over a one hundred year period and 72 times more destructive when measured over a 20 year period. 6 Part of the reason for the enormous impact of methane in the first 20 years is that it has a shorter life span in the atmosphere than CO2 or nitrous oxide. Most of the methane largely dissipates in 12 years whereas CO2 lasts for longer than five hundred years.

The dramatic increase in confinement animal practices since 1995 greatly increased methane emissions. In 1995, 75% of U.S. hogs were raised in outside pens or on pasture. In 2010, more than 95% of hogs, 96% of broiler chickens, 95% of laying hens, 99% of turkeys, and 78% of beef cows were raised on confinement farms. Since more than eighty percent of U.S. agriculture is devoted to producing food for and managing closely caged animals, the changes that are needed to reduce methane emissions obviously need to focus on animal production and consumption.

Nitrous oxide emissions, obviously are much more damaging per ton than either methane or carbon dioxide. When measured over a one hundred year period, nitrous oxide is 298 times more damaging than carbon dioxide, and is still more than half as damaging 500 years after being emitted, and 153 times more damaging than CO2.

Most of the nitrous oxide emissions come from synthetic fertilizer manufacture and use, the billions of tons of animal manure from cattle herds and poultry flocks, and the billions of tons of sewage sludge applied to farmland.

Industrial fertilizer manufacture alone is estimated to emit 6.6 pounds of nitrous oxide for each pound of nitrogen produced. But, these emissions are not attributable to agriculture by any government agencies; instead they are listed under manufacturing.

Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizer

The National agriculture statistical service (NASS) of the USDA reported that U.S. farmers used an average of 24 billion, 661 million pounds of nitrogen fertilizer per year from 1998 to 2007. 7 So, they must know (if they bothered to connect the dots) that chemical corporations emitted 162 billion, 769 million pounds of nitrous oxide related green house gasses just to manufacture the nitrogen that NASS claimed farmers used every year. In addition to the greenhouse gasses emitted in manufacture, we must also include those attributable to the transportation and application of this mountain of fertilizer every year.  (24,661,000,000 pounds of fertilizer is equal to 12,330,000 one-ton pallets, which would cover 10,960 football fields-that is almost half of the football fields in the U.S.).

UN (FAO), EPA, and USDA estimates don’t include emissions from producing, shipping, or applying synthetic nitrogen, yet as these numbers illustrate, emissions of the most damaging gases are huge, and contribute to making factory farming the largest single polluter. Obviously, something is wrong with the government number crunching. Why don’t the regulators make these connections and act to stop these destructive practices? Because our regulatory agencies work to protect the elite 1%, the polluters, not us, the environment or climate stability.

The currently excessive, but largely ignored, level of our agricultural emissions must be reduced. If our agricultural sector does not change the way they farm, process, and ship food the U.S. will fail to significantly reduce emissions and curb the climate chaos that they produce. The changes necessary require major paradigm shifts in farming practices, food handling, and food consumption.

Since so much of U.S. agriculture is devoted to producing confined meat (beef, dairy, hogs, poultry), any reduction in the amount of factory-farmed meat eaten is going to reduce the amount of methane and nitrous oxide released and indirectly reduce the amount of CO2 required to ship these expensive foods to markets.

Besides synthetic nitrogen fertilizers, and environmentally destructive meat, a serious problem in the U.S. is the increasing use of sludge from sewage treatment plants to fertilize farmland. Currently, about 100 billion pounds of sewage sludge is applied to U.S. farmland each year. 8 Sewage sludge often contains all manner of industrial chemicals, medical waste, resistant bacteria, resistant viruses, and flame-retardants. Sludge is also an increasingly worrisome greenhouse gas emitter. Sixty percent of all the sludge produced in the U.S. is applied to millions of acres of farmland. This is a cheap but dangerous way to reduce the cost of increasingly expensive fertilizers.

Sludge applications continue to increase because the powerful Carlisle Group controls the hauling. And the U.S. regulation of sludge is near the worst in the world. Unless we stop this practice we could render millions of acres sterile because of heavy metal concentrations and high resistant bacteria and viral populations. A majority of the sewage-sludged land is used to grow cattle feed or to graze animals, which is another reason to avoid factory-farmed meat.

The new insurgent movement in the U.S. must demand a progressively elevated carbon tax imposed on all these pollutants! In the meantime consumers must boycott them. These are dire realities. The future will be bleak if we do not act.

Fixing the Problem

If we do act, farmers know from our experience that we can address these problems readily and rapidly with sustainable organic techniques, and more locally focused production and marketing strategies. If farmers do change, farmland could become a significant sequester pool for greenhouse gasses and provide carbon credits to farmers who convert.

If raising animals for human food creates more greenhouse gasses than fossil fueled vehicles and industry combined, we better reduce our meat consumption. Since 90% of meat comes from CAFOs and confinement operations, this means boycotting all factory-farmed meat, eggs, and dairy. Nearly all scientists agree with that conclusion! While we rail about coal, and gasoline, and diesel, and jet fuel, the biggest part of the problem is sitting at our dinner tables. Our diets, our habits, our excesses are a major part of the problem, and a major part of the solution. Our bad food choices, our food over-consumption, and our enormous food waste (we throw away more than a third of our food, most of which ends up non-composted in municipal landfills, releasing enormous amounts of methane) are the elephants in the room!

Meat Consumption

If U.S. consumers cut their meat consumption from the current 12 ounces to 6 ounces per day it would be the equivalent of taking almost 50 million cars off the road. Six ounces of meat is still more than twice the world average, so cutting our consumption in half would give consumers their meat, while cutting in half the environmental damage. We especially must stop eating factory-farmed meat, because it is the most damaging to both the environment and our bodies. 9

Even meat advocates like Simon Fairlie recommend that we cut our consumption by half:

Now if you are a privileged white middle class Briton like myself,…then halving the amount of meat and dairy in one’s diet seems quite tolerable, generous even. 10

Fairlie argues for this reduction even though Brits only eat 8 ounces of meat and animal products per day, which would cut Fairlie’s daily portion to 4 ounces. Fairlie also argues that our meat should come from herds and flocks that are rotationally grazed on organically managed land that is not arable enough for vegetable, grain, and fruit production. 11 Meat grown like Fairlie proposes is a much better food choice, both for the environment and for customers.

Since meat production uses so many billions of acres around the world, we need to adopt herd management strategies that replicate wild herd habits. This involves large or small herds rotationally grazing only the top grasses of small pastures, defecating and urinating and forcing the stubble into the topsoil and staying on the grasses for short periods of time. After the grasses recover then the herd or flocks are returned for a few days to harvest the most nutritious grasses again.

Our current cow-calf system of management leaves the animals on the pastures too long, which inhibits the pasture’s ability to rebound and lowers the quality of the grasses. It also takes the calves off to finish them in enormous feedlots with corn, soybeans, cotton seed cake, cotton gin trash, sludge-fertilized hay, and waste industrial products. Cows are not grain or garbage eaters by choice. Their preferred foods are mixed grasses.

It is not just factory-farmed meat that we need to reduce in our diets; we also need to cut out the majority of overly processed carbohydrates that we habitually consume. That means white bread, white flour pastas, corn, cane, beet syrups and sugars, and fake sugars (Aspartame-Equil, Saccharin, Splenda, etc.), colas, and other soft and power drinks. The U.S. diet currently consists of more than 80% processed, junk, and fake foods. That is not a sustainable food system. While it is profitable for the food processing giants, it is devastating for the environment and our health!

So, the issue isn’t between meat eating and veganism. The issue is about what kind of food you eat and what the consequences are. Don’t eat meat, vegetables, and fruit from factory farms. Eat organic, fresh, and environmentally friendly fruit, vegetables, meat, and dairy and reduce the fattening and unhealthy crap in your diet. In general, try to eat more vegetables and fruit than meat, fish, or dairy products. We don’t abhor meat, but it takes a lot of energy to digest, so, we restrict our occasional meat dishes to fish and shellfish and an occasional bite of a fabulous range-fed organic ham, poultry, or beef cut. Think about your diet and the diet of your kids. Most importantly, your wise food choices will protect yourself as well as the soil that grows your food and the environment your kids will inherit.

Our Delicately Balanced World

We have five major carbon pools on the planet, they are: farmland, oceans, forests, atmosphere, and fossilized carbon. Currently, both the forests and the farmland soils are degraded so seriously that they are not capable of sequestering more carbon than they are already doing. Consequently, the atmosphere and the ocean pools are nearly maxed in their capacity to accept carbon without even more serious disruptions in climate and sea life.  This is a long festering problem, which unfortunately has come due on our watch.

Andrew Sharpless, CEO of Oceana has pointed out how small changes in numbers can have huge consequences. Miss a free throw and lose the championship. If the economy goes into a few percentage point dip, millions will lose their jobs and houses. A three-degree rise in body temperature will make you very sick.

Sharpless adds that:

Nowhere, however, are the big consequences of little numbers becoming clearer than in the health of our oceans. There, a chemical shift of just 0.1 - that’s right, just one tenth of a point - is already causing ocean acidification.

Since the 1830s we have been sending massive clouds of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and other industrial aromatics into the atmosphere and the oceans. The oceans have absorbed at least 30 million tons of carbon dioxide every day for the last several decades. When carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases enter the ocean they promote chemical reactions that make the water more acidic, thus lowering the pH.

Before industrialization the average pH was 8.2, mildly alkaline on the acid-alkaline pH scale. Now it is about 8.1. No big deal, right? After 180 years of industrial and fossil fuel pollution it only dropped a 10th of a percentage point. If you thought this slight rise was ok, you would be wrong! Because of the way the pH scale works, this drop of only 0.1 represents a 26% increase in ocean acidity.

Oceanic scientists estimate that the ocean pH will fall to 7.8 by 2100. The four tenths of a point drop from 1830 to 2100 will cause the oceans to experience a 150% increase in acidity, unless we act to curb the emissions! 12

The damage to the oceans and the atmosphere is long-standing, and did not begin with industrialization. It began in the U.S. with agricultural and forestry mining operations by Europeans along the entire east coast. As early as 1800 the eastern seaboard had been so badly farmed and logged that 30% to 50% of the carbon was lost from the soil, and formerly forested land had been clear-cut and devoted to sheep farms. By the early 1800s, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Connecticut were all 80% deforested sheep farms.

As early as 1813, John Taylor lamented the loss of soil organic matter.

Our country is nearly ruined. We certainly have drawn out of the earth three-fourths of the vegetable matter it contained, within reach of the plow. 13

In 1852, David Wells at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard analyzed soils to determine whether the mineral content of the soil was more important or the humus content (organic matter). Wells found that the amount of humus or organic matter determined how fertile or infertile the soil was. On soils with identical mineral content, the soils with high organic matter had high fertility; those with low organic matter had poor fertility and yield. Those soils abused the longest usually had little or no organic matter left, with consequent low fertility and yield. 14

For nearly 200 years, since John Taylor’s time, U.S. farmers knew about the need for high soil organic matter. Before the Second World War only 5% of the nitrogen used in the U.S. was synthetic nitrogen. But, after the Green Revolution of the 1950s most of the farmers in the U.S. stopped feeding the soil with fertilizer crops and composts and switched to using synthetic nitrogen and triple phosphate to feed the plants.

In the U.S., the soil pool’s lack of capability in sequestering carbon deteriorated due to land abuse during and after the 1950s and the enormous increase in the use of nitrogen mostly to raise grains for meat and milk animals. The soil pool should be a sink for excess carbon but since it has lost about 50% of its organic matter it is less than half as effective as a sink or pool for sequestering greenhouse gasses. Many of our most productive agricultural lands have been degraded or desertified because of industrial production.

Recent studies on the University of Illinois Morrow plots (the oldest continuously farmed experimental plots in the U.S.) have shown that since 1955, when synthetic nitrogen was first used, from 40% to 190% too much nitrogen was applied and yet yields dropped and organic matter declined dramatically. These problems on the Morrow plots are writ large on millions of acres of agricultural soils that have been degraded by synthetic fertilizer all over this country. 15

Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is also responsible for the nitrate poisoning of two-thirds of the U.S. drinking water supply. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is the major cause of the 405 oceanic dead zones around the world (including the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of California and Oregon). Synthetic Nitrogen fertilizer is a killer of soil life, including earthworms and microorganisms, such as: bacteria, viruses, fungi, and actinomicetes. 16

The forest pool’s lack of capacity for sequestering carbon is similar to the decline in agricultural lands and the declining capacities of other plant communities. Too many forests have been degraded, or clear-cut, or over grazed and even over-fertilized with nitrogen. Too much land has been developed, exploited, and then abandoned. The solutions here are similar to organic farming solutions. We need to practice sustainable forestry management strategies that restore the micorrhizal and other forest fungi, replant clear-cut areas with high-density plantings. Manage the reforestation, including thinning and pest control. Avoid the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers because they damage fungi and other microorganisms, which are the foundations of a successful reforestation program. With reforestation and restoration of the forest floor microorganisms, our forests would be able to sequester many more millions of tons of carbon.

If we convert our acreage to organic we can reverse this long-term decline in the agricultural and forest soil pools and sequester enough carbon to reverse the global trajectory toward increasingly chaotic weather patterns. Initially this involves building up the soil organic matter and eliminating chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Damaged land can usually be restored rapidly, eroded land is more difficult and a longer-term project, but it is very doable organically. Wherever fertilizer crops and animal manure composts replace synthetic fertilizer, organic agriculture reduces carbon emissions and becomes much more effective as a sink for sequestering CO2 equivalents.

In the organic systems, soil carbon increased 15 to 28%, demonstrating the ability of the organic systems to sequester significant quantities of atmospheric carbon. Specifically, the Rodale organic manure system showed an average increase of soil carbon of about 1000 lbs per acre-foot of soil per year, or about 3,500 pounds of carbon dioxide per acre-ft per year sequestered. When multiplied over the 165 million acres of corn /soybeans that are produced nationally, a potential of an increase of 580 billion pounds of carbon dioxide per year would be sequestered by farmers switching from conventional chemically based farming systems to organic grain farming methods. Over the 23 year lifespan of the Rodale test, the conventional system showed no significant increases in either soil carbon or nitrogen. 17

Of course, the organic conversion and significant changes in our eating habits seems herculean, since only about 5% of U.S. acreage is organic at this point in time and only 7.5% of our agricultural lands produce non animal crops. But, don’t forget that as late as the mid-1970s more than 40% of the U.S. population smoked tobacco, now, less than 17% smoke, a drop of 57.5% in 35 years.

If we can have such success on this hardest to cure habit in such a short time, we should be able to do something about our excessive consumption of factory-farmed meat and junk food. Just as it was in the public’s best health interest to quit smoking, it is in the public’s health interest to reduce our consumption of meat and other products that are destroying public health, the environment, and climate stability.

We all know that it is going to take radical policy changes to change our fossil fuel and coal addictions. The organic food and farming movement must join ranks with the climate justice movement and the Occupy movement to bring about fundamental change, a shift of political and economic power from the corporatocracy, the 1%, to the grassroots majority, followed by huge infrastructure investment and development. In the meantime, let’s take action with our farms and forks.

With food, as with tobacco, we don’t need a massive infrastructure development to change our consumer habits. There is an abundance of safe organic food on the market today, and thousands of growers willing to grow it if the demand increases. As with tobacco, the public and especially the kids need to be educated about the relationship between chemically produced food and climate change, and the direct relationship between factory-farmed food and cancer, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

If the U.S. population could reduce its addiction to unhealthy, environmentally destructive, and climate destabilizing foods by 57.5% in the next 35 years, (the same way we’ve reduced smoking) we could reduce our greenhouse gas emissions in the same way we reduced the incidence of lung cancer, emphysema, osteoporosis, and chronic bronchitis when tobacco habits were broken. Sure, we need more environmentally responsible energy choices and we should push for those choices as soon as possible. But, we can change a lot, before we ever get the new fuels or the infrastructure they require, by changing our eating habits.

The government, energy, and automobile corporations, at least for now, still dictate the pace on how fast we convert to cleaner fuels. But, we make the decisions about which types of food we eat, just like we control whether we smoke or not. We must begin a national safe eating campaign, similar to the national non-smoking effort that has been so successful. We look forward to the day when the surviving McDonald Big-Mac addicts have to eat their burgers in the alley with the cigarette addicts still smoking tobacco.

We need to demonize factory farm food just like tobacco was demonized. Why? Because factory farmed meat is sick meat that is full of antibiotics and hormones to keep the sick and abused animals alive until slaughter time. It is ironic that we as a society are upset over athletes dosing themselves with sex hormones but are uncritical of our beef and milk products that are full of sex and growth hormones - which we and our kids eat and drink!

Beyond hormones, all non-organic meat and milk products from factory farms are dosed with antibiotics from the day they are born until just prior to being slaughtered. And all of the confined animals are routinely abused, including beef, milk cows, chickens for eggs or meat, and especially turkeys. Factory farmed turkeys can’t even reproduce themselves, they are all artificially inseminated. They are so delicate, since they are enormous, crippled, and vulnerable to dozens of ailments, that they require the most antibiotics of all the factory farmed meats just to keep most of them alive long enough to make it to the slaughterhouse. Turkey sandwich, anyone?

Factory farmed chickens are not much safer or less abused than turkeys. Their illness rates are extremely high. In January 2007 Consumer Reports published their study of bacterial contamination of chicken sold in the US. They purchased 525 broiler chickens from various kinds of food stores in 23 states and tested them for types of bacteria that caused food-borne illnesses. Laboratory results indicated that 83% of these chickens were infected with campylobacter and 15% were also infected with salmonella. That means that maybe 17 out of one hundred chickens were safe. In 2009, Consumer Reports again tested chicken broilers and found that 68% were infected with campylobacter, an improvement, but hardly a badge of safety. Chicken wings, yum!

Vegetables and fruits are no different than meats. Apples are often sprayed 20 times a year, artichokes 26, grapes are sprayed weekly during the growing season, sweet corn every five days for the last 5 weeks before harvest, and strawberries get about 300 pounds of pesticides and 300 pounds of synthetic fertilizer per acre - every year!

We have an agriculture system that is both abusive and bankrupt, but is kept on life support with government subsidies and corporate handouts. This government funding and corporate dominance enables the U.S. food system to cause diabetes, heart disease, cancer, strokes, obesity, water pollution, oceanic dead zones, excessive greenhouse gas emissions, and soil and water degeneration.

One of the critical elements in the fight against tobacco was the damage caused by second hand smoke. The second hand smoke of industrial farming is the damage caused by land and water abuse, pesticides and pesticide drift, toxic fertilizers, hormones, excessive use of antibiotics, genetic manipulation, and, most deadly of all, greenhouse gas emissions. As with second hand smoke, the victims have no control over the source of the pollution, or when or where the polluter “lights-up”. Protect yourself and your family.

For the first time in history, the entire human species are confronted with a deadly universal threat: climate catastrophe. The good news is that this common threat gives us the potential, for the first time ever, to unite the world’s population in a cooperative effort to save the human species. Farmers and gardeners: vote with your farming and gardening practices to save the Earth and the climate. Consumers: vote with your fork and knife to stop this destructive form of food production and distribution!

Will Allen is an organic farmer, author, rural community activist, and a civil rights and anti-war activist. He serves on the Policy Advisory board of Organic Consumers Association, and the board of Willing Hands.

Ronnie Cummins is the co-founder and National Director of the Organic Consumers Association.

