ALBA Success Story: Catalán Farm

By Grist

Farming is no easy occupation to get into. And for many minority, low-income people, the challenges are heightened. The Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association (ALBA), is an EPA and USDA-funded program that enables people to become independent organic farmers. The majority of people who enroll are low-income, but participants who stick with the six month program learn valuable marketing and business skills in addition to best organic farming practices. María Catalán, who sells at all three of the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets, and is considered a success story of ALBA. Now, she integrates what she learned at ALBA with her family’s own folklore and farming techniques. Click here to read more.

I'm thinking of selling this made from colorful (or colorless), organic, heirloom tomatoes.

Homemade Bloody Mary Mix (Spicy Vegetable Tomato Juice)

By MrsWheelbarrow, posted about 1 year ago

Imagine this made with white tomatoes...or green ones...or yellow ones...

Serves 2 quarts

• 5 pounds assorted tomatoes, washed well, quartered, all stem ends and blemishes removed
• 1 medium onion, rough chopped
• 1 sweet pepper - I like Cubanelles, banana peppers, or Jimmy Nardellos (If you can find them)
• 1 handful spinach leaves, washed & stemmed (can substitute kale or chard)
• 1 jalapeno, including seeds & stems (can substitute more or hotter peppers, according to taste)
• 2 carrots, rough chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon celery seed
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

1. In a non-reactive large stockpot, add tomatoes and start cooking as you chop, crushing with a large spoon or potato masher as you go. Keep cooking at a slow simmer as you complete the next steps.
2. Add onion, pepper, spinach, jalapeno and carrots to the blender and blend to a puree. Add in some of the tomato liquid if it gets too thick to blend. Add to the tomatoes. Add celery seed.
3. Simmer, covered, 90 minutes.
4. Pour through a food mill to remove skins and seeds. Add lemon juice and salt and pour into a two quart pitcher or other container. Cover tightly.
5. Chill well for at least one day.

