Oh! bama

On Wednesday, President-elect Barrack Obama appointed former Iowa governor Thomas Vilsack as his USDA chief. And previously, Obama appointed former Monsanto vice-president Michael R. Taylor to his transition team.

There's just not many positives to having either of those two creeps in this administration... I guess Change™ doesn't apply to our food chain. Perhaps next, Richard L. Bond will be made head of the FDA.

(Update: and then there's this article, written by Obama's chief adviser on agricultural issues, Marshall Matz. It's all "blah, blah, industrial agricultural is so great, blah blah..." yikes.)

Disappointing to say the least. I expected better this time around, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see what comes of it (and hopefully it won't kill us or give us cancer).

The agro-industrial complex

An important independent report, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America, by the Pew Charitable Trusts and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has been released, concluding that "Industrial animal farming in the United States needs to make many major reforms in order to protect public health and the environment."

+ The report criticized "the agro-industrial complex" in regards to:

+ their over-and mis-use of antibiotics

+ the pollution created by overcrowded factory farms

+ the spread of disease in overcrowded feedlots

+ the inhumane treatment of confined animals

+ the industry's influence on agricultural research and governmental regulation

... amongst other things

Read the report in its entirety here: http://www.ncifap.org/_images/PCIFAP%20FINAL%20REPORT.pdf

The latest on farm subsidies

Personally, I'm outraged that my tax money goes towards farm subsidies. Now, don't get me wrong, I want to see the [legendary] "family farm" succeed, but farm subsidies tend to go to the larger, super-profitable, monoculture farms whose products don't benefit many Americans (unless you own stock in Monsanto, Cargill, et al.), and can in fact hurt consumers through their land-use policies and GM/GMO and E. coli-ridden products.

Here's some articles that should interest you:

Farm subsidies: Beyond Simplistic Outrage

Farm Lobby Beats Back Assault On Subsidies

Betting the Farm

If you, too, are pi**ed off, contact your agricultural committee state representatives.

Heat over meat

I was just in California, visiting my mom, and read an interesting article in a local newspaper, the Point Reyes Light.

The article was about a slaughterhouse in nearby Petaluma that is closing its doors after almost a century in business serving mostly local cattle ranchers and dairy farmers.

(By the way, the property owner will do very well from the sale of the property, as it’s in a high-priced land area, and its development is already well-planned out, so at least he and his family won’t be hurt by the business’s closing.)

Anyway, hopefully the closing of the slaughterhouse will cause local ranchers/farmers to do away with obsolete mid-twentieth-century practices and become more efficient and profitable.

An organization called North Coast Meats has formed since the slaughterhouse's closure was announced. The group "aims not only to preserve existing infrastructure but also to foster the possibilities for livestock growers and meat providers in the local sustainable agriculture movement."

“The task is to create a regional agricultural infrastructure, but not necessarily to recreate what was here before,” stated North Coast Meats' Sam Goldberger. “Right now, food travels on the order of thousands of miles before it reaches you and consumers are demanding for that to change.”

According to the article, "The group is currently doing a feasibility study examining the costs of building and operating an organic, USDA-approved 'Integrated Animal Processing Center' that would serve a wider variety of functions than traditional slaughterhouses do – such as including a cut-and-wrap facility for the meat and direct distribution of the meats to retailers. They also plan to house a commercial kitchen, provide profit sharing, and make their own energy by processing biological waste."

“Local ranchers are increasingly caught between the rising cost of grain and price competition with large-scale producers. As feedlots, slaughterhouses, distributors and retailers each claim a piece of the profits and the price of conventionally grown meat stays the same, ranchers wind up paying the price.”

By combining several of the steps of slaughtering and packaging meat into one location, North Coast Meats plans to remove the profit-consuming middlemen of the meat business. North Coast Meats hopes “to steer the direction of agriculture in an unconventional direction designed to benefit the rancher and the consumer above any middlemen. ‘If the rancher is going to be able to survive they are going to need higher margin products,’ said Goldberger. ‘I see slaughterhouses as just one link in that chain.’”