Citations:

1. Gillis, Justin, As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks, The New York Times, Dec. 17, 2011, p. A1

See also the more alarming story: Connor, Steve, Shock as Retreat of Arctic Sea Ice Releases Deadly Greenhouse Gas, The Independent (UK) Dec. 13, 2011

2. Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization, November, 2006 and Climate Change: Greenhouse Gas Inventory: Global Change Program Office, Office of the Chief
Economist, U.S. Department of Agriculture. Technical Bulletin No. 1907. 163 pp. March 2004.

3. Goodland, Robert and Jeffery Anhang, Livestock and Climate Change. World Watch Magazine, November 1, 2009.

4. USDA National Agricultural Statistical Service, Acreage Distributions per crop, 2002, and 2008.

5. Shiva, Vandana, 2008 Manifesto on Climate Change and the Future of Food Security. Published and co-authored by the International Commission on the Future of Food and Agriculture and LaSalle, Tim, 2008 Paper delivered to the Eco Expo East Conference and Trade Show.

6. International Panel on Climate Change, Fourth Assessment Report, Table 2-14. Chapter 2, p. 212. Excerpt.

7. USDA, National Agricultural Statistical Service. Fertilizer Use Statistics, 1998-2007.

8. The Carlisle Group, which is the largest U.S. distributor of sludge, contends that about 135 billion pounds of sludge are applied to farmland each year.

9. Carus, Felicity, 2010. “UN Urges Global Move to Meat and Dairy Free Diet. The Guardian

10. Fairlie, Simon 2010. Meat: A Benign Extravagance. pg. 39. Chelsea Green, White River Junction, Vermont.

11. ibid., pp. 35-43

12. Andrew Sharpless. January 21, 2011 Ocean acidity: Small Change, Catastrophic Results. McClatchy-Tribune News Service.

13.Taylor, John 1813, The Arator.

14. Wells, David 1852,

15. Mulvaney, Richard, Saeed Khan, and Tim Ellsworth, 2009  “Synthetic Nitrogen Fertilizers Deplete Soil Nitrogen: A Global Dilemma for Sustainable Cereal Production,” Journal of Environmental Quality,

16. Diaz, R.J. and R. Rosenberg. 2008. Spreading dead zones and consequences for marine ecosystems. Science 321:926-928.

17. Hepperly, Paul. 2003, “Organic farming sequesters atmospheric carbon and nutrients in soils.” New Farm Trials, The Rodale Institute

Thanks again for being pioneers and supporters of this local organic food movement,

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Mayo Kama ( Sonoran ancestor of Butternut) 
• Daikon Radish
• New: Rainbow Swiss Chard - good for cooking, steaming or stir frying
• New: several heads/varieties of green and red Lettuce
• New: Parsley
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Garlic

Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico — Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

Experts agree that in general organic farms tend to be less damaging to the environment than conventional farms. In the past, however, “organic agriculture used to be sustainable agriculture, but now that is not always the case,” said Michael Bomford, a scientist at Kentucky State University who specializes in sustainable agriculture. He added that intense organic agriculture had also put stress on aquifers in California.

Some organic standard setters are beginning to refine their criteria so that organic products better match their natural ideals. Krav, a major Swedish organic certification program, allows produce grown in greenhouses to carry its “organic” label only if the buildings use at least 80 percent renewable fuel, for example. And last year the Agriculture Department’s National Organic Standards Board revised its rules to require that for an “organic milk” label, cows had to be at least partly fed by grazing in open pastures rather than standing full time in feedlots.

But each decision to narrow the definition of “organic” involves an inevitable tug-of-war among farmers, food producers, supermarkets and environmentalists. While the United States’ regulations for organic certification require that growers use practices that protect water resources, it is hard to define a specific sustainable level of water use for a single farm “because aquifer depletion is the result of many farmers’ overutilizing the resource,” said Miles McEvoy, head of the National Organic Program at the Agriculture Department.

While the original organic ideal was to eat only local, seasonal produce, shoppers who buy their organics at supermarkets, from Whole Foods to Walmart, expect to find tomatoes in December and are very sensitive to price. Both factors stoke the demand for imports. Few areas in the United States can farm organic produce in the winter without resorting to energy-guzzling hothouses. In addition, American labor costs are high. Day laborers who come to pick tomatoes in this part of Baja make about $10 a day, nearly twice the local minimum wage. Tomato pickers in Florida may earn $80 a day in high season.

Manuel Verdugo, 42, began organic tomato farming on desert land in San José del Cabo five years ago and now owns 30 acres in several locations. Each week he sends two and a half tons of cherry, plum and beefsteak tomatoes to the United States under the brand name Tiky Cabo.

He has invested in irrigation systems that drip water directly onto plants’ roots rather than channeling it through open canals. He is building large shade houses that cover his crops to keep out pests and minimize evaporation. Even so, he cannot farm 10 acres in the nearby hamlet of La Cuenca because the wells there are dry.

At another five-year-old organic farm, Rosario Castillo says he can cultivate only 19 acres of the 100 he has earmarked for organic production, although he dug a well seven months ago to gain better access to the aquifer. The authorities ration pumping and have not granted him permission to clear native cactuses. “We have very little water here, and you have to go through a lot of bureaucracy to get it,” Mr. Castillo said.

Many growers blame tourist development — hotels and golf courses — for the water scarcity, and this has been a major problem in coastal areas. But farming can also be a significant drain. According to one study in an area of northern Baja called Ojos Negros, a boom in the planting of green onions for export a decade ago lowered the water table by about 16 inches a year. “They were pumping a lot of groundwater, and that was making some people rich on both sides of the border at the expense of the environment,” said Victor Miguel Ponce, a professor of hydrology at San Diego State University.

The logistics of getting water and transporting large volumes of perishable produce favors bigger producers. Some of the largest are American-owned, like Sueño Tropical, a vast farm with rows of shade houses lined up in the desert that caters exclusively to the American market.

While traditional organic farmers saw a blemish or odd shape simply as nature’s variations, workers at Sueño Tropical are instructed to cull tomatoes that do not meet the uniform shape, size and cosmetic requirement of clients like Whole Foods. Those “seconds” are sold locally.

Yet the connection to the United States has brought other kinds of benefits. Del Cabo Cooperative, which serves as a broker for hundreds of local farmers, provides seeds for its Mexican growers and hires roving agronomists and entomologists to assist them in tending their crops without chemicals. As the American market expands, said John Graham, a coordinator of operations at Del Cabo, he is always looking to bring new growers into his network — especially those whose farms draw on distant aquifers where water is still abundant.

Eaters, beware: Walmart is taking over our food system

by Stacy Mitchell

Aubretia Edick has worked at a Walmart store in upstate New York for 11 years, but she won’t buy fresh food there. Bagged salads, she claims, are often past their sell-by dates and, in the summer, fruit is sometimes kept on shelves until it rots. “They say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ but they don’t. As a cashier, you hear a lot of people complain,” she said. Edick blames the problems on the store’s chronic understaffing and Walmart’s lack of respect for the skilled labor needed to handle the nation’s food supply. At her store, a former maintenance person was made produce manager. He’s often diverted to other tasks. “If the toilets get backed up, they call him,” she said.

Tracie McMillan, who did a stint working in the produce section of a Walmart store while researching her forthcoming book, The American Way of Eating, reports much the same. “They put a 20-year-old from electronics in charge of the produce department. He didn’t know anything about food,” she said. “We had a leak in the cooler that didn’t get fixed for a month and all this moldy food was going out on the floor.” Walmart doesn’t accept the idea that “a supermarket takes any skill to run,” she said. “They treated the produce like any other kind of merchandise.”

That’s plenty to give a shopper pause, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to reasons to be concerned about Walmart’s explosive expansion into the grocery sector.

Growth of a giant

In just a few short years, Walmart has become the most powerful force in our food system, more dominant than Monsanto, Kraft, or Tyson.

It was only 23 years ago that Walmart opened its first supercenter, a store with a full supermarket inside. By 1998, it was still a relatively modest player with 441 supercenters and about 6 percent of U.S. grocery sales. Last year, as its supercenter count climbed above 3,000, Walmart captured 25 percent of the $550 billion Americans spent on groceries.

As astonishing as Walmart’s national market share is, in many parts of the country the chain is even more dominant. In 29 metro markets, it accounts for more than 50 percent of grocery sales.

Seeking an even bigger piece of the pie, Walmart is campaigning to blanket New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other big cities with its stores. It has made food the centerpiece of its public relations strategy. In a series of announcements over the last year, Walmart has deftly commandeered high-profile food issues, presenting itself as a solution to food deserts, a force for healthier eating, and a supporter of local farming.

It is a remarkably brazen tactic. On every one of these fronts, Walmart is very much part of the problem. Its expansion is making our food system more concentrated and industrialized than ever before. Its growth in cities will likely exacerbate poverty, the root cause of constrained choices and poor diet. And the more dominant Walmart becomes, the fewer opportunities there will be for farmers markets, food co-ops, neighborhood grocery stores, and a host of other enterprises that are beginning to fashion a better food system – one organized not to enrich corporate middlemen, but to the benefit of producers and eaters.

The big squeeze

Walmart’s rise as a grocer triggered two massive waves of industry consolidation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. One occurred among supermarkets, as regional titans like Kroger and Fred Meyer combined to form national chains that stood a better chance of surviving Walmart’s push into groceries. Today, the top five food retailers capture half of all grocery sales, double the share they held in 1997.

Go big or go out of business.Photo: Walmart Stores

The second wave of consolidation came as meatpackers, dairy companies, and other food processors merged in an effort to be large enough to supply Walmart without getting crushed in the process. The takeover of IBP, the nation’s largest beef processor, by Tyson Fresh Meats is a prime example. “When Tyson bought IBP in 2001, they said they had to do that in order to supply Walmart. We saw horizontal integration in the meat business because of worries about access to the retail market,” explained Mary Hendrickson, a food systems expert at the University of Missouri. Four firms now slaughter more than 80 percent of cattle. A similar dynamic has played out in nearly every segment of food manufacturing.

“The consolidation of the last two decades has created a food chain that’s shaped like an hourglass,” noted Wenonah Hauter, executive director of Food & Water Watch, explaining that a handful of middlemen now stand between 2 million farmers and 300 million eaters.

Their tight grip on our food supply has, rather predictably, come at the expense of both ends of the hourglass. Grocery prices have been rising faster than inflation and, while there are multiple factors driving up consumer costs, some economic research points to concentration in both food manufacturing and retailing as a leading culprit.

Farmers, meanwhile, are getting paid less and less. Take pork, for example. Between 1990 and 2009, the farmers’ share of each dollar consumers spent on pork fell from 45 to 25 cents, according to the USDA Economic Research Service. Pork processors picked up some of the difference, but the bulk of the gains went to Walmart and other supermarket chains, which are now pocketing 61 cents of each pork dollar, up from 45 cents in 1990.

Another USDA analysis found that big retailers have used their market power to shortchange farmers who grow apples, lettuce, and other types of produce, paying them less than what they would get in a competitive market, while also charging consumers inflated prices. In this way, Walmart has actually helped drive overall food prices up.

What Walmart means when it says “local”

Last year, Walmart announced that it would double the share of local produce it sells, from 4.5 to 9 percent, over six years.

Come and get your Georgia peaches.Photo: Walmart Stores

This doesn’t necessarily mean shoppers will soon find a variety of local produce at their nearest Walmart, however. Walmart counts fruits and vegetables as local if they come from within the same state. It can achieve much of its promise by buying more of each state’s major commodity crops, such as peaches in Georgia and apples in Washington, and by using big states like California, Texas, and Florida, where both supercenters and large-scale farming are prevalent, to pump up its national average.

“It speaks to the weakness that we’ve all known about, which is that ‘local’ is an inadequate descriptor of what we want,” said Andy Fisher, former executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition. “It’s not just geography; it’s scale and ownership and how you treat your workers. Walmart is doing industrial local.”

Walmart’s sourcing is becoming somewhat more regional, but the change has more to do with rising diesel prices than a shift in favor of small farms. It’s a sign that Walmart’s Achilles heel – the fossil-fuel intensity of its far-flung distribution system — might be catching up with it. According to The Wall Street Journal, trucking produce like jalapeños across the country from California or Mexico has become so expensive that the retailer is now seeking growers within 450 miles of its distribution centers.

“They see the writing on the wall. They know the cost of shipping from California back to Georgia and Mississippi is high now,” said Ben Burkett, a Mississippi farmer who noted that Walmart is now meeting with producers in his region. He’s hoping to sell the chain okra through a cooperative of 35 farmers. “We’ll see. My experience in the past with Walmart is they want to pay as little as possible.”

That skepticism is shared by Anthony Flaccavento, a Virginia farmer and sustainable food advocate. “If multimillion-dollar companies like Rubbermaid and Vlasic can be brought to their knees by the retail behemoth, how should we expect small farmers to fare?” he asks.

Local is the new organic — and Walmart does both the corporate, industrial way.Photo: Walmart Stores

Walmart’s promise to increase local sourcing is reminiscent of its pledge five years ago to expand its organic food offerings. “They held true to their corporate model and tried to do organics the same way,” said Mark Kastel of the Cornucopia Institute. For its store-brand organic milk, for example, Walmart turned to Aurora Organic Dairy, which runs several giant industrial milking operations in Texas and Colorado, each with as many as 10,000 cows. In 2007, the USDA sanctioned Aurora for multiple violations of organic standards. Earlier this year, the agency stepped in again, this time revoking the organic certification for Promiseland Livestock, which had been supplying supposedly organically raised cows to Aurora.

These days, Walmart’s interest in organic food seems to have ebbed. “Our observation is that they sell fewer organic products and produce now than four years ago,” said Kastel. Ronnie Cummins of the Organic Consumers Association agrees. Today, he says, “the proportion of their sales that is organic is the lowest of any major supermarket chain.”

Leveraging food deserts

Walmart has renewed its push to get into big cities, after trying and failing a few years ago. This time the company has honed a fresh strategy that goes right to the soft underbelly of urban concerns. In July, Walmart officials, standing alongside First Lady Michelle Obama, pledged to open or expand as many as 300 stores “in or near” food deserts.

Walmart sees underserved neighborhoods as a way to edge its camel’s nose under the tent and then do what it’s done in the rest of the country: open dozens of stores situated to take market share from local grocers and unionized supermarkets. Stephen Colbert dubbed the strategy Walmart’s “Trojan cantaloupe.” For example, an analysis by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer’s office estimates that if Walmart opens in Harlem, at least 30 supermarkets, green grocers, and bodegas selling fresh produce would close.

For neighborhoods that are truly underserved, it seems hard to argue with the notion that having a Walmart nearby is better than relying on 7-11 and McDonald’s for meals. But poor diet, limited access to fresh food, and diet-related health issues are a cluster of symptoms that all stem from a deeper problem that Walmart is likely to make worse: poverty. Poverty has a strong negative effect on diet quality, a 15-year study recently concluded, and access to a supermarket makes almost no difference.

Neighborhoods that gain Walmart stores end up with more poverty and food-stamp usage than communities where the retailer does not open, a study published in Social Science Quarterly found. This increase in poverty may owe to the fact that Walmart’s arrival leads to a net loss of jobs and lowers wages, according to research [PDF] by economists at the University of California-Irvine and Cornell.

Walmart has also been linked to rising obesity. “An additional supercenter per 100,000 residents increases … the obesity rate by 2.3 percentage points,” a recent study concluded. “These results imply that the proliferation of Walmart supercenters explains 10.5 percent of the rise in obesity since the late 1980s.”

The bottom line for poor families is that processed food is cheaper than fresh vegetables — and that’s especially true if you shop at Walmart. The retailer beats its competitors on prices for packaged foods, but not produce. An Iowa study found that Walmart charges less than competing grocery stores for cereals, canned vegetables, and meats, but has higher prices on most fresh vegetables and high-volume dairy foods, including milk.

Local? I don’t think that word means what you think it means.Photo: Walmart Stores

The future of food?

We stand to lose a lot if Walmart keeps tightening its grip on the grocery sector. Signs of a revitalized food system have been springing up all over — farmers markets, urban gardeners, neighborhood grocers, consumer co-ops, CSAs — but their growth may well be cut short if Walmart has its way.

“People need to keep an eye on the values that are at the root of what is driving so much of this activity around the food system,” said Kathy Mulvey, policy director for the Community Food Security Coalition.

Walmart is pushing us toward a future where food production is increasingly industrialized, farmers and workers are squeezed, and the promise of fresh produce is used to conceal an economic model that leaves neighborhoods more impoverished. Are we going to let it happen, or are we going to demand better food and a better world?

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Guatemalan Blue (Banana type)
  
• Daikon Radish
• Baby-Salad Greens Mix ( Lettuce-green & red, Mizuna-green & red, Kale-green & red )
• NEW: tender young Collards
• Green Tomatoes
• Lettuce (whole)
•  Arugula
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Garlic

The New Agtivist: Inga Haugen, farm girl at large

by Sarah Henry

Inga Haugen may look a little like Heidi, but she’s a modern-day farm girl through and through. In 1993, her family moved to the small town of Canton, Minn. (population less than 400), to Springside Farm, 230 acres of rolling hills and grazing land that was then a hobby farm. Her mother, Bonnie, wanted to run a working farm; she figured it would be a way to earn a living while she raised three children: Inga, now 30, Olaf, now 27, and Thor, now 24. Springside was in one of the worst places to farm in the county, with steep hills and runoff issues, but the family (her father, Vance, kept a town job) turned it into a viable, seasonal, dairy operation.

Haugen went off to college and worked in a library before moving back to the farm three years ago because she was homesick for the land. She signed on for a stint running the family dairy business, an operation on the small side of medium, with some 100-150 cows, whose milk is sold through Swiss Valley Farms Cooperative.

A little over a year ago, Haugen handed over the reins of the dairy business to her brother Olaf, and launched her own sustainable ranching enterprise, Farmgirl at Large, located within Springside Farm. She raises chickens, pigs, and cattle in a pasture-based system. She also has a fledgling oyster mushroom business. Recently, we heard from Haugen about what it’s like to be, as she calls herself, “a young, female, seasonal, sustainably minded, contrary farmer.” In addition to farming with a smaller footprint than many, Haugen has also been outspoken about the need for health care for small-scale food producers.

Q. Is farming in your DNA?

A. Absolutely. I call myself a third-generation farmer, but when I traced my family lineage in Norway as far back as I could, we’re something like the 15th generation of farmers. As I like to point out, everyone has a farmer in his or her family tree. You only have to go back about four generations to find someone farming in the family in some shape or form.

Q. What appeals to you most about working the land?

A. I love being able to go out in my own backyard to see the ladies [cows]. It’s just my dog and I, and we look after the ladies and produce quality food for people that I feel good about. It’s gorgeous out here. The animals are lovely. Milk is healthy. It’s a good life.

Q. Can you describe your company, Farmgirl at Large?

A. It’s a very small-scale operation: I generally have 10-20 pigs at a time, 75-100 chickens at a time, and about three beef cattle a year. I wanted to do something that was an offshoot of the existing farm business, but under my own steam. I like the synergies of the business. The pigs drink the waste milk. The chickens roam and pick up bugs that enhance their flavor and help the cows. The bulls, which are grass-fed, produce incredibly lean meat, and catch the ladies we might have missed through A.I. [artificial insemination]. So it’s very much a business that complements and diversifies the existing farm.

