February 1, 2011, 10:28 pm

A Food Manifesto for the Future

By MARK BITTMAN

Mark Bittman on food and all things related.

For decades, Americans believed that we had the world’s healthiest and safest diet. We worried little about this diet’s effect on the environment or on the lives of the animals (or even the workers) it relies upon. Nor did we worry about its ability to endure — that is, its sustainability.

That didn’t mean all was well. And we’ve come to recognize that our diet is unhealthful and unsafe. Many food production workers labor in difficult, even deplorable, conditions, and animals are produced as if they were widgets. It would be hard to devise a more wasteful, damaging, unsustainable system.


Here are some ideas — frequently discussed, but sadly not yet implemented — that would make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring. In no particular order:

• End government subsidies to processed food. We grow more corn for livestock and cars than for humans, and it’s subsidized by more than $3 billion annually; most of it is processed beyond recognition. The story is similar for other crops, including soy: 98 percent of soybean meal becomes livestock feed, while most soybean oil is used in processed foods. Meanwhile, the marketers of the junk food made from these crops receive tax write-offs for the costs of promoting their wares. Total agricultural subsidies in 2009 were around $16 billion, which would pay for a great many of the ideas that follow.
  

• Begin subsidies to those who produce and sell actual food for direct consumption. Small farmers and their employees need to make living wages. Markets — from super- to farmers’ — should be supported when they open in so-called food deserts and when they focus on real food rather than junk food. And, of course, we should immediately increase subsidies for school lunches so we can feed our youth more real food.
  

• Break up the U.S. Department of Agriculture and empower the Food and Drug Administration. Currently, the U.S.D.A. counts among its missions both expanding markets for agricultural products (like corn and soy!) and providing nutrition education. These goals are at odds with each other; you can’t sell garbage while telling people not to eat it, and we need an agency devoted to encouraging sane eating. Meanwhile, the F.D.A. must be given expanded powers to ensure the safety of our food supply. (Food-related deaths are far more common than those resulting from terrorism, yet the F.D.A.’s budget is about one-fifteenth that of Homeland Security.)
  

• Outlaw concentrated animal feeding operations and encourage the development of sustainable animal husbandry. The concentrated system degrades the environment, directly and indirectly, while torturing animals and producing tainted meat, poultry, eggs, and, more recently, fish. Sustainable methods of producing meat for consumption exist. At the same time, we must educate and encourage Americans to eat differently. It’s difficult to find a principled nutrition and health expert who doesn’t believe that a largely plant-based diet is the way to promote health and attack chronic diseases, which are now bigger killers, worldwide, than communicable ones. Furthermore, plant-based diets ease environmental stress, including global warming.
  

• Encourage and subsidize home cooking. (Someday soon, I’ll write about my idea for a new Civilian Cooking Corps.) When people cook their own food, they make better choices. When families eat together, they’re more stable. We should provide food education for children (a new form of home ec, anyone?), cooking classes for anyone who wants them and even cooking assistance for those unable to cook for themselves.
  

• Tax the marketing and sale of unhealthful foods. Another budget booster. This isn’t nanny-state paternalism but an accepted role of government: public health. If you support seat-belt, tobacco and alcohol laws, sewer systems and traffic lights, you should support legislation curbing the relentless marketing of soda and other foods that are hazardous to our health — including the sacred cheeseburger and fries.
  

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• Reduce waste and encourage recycling. The environmental stress incurred by unabsorbed fertilizer cannot be overestimated, and has caused, for example, a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is probably more damaging than the BP oil spill. And some estimates indicate that we waste half the food that’s grown. A careful look at ways to reduce waste and promote recycling is in order.
  

• Mandate truth in labeling. Nearly everything labeled “healthy” or “natural” is not. It’s probably too much to ask that “vitamin water” be called “sugar water with vitamins,” but that’s precisely what real truth in labeling would mean.
  

• Reinvest in research geared toward leading a global movement in sustainable agriculture, combining technology and tradition to create a new and meaningful Green Revolution.
  

I’ll expand on these issues (and more) in the future, but the essential message is this: food and everything surrounding it is a crucial matter of personal and public health, of national and global security. At stake is not only the health of humans but that of the earth.
This column appeared in print on February 2, 2011. It will appear in Opinionator regularly.