The Food Bomb

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_food_bomb_20110131/

Posted on Feb 1, 2011

By Barry Lando
On the face of it, the protests currently sweeping across the Arab world have been driven by overwhelmingly leaderless, frustrated, impoverished, unemployed youths battling geriatric dictatorial regimes that are supported by pampered militaries—and the United States. Fueling all these protests, from Egypt to Yemen to Jordan to Tunisia to Algeria, is another common factor, one that also fueled the French Revolution: rocketing food prices.
A perfect storm of natural disasters around the globe, rising oil prices and rapacious speculators have produced the current dramatic rise in food prices, but even had these events not occurred, food prices would be spiraling upward, and roiling the planet, no matter who was governing.
What is outrageous is that our leaders know this—they’ve known it for years—but, like deer transfixed by the lights of an onrushing truck—they’ve done precious little to avert catastrophe. Indeed, rather than deal with impending disaster, they’ve made the situation even worse. 
The statistics are stark: Almost 7 billion people currently inhabit this planet, 1 billion of whom are on the brink of starvation. By 2050, the population will be 9.2 billion, including many with higher incomes and thus much larger and demanding appetites.
The bottom line is the world will need 70 percent more food in 2050 than it produced in 2000. But at the same time, the resources available are plummeting. The amount of agricultural land per person on the planet will have dropped from 10.6 acres in 1961 to 3.7 acres in 2050.
As for water, just to maintain current levels of nutrition—never mind improving things—farmers will need 17 percent more fresh water by 2050. Problem is, 70 percent of the world’s fresh water is already used for irrigation.
But instead of investing in agriculture, the world’s leaders and development organizations have been obsessed with industrialization. The statistics are shocking: Development assistance to agriculture, from all sources, went from 20 percent of all aid 25 years ago to only 4 percent today. 
Developing countries themselves reduced investment in agriculture from 11 percent 25 years ago to 7 percent in 2007.
These figures are from Shivaji Pandey, a soft-spoken Indian official I spoke with at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) offices in Rome.
First off, he says, food production has to be transformed from a dull, bureaucratic backwater to Page 1 of the international agenda. Seventy-five percent of the world’s hungry and poor still live in rural areas and derive their livelihood from the land.
OK. Then I ask: Surely it makes sense to industrialize, get those people good factory jobs and off the overcrowded land, right?
Wrong, he says. “Agriculture has been shown to be twice as effective in eliminating hunger and poverty as any other kind of development. There is scientific evidence that every 1 percent increase in crop productivity will reduce the number of poor and hungry by 0.4 percent.”
What about the wonders of the “Green Revolution”? “That’s over,” says Pandey. “Sixty years ago, rice, wheat and maize yields in countries like India were dramatically rising at 3 percent a year. No longer. The rate of growth instead is declining, heading for about 1 percent a year by 2050.”
It was the soaring food prices of 2007 and 2008 and the radical political unrest they sparked that finally got the world’s leaders to start paying attention. One result was that Pandey was named to head a steering committee under the auspices of the FAO tasked with figuring out how to dramatically increase food production without at the same time destroying the environment.
One of the first things he did was to tell his experts to stop their research. “Of course, there are still things to learn,” he says, “but we already know a lot of the answers. We’ve known for decades.”
The problem is that the politicians who call the shots have refused to listen.
Arguments against protectionism, for example, have gone unheeded. According to Mark Malloch Brown, the former head of the United Nations Development Programme, the developed world lavishes a billion dollars a day on subsidies and support prices to protect its farmers, many of them huge agribusinesses. That protection costs developing countries $50 billion in potential lost agricultural exports. The sum is the equivalent of all development assistance to the Third World.
Another well-known problem: Since bioenergy became the flavor of the month, almost 5 percent of the world’s cereals are now used not to feed people but to produce 0.3 percent of the world’s energy.
One major obstacle, says Pandey, is that many of the new technologies have been developed for rich, large farmers. Governments have generally ignored the 400 million to 500 million farmers across the world who cultivate less than five acres. “They have no strong political voice, but those small farmers produce more than half of the world’s food.”
It was small farmers tilling an average 2.7 acres in India’s Punjab who were responsible for the Green Revolution in the 1960s and ’70s, a development that took India from the brink of famine to actually exporting food by 1985. Similarly, the agriculture revolution that has taken place in China in the past 25 years occurred on the backs of farmers with less than half an acre.
The “white revolution” that made India the world’s No. 1 milk producer was achieved by farmers with only one or two cows.
Says Pandey, “In a country like Madagascar, where 70 percent of the population live on less than one dollar a day, where agriculture is the most important contributor to the GDP, if it is not agriculture that will get them out of their misery, what do the so-called experts propose? So many other countries are in that same situation in Africa.
“Certainly some consolidation of small landholdings would be better, but today we can make this world a better place only by making it easier for those who’ve been ignored for so long.”
Among the biggest victims of the lack of investment in agriculture are teaching and research. Says Pandey, “Around the globe, many of the so-called ‘agriculture experts’ are less qualified than they were 50 years ago. Many don’t even understand what they’re supposed to be teaching. They don’t even know that they don’t know.”
There has also been no investment in infrastructure to aid the farmer—roads, storage, electricity and access to credit.
Of course, all that costs money. But some solutions are remarkably—if deceptively—simple. For instance, huge numbers of small landholders across the globe don’t have title to their farms. Says Pandey, “If I don’t own it, I’m not going to invest in it or protect it. So they don’t invest.” In Vietnam in 1989, in the face of a dramatic food crisis, the communist government—which was importing food—gave titles to the peasants. Within just three years, Vietnam became the world’s third-largest rice exporter. “It wasn’t the only factor, but giving those titles had a major impact. Even Cuba now is talking about giving 7,000 square meters of land to [individual] farmers.”
Some ways of raising production would actually save money. Thirty years ago, for example, the experts advised farmers to thoroughly plow their land, get rid of all weeds, roughage and waste. Bad advice, says Pandey. Such practices actually destroy the soil.
“Now we tell them to till the earth only when and where necessary.” Sounds simple, but there are dramatic side effects. In addition to saving the land, less plowing also means the farmer spends less for tractors and fuel. It also means less greenhouse gas emissions—in two ways: less fuel burned, but also, if the soil isn’t thoroughly plowed, more carbon remains trapped in the earth, as much as 74 kilograms per acre per year.
“This reform actually means spending less, and it requires no new technology. It’s just teaching the farmer not to do something,” says Pandey.
It all seems obvious, but less than 10 percent of global farmland—largely in North and South America—is under this kind of system.
Other reforms—like rotating crops and cutting back on rampant use of pesticides and fertilizers—are nothing new, but they can have a revolutionary impact, often in ways you would never think of, such as teaching farmers not to burn their waste, but to use it as a mulch on their fields. That improves soil quality, but it also means less evaporation, which means farmers will need 30 percent less water. Researchers in Australia found that such mulching also reduces the temperature of the plants by one degree—which could greatly reduce the impact of climate change on crop production.
Pandey’s task force will present these and other strategies to agricultural ministers from around the world in Rome in June. “We’re going to boil the thing down to 100 to 120 pages, something that national leaders can digest in a couple of hours while they’re flying from one spot to another.”
There’s reason for optimism, says Pandey: “The lessons we have learned in the past 40 to 50 years have taught us now we can produce more on the same amount of land, and can do it in a way that does not destroy the ecosystem.”
Problem is, implementation is not in the hands of FAO experts. They have to persuade policymakers to make the reforms, many of which have been proposed for decades. 
Perhaps the current dramatic wave of unrest will convince at least some leaders they no longer have a choice.
Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia University, spent 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with “60 Minutes.” He has produced numerous articles, a documentary and a book, “Web of Deceit,” about Iraq. Lando is just finishing a novel, “The Watchman’s File.”
Flickr / joost j. bakker (CC-BY)