Q. Why did you start a website with the same name?

A. My website, Farmgirl at Large, is a venue to explain the philosophy behind my business, but it’s also a place where I can be an ambassador for all things agriculture — I was a dairy princess in high school, I had a crown and a sash and I got to ride around in parade floats and advance the dairy industry through public service — that kind of advocacy comes easily to me. I can talk about agriculture for hours.

Q. What are some of the challenges of running a small-scale farm?

A. The professional and personal are inextricably intertwined. I live in my workplace and I work from my home. There is always more I could do. Maybe an electric fence is sagging, so it’s shocking all the time and needs fixing. Maybe some hay bales need moving. There’s this triple bottom line around health that’s hard to keep in balance: the physical farm, the business side, and your own well-being. It also appalls me that people leave farming because they can’t afford to give up a town job that comes with health benefits. Health care is a huge issue for people who farm the land. [Editor’s note: Inga went to D.C. last summer with The Center for Rural Affairs to lobby on behalf of small business owners for continued work on health-care reform.]

Q. What do you do to reduce the environmental impact your farm has?

A.: Keeping the 230 acres in grass is the first thing. We’ve got highly erodible land and regular slopes, too. More grass equals more held water, like [in] a sponge, as opposed to topsoil erosion and sheeting water into our creeks and waterways. We used managed rotational grazing to allow access to vulnerable areas sparingly and appropriately. I try to stack enterprises, so one set of “waste” can be used elsewhere. Every time you make a system more efficient, you reduce the energy inputs, which is positive environmentally. First reduce, then reuse, then recycle. We reuse the water [from the milk chilling system] to wash down the barn, which is [then] held until we can use it when the fields need irrigation.

Q. Can you describe your philosophy around raising livestock for slaughter?

A. I love animals. Working with critters is my favorite part of farming. I work hard to accommodate the needs, wants, and likes of the animals in my care. Pigs are naturally curious, so they’re given something new to play with every now and again. Cattle are herd animals, so I try to make sure they’re never isolated. These are simple quality-of-life issues, beyond adequate living quarters, water, and quality food, but they make a big difference to the animals. I’m an omnivore, and I stole my approach to raising animals for meat from a friend: Every animal should only have one bad day in its life and wake up not knowing when that day arrives.

Q. What’s it like being in an area where the majority of the meat is produced in an industrial fashion?

A. I get some funny looks, but I do business with the same families [who run the big farms] when they buy a half a hog from me for their own freezer. A lot of farmers raise the food they eat in totally separate ways from anything they sell, so people selling and eating the same things [is] seen as being a bit on the odd side.

Q. Can you outline your position on the organic issue?

A. We’re not a certified organic farm, though we adhere to organic principles where we can, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with them. Where they don’t work for me is when I have a sick cow in the herd. I want that animal to have a healthy, positive life, and if I see a cow that needs a little bit of help, then I will give it an injection of antibiotics. We use medicines but we do so sparingly. And, of course, we don’t sell that milk.

Q. Do you have thoughts about the Farm Bill?

A. Yes, how long do you have? The Farm Bill is complex, it has so many parts, and a lot needs to change. I was appalled to find out about the secret Farm Bill; I’ve been following the developments on Food Democracy Now! The Farm Bill needs to have transparency for people to have any faith in what happens with it. Oversight too. I think it’s reprehensible that certain interests are playing hardball about the programs that benefit our most vulnerable populations — I’m thinking here of SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program], Farm to School, and school lunch. I understand that we need to think about efficiencies of scale, and yet the lack of diversity in agriculture and the increase in monocrops by Big Ag — to the point where we have only five foods grown on a large scale — is criminal.

Q. What’s next?

A. I’d like to add some sheep in the mix. I enjoy working with those animals and people often ask for lamb. There are some competition concerns in terms of grazing land and the cows and some fencing issues, but I think it’s an option worth exploring for the future.

Q. Do you see yourself as a farmer for life?

A. I do. My dad says you shouldn’t turn your hobby into your profession, but farming runs so deep for me. I think it would kill me not to farm.

Sarah Henry is a freelance food writer based in Berkeley and the voice behind the blog Lettuce Eat Kale. Follow her on Twitter.

Occupy the Food System

by Willie Nelson
Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement, there’s a deeper understanding about the power that corporations wield over the great majority of us. It’s not just in the financial sector, but in all facets of our lives. The disparity between the top 1 percent and everyone else has been laid bare — there’s no more denying that those at the top get their share at the expense of the 99 percent. Lobbyists, loopholes, tax breaks… how can ordinary folks expect a fair shake?

No one knows this better than family farmers, whose struggle to make a living on the land has gotten far more difficult since corporations came to dominate our farm and food system. We saw signs of it when Farm Aid started in 1985, but corporate control of our food system has since exploded.

From seed to plate, our food system is now even more concentrated than our banking system. Most economic sectors have concentration ratios hovering around 40 percent, meaning that the top four firms in the industry control 40 percent of the market. Anything beyond this level is considered “highly concentrated,” where experts believe competition is severely threatened and market abuses are likely to occur.

Many key agricultural markets like soybeans and beef exceed the 40 percent threshold, meaning the seeds and inputs that farmers need to grow our crops come from just a handful of companies. Ninety-three percent of soybeans and 80 percent of corn grown in the United States are under the control of just one company. Four companies control up to 90 percent of the global trade in grain. Today, three companies process more than 70 percent of beef in the U.S.; four companies dominate close to 60 percent of the pork and chicken markets.

Our banks were deemed too big to fail, yet our food system’s corporations are even bigger. Their power puts our entire food system at stake. Last year the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Justice (DOJ) acknowledged this, hosting a series of workshops that examined corporate concentration in our farm and food system. Despite the hundreds of thousands of comments from farmers and eaters all over the country, a year later the USDA and DOJ have taken no action to address the issue. Recent decisions in Washington make clear that corporate lobbyists have tremendous power to maintain the status quo.

In November, the Obama administration delivered a crushing blow to a crucial rule proposed by the USDA (known as the GIPSA rule), which was meant to level the playing field for independent cattle ranchers. The large meatpackers, who would have lost some of their power, lobbied hard and won to leave the beef market as it is — ruled by corporate giants. In the same month, new school lunch rules proposed by the USDA that would have brought more fresh food to school cafeterias were weakened by Congress. Food processors — the corporations that turn potatoes into French fries and chicken into nuggets — spent $5.6 million to lobby against the new rules and won, with Congress going so far as agreeing to call pizza a vegetable. Both decisions demonstrate that corporate power wins and the health of our markets and our children loses.

Despite all they’re up against, family farmers persevere. Each and every day they work to sustain a better alternative — an agricultural system that guarantees farmers a fair living, strengthens our communities, protects our natural resources and delivers good food for all. Nothing is more important than the food we eat and the family farmers who grow it. Corporate control of our food system has led to the loss of millions of family farmers, destruction of our soil, pollution of our water and health epidemics of obesity and diabetes.

We simply can’t afford it. Our food system belongs in the hands of many family farmers, not under the control of a handful of corporations.

Kucinich: Protect Our Food Supply from Manufactured Crises

by Common Dreams

WASHINGTON - December 9 - Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today announced commonsense legislation that would prohibit open-air cultivation of Genetically Engineered (GE) pharmaceutical and industrial crops, preventing biological contamination of our food supply. The bill would also establish a tracking system to regulate and ensure the safety of GE pharmaceutical and industrial crops.

“We must take steps to prevent genetically engineered organisms from being grown in a way that could do irreversible damage to our food supply. Under pressure from profit-minded industry, we have already allowed the spread of genetically modified crops into our agriculture at great cost to our economy and with unknown effects on our bodies,” said Kucinich.

The Department of Agriculture has allowed more than 300 outdoor field trials of plants—including feed crops including corn, soybeans, rice, safflower, barley, alfalfa, mustard greens, peas, sugarcane, tomatoes, and wheat—which are genetically engineered to produce experimental pharmaceuticals, industrial enzymes and novel proteins. Those GE substances are not intended to be incorporated into food or to be spread into the environment or our food supply. Yet there are examples of such contamination, with enormously destructive consequences.

“Many Americans are unaware that crops that are genetically engineered to produce experimental pharmaceutical drugs are being grown in this country in the open, allowing them to contaminate conventional crops without detection. We cannot rely on industry to prevent the unintended spread of genetically engineered organisms,” said Kucinich.

H.R. 3554, The Genetically Engineered Safety Act, which would prohibit the open-air cultivation of genetically engineered (GE) pharmaceutical and industrial crops. The bill would prohibit the use of common human food or animal feed as the host plant for a genetically engineered pharmaceutical or industrial chemical. H.R. 3554 would also establish a tracking system to regulate the growing, handling, transportation, and disposal of pharmaceutical and industrial crops protect native ecosystems and traditional farms from the unstudied dangers of growing GE organisms. The legislation is part of a package of bills introduced by Kucinich, which includes H.R. 3553, the GE Right to Know Act.

“We have taken few steps to ensure that our own genetic experiments are kept in check. This commonsense legislation would simply ensure that our experimentation with genetic engineering and cloning do not disrupt our traditional food supply. When you are talking about the safety and stability of the food supply, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said Kucinich.

Guilty as charged

by Kathryn Gilje

Truth be told, there were tears in my eyes as I sat there, translating and tweeting amongst the bustling crowd of media and hundreds of people, most of them farmers. After an intensive public trial covering a range of human rights violations, on December 6, the jurors issued a scathing verdict to the six largest pesticide and biotechnology corporations, urging governments to take action to prevent further harm. The crowd erupted in a roar of applause, and later, congratulations were shared in at least seven languages. The verdict was handed down to the six largest pesticide corporations — Monsanto, Syngenta, Bayer, BASF, Dow and Dupont — collectively known as the “Big 6,” for their human rights violations, including internationally recognized rights to life, livelihood and health. The agrichemical industry is valued at over $42 billion and operates with impunity while over 355,000 people die from pesticide poisoning every year, and hundreds of thousands more are made ill. In addition, pesticide corporations have put livelihoods and jobs in jeopardy, including those of farmers, beekeepers and indigenous peoples.

The preliminary findings, to be elaborated and finalized by the jury over the next two weeks, include these recommendations for governments:

• Prosecute corporations for criminal liability, rather than civil liability only;

• Fully commit to and legislate for the precautionary principle; and

• Prevent corporations from directly or indirectly harassing and intimidating scientists, farmers and human rights and environmental defenders, in any form.

The tribunal was only made possible through the incredible collaboration of many people — and the support of 400 organizations and more than 7,000 individual people, worldwide. The Center for Food Safety, Alaska Community Action on Toxics, and Farmworker Association of Florida were key contributors in United States.

As for my part, I’m elated and exhausted, both. But that’s just tonight. Tomorrow, it’s time for the planning meeting for what comes next, and I’m energized and honored to take part, and for PAN to be part of the growing momentum around the world that seeks an end to corporate abuse, putting fairness and dignity in its place.

Nearly 30 years after the the original “Dirty Dozen” campaign that launched PAN International, I feel another global groundswell coming on.

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
Click here to check us out on Facebook

CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash -Spaghetti
  
• Daikon Radish
• Baby-Salad Greens Mix ( Lettuce-green & red, Mizuna-green & red, Kale-green & red )
• Anaheim Mild Chili Peppers
• Green Tomatoes
• Loose-left lettuce head
• Back: Arugula
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Garlic

Organic farming takes root in Arizona, strong growth predicted

by Cassondra Strande

WASHINGTON – For just over a year, Alegria Hayes and Lyle Ford have been growing micro greens and cacao organically on five acres of land in Sonoita, Ariz.

Hayes started growing the plants after moving from New York City to the desert, where she said she couldn’t find the type of natural, raw foods that make up 100 percent of her vegan diet.

At the urging of her partner, she later expanded her own private garden to what is now known as Awaken Organics, run out of a 10-by-20-foot greenhouse.

“We’re a very small operation, we produce 60 to 80 pounds a week,” said Hayes, who is working to get her farm certified as organic.

Small or not, Hayes and Ford are part of a growing move toward organic farming in Arizona, where the number of certified organic farms nearly tripled, from 26 in 2006 to 77 in 2008, according to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The state increase mirrors the exponential growth of organic farms across the nation, where the Agriculture Department says such farms jumped from 40 in 1997 to more than 12,941 in 2008. And the trend is expected to continue, with another tripling of organic farms between now and 2015, according to a report by the Organic Farming Research Foundation.

Foundation spokeswoman Denise Ryan said that recent changes in eating habits of Generation X have fueled the demand for certified organic produce and products. She attributes that increased demand to the public perception that healthy eating will improve overall well-being.

“I think we have a raised consciousness in this country and never before has health been more imperative,” Ryan said. “Organic farming provides a healthier alternative that is manifested in human health and economic health.”

Even with its newfound popularity, however, certified organic farms still accounted for only 13,742 acres of the 26.1 million farm acres in the state in 2007 – about 0.05 percent of the total, according the Agriculture Department statistics. The organic acreage in the state doubled in 2008, to just over one-tenth of one percent.

Arizona Farm Bureau spokeswoman Julie Murphree said she has noticed the increase and expects the trend to continue. She stressed, however, that standard farming and certified organic practices are both “extremely valuable, extremely healthy and extremely necessary in the food continuum.”

Murphree defines the “food continuum” as the range in types of farms.

“If we don’t embrace the entire food continuum we will not be able to produce the abundant and nutritious agriculture in Arizona that we do today,” Murphree said.

Hayes’ farm is not officially certified organic, but she is working toward it. The process to take her farm from the current certification of naturally grown to the next step, certified organic, requires her to keep up with paperwork and open her farm to peers who serve as inspectors.

Though some may be overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork – certified farmers have to log just about everything, from when each area was cleaned to what type of fertilizer was used – Hayes says it makes sense and actually helps her and her partner manage a farm as newcomers.

“We come from the outside, we’re not farmers for generations,” Hayes said.

Janice Smith said that although the certification process is a “tremendous amount of paperwork,” it is worth it because it keeps farmers accountable.

“It’s very worth the effort, not just for yourself but for the consumers eating your food,” said Smith. She and her husband, Byron, run an organic farm three hours north of Sonoita, in Wilcox.

Several years ago, the Smiths were also getting their start in organic farming, like Hayes. Today, their Sunizona Family Farms is run with the help of family and about 23 year-round, full-time employees.

Sunizona has been an Arizona certified organic farm since 2009. Of the 300 acres on the farm, only about 20 are used to grow seasonal crops and another three acres are used for year-round fruit and vegetable production in greenhouses there.

Smith said that besides being held accountable by the certification board, Sunizona has an open-door policy that lets any customer come in for a tour at anytime.

Sunizona takes organic one step further, describing its operation as “veganic,” meaning farmers there do not use any animal products in the production of their crops.

“We feel this is the future of farming,” Smith said. “We’re living in a time … where people want to know who grows their food.”

For Hayes, it’s been hard work so far, but she said she’s enjoying her new endeavor. She said being organic has been simple because, “nature takes care of everything.”

Making Local Food Real

by Mark Bittman
You might think it would be difficult to find a cheerful and optimistic farmer the year a hurricane wiped out most of the crop, but I did so in Burlington, Vt., the day after Thanksgiving. I was visiting the Intervale Center, a nonprofit that manages a 350-plus-acre flood plain not far from downtown.

The Intervale, which is on the Winooski River, has been farmland for nearly the entire time humans have lived in this region, not only because land that floods is especially fertile (think of the Nile), but because it isn’t much good for anything else. “The Intervale was always a smart place to grow food,” says Will Raap, the founder of Gardener’s Supply, headquartered in the Intervale. “It’s fertile and flat, and there’s plenty of water. And as Burlington grew it didn’t get developed because it floods.” Twenty-five years ago, part of it was planted in corn and much of the rest had become an informal dump.

Raap happened upon the land back then, saw its potential and teamed with Burlington Mayor Bernie Sanders (the now-heroic Vermont senator, with whom I was touring the Intervale Center) to begin seeding and incubating small businesses and farms in the Intervale. The Center’s goals are familiar ones, but worth repeating: to use the land responsibly and sustainably, to help farmers make a living, and to make needed connections among people, farms and food.

A $7,000 loan from the city helped create a central composting facility (it’s now a profitable business), but the big plan was to provide a home for new farmers, on plots ranging from one to 40 acres. This goal was quickly realized, beautifully, and the results form the core of a regional system that’s providing local food in significant and ever-increasing amounts.

Some of these farms have relied heavily upon the C.S.A. (community-supported agriculture) method of selling their crops. In a C.S.A., devoted consumers pre-pay the farmer for a percentage of the crop, usually stopping by the farm once a week to pick up a box of assorted produce. In theory, whatever is harvested that week is equally divided among shareholders. (In practice it’s more complicated than this, but let’s keep it simple.)

But C.S.A.’s have limitations for both consumers and farmers. To attract customers, farmers must diversify and plant 20, 30, even 40 crops annually, trying to grow each in quantities sufficient to satisfy all the shareholders. When it comes to kale, a prolific crop whose season begins early and ends late, this isn’t a problem. When it comes to eggplant, tomatoes, strawberries, peaches or any number of other foods whose abundance isn’t easily guaranteed … well, that’s serious work. (A common lament goes something like, “My basket had three strawberries and four pounds of kale!”) Then there are the inconveniences of picking up the box at the farm, usually at an assigned time. (This can also be a chance for community members to socialize and connect with farmers.)

For both farmers and consumers, there is also risk. When the floods associated with Hurricane Irene came this fall, some C.S.A.’s virtually ceased operations for the year. Bad for everyone.

Thus C.S.A.’s have limited impact in moving the food system forward, because most of the population prefers more traditional shopping. Farmers’ markets address this to some extent, which is why they’re growing in both number and popularity. (On fine days, the Burlington farmers’ market is visited by thousands of people.) But farmers’ markets tend to open only one or two days a week, and attendance falls off when the weather turns.

In Burlington and elsewhere two other factors make life easier for both farmers and consumers. Here it’s the presence of the 38-year-old City Market, a community-owned downtown supermarket where, says general manager Clem Nilan, the main problem with locally sourced food isn’t demand but supply. (Sales of local produce have more than doubled in recent years, says Nilan, as has membership.)

Because the market can sell all the local produce it can get, it can guarantee purchases from farmers and even sometimes extend payments in advance. Thus a farmer like Thomas Case, who lost most of his late-season crop to Irene, can end up owing money (or product) to the market. Yet although Case — who has been farming in the Intervale for 10 years — is hardly happy about this, his optimism dominates his attitude: “This was a hard year, of course, but the way things have developed has made it easier in general for us to make a living.”

Selling to a market rather than to individuals allows farmers to specialize; half of Case’s production, for example, is now in carrots and salad greens, and he can sell all he can grow with no trouble. And local farmers’ lives are made even better by the Intervale Center’s latest contribution to the network, the Intervale Food Hub, a next-generation C.S.A. that aggregates produce from 24 farmers, divides it into shares and distributes it to consumers at their workplaces, thus minimizing risks and maximizing convenience.

“We’re getting to the next ring of consumers with the Food Hub,” says Travis Marcotte, the Intervale Center’s executive director, “people who like the concept of the C.S.A. but were unlikely to participate in the traditional way.” He’s projecting that the Food Hub will grow by 20 percent in both membership and sales next year, and involve more farmers from all over the area. (Already, only about a quarter of the Food Hub’s produce comes from farms within the Intervale.)