A Tale of Two Farms & an Evening with Michael Pollan

Upcoming Events:   Mark your calendars for these fun, thought-provoking and inspiring events coming up soon! Purchase tickets early as these popular events fill up quickly!     A Tale of Two Farms Thursday, February 17, 2011 6:00 p.m to 9.00 p.m. Cavallo Point Cooking School 601 Murray Circle, Sausalito Price: $85 per person, plus tax (includes class, dinner and wine)  Enjoy a warm and intimate evening cooking with Marin Organic producers, Peter Martinelli of Fresh Run Farm and Loren Poncia of Stemple Creek Ranch. Participants will prepare a delicious feast under the expert tutelage of Jayne Reichert, head chef/teacher at the Cavallo Point Cooking School, and then enjoy their hard work over wine and engaging conversation with the featured producers. A Tale of Two Farms is a seasonal event hosted by the Cavallo Point Cooking School and Marin Organic.  50% of the ticket proceeds benefit Marin Organic  To purchase tickets please call the Cavallo Point Cooking School at:   (415) 339-4777  ~~~         An Evening with Michael Pollan: The Sun Food Agenda   Thursday, March 24th, 2011 Marin Center - San Rafael Reception: 7:00 p.m. - 7:50 p.m. **  Presentation: 8:00 p.m. Reception Tickets:   $75 **Reception tickets will benefit Marin Organic, and include refreshments, premium orchestra seating and pre-talk with Michael Pollan.   Presentation only:  $45 / $35 / $25 Bargain Seats: $20  Rows 26-34     By replacing the energy of the sun with energy from fossil fuels, industrial agriculture has made food impressively cheap and abundant.  But this achievement comes at a cost. Today, our food system is implicated in three of the most critical problems facing our society: the energy crisis, the climate crisis, and the health care crisis.  None of these problems can be addressed without reforming the way America eats.  In this inspiring multimedia presentation, Pollan connects the dots between food and health, and introduces us to some visionaries who are "resolarizing" the food system.  The Sun Food Agenda - involving change at the level of the farm, the marketplace and the culture - promises to improve our health, cut our dependence on fossil fuel, and help solve our climate crisis.    Tickets to the reception and talk can be purchased through the Marin Center Box Office or by calling 415 499-6800  For more information about Michael Pollan please visit www.michaelpollan.com

Critically Endangered Chicken that's a Skilled Mouse Catcher

Buckeye Chicken

The Buckeye is a dual-purpose breed of chicken with a deep, lustrous red color of plumage. They have yellow legs and skin, and, thanks to their pea comb, are very cold-weather hardy. While Buckeyes adapt readily to a variety of living conditions, they do best under free-range conditions, or conditions where they have room to move around. Because of their active nature they do not do especially well in small confined spaces. Roosters weigh approximately nine pounds; hens weigh approximately six and a half pounds and lay medium-sized, brown eggs.

Buckeyes were developed by Mrs. Nettie Metcalf of Warren, Ohio, and appropriately named after the “Buckeye State.” Buckeyes are unique in the American Class of chickens in that it is the only breed created entirely by a woman. Mrs. Metcalf started by breeding a Buff Cochin male to Barred Plymouth Rock females. This produced what she considered a large, lazy fowl. The next year she purchased a Black-Breasted Red Game male and crossed this male over the half cochin pullets. This cross produced several red offspring and from there she developed the breed. It is interesting to note that her creation predated the introduction of Rhode Island Reds into the mid-west.

In 1896 she learned that her idea of red fowls was not new and that a very popular eastern breed had been developed, the Rhode Island Red. After corresponding with several Rhode Island Red breeders, she decided to call her breed Pea Combed Rhode Island Reds (she even traded stock with several of these breeders). Rather than helping to promote her new breed, she found that calling them Pea Combed Rhode Island Reds was in fact limiting its popularity. So in 1902 she exhibited a pair in the Cleveland, Ohio poultry show as Buckeyes. Within a few years Pea Combed Rhode Island Reds began to disappear.

The Buckeye should not be confused with the Rhode Island Red, even though they share some history. Buckeyes are unique in their body shape: slanted, short but broad back, very meaty thighs, powerful wings and breast. They appear very close to the Cornish, as bred in 1905, in body shape. (It should be noted that the originator indicated that she did not use Cornish in their breeding; the Cornish body shape was simply her goal.) In color the Buckeye is also unique. The color of the Buckeye is darker than that of the original Rhode Island Red (later, the Rhode Island Red was bred for a shade of color even darker than the Buckeye). The Buckeye also has a slate colored bar in the undercolor (fluff) of its back; the Rhode Island Red’s feathers should be red to the skin. Both breeds share the trait of tight feathering – unique in the American Class of poultry.

Buckeyes also have a personality all their own. They are a very active fowl and are noted for being especially vigilant in the pursuit of mice, some breeders comparing them to cats in regard to this ability. They tend to have very little fear of humans and are possibly too friendly. In fact, some males may show a little aggression during breeding season. They also seem to lack the tendency to feather-pick each other (this is a trait worthy of further exploration). The males emit a full range of sounds beyond those typical of many other chicken breeds, including a dinosaur-like roar!

Status: Critical

Breed clubs and associations:
The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, Box 477, Pittsboro, NC 27312, (919) 542-5704, email albc@albc-usa.org, www.albc-usa.org
 
American Buckeye Poultry Club, Laura Haggarty Secretary/Treasurer P.O. Box 35 Williamstown, KY 41097 (859) 801-6081, laura@americanbuckeyepoultryclub.com, www.americanbuckeyepoultryclub.com
American Poultry Association, PO Box 306, Burgettstown, PA15021, email secretaryapa@yahoo.com, www.amerpoultryassn.com

Society for the Preservation of Poultry Antiquities, Dr. Charles R.H. Everett, Secretary, 122 Magnolia Lane, Lugoff, SC, 29078, email crheverett@bellsouth.net

The American Buckeye Club, Jeffrey Lay, 4686 Crains Run Rd, Miamisburg, OH 45342, (937) 470-2888, jefflay@woh.rr.com, www.americanbuckeyeclub.org.

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!