San Jose Food Not Bombs Meeting and potluck

San Jose Food Not Bombs Meeting and potluck!

 

Time	Saturday, February 12 · 6:30pm - 9:30pm
Location	Hijinx House 137 Sunol St San Jose, CA 95126
Created By	San Jose Food Not Bombs
More Info	We're meeting after serving on Saturday the 12th at Hijinx House, see you all there!

Re-engineered plants may root out terrorism threats

I'm no plant expert, but why does it need to be resistant to antibiotics?  Is letting this shite loose really a good idea?  I love how it takes 3 hours for the plants to turn white.  And they want to put it EVERYWHERE.  Let me guess... it's resistant to RoundUp, right?  Just another way to sell more poison.  Grrr.  - nanda -

 

By Bruce Finley
The Denver Post

Posted: 01/27/2011 01:00:00 AM MST

Updated: 01/27/2011 06:15:57 AM MST

CSU biologist June Medford looks at re-engineered plants such as arabidopsis as a tool in to the war on terrorism. The presence of potentially deadly vapors causes such plants to turn white. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)

A government-backed Colorado State University scientist has re-engineered plants so that they can detect explosives, air pollution and toxic chemicals. Plants fixed with custom-made proteins in biologist June Medford's lab signal the presence of potentially deadly vapors by turning from green to white.

Military and Homeland Security research directors on Wednesday said they envision wide applications for the genetically modified plants positioned in buildings, war zones and cities where terrorists could set up covert bombmaking factories.

"If you take something into Denver International Airport, like an explosive for a plane, my plants are going to turn white," said Medford, 52. "That's going to get the security guys on

Extras

• Learn more information about plant sentinels that detect environmental contaminants and explosives.

you."

 

But none are deployed yet. And the plants, as currently engineered, take more than three hours to change colors.

There's also the problem of genetically modified plants spreading on their own or cross-pollinating with other plants. 

Medford's creations contain genes resistant to antibiotics and herbicides. Today they're growing inside refrigerator-sized chambers in a locked, limited-access lab on CSU's Fort Collins campus. Federal laws regulate genetic modification of plants; the U.S. Department of Agriculture is charged with ensuring the plants are not released.