Burlington and the Intervale Center are hardly alone in building a more sophisticated system that moves food from small- and medium-size farms to local consumers via C.S.A.’s, farmers’ markets, local supermarkets (and, increasingly, national chains) and hubs. Each of these things is happening nationwide, and barely a day goes by that I don’t hear from someone touting their local food scene, each of which appears to be at a different stage and has some innovative twist.

Yet as more sound models like the one in Burlington appear, it will become easier for those communities that are newly trying to increase their production and consumption of local food to do so. As Senator Sanders says, “We’re in the midst of a food revolution.” On visits like this it really seems that way.

Occupy Your Food Supply: Radical Farmer’s March Aims to Bridge Urban-Rural Divide, Focus in on “Food Justice”

by Anna Lekas Miller

“I have a confession to make,” said Jim Gerritsen, an organic seed farmer from northern Maine, “This is my first time in New York City. I had no good reason to come until today.”

Jim Gerritsen was one of several farmers, farm laborers, and food activists that came from across the country to the country to the Farmer’s March this past Sunday—a rally and march designed to connect the struggles of rural farmers held captive by the corporate control of big agriculture with the Occupy movement in New York City.

The march began with music and a rally of speakers in La Plaza Cultural, one of New York City’s many community gardens, with over 500 rural farmers, urban farmers, food laborers, community activists and former occupiers—some wearing overalls and straw hats, and others wearing “we are the 99%” buttons.

“I am here today to let you know that America is broken,” Gerritsen continued, addressing the diverse multitude. “The corporate control of our government and our economy—and the joblessness that it is creating—is directly related to the corporate dominance of big agriculture and the quality of food that you are getting.”

In addition to being a farmer, Jim Gerritsen is the President of the Organic Seed Grower and Trade Association (OSGTA)—which this past spring filed a lawsuit with Monsanto, the corporate giant that controls 93% of the soybeans and 80% of the corn growth in the United States. Since March, over eighty-two other seed businesses, trade organizations, and family farmers—representing more than 300,000 people—have joined in the lawsuit, fighting the corporate monopoly of genetically modified seeds that are crushing organic farmers out of business and giving consumers little choice over whether or not their food is genetically modified.

Monsanto is not the only monopolistic offender—though it is one of the most influential through the extreme prevalence of corn and soybean chemical ingredients in processed foods. Four firms now control 84% of beef packing and 66% of beef production—over the past thirty years, the farming sector has lost over 90% of their pork producers, over 80% of their dairymen, and over 40% of their ranchers. Farmers are being forced into bankruptcy by corporate conglomerates.

Destroying jobs and economically devastating small farmers is only one element of the food industry’s particular strain of corporate greed. Eradicating farmers in favor of corporate mass production pushes their unregulated, heavily processed food on consumers. In addition to having little choice to begin with, this food is far more affordable by merit of its mass production.

As a result, more and more people—especially in lower income communities—are experiencing the health affects of genetically modified fats and sugars. It is no coincidence that obesity is directly correlated to income level, and that cases of diabetes, hypertension, and other obesity-related illnesses are concentrated in low-income communities, and often communities of color.

The reality is, most ordinary consumers in the ninety-nine percent are more concerned with trying to live within their means than making consciously healthy decisions. Economically, it makes more sense to purchase a filling fast food hamburger, especially when it is the same price as fresh fruits and vegetables. In trying to live from day-to-day, consumers lose track of long-term health consequences of their decisions, fueling the corporate supply with their continual demand.

As corporations become conglomerates and crush and replace small farmers, healthy food quickly becomes a privilege, rather than a right. And when storms caused or worsened by climate change like Irene come along, small farmers pay the biggest prices. Many of upstate New York and tri-state area farms lost a huge percentage of their harvest this year–and, one speaker at the rally said, while the media declared the storm over because the city was spared, they found themselves vulnerable to fracking companies who wanted to move in onto the land.

In the past, the food movement—like many movements—has been seen as a fringe movement, especially among urban audiences. What happened on the farm stayed on the farm, and products like organic heirloom tomatoes were more of a symbol of green elitism, rather than a means of resisting the toxic corporate machine.

Then along came Occupy Wall Street—a movement that combines its roaring collective fury at Wall Street and its radical, idealistic design to merge previously marginalized progressive movements into a vision for a new society to build over our broken, unsustainable system. One of these demands is food. Not just any food—food that is produced outside of the corporate machine, simultaneously protecting the livelihood of small farmers and ensuring the health of its eventual consumers.

In the days of the occupation at Liberty Plaza, the cooks in the kitchen formed alliances with many local, sustainable farmers, making sure that all of the food that they prepared was free of genetically modified organisms. A group called Feed the Movement formed, collecting donations to pay small, local farms for their contributions and thereby supporting both the occupy movement and small farmers. Several additional groups, such as Occupy Big Food and the Occupy Wall Street Sustainability Food Justice committee, also emerged, using the language of greed, inequality, and resistance mobilized by the occupy movement to bring awareness to the corporate stranglehold on the food industry.

However, until Sunday—aside from the occasional deliveries and donations—there was no organized urban-rural solidarity between farmers and occupiers. Though many farmers, such as Jim Gerritsen, were politically mobilizing against the corporate machine, these issues remained largely absent from the initial discourse on corporate greed, financial fraud, and joblessness. In rural communities—often conservative land where the most pervasive discourse on the occupy movement was negative—it was difficult for rural farmers to see themselves in the media’s images of the urban ninety-nine percent.

The Farmer’s March—organized by urban farmers and food activists within Occupy Wall Street–began to bridge this divide. While local CSAs and greenmarkets have been forming connections between urban consumers and rural farmers for several years (and pushing to get food stamps accepted and improve access to these bounties for low-income members), this took those small connections and made them large-scale.

For the first time, rural farmers and this new crop of daring urban activists met one another in a massive way, exchanging stories of corporate greed and marching together to demand basic economic justice. The march culminated in a seed exchange in Liberty Plaza, symbolizing the ultimate peoples’ resistance to the food industry’s corporate machine.

All photos by Anna Lekas Miller.

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
Click here to check us out on Facebook

CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash -Butternut
  
• Daikon Radish
• Baby-Salad Greens Mix ( Lettuce-green & red, Mizuna-green & red, Kale-green & red )
• Anaheim Mild Chili Peppers
• BACK: Italian Marconi Sweet Peppers
• BACK: Green Tomatoes
• BACK: Jerusalem Artichokes
• fresh Basil
• BACK: Sauerkraut (home made)
• Garlic

Staple Luck Club: Bartering Out Of Love For Human Exchange

By Amber Turpin

I have been officially inducted into a club. Instead of membership fees, shmancy pants events, and exclusivity, this club is promoting an age-old practice of bartering. The Staple Luck Club is the brainchild of my friend, chef, and food consultant Gabriel Cole. He has been tinkering with the concept for years–knowingly and subconsciously–via random food projects, backyard duck tending, and foraging enthusiasm.

“The initial inspiration was hanging out with friends who love food and always swapping homemade edibles with people,” Cole explains. “Someone would bring me jam and I’d give them granola. A friend often brings me lettuce for my ducks, so I give her some red wine vinegar I make, etc. The idea behind [the club] is to foster community, stay low on the food chain, and save money by bartering. I also read a great book called Nowtopia which talks a lot about new forms of commerce.”

For members, the pure and simple concept is enticing: Make a bunch of one type of thing (ideally using quality, local ingredients when possible), and bring it to a monthly gathering where everyone else attending has done the same. Then swap-shop, trading your item for other items that catch your eye or appetite.

Bartering, of course, is far from a new system. It was, in fact, the very first form of commerce before money was developed. As societies formed, people would trade goods and services for the things they needed as opposed to going out and buying them. According to the New World Encyclopedia, cattle and other livestock were the first units for trade, followed by shells, and then eventually cold hard cash.

Nowadays we are moving even further away from cash as we all depend on credit cards and device-free money exchange straight out of our bank accounts. But bartering still takes place in some societies, most common for communities that either have no access to currency or have a very unstable economy. In our financial climate today, we are seeing a resurgence in bartering due to the current recession.

There are definitely comparable bartering clubs out there, from Brooklyn to Austin and London, and while they all celebrate the same concept of valuing handmade goods over federal currency, Staple Luck Club incorporates services as well. “What started as food only quickly became house staples beyond edibles. Now people want to exchange homemade laundry detergents and toothpaste, massages and haircuts, clothes mending, and yard work…so I say give the people what they want and the more money we can all save while hanging out, the better,” states Cole.

With our nation’s 99 percent grappling to have a voice against the one percent, the nourishment one can receive from “handmade with love” feels even more quenching these days. The community that develops over homemade recipes or personal services brings people into contact with each other–a reprieve from our often impersonal Internet world. Lucky for me, I can trade my product for a 10-minute massage, or bring along a pair of ripped jeans for repair in exchange for my jar of pear butter.

The Free Farm

–by Pancho Ramos

We are not growing fruits and veggies. We are facilitating the growth of soil and community.  The food is a byproduct. We’re mostly giving back to Mother Earth, and in the process, enjoying the co-creation of the Belovedhood.

This is the revelation I got when I met hermano Tree. From my perspective, this is Gandhi’s constructive program at its best, revamped for the 21st century. Gandhi used the spinning wheel as both physical embodiment and symbol for radical change. Today, the foundation for social justice is local and healthy food — our “spinning wheel” for the 21st century. For the last few years, I’ve been close to an amazing man named “Tree,” to learn how to facilitate this construction.  If you know him, you know that he is full of wisdom. When you are in his presence, meaningful work flows naturally. In his non-hierarchical, nonviolent, gentle way to suggest activities, one feels compelled to be of service. It could be in a park or an urban farm or a soup kitchen or a school yard, this love to serve and be kind permeates one’s soul. And it becomes contagious.

Being close to Tree has given us the privilege to witness first hand his incredible energizing schedule. I wanted to know how it is  possible for a human being to have such intense work days and still be generous with all beings.

A hint of the answer to the question: “How is it possible that a human being could have such intense work days and still be generous with all beings?” comes from Peace Pilgrim. She said:

Now there is living to give instead of to get. As you concentrate on the giving, you discover that just as you cannot receive without giving, so neither can you give without receiving – even the most wonderful things like health and happiness and inner peace. There is a feeling of endless energy, it just never runs out, it seems to be as endless as air. You seem to be plugged in to the source of universal energy.

Tree does all this, so that you and I, and all those families from different backgrounds can have fresh local organic food. We were thrilled to see that now there are entire families from the Mission who are coming to the stand. Families from the part of the Planet we call China, Mexico, Guatemala, Yemen, India; people who speak Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Farsi, Arabic, Hindi, English; and lots of children, plenty of children.  It is a wonderful experience to foster this intercultural interaction and get nourished by their smiles and laughter. Some of our fliers are now in Spanish and Mandarin.

The Free Farm Stand is definitively a great experiment in the joy of serving our diverse families in the Earth Community, as is the Free Farm.

Under Tree’s servant leadership, all of a sudden, 40 volunteers at the farm can work harmoniously. As sister Britney and I write this piece from the Free Farm, there are people: harvesting for the free farm stand; building a terrace; beautifying the labyrinth; watering the beds and isolated pots; preparing the table for the vegan lunch at noon; planting seeds in the greenhouse; washing the produce for the 1pm farm stand; guiding visitors to show some of the magic of the farm; carrying wheelbarrows –or taking a nap in one of them– full of mulch to nourish the paths; turning the compost; taking pictures for the blog and writing a post to celebrate all of this work and the work that can’t be described with metrics.

The diversity of the people volunteering honors and matches the rich diversity of life in the farm. On the one hand, the farm is filled with people of brown, black, white skin; a 1 yearold whose mom joined the yoga and meditation sessions in the morning; young people from both Standford and the UC Berkeley; teens from all backgrounds sharing their wisdom; enthusiastic elders from the neighborhood; people without houses and without money giving away all they have: their time, love and energy; Christians, a Buddhist monk, secular people, anarchists, Jews, Muslims, Native Americans all united in this church without walls. With this diversity, we come together, work together, learn together, and share. On the other hand, the farm is inhabited by a red tail hawk –who has made the farm her source of mice and rats– by ravens, hummingbirds, pigeons, worms, snails, ants; bumble bees, bees that live in hives and bees that live buried in the soil, who knows what fascinating interactions are happening beneath the surface of the beds. We learn from this animal world too, just as we learn from the diverse human worldviews that the farm draws together.

Many of us enjoy our volunteer work at the Free Farm because we believe that healthy _local_ food is the foundation of social justice. While 93 percent of the varieties of crops have gone extinct in the part of the Planet we call the U.S. –and all over the World– city kids, like many of us, are learning how to facilitate the growth of food and how to let some crops go to seed.  The concepts of both regeneration (not sustainability) and community are being shared and practiced. We are planting seeds of generosity and harvesting kindness to and from the community.

With this growth of soil and community, local neighbors are getting more and more involved. As these neighbors volunteer at the farm and receive its produce, a circle of giving and receiving is emerging. In this gift economy, we are able to provide for one another and cultivate compassion and care. As we shared before, the effects of the farm do not end within the Western Addition neighborhood here in San Francisco.  They carry over to the Mission, where the surplus food produced by the farm is given away as an act of unconditional love.  We don’t believe that in a pollution-violence based economy only people with financial resources can consume healthy local organic food. We believe and practice that everybody can and must be nourished with healthy local food and healthy entertainment. We are doing our best to treat each other as family. And our family is widening, indeed. There is a palpable love and acknowledgement to take care of our elders, including Page and Margaret’s initiative to make the farm more accessible to them:

Why is it that some of us forget, when we are adults, how wonderfully interdependent and vulnerable we are when we are just mere babies or respectable elders? This is what the young generations are learning in shared servanthood with the guidance of people like hermano Tree. He is one of those people that you want to live in community with in order to change our thing-oriented society to a people-oriented society, one meal at a time. As our friends from Growing Cities captured in this video: “Food is a such unifier. Food is a (r)evolution right now.”

Through the act of freely giving away healthy and local produce, unjust food systems–like the one in this part of the Planet, where kale is often not affordable for many, yet unhealthy hot dogs and sodas cost less than a dollar–are challenged and a community is built.  It is the love and dedication of volunteers that makes this possible.  And it is this same love and dedication which has an infectious tendency on others, keeping the farm and the stand energized and thriving.

In other words: feed all, serve all, love all.

These were our two seeds as Free Farmers, 

May all become compassionate, courageous and wise.

Britney, Pancho and Adelaja

Exposing the Shame: A Critical Look At Farm Worker Housing

By Gail Wadsworth There is a sense of pride in this trailer park and the public spaces surrounding the trailers are, for the most part, pleasant, and clean. But it’s clear that the trailers are old and in some cases unsafe. In fact, there are a couple of trailers that have collapsed and are sitting in place with the contents extruding. This is home to a community of farm workers and their families just outside of Stockton, California.

In this site, the residents own their own trailers. When compared to many other U.S. farm workers, they are a lucky group. All across the country farm workers face housing challenges. For those who care about a sustainable food system, understanding where the workers who produce your food live and supporting policies to abolish substandard conditions for workers is essential.

At the trailer park in Stockton, trailers had had no gas to operate stoves and hot water heaters for over 45 days. In some cases, residents were building fires outside to cook and heat water for washing. The septic systems from several of the units had failed and leaked sewage onto the ground outside. According to several long-term residents, the management routinely breaks promises to improve services. The health department and building inspectors appear blind to violations. But, according to residents, the sheriff remains at the ready for evictions. Trailer owners are reluctant to withhold rent for their lots and are also unwilling to complain to county officials because they fear their trailers will be condemned and they will lose their investment and homes.

Another example of farm worker housing in the Stockton area is an urban squatter camp beneath an underpass between a low-income neighborhood and an industrial zone. Situated 15 feet below the grade of the street the makeshift shacks are hidden from view. The water source for the residents of this camp is a leaking valve that has been tapped and is being piped into an open hole in the ground. It’s not clear how many people live in this camp but many of the residents work in nearby farm fields.

There is a marked absence of current, scientifically rigorous research to inform policy aimed at developing strategies to provide safe and affordable housing for foreign-born U.S. farm laborers. In fact, in California, where a majority of U.S. farm workers live, there has been no statewide survey of farm labor housing conditions and certainly no thorough investigation of farm labor housing has been completed nationally. Evidence shows that the current farm laborer population differs significantly from the population for whom housing policy was created.

Recent Economic Research Services assessments of hired farm workers reveal a higher proportion who are undocumented and foreign-born than in the past. In addition, the majority of these workers are “settled” workers who do not migrate with the crops. “Follow-the-crop” migrants, for whom most housing policy is devised, actually comprise less than 12 percent of this workforce. According to the Farm Labor Survey, between 1950 and 2006, the number of family members working on farms declined, while the number of hired farmworkers per farm increased.

The federal Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act requires that each person who owns or controls housing specifically provided to migrant farm workers must ensure that the facility complies with the federal and state safety and health standards covering that housing. Migrant housing may not be occupied until it has been inspected and certified to meet those standards. So, regulated migrant housing tends to be of high quality.

Here is the current state of farm worker housing programs in some major agricultural states taken from data supplied by the respective state housing agencies.

Florida

Every year, approximately 150,000 to 200,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers and their families travel and work in Florida. Currently, the Florida migrant labor camp program issues over 700 permits that ensure housing that meets or exceeds legal standards for 34,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers, and their families. That’s assured safe housing for only 17 percent of the seasonal agricultural workforce in that state.

Texas

There are an estimated 212,112 migrant farm workers and family members in Texas households. Right now, 31 migrant labor housing facilities, licensed by the Texas housing department, provide housing to a total of 3,245 persons. That’s housing for 1.5 percent of the estimated population of farm workers. Because of the great difference between the estimated number of migrant farm workers and the amount of housing provided by licensed facilities, the majority of farm workers and their families live in rented houses, apartments, motels, travel trailers, shacks, tents or even automobiles.

California

Currently, there are 24 public migrant housing centers in California exclusively reserved for the use of families, with no provision whatsoever for unaccompanied workers. Typically open for only six months during the local peak agricultural season, these labor camps altogether provide housing for 1,903 families. Prospective residents must have traveled at least 75 miles from their permanent place of residence and meet strict low-income requirements. Most centers are under the administration of a county housing authority.

The exclusion of unaccompanied and undocumented workers from the units that were built or rehabilitated with federal funds indicates that the vast majority of today’s migrant farm laborers are ineligible for public housing. Despite substantial increases in farm labor employment and shifts in the regions where workers are needed, the number of facilities in the state have decreased by two since 2000 reducing the number of units by 204.

Washington

In Washington, the population of migrant and seasonal farm workers and their family members is estimated at 289,000 individuals in 67,000 farm worker households. Of these, 70 percent live permanently in the state. A study to determine the population of farm workers in each county in the state and the need for housing shows a gap in housing in all counties ranging from less than 1 to 24 percent new units needed. Once the study was complete, the state set about creating a strategy to fund and build the needed units.

In 2003, the Washington State farm worker housing trust, a nonprofit, was formed to address the housing issue. As of 2008, the trust and its housing authority partners working with funding from state and federal programs had developed 1,002 community-based farm worker homes in 34 developments. The Trust continues to work at expanding housing development, developing tools to increase financing through public and private means and supporting local communities to create partnerships among farm businesses, farm worker advocates, affordable housing providers and others to create a more sustainable model for agricultural communities.

