Green Options

The phrase,”industrial farming” is something I see on lots of web posts and comment strings.  I’m guessing that this intentionally derisive terminology conjures up some pretty negative imagery for most people not directly involved with farming.  The use of this emotive term raises two questions for me:

• Is modern, “industrial” farming actually what people imagine it to be?
• Is there actually a viable alternative?

Well, let’s consider some of the features of modern farming

“Industrial Farming Is Highly Mechanized” (True but Necessary)

It might not fit your view of a romantic, rural life-style, but if you are actually the farmer, the comfortable, efficient, sophisticated farm equipment available today sounds pretty good.  As in all “industrialized” segments of our economy, machines and computers make farmers more productive and eliminate the most laborious (and often dangerous) parts of the job.  There is a detailed history of farm equipment on the John Deere website that is worth a read.  Mechanization of farming has enabled the workforce directly involved in farming to drop from ~40% in 1900 to less than 1% today.  Over this time period, people have chosen other careers intentionally.  There are not a lot of people who want to work on farms in the old, labor-intensive way.

Actually, hand-labor-intensive crops (e.g. coffee, strawberries…), or high labor cropping systems (e.g. Organic) are on a collision course with demographic trends.  The pool of unskilled farm laborers upon which rich Americans have (unethically) depended is only going to decline over time and make rejection of “mechanization” an increasingly non-viable option.  Unless you are the one doing the work, it isn’t really reasonable to insist that mechanization be avoided because it’s too “industrial.”

As I have been blogging on this site for a little while, I see some of the exchanges in the comment streams on other folk’s posts.  I was surprised to see that Vegans don’t use honey because it involves domsticated bees.  That has raised a few random questions for me.  (Full disclosure, I am [...]

A team of Dutch researchers (Verweij and Kema) , reporting in last December’s edition of the medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases suggest that over-use of the farm fungicide may be contributing to the growing resistance of the Aspergillus fungus to the disease-fighting chemicals.

There are measurable levels of MNI’s toxic chemicals in every type of food that has been tested. Most are completely unregulated. There is no requirement that food be labeled to let consumers know that the chemicals are present. You can’t even avoid these chemicals by buying Organic. In fact, Organic produce often has even higher levels of some of the chemicals. You can’t wash them off because they are inside the food. There are very few studies on the long-term effects of ingesting these chemicals and none have ever been funded my MNI itself.  Only publicly funded studies have shed some light on the toxic nature of these chemicals.

This chemical production giant is not a public company so it does nothing to make its activities transparent. MNI has never been successfully challenged in court and isn’t subject to the jurisdiction of any government.

The industry that has been providing us with high quality coffee may seem to be doing well today, but it actually faces a combination of issues that may well render our lattes and capachinos a very expensive indulgence in the future.  We will probably stop worrying about whether it is “Fair Trade” or “Organic” and worry about whether we can get it at all.

“Arabica” Coffee - the Good Stuff

Any coffee aficionado will tell you that ‘arabica‘ coffee (Caffea arabica) is far better than the lowly ‘robusta’ coffee (Caffea canephora) that made up the Folgers-style “cup of Joe” that I grew up drinking.  These are actually two different species of coffee and arabica only does well in a limited range of environments - mainly consisting of higher elevations in the tropics.  At lower elevations the pests (insects and diseases that ‘robusta’ can tolerate), devastate the more delicate, arabica types.  

Coffee Production Problem One

The places where arabica coffee can grow are shrinking.  Even subtle temperature increases caused by climate change raise the elevation limit for successful arabica cultivation.  Mountains get smaller as you go higher so you can imagine the issue.  There is less and less land suitable for arabica production.  If this was the only problem it might be fixable, but it isn’t coffee’s only challenge. 

The benefits of organic and grass fed beef have been well documented.  Numerous studies have shown that organic and grass fed beef has significantly higher levels of Omega 3s and lower levels of saturated fats than conventionally produced beef.  But recent studies have cast doubt on the long held wisdom that grass fed beef does not have significant E. Coli contamination issues.