Medford said she's working on ways to remove objectionable genes and also to sterilize the modified plants so they could not spread on their own.

The Defense Department's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, launched Medford's plant research in 2003 with a $500,000 grant. The Office of Naval Research in 2006 kicked in $1 million. The Department of Homeland Security also funded early research.

Now the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency has granted $7.9 million for Medford and her team of about 30 researchers to speed up plant detection and color change and, then, to test "plant sentinels" outside

Peter Bowerman, a post-doctoral researcher at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, takes a look at arabidopsis stored in a biology lab on campus. (Craig F. Walker, The Denver Post)

the lab.

 

Homeland Security officials said strategic placement of the plants could help reach a goal of deploying a decentralized, nationwide system for detecting explosives.

"Because you could engineer these plants any way you want, you could make them highly selective," said Doug Bauer, the Homeland Security explosives research program manager in Washington, D.C.

"Our hope is if these plants could be located ubiquitously, we might be able to detect explosives at the point they are being assembled," he said. "You would have a much greater opportunity for first-responders to interdict and disrupt that activity."

Homeland Security agents are interested in adaptations so that only agents using infrared technology could see plant color changes, Bauer said.

Another possibility: Police could use the plants to enforce drug prohibitions, Bauer said. "Such sentinels," he said, "could be very inexpensive."

Military strategists are brainstorming applications aimed at protecting soldiers from roadside bombs and other perils of war.

"You could potentially have potted plants that you could bring someplace," said Linda Chrisey, bioscience technology program director in the Office of Naval Research.

"You might have the plants on a convoy route," Chrisey said, "or in buildings you were concerned about" — as well as in areas littered with land mines: "If you didn't quite know where things were buried, you could use the plants to help alert you to which areas you need to concentrate on."

The plants also could be deployed to sniff for greenhouse gases and other industrial pollution.
Medford and colleagues at Duke University and the University of Washington began their work using computers to redesign naturally occurring plant proteins called receptors.

Then Medford started dipping plants in a bacteria solution, which allowed them to pick up the custom receptors. Once a plant's genetic structure has been altered, its receptors can detect a pollutant or explosive in air or soil near the plant. When a plant detects the substance, new internal signaling causes the plant to lose its green color and turn white.

Peer-reviewed research results are to be published his week in the science journal PLoS ONE.
While her plants respond to an explosive in hours, researchers said improvements in progress probably will reduce the response time to a few minutes.

"Having cellphones, having social media, having the Internet — this is empowering people," Medford said. "What I see our technology doing is empowering people to know if their air and water is clean."
Bruce Finley: 303-954-1700 or bfinley@denverpost.com

---

Government grants

Colorado State University has received a number of grants from the Office of Naval Research, U.S. Navy, U.S. Department of Defense and DARPA in the past decade. Here are some highlights:
• Examining issues of human cognition in relation to individual decision-making under stress and team pattern-recognition under stress.
• Developing playing cards with messages on how American soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan can help preserve precious antiquities (program has expanded to Egypt and the Middle East region).
• Developing military radar system that will track enemy movement through cities filled with tall buildings, trees and other obstructions.
• Advancing fundamental understanding and development of interference coatings for high-energy lasers.
• Conducting ongoing atmospheric and hydrologic research that supports U.S. military efforts through Center for Geosciences/Atmospheric Research. (Provided cave-detection technology for anti-Taliban operations within a month of 9/11 and helped address how clouds and ice affect certain military airspace zones.)
• Identifying and isolating chemicals that some invasive weeds are known to release to gain footing over native plants and researching the use of those chemicals as natural herbicides, while identifying plants that are resistant to those chemicals.
• Creating a new class of adaptable computer systems capable of processing large files and complex data sets at speeds up to 600 times faster than the quickest Pentium chip.