Nationwide

There are estimated to be three million migrant and seasonal farm workers at any given time in the United States. According to the Economic Research Service, housing conditions have long been substandard and there has not been any improvement in recent years. Despite an increased demand for hired farm laborers, farmers have become less likely to provide housing for them. The foreign-born share of the U.S. farm labor force has doubled within the past four decades. During that same time period, there has been a substantial decline in employer-provided housing for farm laborers, especially for those employed on a seasonal basis. The factors responsible for this housing decline include an employer response to strict regulations, the increase of farm labor contractors (FLC), and the Latinization of rural America.

Federal, state, and local housing development policies need to be enacted that encourage creation of farm worker housing. Agencies responsible for enforcing fair housing laws need to have the authority, motivation and resources available to prevent substandard conditions. Long-term financial commitments are needed in order to develop new housing and improve existing housing quality.

Government agencies can encourage the formation of coalitions to develop cooperative housing specifically for the agricultural worker population. Trust funds can be generated in a number of creative ways with funding earmarked for farm worker housing. But a stable, renewable source of funds needs to exist at all levels of government for affordable housing in rural regions. This development will only occur when policy is developed to address these issues. If you care about a sustainable food system, you should care about where the workers who produce your food live. Support policies that work to abolish substandard conditions for workers.

The living conditions faced by farm laborers in the U.S. expose the shame of spatial inequity experienced by rural regions. As long as the people who work in the fields where our food is produced live in unhealthy and unsafe conditions, our food system will never be sustainable.

Occupy the Pesticide Industry!

Kathryn Gilje

There are two things that PAN and Occupy hold deeply in common: (1) We know that corporate control of our government, economy and food system undermines our attempts to push forward real change. And (2) As government has failed to rein in the corporate occupation of our food and farms, we believe we must hold them to account ourselves. And so we move forward. PAN will bring the Big 6 pesticide corporations to rigorous, public trial on December 3, 2011 in Bangalore, India.

I will be there, testifying and reporting from the ground, alongside hundreds of others from the 99% —  farmers, farmworkers and scientists who feed our world. I hope to see you engaged and active, too.

A Calling Out

The pesticide industry has a long history of getting away with human rights abuses in part because there is no single set of laws to which they are accountable as global corporations, and in part, because they game and control the system:

• 49% of the global seed market and 74% of the global pesticide market are controlled by the Big 6: Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Bayer, Dow and BASF.

• Ten giant companies control 90% of the pesticide market. In the U.S., these powerful corporations have unprecedented influence on government regulators tasked with protecting public health and the environment from the dangers of their products.

• These pesticide/seed conglomerates control the tools available to grow food in the U.S.: through capture of public universities, aggressive contracts and marketing with farmers, and the bold-faced public lie that they can feed the world.

Responding with Dignity

We seek a governing system that works for the well being of our communities, around the world. And we know that the basic human rights to life, livelihood and health are agreements we hold as a people. These are conditions of our humanity, and of a fair society, and they should operate as a set of globally binding laws.

But until we the people hold corporations like Monsanto to account, none of us will be safe from the havoc wrought by the pesticide industry: the next Bhopal, from the epidemics of cancer, or the pesticides that travel on wind and water.

Stay tuned, we’ll be reporting from the ground throughout the tribunal. Meanwhile…

Take action » Join PAN International as we hold these corporations to account, and build a groundswell of people around the world who are bent on change. Add your name to the tens of thousands of people around the world calling for dignity, health and corporate accountability for human rights abuses.

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
Click here to check us out on Facebook

CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash -Spaghetti
  
• Daikon Radish
• Baby-Salad Greens Mix ( Lettuce-green & red, Mizuna-green & red, Kale-green & red )
• Anaheim Mild Chili Peppers
• NEW: Pepperoncini Peppers- mostly sweet , some might be mildly spicy
• NEW: fresh Basil
• Spinach
• Garlic

Pasture-raised or organic: Why we can’t do both

by Alexis Koefoed

My partner and I raise chickens for meat and eggs on 55 acres — a small farm by today’s standards. Along the way, I’ve had to make many tough decisions, be inventive, develop relationships with our customers, and work a lot of 14-hour days to insure our farm’s progress. The work is hands-on. I spend most of the day out in the pastures collecting eggs by hand, replenishing the birds’ food and water, building coops and shade houses, and managing compost piles. I’m proud of what we do — but I can’t afford to give the birds organic feed.

While certified organic feed is desirable, many chickens are fed organic grains but are still raised in confined quarters. And, when faced with the choice, I believe that treating animals well — and giving them the freedom to walk and roam around, and enjoy their natural behaviors and habitats — is the most important piece of the puzzle. Organic grains will not alleviate the inhumane conditions of overcrowded barns, poor housing, poor water quality, or lack of access to fresh pastures and forage (nor the diseases associated with those conditions).

Why do we have to choose? The answer — as is often the case in farming — is cash flow.

The cost of conventional grain has risen 30 percent since the beginning of 2011. This is a considerable increase, since we already spend over $8,000 a month on feed. By our calculations, organic feed would cost as much as 75 percent more. In short, it’s financially impossible. If we passed the cost on to our customers (a step that would result in our birds retailing at over $35 apiece), we’d be priced out of the market.

Eggs from Soul Food Farm.Photo: Christy McDonald

My partner and I have spent considerable time discussing what to feed our chickens. And while conventionally grown feed is produced in ways that we don’t agree with, small-scale pastured chicken farming is already expensive. The farm fronts all the costs of purchasing and caring for both the laying hens and meat birds — and in the case of layers, we need to make a six-month commitment before we ever collect an egg to sell. When it comes to the meat birds, even after the 10 weeks it takes to raise them, we still have the costs of transporting them to the processor, slaughtering and packaging, and finally, transporting them to market. And because we’re small, we receive no discounts on feed or slaughter costs. And because we’ve focused mainly on chickens, we don’t sell an array of other products to offset our expenses.

By far the most daunting cost on our farm is the chickens’ feed. After researching our options, we chose to buy non-organic feed and do business with a small, owner-operated mill less than an hour away in Petaluma, Calif. This mill buys as much grain as they can from California growers; and they don’t add hormones, antibiotics, or anything synthetic to the grains. What I like about the mill is that I have the opportunity to talk with the people there every time I buy the feed. And that’s just as important as ensuring that our customers have the ability to visit the farm and talk directly to us as their farmers.

Photo: Kate Farnady

I don’t buy grain from sources where I cannot speak to a person involved in the growing or milling process. So many of the grains that go into animal feed come from other countries (China has recently become one of the leading producers of the soy used in animal feed, for instance). And I would want to investigate the conditions of their soil, water, and work environments before I invested in markets so far from my own farm.

Although it’s far from the current reality, one of the most transformative innovations — and I believe the most ideal method for grain acquisition — would be an independent system owned and controlled by local farmers. The grains would have to be grown far from pesticide and herbicide drift and GMO contamination. They could then be sold to a neighboring mill or cooperative. Local animal farmers could access organic grains at an affordable price; producers would have a constant and steady market year round; and communities would benefit from the rebuilding of rural economies. We’d also have transparency and traceability, straight from the field, to the mill, to the animals.

Friend of a farmer: Why small-scale ag needs community

by Steph Larsen

Tucked into the end of a recent New York Times article about young farmers were two frank paragraphs about a quiet reality many of us face:

Ms. Oakley said young farmers rarely discussed that lack of community, adding that she had seen the isolation break up marriages. At their Three Springs Farm, she and her husband, both 34, grossed $60,000 by their third season — a reason to celebrate by most standards — but they wished they had more company.

“It was just the two of us, every job we did together,” Ms. Oakley said. “It’s intense. We would gladly trade a little competition for more community and collaboration.”

Amen! As a young, very extroverted part-time farmer who didn’t grow up in a small town, I’d do just about anything for more of a sense of community.

Not only do farmers rarely discuss the isolation they face, but consumers and advocates who want to see more small, sustainable farmers on the land rarely talk about what it will take to build the kinds of communities where farmers want to live.

Picture in your mind the perfect farm, the farm where you would like your food to be grown. It’s a place that reflects all the values you hold dear. Feel the sun on your face; maybe there’s a slight breeze in your hair. Notice what plants are growing there, the vegetables and fruits and herbs that you love. Smell the rich, wet soil. Hear the birds in the trees or on the ground. Look in the face of the farmer. You know that she doesn’t use synthetic pesticides or inject her animals with hormones. She’s also making a living wage, has access to health care, and she can pay her workers a living wage too.

Now picture the community your farmer lives in. Picture the people that she is surrounded by, the neighbors he sees every day. Listen to the sound of the vibrant businesses in the place where she lives, feel the support and security that your farmer feels. Visit the school her children attend, the grocery store, and the cafe where she sells her products. Notice that the community nourishes her with positive support, just as the farmer provides the community with healthy food.

Sounds pretty good, don’t you think?

Unfortunately, most farmers don’t live in a supportive, idyllic community like the one you just pictured. In reality, producing food can be lonely. If you’re farming in a manner different from all your neighbors, it can even be alienating. Not to completely romanticize “the way things used to be,” but there were a lot more families here — in Nebraska, and all over rural America — 50 to 60 years ago. I drive by towns that once had several hundred people, a post office, and a school; now there are only a few houses left. Everything else has been bulldozed to plant corn. People were lonely then too, but at least there were a handful of other people there canning food or tending livestock, and you could do these things together.

If we’re going to bring 100,000 new farmers onto the land, as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has suggested, we’ll need more people who are willing to step up and grow our food. Whether they live in urban, rural, suburban, or frontier places, farmers need to know they’re part of a web of other people who care about and value their work. Even those of us who lean towards fierce independence want to know we’re not alone.

I live five miles outside a town of 850 people that could be more vibrant, more open to my ideas and goals as a farmer. I know that the customers who buy our eggs and lamb appreciate the work I do to make the food they eat, but I don’t see them every day. (In fact, because I sell at an online farmers market, I rarely see any of my customers at all.) There are one or two other farmers in the area who grow things like we do, but we see them about every other month. Folks in my town are nice people, but they generally see nothing wrong with chemical farming or genetically modified seeds, as far as I can tell. Rarely does anyone think that farming without these technologies might be worth something extra. We stand by our values and practice sustainable agriculture, but pay the price of being seen as outsiders.

Growing food can be fun and rewarding. But for me, and many others like me, much of the enjoyment slips through my fingers like soil if there’s no one to share it with.

So what can you do? At the time of year when everyone is contemplating thankfulness, one place to start is with the farmers in your life. Find out what kind of community they live in, and what you could do to help them feel more nourished. Smile when you see them. Write them a thank-you card, make them a gift, or express in some other way that you appreciate their hard work. You might think of them every time you eat their products, so why not give them something that will remind them just as often that their customers are grateful? Bring as much joy to their lives as they bring to yours with the food they grow. Perhaps you’ll find that by building your farmer’s community, your own community is strengthened too.

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Mayo Kama ( Sonoran ancestor of butternut squash)
  
• Daikon Radish
• Baby-Salad Greens Mix ( Lettuce-green & red, Mizuna-green & red, Kale-green & red )
• Anaheim Mild Chili Peppers
• Surprise Bag of Mild to Hot Chili Pepper varieties
• NEW: Spinach
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Garlic

Featured Vegetable: Spinach

History of Spinach:
Spinach is thought to have originated in ancient Persia (Iran). Spinach made its way to China in the 7th century when the king of Nepal sent it as a gift to this country. Spinach has a much more recent history in Europe than many other vegetables. It was only brought to that continent in the 11th century, when the Moors introduced it into Spain. In fact, for a while, spinach was known as “the Spanish vegetable” in England.

Description:

Calorie for calorie, leafy green vegetables like spinach with its delicate texture and jade green color provide more nutrients than any other food. Spinach belongs to the same family (Amaranthaceae-Chenopodiaceae) as Swiss chard and beets and has the scientific name, Spinacia oleracea. It shares a similar taste profile with these two other vegetables, having the bitterness of beet greens and the slightly salty flavor of Swiss chard.

Popeye popularized spinach, but it’s too bad he ate it out of a can. Fresh spinach retains the delicacy of texture and green color that is lost when spinach is processed. Raw spinach has a mild, slightly sweet taste that can be refreshing in salads, while its flavor becomes more acidic and robust when it is cooked.

There are three different types of spinach generally available. Savoy has crisp, creased curly leaves that have a springy texture. Smooth-leaf has flat, unwrinkled, spade-shaped leaves, while semi-savoy is similar in texture to savoy but is not as crinkled in appearance. Baby spinach is great for use in salads owing to its taste and delicate texture.

Spinach is an excellent source of bone-healthy vitamin K, magnesium, manganese, and calcium; heart-healthy folate, potassium, and vitamin B6; energy-producing iron and vitamin B2; and free radical-scavenging vitamin A (through its concentration of beta-carotene) and vitamin C. It is a very good source of digestion-supportive dietary fiber, muscle-building protein, energy-producing phosphorus, and the antioxidants copper, zinc and vitamin E. In addition, it is a good source of anti-inflammatory omega-3 fatty acids, and heart-healthy niacin and selenium.

A Few Quick Serving Ideas

• Add layers of steamed spinach to your next lasagna recipe.
• Pine nuts are a great addition to cooked or steamed spinach.
• Spinach salads are a classic easy and delicious meal or side dish.

Our Hero: Maisie Greenawalt of Bon Appétit Management Company

by Leslie Hatfield

The social responsibility efforts of most corporations are met with skepticism by many in the good food movement, but Bon Appétit Management Company, an on-site restaurant service moving swiftly and consistently toward ever more ambitious sustainability standards — and influencing suppliers, chefs and eaters along the way — serves for even the most jaded among us as a shining example of a truly mission-driven business, in large part due to the contributions of vice president of strategy Maisie Greenawalt.

Maisie grew up in Santa Cruz, where it was mainstream to eat local eons ago, but rather than preach to the not-yet-converted, she lets the food served in Bon Appétit’s 400-plus cafeterias speak for itself. On labor issues, however, she takes a more direct approach — her most recent major project, TEDxFruitvale, focused entirely on farmworker justice, a topic that  has only gained serious attention over the last few years.

We recently caught up with Maisie to congratulate her on TEDxFruitvale, get the inside story of Bon Appétit and as  we do with all of Our Heroes, find out more about what brought her to her inspiring work. Here’s what she had to say.
Q. You’ve contributed a lot to the good food movement over the years, most recently with the organization of TEDxFruitvale, a special conference dedicated to labor issues surrounding food production. The YouTube videos were amazing – how did the event go in person?

The feeling in the room was incredible. Having so many people focused on farmworkers, who are so often ignored, was truly special. Also, having farmworkers on the stage telling their stories, as well as some listening in the audience (via simultaneous Spanish translation) made the event different from any other I have attended. I was really proud to have been part of making that happen.
Q. And you worked closely with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers on the Code of Conduct associated with their enormously successful Fair Food Campaign, which has really helped get labor into the sustainable food conversation these last few years. What role do corporations have to play in the good food movement in general, as well as on the often-ignored labor front?
Because of our size, we also have the chance to shape the practices of large-scale growers and meat producers.  They have to at least listen to us. Corporations have clout that independent restaurants and nonprofits don’t have.

I think corporations like us have two roles to play. First, we can support small-scale agriculture in a really consistent way. With our thousand-plus Farm to Fork partners, we can take as much as they can grow, we can pay a fair price for it, at the time of delivery if necessary. We’re even starting to sign up for a season’s worth of carrots, onions and potatoes. Second, because of our size, we also have the chance to shape the practices of large-scale growers and meat producers. Right after TEDxFruitvale, I had a conversation with a big produce supplier who said to me, “You’re really stirring things up!” And I was like, “Yeah! Let’s talk about labor!” They have to at least listen to us. Corporations have clout that independent restaurants and nonprofits don’t have. Unfortunately many don’t always wield that power for good.
Q. You were also instrumental in the creation and launch of Bon Appétit’s Farm to Fork program in 1999, the Eat Local Challenge in 2005, and the Low Carbon Diet and Calculator in 2007. That’s kind of mind-blowing that these projects happened at a company that serves 120 million meals a year. So which project has been most exciting, and what do you see as the biggest milestone – so far – in the good food movement?

The first Eat Local Challenge Day in the fall of 2005 was a real watershed moment for us. We had never done a companywide promotion before. We give the chefs and managers as much latitude as possible to create menus and events that are right for their specific customers and their region, so asking everyone to hold an event on the same day was a risk from a company-culture standpoint. It was a big request — cook a meal using only ingredients from within 150 miles, except salt. Remember, this was before The Omnivore’s Dilemma came out, before locavore was in common usage.

Then Hurricane Katrina hit. We went back to the chefs and managers and suggested we cancel the challenge. They said “No! We have this farmer and that farmer lined up; we have our menu all planned! You can’t cancel it!” So we went ahead. We had anticipated a little resistance, but instead we got this incredible team and community effort. The other thing that was so exciting was that we had actually planned the Challenge thinking it would illustrate the loss of biodiversity, that the menus would be similar around the country. However, that wasn’t the case at all! It was the opposite — I was just blown away by the different crops and dishes that our chefs featured.
Q. You said in your opening remarks at the TedX event that you “have a pretty cool job.” It must be neat to feel like you’re effecting change on a large scale. There must be some frustrations, though – what is not moving fast enough? What keeps you up at night?

It still surprises me, sometimes  just how big the gap is between the good food movement and industrial agriculture, how little both sides understand each other. It’s frustrating but also exciting to overcome. Last week we were talking to a major meat producer about starting up a program that could get certified by Food Alliance [a rigorous third-party sustainability certifier]. And this company was so floored by what we were proposing they do. They said, “Everything we’ve done has always been aimed at reducing costs in production. No one has ever asked us to do things that are inefficient, that cost more.”  I’m still not sure they get the reasoning behind our requests. The partnership isn’t necessarily going to happen, but it feels great to be able to ask them those questions and introduce them to new ideas.

What really keeps me up at night, however, is the labor issue — that I’ve been working  on it for several years now, but I still don’t have a clear answer. After TEDxFruitvale, a large company approached me wanting advice on how to make sure the food they served was grown fairly. And I couldn’t just say, Here’s what you do. I’m frustrated by just how complicated the commodity supply chain is, the lack of transparency.
Q. I worked for several years for a concessionaire in Yellowstone National Park, and the food – particularly the food that was served in the employee dining rooms, which typically fed at least a few hundred people – was horrible. Can you speak to the difficulties of creating really delicious (let alone sustainable) food in an industrial setting?

Unfortunately, as you know, America is addicted to cheap food, and at places like Yellowstone, cost is definitely a challenge. Not just food cost but labor cost. Most people assume that our food costs are higher than our competitors, but it’s not always true that fresh, local, seasonal ingredients are more expensive than processed commodities. We do have higher labor costs because  we hired skilled staff who cook everything from scratch, but they can also save us money — we don’t waste any of those quality ingredients, we turn them into stock, sauces, soups.
Q. Thanks no doubt in part to your work there, Bon Appétit stands alone as a shining example of a relatively large company that is working – quickly and efficiently – to get sustainably produced food onto tables in unlikely settings. A lot of people within the movement, I think, ignore the contributions of companies like yours, but of course, because you guys feed so many people, you are really well-positioned to create a giant impact. How are you changing perceptions, especially with people outside of the movement?