Cattle ranchers that are raising local meat to serve the local community will be hurt the most by the closure of the slaughterhouse. David Evans of Marin Sun Farms in Point Reyes said that “it is very important to his locally-grown, grass-fed business that to have a processing facility nearby.”

“This will be most devastating to anyone who is trying to get out of the commodity beef market and do more grass-fed, direct marketing, or community supported agriculture,” said Ellie Rilla, the Marin County Farm Advisor for UCCE.

The article stated that “though only a few local ranches are currently exploring those specialty markets, consumer demand for them is making them more profitable. Last year, The UCCE went to every ranch in Marin County and surveyed them about their interest in pursuing those specialty markets. Over half of them said that they are.”

According to an earlier 2003 University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) survey, out of 186 agricultural producers in Marin County, two percent (or about four) of them were considering leaving the business, even though 63 percent (or about 117 of them) were unprofitable or marginally profitable.

It is absolutely time for a change in farming, ranching, etc.; the government needs to quit subsidizing the largest food producers so as to give the more efficient, more sustainable, and more profitable small-time food producers a chance. The government is always preaching how a market should control itself (basic supply and demand-type stuff), but it still feels compelled to subsidize inefficient business. It’s also time for food producers to quit paying for chemical and poison pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, hormones, and etc., which costs them many thousands of dollars a year, and only profits the companies that produce those chemical and poisons. Post-World War Two, the government and the big chemical companies pushed all that junk onto farmers, and now, several generations later, it’s the only way the large-scale farmers know how to farm.

But, there’s no reason for the smaller farmers to continue to farm the way their fathers or grandfathers did, when they can more profitably and sustainably farm the way their great-grandfathers did.

Sustainability is one major key to keeping family farms going and to obtain profits. The public does want inexpensive food, but it also wants food that tastes like it’s supposed to, and that won’t harm their health in the short AND long term. Produce like genetically-modified tomatoes only help the producer of the tomato; buying a tomato that has a month-long shelf life or a perfect, blemish-free red skin but that internally is unripe and is tasteless is like marrying an attractive person that is ugly on the inside: perhaps gratifying in the short term, but one grows weary of it after awhile.

Need I say more?

What, us worry?

I have always respected other countries for opposing the importation from (mainly) the U.S. and Canada of genetically modified (GM or GMO) foodstuffs, but the strength of their resolve is getting a bit worrisome lately. Of course, it's mainly the politicians, as they're probably getting big donations to their political campaigns and/or personal accounts to push GM/GMO products onto their fellow countrymen and constituents (exactly like it was done in the U.S. and Canada).

I have a strong suspicion that lately it's due to the whole corn prices dilemma, but perhaps I'm wrong.

Here's an interesting article about a consumer choice experiment undertaken in New Zealand recently:

http://www.gmo-compass.org/eng/news/stories/282.international_study_consumers_would_buy_gm_products.html

The only "problem" with the experiment is that GM/GMO products will never be cheaper than conventional products, due to the prices charged by the biotech companies to the farmers for such things as the rights to grow their seed, the seed costs, the higher pesticide and herbicide costs, etc.

I also question the accuracy of the experiment, since the GM/GMO products were labelled “spray-free genetically modified.” What does that mean exactly? Not sprayed with diesel fuel? Not with rat poison? Not with human feces? With how GM/GMO crops are produced, a large amount (when compared to conventional and especially organic crops) of herbicides, for instance, has to be applied in order to kill off resistant weeds a.k.a. volunteer "frankenweeds," so it can't mean herbicides. And it can't mean pesticides or insecticides, as farmers have increased their use of pesticides once GM or GMO crops have become established. So these fruits were free from the spray of what? I'd like to know! The term "spray-free" might have influenced customers' decisions, as it mkes it sound harmless compared to the conventional fruit, for instance.

An Onion Infographic

© Copyright 2007, Onion, Inc. All rights reserved.

Does Whole Foods have an organic produce section?