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Maria Rodale

CEO and Chairman of Rodale, Inc. and book author

Posted: January 31, 2011 06:07 PM

We Stand in Opposition to GE Alfalfa

Every once in a while an issue comes along that is so shockingly wrong, that people seem to spontaneously unite in opposition. This is one of those times. I am very honored to post this letter, written by some of the most informed, passionate, and good-hearted people I know. Please, do what you can to fight against the GMO contamination of our bodies and our environment by demanding organic. Thank you. --Maria

We stand united in opposition to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) decision to once again allow unlimited, nationwide commercial planting of Monsanto's genetically engineered (GE) Roundup Ready alfalfa, despite the many risks to organic and conventional farmers.

Last spring more than 200,000 people submitted comments to the USDA highly critical of the substance and conclusions of its draft EIS on GE Alfalfa. Instead of responding to these comments and concerns, including expert comments from farmers, scientists, academics, conservationists, and food safety and consumer advocates, the USDA has chosen instead to listen to a handful of agricultural biotechnology companies.
USDA's decision to allow unlimited, nationwide commercial planting of Monsanto's GE Roundup Ready alfalfa without any restrictions flies in the face of the interests of conventional and organic farmers, preservation of the environment, and consumer choice. USDA has become a rogue agency in its regulation of biotech crops and its decision to appease the few companies who seek to benefit from this technology comes despite increasing evidence that GE alfalfa will threaten the rights of American farmers and consumers, as well as damage the environment.

The Center for Food Safety will be suing on this decision.

In the coming months, we will be seeing USDA proposals to allow unrestricted plantings of GE sugar beets, and GE corn and soy crops designed to resist toxic pesticides, such as 2-4D and Dicamba, highly toxic pesticides that pose a serious threat to our health and the environment. To win these critical and difficult battles, the entire organic community, and our allies in the conventional food and farming community, will have to work together.

Now is the time to unite in action. We need to work together to restore sanity to our food system, stop the deregulation of GE crops and join together against the forces that are seeking to silence hundreds of thousands of Americans.

As we move forward, we are united in opposing genetically engineered organisms in food production and believe that pressure to stop the proliferation of this contaminating technology must be focused on the White House and Congress. The companies responsible for this situation are the biotech companies whose GE technology causes genetic drift and environmental hazards that are not contained as the deregulation of genetically engineered alfalfa goes forward. The organic community stands together with consumer, farmer, environmental and business interests to ensure practices that are protective of health and the environment.
We urge you to join us today.

Sign up to receive action alerts.

Consider making a donation to the legal effort ahead.

Let the White House know that you do not support the deregulation of GE alfalfa.

Sincerely,
Christine Bushway, Organic Trade Association
Jay Feldman, Beyond Pesticides
Michael Funk, United Natural Foods Inc (UNFI)
Elizabeth Henderson, NOFA Interstate Council
Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm
Liana Hoodes, National Organic Coalition
Kristina Hubbard, Organic Seed Alliance
Faye Jones, Midwest Organic Sustainable Education Service
Robby Kenner, Robert Kenner Films
Andrew Kimbrell, Center for Food Safety
Russell Libby, Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners (MOFGA)
Ed Maltby, Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance (NODPA)
Robyn O'Brien, Allergy Kids
Keith Olcott, Equal Exchange
Michael Pollan, Author
Maria Rodale, Rodale Inc.
Eric Schlosser, Author
Robynn Schrader, National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA)
Corinne Shindelar, INFRA
George Siemon, Organic Valley
Michael Sligh, Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI)
Megan Westgate, Non-GMO Project
Maureen Wilmot, Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF)
Enid Wonnacott, Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont (NOFA-VT)

How Food Prices Can Fuel Revolutions like Egypt's

How food prices can fuel revolutions like Egypt’s 3

by Jess Zimmerman

31 Jan 2011 11:51 AM

• 
  

More: Egypt, Food, food prices, Grist List, Politics

Photo: Joonas PlaanThis is not Egypt's first time at the revolution rodeo, and previous outbursts were precipitated by the cost of bread. Global food prices are spiking right now, and Egypt, as the world's largest wheat importer, is reliant on climate-tossed countries like Russia and Pakistan for its food supply. Do commodities prices play a role in the current protests?
Food insecurity means political insecurity: NPR reported yesterday on the role of food prices in the recent turmoil:

Political unrest has broken out in Tunisia, Yemen, Egypt and other Arab countries. Social media and governmental policies are getting most of the credit for spurring the turmoil, but there's another factor at play.
Many of the people protesting are also angry about dramatic price hikes for basic foodstuffs, such as rice, cereals, cooking oil and sugar.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says its global food price index is at a record high, above even where it stood during the last food crisis three years ago. In early 2008, rising prices caused riots in dozens of countries -- several of which are now seeing uprisings once again.