Well, first of all, thank you. We hope we’re having an impact. The biggest way we try to reach people not in “the choir” is through our diners. You know, lots of university students do care about things like climate change and animal and worker welfare, but some just want to eat lunch before class. Same goes for our corporate and museum guests. We try not to preach at them, but instead to reach them through flavor first — we want them to go, “Wow, this food tastes amazing!” and then maybe notice that it came from a local farm. (We have signs for all our Farm to Fork vendors.) We also treat things like our Low Carbon Diet Day and Eat Local Challenge Day as opportunities to really inform our guests about how their food choices make a difference in greenhouse gas production and supporting farmers and their communities.
Q. On a personal level, what brings you to this work? Was there an “aha” moment for you?
We depend on farmworkers to pick our food. They deserve the same rights and protections as workers in any other sector — the right to get paid for hours worked, to be eligible for workers compensation and unemployment, to not be sexually harassed.

There was for the farmworker piece, for sure — I talked about this a little in my introduction to TEDxFruitvale. In 2009, I wasn’t really sure where I stood on the immigration issue. I was swayed by arguments that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t be allowed to get drivers’ licenses. And then I went to Immokalee, Florida, at the invitation of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, to see the conditions for tomato pickers firsthand. My eyes were really opened. This wasn’t about health insurance, or overtime. Those are red herrings. This was about basic human rights. No one, no matter how they entered this country, deserves to be threatened with physical violence by their employers, to be treated like animals and locked in overcrowded trailers at night.
Q. Along those lines – where did you grow up, what was the food culture like for you there (at home and in your community) and how do you feel that informs your work as an advocate for sustainably produced food?

I grew up in Santa Cruz, California, where buying from local, organic farms has long been mainstream. My mother is half Italian and obsessed with India, so both of those cuisines were prevalent in our household. My comfort foods are curries, Asian noodles or pastina with Parmigiano Reggiano.
Q. I presume like most passionate people, you work pretty hard. How do you unwind?

I try hard to take a real vacation each year — multi-week, foreign destination, usually involves good food. This year was France, next year will be trekking in Nepal (not for the food); in the past few years I’ve been to Belize, Thailand and Vietnam, and China. I also get regular massages, but I have to admit, I spend the first half of the time on the table thinking about work. More mundane relaxations — riding my cruiser bike to the Santa Cruz beach and needlepointing.
Q. We usually ask Our Heroes to choose (say you had a disposable magic wand) one – and only one! – specific policy they would like to see change. What would you change, if you could?

We depend on farmworkers to pick our food. They deserve the same rights and protections as workers in any other sector — the right to get paid for hours worked, to be eligible for workers compensation and unemployment, to not be sexually harassed.  (They are exempt from many federal employment laws.)
Q. Last question: Thanks for letting us interview you, your work really inspires us here at Ecocentric. Who are some of your Heroes?

In food, one of my heroes is Jennifer Dianto Kemmerly, the director of Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Seafood Watch program. Jenn makes a complicated issue simple and engaging no matter how much her audience does or doesn’t know about seafood. She’s been a tireless advocate for sustainable seafood, and I think the Seafood Watch program has had a huge impact on consumer awareness and industry purchasing.

Years ago I saw a documentary about Maya Lin, the designer of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC and her story has inspired me ever since. You know, she was just a 19-year-old Yale student when she won the design contest, and she had to fight so hard to get it built the way she imagined it. I found her confidence in her own vision incredible. It’s easy to be confident about what you’re doing when everyone agrees with you, not so much when you’re swimming against the tide of public opinion.

Our Incredibly Boring Post About the CFSC Conference

by Chris Bohner

What could be more riveting than reading about a conference that you probably didn’t attend?  Listening to Kenny G while stuck in an elevator?  Watching paint peel from the wall?  Reading the twitter feed from the conference?  Yes, we get it that conference roundups are extremely boring, but please just take your medicine and read our Our Top 12 Amazing Moments from the 2011 Community Food Security Coalition Conference: 1. When the activist/author Raj Patel reminded the attendees that the U.S. New Deal was a compromise that came about because radicals, socialists, and anarchists were making uncompromising demands in the streets, much like Occupy Wall Street is doing now. As he said this, the PowerPoint presentation was interrupted by the message “Threat Detected” from his anti-virus software.

2. Marching with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers with 200+ people to Trader Joe’s (which still refuses to sign the Fair Food agreement) and singing to the tune of Freddie Scott’s song  ”Hey Trader Joe, you’ve got what I need, so just pay a penny more (yeah just pay a penny more).”

3. Drinking delicious beer at Beer Revolution and sipping a Greyhound at the Van Cleef (yes, the staff at Real Food Real Jobs like their fermented and distilled beverages).

4. The folks from LiveReal and Real Food Challenge making the conference, well, a whole lot more real at their storytelling and organizing workshop.  After hearing more abstract speeches than we care to count in some other sessions, these young leaders captivated us with emotional stories of struggle and hope. And they opened up the space for the rest of us to do the same.

5. Hearing about the project to rebuild the New Deal coalition of rural farmers and urban workers from Food Democracy Now, George Naylor of the National Family Farm Coalition, Navina Khanna of LiveReal, and the Family Farm Defenders (the farmers that drove the tractors to support union workers in Wisconsin!).  This workshop underscored the importance of the Farm Bill, not only for farmers, but workers.  Follow what’s going on by going to the Food Democracy Now website.

6. Washing dishes at Occupy Oakland.

7. Listening to our fellow member of the Food Chain Workers Alliance, the amazing Saru Jayaraman of the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC).  ROC was founded by our union several months after 9/11 to continue UNITE HERE‘s efforts to support our members and their families who worked at Windows of the World. Saru has turned ROC into so much more – an independent voice for restaurant workers in 10 cities.

8. Learning about social media from Naomi Starkman of Civil Eats and Haven Bourque of HavenBMedia (if you haven’t noticed, we’re learning it on the fly), and experiencing the adrenalin rush of having some of our stuff tweeted by food writers we really respect like the Ethicurian and Hannah Wallace. Yes, we are gratuitously complimenting them so they continue to do so.

9. Amazed to learn from our friends at the Real Food Challenge that their beautiful doodles were actually a form of note taking. We are going to try and learn the method and throw away our yellow legal pads.

10. Inspired by the courage of the conference organizers to hold a plenary session about Walmart and corporate responsibility at the same time the company is throwing buckets of money at food groups. Even more inspired by the Walmart workers who spoke at the event

11. The public health world sometimes drives us crazy (like ignoring the structural causes of health and food insecurity), but Larry Cohen of the Prevention Institute was dynamite. Check out his group’s video We’re Not Buying It.

12. Damara Luce of Just Harvest USA/CIW telling workshop participants about the Student Farmworkers Alliance (SFA) organizing philosophy:

SFA is  ”dedicated to working with farmworkers for change but we will not act on their behalf, instead taking our lead from the workers themselves.  Farmworkers’ daily experience of working in sweatshop conditions in the fields puts them in the best position to build movements to change those conditions—and the larger power imbalances they stem from. In turn, we take responsibility for organizing our communities and colleagues to understand—and act on—our role in this movement.”

We think all organizations advocating for others can learn from this philosophy, and at the next conference we hope attendees get to hear a whole lot less from us and a whole lot more from food workers directly.

We truly want to thank the staff, board and host committee of the Community Food Security Coalition for putting on a tremendous conference.  Some of us at Real Food Real Jobs have been on the other side of putting on conferences, and we know how much hard work goes into making a successful event.

Baltimore’s can-do approach to food justice

by Vanessa Barrington

Beehives from Five Seed Farm and Apiary, one of the farms expected to begin production on Baltimore city land in 2012. Photo: Courtesy of Five Seed Farm and Apiary

Cities all over the country are addressing the lack of access to fresh and healthy food on the part of their residents, but few are in as much of a bind as Baltimore.

Like Detroit, and other cities known for their class and race disparity, Baltimore has been losing population and gaining vacant land at a fast pace in recent decades. The result is vast swaths of neighborhoods located far from grocery stores. Baltimore gave itself a D on its own 2010 Health Disparities Report Card, which found that 43 percent of the residents in the city’s predominantly black neighborhoods had little access to healthy foods, compared to 4 percent in predominantly white neighborhoods. Meanwhile, more than two-thirds of the city’s adults and almost 40 percent of high school students are overweight or obese.

In other words, the situation is a dire one. But it’s not all bad news; in fact, the city of Baltimore is going to great lengths to make a change.

Speaking on a panel at the recent Community Food Security Coalition Conference in Oakland, Calif., Abby Cocke, of Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, and Laura Fox, of the city health department’s Virtual Supermarket Program, outlined two approaches to address the city’s food deserts. Both were presenting programs that have launched since Grist last reported on Baltimore’s efforts to address food justice. And both programs come under the auspices of The Baltimore Food Policy Initiative, a rare intergovernmental collaboration between the city’s Department of Planning, Office of Sustainability, and Health Department. They also show how an active, involved city government and a willingness to try new ideas can change the urban food landscape for the better.

According to Cocke, Baltimore’s Planning Department has a new mindset. She calls it a “place-based” model. “In the past,” she says, “growth was seen as the only way to improve the city, but we’re starting to look at ways to make our neighborhoods stronger, healthier, and more vibrant places at the low density that they’re at now.”

Intercropping farms within the urban landscape

In cities like Oakland — where well-known urban farmer Novella Carpenter was slapped with a large fine recently, resulting in a public push for changes to the zoning laws  – shifts in urban policy have been largely reactive. Other cities, like Detroit, have taken a hands-off approach. Thanks to Baltimore’s Office of Sustainability, however, the city is actively encouraging the creation of small entrepreneurial farms on vacant lots to bring more healthy fresh food to city residents.

In 2010, planning officials met with urban farmers to find out what they would need to grow food in the city. Planners mapped out 20 publicly owned parcels (ranging from one to 12 acres) that met the farmers’ criteria. City officials then encouraged experienced commercial and nonprofit groups to submit a business plan. Of the 10 initial responses, four commercial farms — including Five Seeds Farm and Seed and Cycle — and one nonprofit, Real Food Farm, were qualified to start farming.

The parcels will be leased to the would-be farmers for a mere $100 a year, and the city will make start-up capital available for those who need it. Baltimore is also rewriting its entire zoning code, one major goal of which is to facilitate farming within city limits. In addition to making its citizens healthier, says Cocke, the city hopes to “transform vacant lots, increase environmental awareness among its citizens, create green jobs, and raise its profile as a leader.”

Image: Center for a Livable Future

Bringing the supermarket to libraries and other public spaces

Urban farming is a useful way to make more people aware of where their fruit and vegetables comes from, but it can only provide so much food. That’s where Baltimore’s Virtual Supermarket program — a creative public-private partnership that utilizes the city’s libraries to bring fresh groceries to remote neighborhoods — enters the picture.

According to Fox, the original idea was to launch the program in churches in underserved areas. But city officials quickly found that most people didn’t feel comfortable going into unfamiliar churches. Not to be deterred, and recognizing a good idea, the city began looking at other easily accessible neighborhood spaces, and eventually settled on public libraries.

Working with The Center for a Livable Future at nearby Johns Hopkins University, the health department conducted a mapping project to target neighborhoods with no access to fresh food, low vehicle ownership, low income, and high mortality rates from diet-related diseases. They found that as much as 18 percent of Baltimore qualifies as a food desert, using these criteria. (This data is the basis of the city’s first official “food desert map,” which will be released in January 2012).

Partnering with Santoni’s, a local, family-owned grocery chain, the city launched Virtual Supermarket in March 2010 in two public libraries. Users place orders from the city’s free-to-use library computers, and Santoni’s staff members deliver the food. Customers can pay with EBT cards, cash, or credit/debit cards.

Today the program includes three libraries and one school, and its success has enabled the city to hire a full-time community organizer to recruit potential customers at senior centers and public housing complexes. To date, 150 different customers have made 700 orders.

Although the city prohibits tobacco, it doesn’t regulate what types of foods people can buy. Nonetheless, 60 percent of the Virtual Supermarket customers polled reported that their diets have improved. Most importantly, according to Fox, the program keeps Baltimore residents from having to travel an hour by bus to the nearest store, or pay to take one of the numerous unofficial cabs that line up outside the city’s grocery stores. She says she sees it as a “health equity program,” adding, “why should someone have to pay $15 to get their groceries home in a cab when someone in a wealthier neighborhood who owns a car would pay 25 cents?”

What’s next for Baltimore? For one, the city is upping its focus on cooking. They’ll soon be staging cooking demonstrations at farmers markets and other locations, and launching a program to get citizens talking to their neighbors about nutrition and cooking.

Last March, Baltimore also became one of the first cities in America to hire a full time Food Policy Director. Holly Freishtat works out of the Office of Sustainability in the Department of Planning. As Fox sees it, embedding healthy food policy into the planning department makes complete sense. After seeing some city residents endure an ongoing ordeal simply to get fresh food on their tables, she says, “Where you live affects your whole being.”

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Guatemalan Blue (Heirloom Banana variety)
  
• Daikon Radish
• Baby-Salad Greens  Mix ( Lettuce-green&red; Mizuna-green&red; Kale-green&red )
• Anaheim Mild Chili Peppers
• Surprise Bag of Mild to Hot Chili Pepper varieties
• Jerusalem Artichokes
• Purslane (Verdolaga) to eat in salads, or cooked, stirfry or otherwise. click on link for serving ideas
• Garlic

Faces & Visions of the Food Movement: Y. Armando Nieto

by Jen Dalton

Over 1,000 people have gathered in Oakland, California to attend the Community Food Security Coalition Conference today, an annual gathering that, as Nieto says, is “a real opportunity to organize and a call to action to take back our food system.” We are just steps from the tent city housing a lively group of Occupy-ers and the boarded Bank of America and Wells Fargo storefront windows along Broadway Street. In light of these converging movements and the urgency of communicating the needs of the 99 percent, it’s fitting to highlight and champion the work of Y. Armando Nieto, Executive Director of the California Food and Justice Coalition. A child of the 60s, he is a staunch supporter of rising up and speaking your mind. Nieto is also a veteran of the environmental movement and a seasoned executive and development professional who is applying his business acumen towards good food for all. Let him inspire you to rise up and take a stand for what matters most to you and your community. The time is now.

What issues have you been focused on?

The California Food and Justice Coalition is focusing on the 2012 Farm Bill reauthorization process as an organizing mechanism, not to organize for organizing sake, but to keep people more engaged in the system. We are a coalition of California organizations, but in order to affect the Farm Bill legislation, we partner with other organizations around the country. Our goal is to build a strong coalition that will work together for this Farm Bill and beyond.

Within the state, we have a real emphasis on holding listening sessions to set up a dialogue process that’s on-going; to learn what priorities people have for food and farm policy; and demystify the legislative process so people see what’s going on with food policy.

We also work with a couple of counties on a pilot project called Mothers Taking Action in San Joaquin and Ventura counties to provide a safe environment for mothers to share how they care for their families in good and bad times and how they can empower each other and effect change in their communities. It gives us a way to stay directly involved with families at a grassroots levels.

What inspires you to do this work?

I’ve been building up to this my whole life. I was CEO of Redefining Progress and Managing Director with the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment, and Executive Director at Eagle Eye Institute in Somerville, Massachusetts, Earth Share of California and the Environmental Defense Center. I’ve also done a lot of social justice work. All along, people become engaged then their attention wanders—but start messing with someone’s food plate they start paying attention again. I can bring the experience and expertise of the networks I’ve known, to use food as an organizing mechanism for fixing what’s wrong with our society.

What’s your overall vision?

We take back the food system. The necessity of this will engage people in conversations about values. I believe the purpose of food is to nourish people, it’s not a commodity to create wealth. That puts the cart before the horse. We can get back to core values of what we as people around the word believe in and re-create the kind of government and society that will work for us.

What books and/or blogs are you reading right now?

I work a lot and do a lot of volunteer work, so I read a lot of absolute fiction. I became a good friend of Dean Koontz at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. His books can be post-apocalyptic, about society that isn’t sustainable, and individuals responding by creating their new environment. He raises practical information in fantastical situations.

Who’s in your community?

All the young people. Where are the people my age? I just turned 60 and it was great to get well wishes. Staff here tends to be 35 and younger and the work I’m doing tends to be with that age group. I’m energized and empowered to be associating with people who care and work for similar values.

What are your commitments?

I totally believe I’m on the planet for a reason. I’m a child of the 60s, a lot of civil unrest and rage against the machine. I’m blessed to be a survivor, to have a seat at all the tables I’ve wanted to be at and have solution-oriented conversations. I am all about service. I’m a recovering alcoholic and believe we have the opportunity to create a better world. I’m old enough to have seen things going in cycles, the pendulum swinging back and forth; I choose to believe that we can spiral to a higher consciousness and apply lessons that seemingly generations have learned over and over again. We can evolve from that.

What are your goals?

They used to be when I was 30, live fast, die hard and leave a good looking corpse. My goals now are to be of service until I stop breathing. I have a 25-year old daughter who is half Chicano; I hope the world I’m creating provides her the opportunities for professional and personal growth that have not been available to me. If I stay teachable, I will probably live forever and continue being an example of what you can do right and wrong and continue to survive. That’s my goal.

What does change look like to you?

I think that as individuals we are changing all the time, but I hope THE CHANGE happens in my lifetime. I’ve been around long enough to see how a culture evolves around fear, so change looks like freedom, people being able to breathe free and really discount and not pay attention to the histrionics and propaganda. Just see it for what it is and ignore it. It’s the most powerful thing we can do.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

It’s showing up. It means questioning everything that’s the common lexicon. For example, democracy isn’t voting every four years. It’s about being responsible and accountable for yourself. People can begin to not look to the President, like after 911 ‘go shopping’; what if it was to reach out to your neighbor, come of out of fear, have a potluck, take responsibility for being a part of a community? I think one of the sins the grown ups did in this country, morally, two big ones we allowed to happen, after 911, when the world said we are America, we allowed that to be politicized for a little man from Texas, and during the 2008 political campaign, we allowed Hilary Clinton to be demonized for saying it takes a village to raise to child. It was morally corrupt to demonize her. I was not a huge Hillary supporter, but we were wrong to do that.

We don’t have enough discourse, that’s where it starts.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

The Mothers Taking Action program we’re piloting for two years and building a replicable model to offer to all 52 counties in California. It’s a way to honor how families have survived, what mothers know and what has kept families fed in good times and bad. In society we have set ways of doing things and this puts our money on the mothers.

There’s local work we do on food policy councils. We’re members of the Oakland Food Policy Council, and Berkeley Food Policy Council.

We’re working with Roots of Change to build a council of councils. To create a platform, a statement of values that we all can share.

We co-hosted the 15th annual Community Food Security Conference. It’s a real opportunity to organize and a call to action to take back our food system. So some of the things we’re doing are challenging people to engage in conversations. It’s important to organize the organizers, but we want to go deep and engage citizens and residents and find out how they can to be engaged.

We’re working more and more on the effects of climate change and food systems. And the struggles for nutrition we’ll have in changing economic and climate times.

What projects are you inspired by?

I’m inspired everyday by work that individuals do. I’m skeptical of magic bullets; so while I totally appreciate and participate in celebrating the efforts of groups and individuals, I don’t think it serves anyone to single out anything I don’t have first hand knowledge of. What I’ve learned in putting together this conference is the Black Panther Party put on breakfast for over 200,000 children without any government support. We can celebrate that without getting into any political things.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

Yeah, so I’ll give it to you straight. What happened before I took this position, I worked extensively in the environmental and environmental justice movement and climate change, and AB32 as CEO of Redefining Progress,which was a think tank of economists. I learned that things will get a whole lot worse before they get better.