Whole Foods does have many items that are “organic” (according to the official USDA/FDA standards), and their 365 brand is pretty amazing (quality and price-wise) but their produce section leaves much to be desired. Nowadays when you walk into Whole Foods (some call it Wal Foods) produce section, you’ll notice that much of their produce is conventionally grown, mostly either in California or in another country.

Living in North Carolina, I’m offended when I see such items as collards (grown widely in N.C.) or sweet potatoes (N.C.’s state vegetable!) from California being sold at Whole Foods, especially when they’re conventionally grown and in season right here. Basically, this means that a truck had to drive all the way from California, perhaps stopping at Whole Foods’s HQ in Texas, with its load of produce for my local Whole Foods stores. And not only are they conventionally grown, but they’re much more expensive than if you were to buy them at a local supermarket (which sells the exact same conventional product) or farmers’ market (which sells the organic version). I guess somebody’s gotta pay for all that diesel for the trucks!

Awhile ago, Wal-Mart entered into the organic fray and began an organic items section, which includes produce. Years ago (perhaps now, but I haven’t checked), Wal-Mart carried more locally-grown produce than Whole Foods did. I’ve heard that my local Food Lion grocery stores rely on a farm or farms that are located in eastern N.C. (it still has to be trucked in to the stores, but not nearly as far as Whole Foods’ trucks have to drive). I have to laugh when I see pictures of local farmers and such adorning the walls of my local Whole Foods, with a write up about their product; well, many times their products have been discontinued because a cheaper source has been located overseas or in California … but their picture and bio remain well-visible! Whole Foods tries to explain away the various reasons for selling local produce on their website, but it sounds more like something a political operative wrote.

The solution for me? Well, besides growing my own naturally-grown/organic (non-certified, of course) vegetables, I shop for my veggies at a co-op grocery that is a much less-corporate version of Whole Foods: Weaver Street Market (located in Carrboro). Also, I shop at the local farmers’ markets: Hillsborough’s, Carrboro’s, Durham’s, and even the state farmers’ market in Raleigh or a local flea market (Buckhorn) on occasion. Raleigh’s doesn’t have an actual organic section per se, but some of the farmers who sell there actually grow their vegetables old school-style, and don’t use pesticides and herbicides (or only sparsely when necessary). I do shop at the conventional grocery stores on occasion, as they have produce that is similar to Whole Foods (i.e. conventional, but at least it’s often times local). Plus, it’s cheaper there (average probably about 1/3 the price). One must be careful, however, as since the FDA’s been micromanaged by the current presidential administration bureaucrats, and therefore less food safety testing has been conducted in the past several years; your fruit and veggies could be irrigated in diesel fuel in beds of asbestos for all you (and the FDA inspectors) know. They’re leaving it up to the companies to police and report themselves … yeah, I’m sure THAT will work out in the consumer’s best interests…

Again, though, I have to hand it to Whole Foods for products like their 365 brand; while not even close to being local, at least its a safer alternative than buying GMO-laced garbage at the conventional supermarket.

Alternative fuels

Of course, for many reasons, we need to find an alternative to petroleum-based motor fuels, and as soon as possible (if not 30 years ago). And, it appears as if the United States is looking towards ethanol to be the official answer to the gasoline replacement question. My main concerns with using ethanol are that it will continue the BILLIONS of dollars in corn subsidies paid by the government (especially to the VERY large commercial farmers), and that protected and/or at-risk lands might be planted in corn in order to cash in even further on the production of corn (including more forests – and especially our national parks -- will be stripped to use the wood for ethanol production). Of course, both resources (corn and trees) are renewable resources, but you know that the large corporate farmers and the lumber companies (et al.) will eventually get greedy with our natural resources (much like the oil companies do now) and the American public will suffer for it. Plus, larger amounts of genetically-modified (GM) corn and etc. will be grown, and bioengineered yeast strains, which is bad for everyone and everything but the biotech companies. Right now, my only ‘pro’ regarding corn-based ethanol production is that the byproduct (the mash) can be used as a very efficient protein feed for livestock production or even human consumption (although ex- Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan feels that animals will go hungry once ethanol production increases!).