Not the major factor in Egypt: David Pollock at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy told us he doubts that commodity pricing is a major factor -- in fact, he called it a "huge oversimplification." There are grave inequalities in the Egyptian economy, but it's the inequalities, not the absolute cost, that people object to. And there's also, you know, Mubarak:

There are issues of political stagnation, repression, favoritism, corruption -- it goes way beyond economics and certainly way beyond just food issues. It all goes together, I don't think you could disentangle it very well.

In fact, bread may be the thing the government is screwing up least: Egypt is the world's largest importer of wheat, and wheat prices have been rising. But the Egyptian government also subsidizes staple food items: 70 percent of Egyptians rely on subsidized food. Since the 2008 riots -- which really were about bread -- the government has been keeping food prices for basics relatively stable, says Pollock:

A lot of the population lives on the edge economically and they do feel the effects of a jump in food prices, and Egypt does have to import an awful lot of its food, so it's very vulnerable to global commodity pricing. All of that is true.
But food prices for basic items are heavily subsidized in Egypt ... there are rations and subsidized goods of inferior quality available at very very low prices, and these parallel markets for better and more freely available flour or bread or rice or cooking oil that are available at more like market prices.
... Two years ago there was another issue when they tried to raise bread prices, cut subsidies, and all of a sudden there wasn't enough of the subsidized bread available on the market. People got upset and the bakers were striking and people couldn't get what they needed, and the government stepped in and said okay, the army's going to bake bread for you if necessary, and we'll stop cutting back on subsidies so much and try to keep this on an even keel. And in the last two years that's more or less the policy that the Egyptian government has pursued, so it would be hard to argue that something that happened recently with food prices or distribution was a direct cause or instigator behind this latest wave of really massive unrest.

But it may have been a major factor in Tunisia: Earlier this month, the Washington Post reported that spiking food prices were partly responsible for the Tunisian uprising:

The state of emergency in Tunisia has economists worried that we may be seeing the beginnings of a second wave of global food riots. Battered by bad weather and increasing demand from the developing world, the global food supply system is buckling under the strain. ...
Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali on Thursday vowed to reduce the price of staples such as sugar, milk and bread ,but the pledge wasn't enough to placate the thousands of protesters who mobbed the capital, Tunis, on Friday to demand his ouster. The country's prime minister, Mohammed Ghannouchi, has appeared on state TV to announce he is assuming power.

Which was a major factor in Egypt: Pollock told us that the Egyptian unrest is a clear example of the "demonstration effect," where political developments in one country can catalyze events in another:

People are inspired and imitating and emboldened by what they heard about and saw happening in Tunisia. It takes this kind of catalyst to turn something upside down much more quickly and suddenly and surprisingly than people ever imagined. Once people understood that they can do it if they get to critical mass, that's a huge psychological change.

Enough isn't always enough: Reliance on imports can make a country especially susceptible to shortages -- from, say, giant protests. Egypt actually has plenty of wheat, for now, but Egyptians are anticipating shortages as the protests disrupt importing. It's possible that food concerns could hamstring the uprising, even if they didn't cause it.
In any event, food prices are serious business: Experts may not be tracing the Egyptian revolution back to the cost of bread, but it's true that food insecurity is a source of civil unrest -- not to mention civil injustice. And it's true that climate change threatens food security. Lowering reliance on imports in the short term and fighting climate change in the long term won't end political uprising, even food-related political uprising -- remember "let them eat cake"? The French peasants weren't starving because of floods in Pakistan. But it can potentially have political effects far more profound than partisan points scored off cap-and-trade.