So let’s focus on what we can do, on food. What is the purpose of food, not the histrionics of population and starvation; no let’s go back to what that means for individual communities and how a community can be self-sustainable and how we take that conversation away from multi-national corporations and money interests.

All of this is coming to fruition right now in a time of economic, social, environmental and psychological change. It’s a wonderful opportunity to catalyze grown-ups and responsive people to take back agriculture from the people who have effectively destroyed any opportunity for a sustainable future.

Non-traditional partners will have to come together and figure out how we interact and make it work for all of us. Then see what partners we have at the next concentric ring.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be, to be more effective?

It needs to get over it’self. Like any movment, I’ve always felt the same; I’ve always felt like a martian on the planet. Whether the civil rights or Chicano movement, we all think we are very cool, a way of being that’s probably been with us since we crawled out of the scum. But we have to realize we are all in this together. What comes out of today’s activities will be something new. It won’t be the food movement but a movement of peole that falls out of being accountable and reponsible. The food movemnt is a part of that, but we really have to get over this singleness and specialness to realize we all have to work together to creat the kind of world we all want to be in.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Carnitas and mole enchaladas.

Brazil’s Landless Workers’ Movement in New York: From the UN to Zuccotti Park

by Julia Landau

“Occupy, Resist, and Grow!” I found myself shouting into the human microphone at Occupy Wall Street just the other Sunday. I was translating for Janaina Stronzake, a member of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement–one of the most prominent peasant agriculture movements in the fight for food sovereignty. The crowd repeated, looking to Janaina and then to the depiction of Brazil on her organization’s flag, connecting the dots from there to Wall Street.

The Landless Workers Movement, or Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST), is a social movement based on the right to land and human dignity. Founded in 1985, the movement seeks to connect landless rural families with land not in production. The ultimate goal is agrarian reform: Brazil has alarmingly high levels of land concentration, and a simultaneous abundance of latifúndios–large land holdings–sitting unused, almost forgotten. On paper, the Brazilian government is opposed to the hoarding of potentially productive land, and reserves the right to expropriate land deemed not to be fulfilling its “social function”: creating food and livelihoods for the country’s people. But in practice, the status quo is strong. The MST was founded as a call to action.

The MST operates on the basis of land occupation, which in itself represents a long road. When a group of families seeking land through the MST identifies a space, a camp—“acampamento”—is created. Families occupy the land, cultivate crops, and petition the government for the right to stay. Some groups are luckier than others, winning the right to build their homes in the camp, with the blessing of the landholder. From there, schools, fields, and community are born.

But the fight does not stop there. The MST, allied with the global peasant agriculture movement, Via Campesina, also tackles global issues that affect lives on the ground. Janaina’s recent trip to New York served as localized representation. Not only was the city lucky enough to welcome the MST, but the United Nations was also privileged to hear from the movement, as part of a series of talks on World Food Day and the International Day of Rural Women.

And who better to welcome than a leader from one of the world’s most well-known peasant movements? Serving as a panelist on “Food Security: Global Policy and the Grassroots,” Janaina brought the discussion back to its real roots. “Food security is one step–it’s a tactic,” she said in response to UN and FAO representatives’ narrow support of peasant livelihood. “But food security means nothing unless it exists within a framework of food sovereignty.”

As translator for Janaina, I scanned the room and saw most heads nodding in agreement. The MST’s core message was clear: only food sovereignty represents true freedom. Freedom from dependence on corporate technology, freedom for communities to make their own decisions about their crops, and freedom to feed their families how they choose.

Why so much lip service and so little action on food sovereignty? Well, for starters, addressing food sovereignty is much more difficult than addressing food security because it necessarily and fundamentally implies a pivot in priority and practice, especially in the U.S. Food sovereignty, Janaina told the room, is not defined by exporting production technology developed in the U.S. to family farms in rural Indonesia. It is not defined by consolidating ownership of seeds a la Monsanto and selling them back to the very people who once saved seed themselves. Nor does food sovereignty support Wal-mart buying produce from rural Brazilian farmers and then re-selling it, leading money back to the corporation. Food sovereignty is not about introducing emergency food aid from foreign countries when there are farmers on the ground with product to sell. In short: dependence on foreign technology and external business interests creates more problems than solutions.

Two days after the International Day of Rural Women, we made our way down to Wall Street to observe New York’s own form of occupation and to hear Janaina speak to a crowd at Zuccotti Park. As we carried the MST flag through the square, supporters rushed up to speak to Janaina to discuss the movement and its link to the U.S.

Janaina took the stage. Addressing a crowd of community gardeners and supporters of the occupation, she offered lessons learned from leading the MST. While policy makers may lag behind, revolutionaries create change from within a movement–change sprouts from action. Occupation, she shouted, was a time to grow: to grow education, empowerment, and food community. In solidarity with the movement, in solidarity with occupation, the crowd chanted: “Ocupar, Resistir e Produzir!”

Veterans Day: Honor Farmers Who Continue to Serve Their Country

by Chris Ritthaler

We are now just shy of a century from the end of the First World War. When the peace accords were drawn up, it was thought that this would be the final war that mankind would face, so terrible were its effects and devastation wrought. The end of hostilities on November 11, 1918 became a national holiday—Armistice Day, which over the decades was re-designated Veterans Day. The fact that it was renamed is telling of subsequent world history. Since that time, we have had more wars, police actions, and conflict zones. America’s veterans have gone into harms way time and again throughout these years and it is only right that we honor them by remembering them on this day.

We often forget about those on the home front who support the troops. In World War Two, we had massive rationing as the population scaled down its own luxury in order to feed and supply the war effort. We haven’t seen rationing since then and it becomes easy to take things like flour, grain, sugar, and meat for granted. Farmers feed our nation in time of peace and war and yet we seem to minimize their role in society. A large number of farmers are veterans themselves, working a double duty in keeping America safe and prosperous.

This Veterans Day, the Farmer Veteran Coalition (FVC) wants to honor our veterans, not only for their service in uniform, but also for how they continue to serve their nation. Veterans continue to have a major impact after their service, as leaders in the workplace, teachers to the next generation, civil servants, and as farmers providing food security to our country.

Executive Director Michael O’Gorman began the FVC out of the back of his pick-up truck in January 2008. Michael has been a pioneering organic farmer for over 40 years and worked as a production manager for some of the nation’s largest organic vegetable companies including Jacobs Del Cabo.

Through new grants the FVC also continues to bring in new members for its Fellowship Fund. Some great examples of farming veterans include Drew Wood and Matt Soldano.FVC provides veterans with mentorships, connections with agriculture training programs, educational retreats, informational resources on beginning farming operations, and, when available, small grants. When approached by new veterans, FVC acquires a general picture of their service careers, specific interests, and background in agriculture and caters its services to each vet individually.

Drew Wood, a U.S. Air Force veteran, hit the ground running in building a successful poultry farm. Drew grew up spending time on his stepfather’s farm in Berryville, Arkansas and experiencing the distinct taste of freshly grown food. He explains jokingly that from his military experience, he developed an idea of what bad food was, and after returning and spending years doing other jobs, he revisited his passion for fresh food and farming. Drew and his fiancé, Katie, now own and run Shady Grove Farm in Berryville. FVC recently granted Drew through its Fellowship Fund, which has helped him purchase poultry raising and processing equipment to facilitate their operation. Katie says that the purchases made possible by the grant “make us look more professional and save us time and energy we can spend elsewhere.”

Matt Soldano is a Marine Corps veteran who grew up in Ramsey, New Jersey, a small suburban town with no ties to farming.  After four years of service, Matt worked several different jobs as he transitioned back into civilian life.  After working for his family’s company, Matt explains that his work in business turned into a love affair with agriculture.  Matt began Southtown Farms, LLC in Mahwah, New Jersey in 2010. The mission of his farm is to “heal the land through sustainable agriculture practices, and make my community a healthier place to live and thrive.” His business focuses on their egg laying chickens. To help Matt with the start of his chicken farm, FVC provided him with informational resources on poultry and later purchased a chicken coop and an environmental shelter for the coop.

FVC also supports farming veterans in other ways. USDA Risk Management Agency recently granted FVC to host the “Empowering Women Veterans:  Success in Agriculture Business and Wellbeing” conference in July 2012 in Davis, California. This conference, the first of its kind, aims to accomplish multiple goals. It will bring women veterans together in an environment specifically designed to address their unique experiences and needs. Women leaders in business and agriculture will speak to the veterans about the challenges faced by women in both sectors as well as the programs available to help women succeed.

Our country’s veterans have faced extreme emotional and physical challenges, both during and after their terms. Not only have these farming veterans given back to our country on the battlefield, but they continue to give back in America’s fields and on our tables. Their work in agriculture provides them with the internal satisfaction from working for a greater cause and also provides communities with healthy, farm-fresh food. We salute these men and women in deep recognition on this Veterans Day for their lifelong dedication to serving others.

-The Avalon Gardens Family

Spiritualution - Justice to the People
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CSA Harvest List

Sometimes we have a featured vegetable of the week and we will give you historical information, interesting facts, and delicious recipes to try.  If you click on the vegetables in the harvest list, it will bring you to the past newsletter where that vegetable was featured.  All of our past newsletters can be found on our Farm Report website.

• Winter Squash - Spaghetti
  
• Daikon Radish
• NEW: Baby-Salad Greens  Mix ( Lettuce-green&red; Mizuna-green&red; Kale-green&red )
• NEW: Jerusalem Artichokes
• NEW: Purslane (Verdolaga) to eat in salads, or cooked, stirfry or otrherwise. click on link for serving ideas
• NEW: Green Tomatoes
• Garlic

Featured Vegetable: Jerusalem Artichokes

The Jerusalem artichoke has no relatives in the artichoke family but is actually a member of the sunflower family. A native of North America, it grew in the wild along the eastern seaboard from Georgia to Nova Scotia. The explorer Samuel de Champlain first encountered sunchokes growing in an American Indian vegetable garden in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1605. In his opinion they tasted like artichokes, a name that he carried back to France. The American Indians called them sun roots and introduced these perennial tubers to the pilgrims who adopted them as a staple food.

Apparently the French began growing these tubers successfully because they were sold by Parisian street vendors who named them topinambours, the French word for tuber. Six Brazillian Indians from the Topinambours tribe were brought back to the curious French in 1613 after an expedition, and the street hawkers adopted this name for their prized tubers from the Americas.

There is a record of Champlain sending some of the tubers to his native France after tasting them a second time in Canada. It’s very likely he sent them home from Massachusetts, too, because a book called Histoire de la Nouvelle France ,published in 1609, makes mention of this vegetable before Champlain’s exploration in Canada.

When Jerusalem artichokes arrived in Italy sometime before 1633, the Italian word for sunflower, “girasole” which means “turning to the sun,” was somehow later corrupted into the word “Jerusalem.” This corruption combined with Champlain’s likening the taste of the vegetable to an artichoke brings our mystery to a close.

Jerusalem artichokes made their way across Europe, reaching England in 1617 and Germany by 1632. An early edition of the Oxford English Dictionary mentioned “Artichocks of Jerusalem” in 1620.

As in all trends, there is a rise in popularity, and then a fall into obscurity. France readily accepted the Jerusalem artichoke in the early 1600s, possibly because of the name artichoke. The potato, on the other hand, was regarded with suspicion and rejected. When the potato was finally accepted, the Jerusalem artichoke fell into rejection because people thought it caused leprosy. This belief was attributed to the irregular shape and brown mottled skin that resembled the deformed fingers of those with leprosy.

In times of desperation, the Jerusalem artichoke became sustenance. It was during a famine that occurred throughout Europe in 1772 that the Jerusalem artichoke could be quickly and easily grown to provide nourishment. During World War II the tubers regained some recognition in several countries because they were a food that could be bought without a ration card. The explorers Lewis and Clark were fortified by Jerusalem artichokes during a time when it was difficult to find ample food on their expedition.

The Jerusalem artichoke is a tuber that grows underground like the potato but is harder to harvest because the tubers cling to the roots and become entwined. Cultivated varieties of sunchokes grow in clumps close to the main root or rhizome while wild ones grow at the end of root. Like their family members of sunflowers, they can grow from 3 to 12 feet high with large leaves and flowers that are 1 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter. They grow well in almost all soil with the exception of very heavy clay soil, but do best in alkaline soil.

Sunchokes are easy to grow from tubers that weigh about 2 oz. and have 2 or 3 sprouts emerging. Plant them deep, about 3 to 4 inches underground. They do best when planted in little hills for better water retention and to make harvesting easier. Plant them in the spring through early summer, and harvest them fall through early winter. Be aware that any tubers left in the ground that were not harvested will reseed themselves. Many farmers are reluctant to go into heavy production of the sunchokes because of their ability to take over and become a serious weed problem.

Sunchokes are often called a starchy plant, but the starch is in the form of inulin, a polysaccharide from which fructose can be produced. Because this starch, or inulin, is not easily digestible by everyone, eat the vegetable in small amounts.

We find their delicate sweetness and nutty flavor so refreshing we include them in our repertoire of vegetables regularly. They have a crispness that resembles water chestnuts and can even stand in for water chestnuts in salads and stir fries.

Nutritionally, the sunchoke’s most outstanding benefits lie in the 327 mg. of potassium for a half-cup serving. That same half-cup serving has 57 calories, 1.5. gr. protein, 1.2 gr. fiber, 10.5 mg. calcium, 10 mcg. folacin along with smaller amounts of niacin and thiamine.

STORAGE: Refrigerate the tubers  . They will keep up to two weeks, but it’s always best eat them as fresh as possible for the best flavor and nutrition. Their sweetness is known to increase when refrigerated after harvesting.

PREPARATION: Scrub the sunchokes clean with a vegetable brush. Since much of their nutrients are stored just under the skin, it’s best not to peel them. Once cut, sunchokes discolor quickly, so it’s best to cut them close to serving time, or cut and immerse them in water with lemon or vinegar to prevent oxidation. Cooking them with the skins on may cause a darkening of the skins because of their high iron content.

RAW:
Slice sunchokes and enjoy the crunch they add to your salad.
Slice and serve them along with crudites and dips.
Shred them into a slaw. Dice them into a chopped salad.
Slice, dice, or shred and marinate in a little extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice or rice vinegar
Coarsely chop sunchokes and add to the blender when preparing raw soups.

STIR FRY: Slice, dice, or shred and stir fry along with other fresh vegetables in a little extra virgin olive oil. They will become softened in about 4 to 6 minutes. For a tender crisp texture, stir fry about 2 to 4 minutes.

BAKED: Sunchokes can be baked whole or sliced. Toss them in a bowl with a little extra virgin olive oil and place on a baking sheet. Set the oven temperature at 375 and bake 30 to 45 minutes for whole, and 20 to 25 minutes for sliced, turning them half way through. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

STEAMED: Coarsely chop the Jerusalem artichokes and put them into a steamer basket. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat. Continue at high heat and steam for 5 to 8 minutes. Test for softness. Remove and season to taste or mash like potatoes.

BOILED: Sunchokes can be boiled whole or cut as desired. Bring a covered saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Add sunchokes and boil for 10 to 15 minutes for whole, and 5 to 8 minutes for cut up. Season as desired or mash like potatoes.

As you can see, Jerusalem artichokes can be enjoyed with any meal, adding a special taste and texture to the palate. Below is a recipe that is as unique as the plant itself:

SUNCHOKE PECAN SANDWICH

Yield: 3 to 4 sandwiches

1 ripe avocado
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon salt
Dash cayenne
1/4 to 1/2 cup (60 to 120 ml) organic canola oil 2 cups (480 ml) coarsely shredded sunchokes
1/2 cup (120 ml) raw or toasted pecans, coarsely chopped or coarsely ground
1/4 red bell pepper, finely diced
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste6 to 8 slices whole grain bread
12 to 16 large basil leaves
3 ripe tomatoes, sliced
3 to 4 butter lettuce leaves

1. To make the avocado sauce, wash the avocado, cut it in half, scoop out the flesh, and place it in the blender. Add the lemon juice, salt, and cayenne and blend briefly. With the machine running, slowly add the canola oil, using just enough to create a thick, creamy sauce. Stop the machine occasionally to scrape down the sides of the blender jar and stir the mixture.
2. To make the sunchoke filling, combine the sunchokes, pecans, and red bell pepper in a medium bowl. Add enough of the avocado sauce to moisten and hold the mixture together. Season with salt and pepper if needed.
3. Spread a thin coating of the avocado sauce over one side of each of the bread slices. Spread the sunchoke mixture over half the bread slices and top with the basil leaves, tomato slices, and lettuce. Place the remaining bread slices over the filling and cut the sandwiches in half..

Farm to Fork Dinner Fiasco

by Laura Bledsoe

When an over-zealous regulator shows up at a farm dinner demanding that food be destroyed as hungry guests await, who do you call? Here’s Laura’s account written as a letter to her guests who had come to Quail Hollow Farm expecting a meal of foods harvested from local small family farms.

This incident shows the value of the 24/7 legal hotline for farmers like Laura who need help…even on a Friday night!  A member benefit like the hotline is available thanks to the financial support of the many FTCLDF members and donors.

Dearest Guests, (You have all become dear to us!)

What an evening we had this last Friday night!  It had all the makings of a really great novel: drama, suspense, anticipation, crisis, heroic efforts, villains and victors, resolution and a happy ending.

The evening was everything I had dreamed and hoped it would be. The weather was perfect, the farm was filled with friends and guests roaming around talking about organic, sustainable farming practices. Our young interns were teaching and sharing their passion for farming and their role in it.  (A high hope for our future!)  The pig didn’t get loose.

Our guests were excited to spend an evening together. The food was prepared exquisitely.  The long dinner table, under the direction of dear friends, was absolutely stunningly beautiful. The music was superb. The stars were bright and life was really good.

And then, …

for a few moments, it felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath us and my wonderful world came crashing down.  As guests were mingling, finishing tours of the farm, and while the first course of the meal was being prepared and ready to be sent out, a Southern Nevada Health District employee came for an inspection.

Because this was a gathering of people invited to our farm for dinner, I had no idea that the Health Department would become involved.  I received a phone call from them two days before the event informing me that because this was a “public event” (I would like to know what is the definition of “public” and “private”) we would be required to apply for a “special use permit”.

If we did not do so immediately, we would be charged a ridiculous fine.

Stunned, we immediately complied.

We were in the middle of our harvest day for our CSA shares, a very busy time for us, but Monte immediately left to comply with the demand and filled out the required paper work and paid for the fee.  (Did I mention that we live in Overton, nowhere near a Health Department office?)  Paper work now in order, he was informed that we would not actually be given the permit until an inspector came to check it all out.

She came literally while our guests were arriving!

In order to overcome any trouble with the Health Department of cooking on the premises, most of the food was prepared in a certified kitchen in Las Vegas; and to further remove any doubt, we rented a certified kitchen trailer to be here on the farm for the preparation of the meals.  The inspector, Mary Oaks, clearly not the one in charge of the inspection as she was constantly on the phone with her superior Susan somebody who was calling all the shots from who knows where.

Susan deemed our food unfit for consumption and demanded that we call off the event because: 

1. Some of the prepared food packages did not have labels on them.  (The code actually allows for this if it is to be consumed within 72 hours.)