Conventional food wisdom has stated that since it isn’t raised on a feedlot, grass fed beef is less susceptible to E. Coli contamination.  Food activists from local food pioneer Michael Pollan to The Organic Consumers Association are among the proponents who vouch for the nutritional and sustainable characteristics of grass fed beef over conventionally produced beef.

Talk about the trifecta of travel.  Make farmers’ markets a priority on your travel agenda and you save money (no admission fees), go green (most markets showcase seasonal, sustainable agriculture) and local (slap that cash directly in the farmer’s hand).

As my husband, John, and I and our eight-year old, Liam, trade Wisconsin winter on our farm for a few weeks working on writing projects on the California coast, indulging in the farmers’ market scene is like the equivalent of a therapists couch for our frozen Midwestern souls.  We see shiny happy people holding fresh spinach and the 20-degree below wind chill back home melts away as a far memory and all is momentarily right with the world.

While markets in January rank particularly appealing, you don’t have to solely escape parkas and snowplows to appreciate a farmer’s market while traveling.  We seek out local markets wherever we may roam.  According to USDA statistics, farmers’ markets grew in number by 13 percent between 2008 and 2009.  Tanking economies may just be what folks need to connect back to their food roots, craving a better quality, authentic connection to what’s on one’s plate.

Pack these seven tips the next time you travel to add some farmer’s market flavor and fare to your touring plans:

1.  Determine a destination

I was thinking of doing a post with a title like ‘In defense of cows’ or something along those lines.  This is not just because I’m a sort of carnivorous and contrarian guy (which I am), but because cows can actually do something that is objectively remarkable.  I know that lots of the readers on this blog are vegetarians or even vegans, and that is fine as a life-style choice for you. But no matter what your personal food choices are, it is worth thinking about what cows can do for the rest of us.

What Cows Do

One of the most abundant natural, organic chemicals in the world (cellulose), is something we humans can’t digest at all.  Cows are cool because they can eat cellulose and turn it into human-edible foods like milk and meat.  The reason that I switched the title of the post is that it isn’t actually the cows that should get the credit for this feat, at least not most of it.  Cows (and other ruminants like sheep, goats, bison, camels, llamas, yaks, water buffalos…) can only make this conversion because of the bacteria that they house in one of their stomachs.  In the whole world, there are only a few bacteria and a few fungi that have the capability of turning cellulose (the main structural polymer of all plants) back into the energy-rich, glucose sub-units of which it is made (bacteria also do that job for termites!).

I can relate to why many people have ethical issues with aspects of how beef or milk is produced today. But that does not, at least for me, mean that we should abandon the idea of harnessing the remarkable microbial process that has allowed ruminant animals to be such an important part of the human food supply in diverse cultures for millenia.  In fact I would like to see us refine not just the “animal wellness” aspect of this industry, but also its greenhouse gas issues.  

This is car news, and it isn’t. But it is definitely…interesting.

Detroit was once the 4th largest city in America and it held the title of Motor City because most of America’s cars came from there. Flash forward 40 years, and Detroit’s population has dwindled from a high of 2 million people to just over 800,000. The average price for a home in Detroit is $15,000, the lowest in the country. With so many empty spaces, criminals have no shortage of hideouts and drug factories. And with America’s auto industry still reeling from the recession, as well as having outsourced many jobs to other states (or countries), the future looks bleak for Detroit’s long-deferred recovery.

Unless one millionaire gets his way, and turns the city into farms. Yes, farms.

Whenever plants are subjected to extreme stress, such as very high or low temperatures, they do not flower and grow because they divert their food to their embryo. “Their instinct is to protect the next generation,” said Wigge.

Plants are better adapted to survive, than people are, in that respect. But then they have had a million or so more years to learn that clever trick. They might outlive us.

In my last post, I wrote about Nathan McClintock’s research on the potential of alternative food to enhance social justice in economically impoverished neighborhoods.

Here, I present a different perspective.

Julie Guthman, a sociology professor at UC-Santa Cruz, thinks that alternative food activism has a tendency to reflect white desires more than the needs of the communities these programs supposedly serve.

Guthman’s surveys of UC-Santa Cruz undergraduates who do six-month field studies with alternative food organizations as well as the managers of California farmers markets and CSAs demonstrate that alternative food is burdened by white rhetoric.