It is interesting to see President Bush visiting Brazil to talk about ethanol production; I’d like to see what comes of it. I understand Brazil is focusing on sugar cane-based ethanol (as is Cuba and a few other countries), but I also understand that virgin rainforests may suffer (much like our national parks may suffer) once land for sugar cane production becomes too valuable to let just “lie around” and be unproductive commercially. Anyway, President Bush seems to be focusing on corn stalks, wood chips from fast-growing trees, and switchgrass for the biomass needed for ethanol production; perhaps he feels that using the ears of corn or other edible biomass will result in people drinking the finished product?

Marty Bender, a scientist at the Land Institute in Kansas, conducted studies in the 1990s that documented that an alternative fuel source such as ethanol (as a large-scale and/or total replacement for gasoline) would be ecologically inefficient and agriculturally destructive in the long run because it may cause the cultivation of every possible acre of ground (including erosive lands that have the potential to stabilize our watersheds, for instance) in order to produce the biomass needed for the tremendous supply that would be required. Plus, it would most likely decrease the food supply (perhaps greatly) nationwide and worldwide if land is considered more valuable to use for the production of fuel biomass than for edible grains.

Of course, I don’t know the answer to what the most effective (in every way) “alternative” fuel is. Perhaps using methane or another form of composting gas (i.e. as a byproduct of composting) will work; maybe algae; perhaps hydrogen would be the most efficient; perhaps biodiesel is the key; maybe fuel cells; heck, possibly solar or thermal heat will work. I’m just not sure. It’d be nice to be able to use something that’s already serving or served its main purpose (in a byproduct or recycling-kinda way), such as landfill gas or sludge, or livestock manure, or urban sewage (perhaps biosolids, even with their heavy metals), or normally unrecyclable plastics or waxed cardboard. Again, I’m just not sure what the answer is. I do think that with so many vehicles on the road that utilize gasoline, something that those vehicles can use directly or be adapted to use would be most practical, at least in the short term (with the “short term” being perhaps 20 years or so). For instance, on my salary, I’m not going to buy a brand-new 2010 year-model truck that runs on hydrogen fuel cells, I’m going to find a way to adapt or convert my 1978 Ford F-150 to use something other than gasoline (I know, I know…perhaps I should have bought a diesel). Perhaps a combination of “alternative” fuels would be best overall, as then no singular resource will be wiped out, exploited by private business interests or governments, or overly affect the environment in a negative way, and people can tailor their fuel needs to their locality and to vehicular or home heating (again, or whatever) requirements. As Rachel Burton of Piedmont Biofuels (in Chatham County, N.C.), who seems to have coined the rather brilliant term ‘Slow Fuel’ (a modification of the term ‘Slow Food’), says, “we are believers in a micro-nodal model of energy production that insists that energy be harnessed where it is used … we have decided to include fuel in our 100 mile diet.”

Heirloom seed

I have become obsessed with heirloom seeds. I’m actually even starting (this year) to save specific seed (corn and peppers for now) so as to make my seed what is termed “land race,” where a specific animal or vegetable over time becomes totally adapted to a specific place’s climate and land or soil. I’m beginning to land race my Stowell’s (sweet) corn, and within the next few years (I’ll have to clear some land I guess) will do it with a Southern dent-style of corn – probably Gourdseed but perhaps Hickory King or Boone County White. I’m also thinking of saving some of the seeds from my Cherokee Purple tomato plants for next year’s garden, but since I have other types of tomatoes growing near them and they might cross-pollinate, I may not.

Many seeds are heirloom anyway: even major companies like Burpee and Wal Mart sell some heirloom seeds (like yellow crookneck squash or Brandywine tomatoes). As long as it’s not a hybrid, or genetically modified (which yellow crookneck squash can be these days), it’s probably an heirloom variety. Heck, even some hybrids are nearly considered to be heirlooms nowadays (especially certain corn or tomato types), as they’ve been grown by some families for generations.