2.  Some of the meat was not USDA certified.  (Did I mention that this was a farm to fork meal?)

3.  Some of the food that was prepared in advance was not up to temperature at the time of inspection. (It was being prepared to be brought to proper temperature for serving when the inspection occurred.)

4.  Even the vegetables prepared in advance had to be thrown out because they were cut and were then considered a “bio-hazard”.

5.  We did not have receipts for our food.  (Reminder!  This food came from farms not from the supermarket!  I have talked with several chefs who have said that in all their years cooking they have never been asked for receipts.)

At this time Monte, trying to reason with Susan to find a possible solution for the problem, suggested turning this event from a “public” event to a “private” event by allowing the guests to become part of our farm club, thus eliminating any jurisdiction or responsibility on their part.  This idea infuriated Susan and threatened that if we did not comply the police would be called and personally escort our guests off the property.  This is not the vision of the evening we had in mind!  So regretfully, again we complied.

The only way to keep our guests on the property was to destroy the food.

I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can.

Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away!  I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food.

We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day.  (A personal family choice to use our own food.)  We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health.  I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldn’t be wanting to serve it to our guests).

I then asked if we couldn’t feed the food to our “public guests” or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs.  (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food.  We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.)

Again, a call to Susan and another negative response.

Okay, so let me get this right.

So the food that was raised here on our farm and selected and gathered from familiar local sources, cooked and prepared with skill and love was even unfit to feed to my pigs!?!  

Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals?

Not only were we denied the use of the food for any purpose, to ensure that it truly was unfit for feed of any kind we were again threatened with police action if we did not only throw the food in the trash, but then to add insult to injury, we were ordered to pour bleach on it.

Now the food is also unfit for compost as I would be negligent to allow any little critters to nibble on it while it was composting and ingest that bleach resulting in a horrible death.  Literally hundreds of pounds of food was good for nothing but adding to our ever increasing land fill!

At some point in all of this turmoil Monte reminded me that I had the emergency phone number for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) on our refrigerator.  I put it there never really believing that I would ever have to use it.   We became members of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund several years ago as a protection for us, but mostly to add support to other farmers battling against the oppressive legal actions taken against the small farmers trying to produce good wholesome food without government intrusion.

The local, sustainable food battle is being waged all across America!  May I mention that not one battle has been brought on because of any illness to the patrons of these farms!  The battles are started by government officials swooping down on farms and farmers like SWAT teams confiscating not only the wholesome food items produced but even their farm equipment!  Some of them actually wearing HAZMAT suits as if they were walking into a nuclear meltdown!  I have personally listened to some of their heart wrenching stories and have continued to follow them through the FTCLDF’s updates.

Well, I made the call, told my story and within a short period of time received a phone call back from the FTCLDF’s General Counsel, Gary Cox.   When told the story, he simply suggested that we apply our fundamental constitutional right to be protected against “unlawful search and seizure.”  I simply had to ask Mary two questions.  “Do you have a search warrant?”  “Do you have an arrest warrant?”

With the answers being “No”, I politely and very simply asked her to leave our property.  As simple as that!  She had no alternative, no higher power, no choice whatsoever but to now comply with my desire. She left in a huff making a scene shouting that she was calling the police. She left no paperwork, no Cease and Desist order, no record of any kind that implicated us for one thing, (we had complied to all their orders) only empty threats and a couple of trash cans full of defiled food.  I will get back to “the inspector” and her threats shortly.  Let’s get to where it really gets good.

While I am on the verge of a literal breakdown, Monte and Gio get creative. All right, we have just thrown all of this food away, we can’t do this, we can’t do that, what CAN we do?  Well, we have a vegetable farm and we do have fresh vegetables. (By the way, we were denied even using our fresh vegetables until I informed our inspector that I do have a Producers Certificate from the Nevada Department of Agriculture allowing us to sell our vegetables and other farm products at the Farmers Market.  Much of our produce has gone to some of the very finest restaurants in Las Vegas and St. George.)

The wind taken out of the inspector’s sails, Gio and his crew got cookin’. It just so happened that we had a cooled trailer full of vegetables ready to be taken to market the following day. Monte hooked on to the trailer and backed it up right next to the kitchen. Our interns who were there to greet and serve now got to work with lamp oil and began harvesting anew. Knives were chopping, pots of pasta and rice from our food storage were steaming, our bonfire was now turned into a grill and literal miracles were happening before our eyes!

In the meantime, Monte and I had to break the news to our guests. Rather than go into the details here, you can see the video footage on Mark Bowers and Kiki Kalor’s (our friends and guests) website at: http://www.reallyvegasphoto.com/Events/CSA-Farm-Government-Inspection/19707296_v2zFML#1546717636_dJJDZjw

We explained the situation, offered anyone interested a full refund, and told them that if they chose to stay their dinner was now literally being prepared fresh, as just now being harvested.  The reaction of our guests was the most sobering and inspirational experience of the evening.

In an instant we were bonded together.

They were, of course, out-raged at the lack of choice they were given in their meal.

Out-raged at the arrogance of coming to a farm dinner and being required to use only USDA (government inspected) meats.

Outraged at the heavy handedness of the Health Department into their lives.

Then there was the most tremendous outpouring of love and support. 

One of our guests, Marty Keach, informed us that he was an attorney and as appalled as everyone else offered his support and counsel if need be, even if it be to the Supreme Court.  He was a great comfort in a tense time.

With their approval, Giovanni and crew got cooking and the evening then truly began. The atmosphere turned from tense and angry to loving and supportive. As soon as I heard my brother Steve sit down and begin strumming his guitar, I knew something special was happening.  Paid guests volunteered their services. Chef Shawn Wallace, a guest, joined Gio and his team his knife flying through the eggplant and squash.  Wendy and Thierry Pressyler and so many that I am not even aware of, were helping to grill and transport dishes.  Jason and Chrissy Doolen offered to run quick errands.  Jeanne Frost, a server for the Wynn hotel, didn’t take a seat and began serving her fellow guests.

Before long we were seated at the beautiful table and the most incredible  dishes began coming forth.  It was literally “loaves and fishes” appearing before our very eyes!  We broke bread together, we laughed, we talked, we shared stories, we came together in the most marvelous way.

Now this is what I had dreamed, only more marvelous than I could have ever imagined!  The sky being bright with glittering stars, we had the telescopes out and invited any guests who desired to look into our starry heaven.  While we were looking into the heavens, heaven was looking down upon us!  I can’t tell you the number of times I have felt the hand of providence helping us in the work of this farm.

As hard and demanding as this work is, I KNOW that this is what we are meant to do.

I KNOW that it is imperative that we stand up for our food choices.

I KNOW that local, organic, sustainable food produced by ourselves or by small family, local farms is indispensible to the health and well-being of our families and our communities now and in the future! If this work were not so vitally important, the “evil forces” would not be working so hard to pull it down.

We were victorious, we will be victorious, we must be!   Our grandchildren’s future is at stake!

Back to the inspector. She did call the police. You must remember that we live in a small town. We know these officers. They responded to the call dutifully but were desperately trying to figure out why they had been called. Never in all of their experience had they ever received a call like this.

Mary, the inspector, demanded that they give us a citation. The officer in charge said that she was to give us the citation, she responded that no, they were to give us the citation, which they then asked her for what violation. Even with the help of her superior on the phone she could not give them a reason. They asked her to leave which she did. The police were very kind and apologetic for the intrusion. All of this was done without fanfare and out of sight of our guests. The police officers are commended for their professionalism!

Now that we have come to the last chapter of our novel, I realize that it ends with a cliff-hanger. As happy as the ending was, it isn’t “happily ever after” yet.  This will remain to be seen in the ensuing days, weeks and even years ahead.

Tom Collins, our County Commissioner, furious by the events that took place, having formerly been a board member for the Southern Nevada Health District is putting together a meeting with himself, the current board members and ourselves to make sense of all this mess.

As so many of you have related verbally and through emails your desire to help and be involved, we will keep you informed as events take place.  I feel that we have been compelled to truly become active participants in the ongoing battle over our food choices.  This is just one small incident that brings to our awareness how fragile our freedoms are.  We are now ready to join the fight!

We would encourage all of you who can to contribute and to become a member of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.  They are not only fighting for the farmers, they are fighting for the consumers to have the right to choose.  You can find them at farmtoconsumer.org

As I close, I am reminded of the passage written so forcefully by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence:

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

The same battle continues.   I pray the result of the battle will be the same, that we have been “endowed by our Creator with … life and liberty”.

We love you all, and thank you with all our souls for your continued love and support!  We will stay in touch.

With warmest wishes for you and your families,

Monte and Laura Bledsoe
Written from Quail Hollow Farm
October 24, 2011
quailhollowfarmcsa.com
Email Laura at quailhollowfarm@mvdsl.com

Maude’s Market: Spreading local food in Monsanto country

by Twilight Greenaway

Maude Bauschard, outside her local food market in St. Louis.

Maude Bauschard sells local and sustainably produced groceries and runs a weekly community-supported agriculture (CSA) box from a small store she calls Maude’s Market.

This wouldn’t sound like much if she were living in a city on one of the coasts, but Bauschard lives in St. Louis, Mo., or what she calls “the heart of Monsanto country.” Literally: The city is home to the world headquarters of Monsanto, one of the world’s leading producers of both herbicide and genetically engineered (GE) seeds.

“So any sort of action — even just using organic feed — anything along those lines,” she says, can feel subversive. Especially lately, as Bauschard says the company has been running a campaign to promote their prominent role in the city.

“It’s called STL Grown. They’re advertising that they support change projects and the city itself, and agriculture in the area; and it’s true. They put money into the botanical garden, public art, etc. and they employ a lot of St. Louisans,” she says.

When Bauschard was laid off from a progressive nonprofit in Washington, D.C. a few years ago, it was no accident that she chose to return to the city where she was raised — even if it meant the work she wanted to do would be going against the grain.

She set up shop (literally) by opening her store around a year ago in a diverse, mainly working-class part of St. Louis called Dutchtown. She describes the area as a food desert, because while there are plenty of corner stores, the nearest full-service grocery store is over mile away. I wanted to “connect the struggling rural economy with the struggling urban economy,” she says. And she had another motive.

Bauschard’s grandparents live on a farm an hour outside the city, but they no longer grow food on the property. Her five-year plan involves familiarizing herself with the local market so that she’ll know exactly what to plant when it’s time to start farming there again (currently the land is rented out for a combination of grazing land for cattle and hay production; Maude and her grandparents want to see it farmed by the family again). “Before I invest in creating an organic apple orchard, for instance,” she says, “I’d like to make sure there’s enough demand in the area for organic apples.”

Bauschard herself grew up in the St. Louis suburbs, so it wasn’t particularly visible to her when the nearby Chesterfield Valley went from being a fertile track of land along the Missouri river and “the place where all the truck farming took place” to one of the county’s fastest growing suburban communities in the last few decades. But, “that development has been absolutely enormous,” she says. “Especially for my grandfather — who was born in a house on the [family farm]. For him it has been a dramatic change.”

On the bright side, Bauschard says she has also seen the sustainable food community grow in the short time she’s been back in town. “Slow Food St. Louis is very active; there’s a group starting a Slow Money chapter, and there’s interest in funding healthy food projects from various foundations in the area,” she adds.

And while she supports quite a few local, organic, and small-scale farmers through her store and CSA, she is well aware that the majority of the farming that remains is likely making the folks who run Monsanto very happy. “I buy from Yellow Dog Farm because they use organic and sustainable growing practices. But at the same time there’s a large CAFO pork producer right there in the same county.”

Has Maude’s Market been a success? For a core audience, yes: 50 people receive her CSA and Bauschard has a waiting list she’d like to accommodate. But for many in the neighborhood, who haven’t been familiarized with the value of local food, it’s still a stretch. So she sees education and outreach as a big part of her job. And she will regularly make recommendations and explain how to cook the foods she has in the store. Recently, she recalls selling a woman a new product (a local lentil mix) at cost because she wanted her to feel comfortable trying new things. And she makes sure to highlight special Midwestern foods like paw paws and pasture raised pork.

She also tries to balance specialty items with a strong base of familiar, fairly affordable foods like potatoes and carrots. While the fact is that she won’t be able to compete with big box stores, she says, “It’s really not much more expensive, considering what people pay in the corner stores around here. And when they see they can get things like green tomatoes here they get really excited — because they won’t have seen those in a store for like a decade.”

Twilight is the food editor at Grist. Follow her on twitter.

Incredible shrinking farmland

by Claire Thompson

Photo: Alicia Guy

Joel Huesby comes from a long line of conventional farmers, but in 1994, he had what he calls an epiphany that led him to switch to organic farming. He’s of the mind that we’ll drive ourselves to extinction if we drive our farmlands that way first. “Conventional commodity agriculture, to my way of looking at it, is standing in the boots of a dead man with toothpicks holding his eyes open,” he said. “It looks alive but it’s not. I don’t see that as the future.”

Through years of trial and error, Huesby and his family found a way to build their soil and make a living that felt authentic. Then, in 2003, their farm — 225 acres near Walla Walla, Wash. — was threatened by developers looking to subdivide it and convert it to “ranchettes.”

So Huesby put together a binder of information about his property and took it to the PCC Farmland Trust, a nonprofit organization formed in connection to Washington’s Puget Consumers Co-op (PCC), the largest consumer-owned natural food retail co-operative in the United States. The PCC Farmland Trust was able to change the legal status of Huesby’s land, ensuring that it will be “organic and undeveloped into perpetuity.” His was the second farm the PCC Farmland Trust saved from development, but it was far from the last.

Disappearing act

For the 80 percent of Americans who reside in cities, it has become far too easy to take farmland for granted. There’s a great deal of focus on supporting organic, local farmers and making the food they produce accessible to the masses, but these efforts would be fruitless without the farmland itself.

Between 1982 and 2007, over 41 million acres of rural land in the United States were developed. That’s 41 million acres of potentially productive agricultural land gone forever — because once farmland is ripped up, paved over, and developed, you can never get it back, not in the same form.

“We’ve become a little casual about our attitude about farmland,” said Dennis Canty, director of the Pacific Northwest regional office of the American Farmland Trust (AFT). He’s seen the Puget Sound region of Washington lose 60 percent of its farmland since 1950. Much of the loss occurs around the edges of cities and towns, where the qualities that make land ideal for farming — like being located in a broad, flat valley — also catch developers’ eyes. Suburban development gobbles up para-urban farmland, while land farther out turns into hobby farms or weekend retreats for city dwellers.

For farmers fighting to stay afloat — especially aging ones who don’t have a willing next generation waiting to take over — offers from developers can be hard to refuse.

That’s where farmland trusts come in. Rebecca Sadinsky, head of the PCC Farmland Trust, explains how the group raises funds to buy rural land and put it under something called a “conservation easement.” Easements legally dictate that the land must forever be used for agricultural purposes, no matter whether it changes hands. “We’ve essentially taken the speculation out of the land,” Sadinsky says. “It can still rise and fall in value as raw land, but it’s raw ag land.” That way, farmers can rest assured that even when they can’t farm anymore, the soil they’ve put so much sweat and tears into will not be paved over.

That’s the basic model practiced by most land trusts (there are 1,700 nationwide, according to the Land Trust Alliance). Not all work to conserve farmland, specifically: One of the oldest and most well-known trusts is the Nature Conservancy, which focuses primarily on saving natural habitat and wilderness, but served as a model for farmland trusts. “The movement to conserve land didn’t start with farmland,” Sadinsky says. But once the threat to agricultural land intensified, it was recognized as a resource worth conserving.

Photo: Alicia Guy, courtesy of PCC Farmland Trust

This land is your land, this land is my land

In the late 1970s and early ‘80s, Canty says, “people could look around and see the land changing right around them.” AFT was founded in 1980; the Vermont Land Trust, which Sadinsky identified as a leader in farmland preservation, started in 1977.

PCC Farmland Trust is unique in that it conserves land specifically for organic farming. “We’d love for everyone to move toward at least more reduction of pesticides,” Sadinsky said, for reasons of water quality alone — not to mention the skyrocketing demand for organic food. But she acknowledges that getting organic certification can be a convoluted and costly process — and she emphasizes the importance of solidarity within the small farm community. “We’ll look for every opportunity to make the argument [for organic farming], without speaking against family farmers who are conventional farmers,” she says.

Farmland trusts have been successful and popular so far. But it’s nearly impossible to save farmland as fast as it’s disappearing — at a rate of more than an acre every minute, according to the AFT.

“These land trusts might pick up 100 or 300 or even 1,000 acres of conservation easements in a year,” Canty says. “But at that rate we’re going to end up with little museum-like farms scattered around the largely suburban landscape.”

So PCC Farmland Trust tries to secure footholds in key areas in the hopes that they will encourage the growth of more agriculture nearby. But support from local, state, and federal government is crucial to conservation efforts. “If you don’t have the political support to protect farmland through regulation, there’s no way you could overcome those shortcomings with funding of conservation easements,” adds Canty.

A model county

Canty and Sadinsky both point to Skagit County — north of Seattle’s King County — as an example of a local government that’s approaching farmland conservation right. Skagit has a local property tax that goes directly to acquisition of conservation easements, as well as a staff dedicated to farmland conservation. Their Farmland Legacy Program reviews applications twice a year from farmers whose land is in need of protection. So far they’ve saved well over 7,000 acres, said Carolyn Kelly, chair of the Conservation Future Advisory Committee, which administers the program. It’s gotten so popular that they have a waiting list.

Kelly credits popular support among voters for the continued success of the program. It was created after a survey showed that Skagitonians — whose county has long been rural, with a “natural resource-based economy” — have a high interest in preserving farmland. “It’s a total community effort,” Kelly says. “I think that’s why we’re still going strong.”

Even in traditionally agricultural communities, the draw of development is strong. “We see agricultural production as the highest and best use of these lands,” Kelly said. “Someone else might see industry or housing. With economic downturns, there is increasing pressure. Somebody offers you enough money, you’re going to think really hard about it. We like to be there to offer an option.”

Organic farms = greener spaces

Conserving farmland has benefits beyond just agricultural potential, too. Urban and suburban land results in much more stormwater runoff, which is full of nasty toxins. In addition, “an awful lot of the intact habitat for fish and wildlife species is found on farms,” Canty says. “Many of the best restoration opportunities are there.”

Kelly agrees. “You get a lot of bang for your buck. We’ve preserved the rural character of Skagit County. Even if you’re just passing through, you get a sense of who we are and what we do.”

All this forward momentum toward protecting farmland could be threatened, though, if the 2012 Farm Bill doesn’t take farmland into account. Part of the last bill, the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, provided matching grants for the purchase of development rights. “We’re trying to … avoid really dire cuts in the conservation programs,” Canty said. “We know we’re going to lose some ground, but we’ll just try not to lose it all.”

“I think you could look at food security as just as important as homeland security,” Kelly adds. “I want to have access to wholesome foods [grown here]. I don’t want to have to wait until it comes in from some other country.”

With just about everything sustainable farmers and eaters hold sacred threatened by budget cuts, farmland doesn’t necessarily come to mind as the most important thing on the chopping block — especially not for urbanites. But without enough farmland, “we can pretty much kiss this idea of local food good-bye,” said Canty.

Claire Thompson is an editorial intern at Grist. She just graduated from Northwestern University and is happy to be back in her hometown of Seattle, proving that her journalism degree is not worthless.