yearofplenty

How Federal Food Subsidies Turn the Food Pyramid Upside Down

The chart above is careening around the internet today. I think it originated here where they describe the Farm Bill in the following terms;

The bill provides billions of dollars in subsidies, much of which goes to huge agribusinesses producing feed crops, such as corn and soy, which are then fed to animals. By funding these crops, the government supports the production of meat and dairy products—the same products that contribute to our growing rates of obesity and chronic disease. Fruit and vegetable farmers, on the other hand, receive less than 1 percent of government subsidies.

As the chart highlights, no wonder a big mac is cheaper than a salad and no wonder the rate of obesity is skyrocketing.

Food On the Table Conference in Moscow, ID | March 26-27, 2010

This conference looks great. It's sponsored by Rural Roots, a Moscow, ID based organization that promotes sustainable food and farming. Here's the scoop.

Join local growers, educators, sustainable food advocates, and community members as we collectively address our regional food system priorities in this unique "working" conference.

Friday Community Dinner at the 1912 Center (5:30 pm - 9 pm) | "Shepherding Change:  How Localizing Food can Transform the Landscape and our Communities"

Saturday Conference Sessions at the UI Idaho Commons (8 am - 5:30 pm)

Farm to Institution:  Integrating local food into restaurants, schools, hospitals and universities

Processing on the Palouse:  Bringing local meat and value-added products to market

Farming as a Business and Lifestyle:  Starting your farm and selling to your community

Backyard Bounty:  Increasing community self-sufficiency

View Conference Flyer

Friday dinner $20 | Saturday conference $20 (lunch not incl.) | Saturday lunch $15

Registration deadline is March 18 (Space is limited so register early!)

Wendell Berry: A Cows Contentment Flavors the Steak

Berry's comments from the Art of the Commonplace, are helpful in describing the benefits of growing your own vegetables and knowing the origins of the meat we eat.

The pleasure of eating should be an extensive pleasure, not that of the mere gourmet. People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and known that the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating. The knowledge of good health of the garden relieves and frees and comforts the eater.

The same goes for eating meat. The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak. Some, I know, will think this bloodthirsty or worse to eat a fellow creature you have known all its life. On the contrary, I think it means that you eat with understanding and with gratitude. A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.

I hear people getting into debates about whether organic vegetables are, from the perspective of chemistry, more nutritious. Others debate the financial advantage of growing your own vegetables. Some take a pragmatic view of the politics and say things like, "the corporate agriculture industry would like nothing better than to see us spend all of our free time in our gardens and not in political dissent." And of course we love to debate the mathematics of carbon footprints.

While these perspectives are all important and need to be debated and discussed, none are quite as compelling to me as the one Berry makes in the quote above. Instead of breaking things down to their component parts, which is what our scientific approaches do, Berry is putting the food we eat in context, using words like beauty, memory and contentment. He says that simply knowing the source and conditions of the land and animals that provide our food makes the food taste better (and I would add, in many cases worse.) I can't prove it with a scientific study but I know it to be true from my experience.

Almost Half of Western Washington Bee Colonies Suffer Collapse

I ran into Jerry Tate from Tate's Honey Farm at the Rocket Bakery this morning. I asked him how his bees are doing and he said they are great, but added that Western Washington Beekeepers are really hurting. I probed for more information and he explained that based on the research of the state beekeepers association, 45% of Washington bee colonies have collapsed (died) west of Ritzville. By contrast, only 25% of colonies to the east of Ritzville have suffered that fate, which is about average for beekeepers since the rise in recent years of varroa mites and the phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder. The survey included all state beekeepers with over 1,000 colonies.

Jerry's hunch is that the late supply of nectar in the Spokane region helped eastern Washington bees whereas western Washington bees didn't have as much available late in the summer. From what I've read, the onset of colony collapse usually has a multiple factors that conspire together. It's a good lesson in the complex nature of the environment. We'd like to think there is one innovation that will fix everything, when it's actually the systems and the interactions of a variety of factors that need to be addressed.

One bit of trivia I learned from Jerry is that many western washington beekeepers send their bees to the Dakota's for part of the summer. He also mentioned that California bees also come north and spend some time in Washington before heading east to the Dakotas.

Jerry and others from the state association will meet with the state Secretary of Agriculture tomorrow in Olympia. Our state's economy is incredibly dependent on tree fruit, especially apples, and without bees to pollinate the trees there won't be any apples.

"Fresh" Movie Now Showing at the Magic Lantern

"Fresh," a new movie about food, is playing at the Magic Lantern in downtown Spokane tonight, Feb 18 at 7pm. The site indicates it will be playing through Feb. 21.

Here's the synopsis;

FRESH celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet.

The People Formerly Known as Consumers

 

I have been noticing a lot of back and forth between farmers and non-farmers on Twitter and this statement by @follownathan really caught my attention. He says, "I am growing very tired of hearing the word "consumer" It's a design for a disconnect #ag4all #agchat #food"

Nathan rode his bike across the country learning about and telling the stories of the farms and farmers he encountered along the way. But he has discovered in the process that his input on farming has not always been welcome. He has expressed often that he is dismissed as a "consumer" in conversations about agriculture. I have felt some of the same tensions in my conversations with farmers.

His comment reminded me of sentiments expressed in an article by Jay Rosen from 2006 titled, "The People Formerly Known as the Audience." In describing a rapidly changing media landscape where the audience no longer stands by passively he says;

The people formerly known as the audience wish to inform media people of our existence, and of a shift in power that goes with the platform shift you’ve all heard about.

Think of passengers on your ship who got a boat of their own. The writing readers. The viewers who picked up a camera. The formerly atomized listeners who with modest effort can connect with each other and gain the means to speak— to the world, as it were...

The people formerly known as the audience are those who were on the receiving end of a media system that ran one way, in a broadcasting pattern, with high entry fees and a few firms competing to speak very loudly while the rest of the population listened in isolation from one another— and who today are not in a situation like that at all.

It really is amazing how dramatically things have shifted when it comes to media. I'm just a lowly local blogger but in a strange twist of Google economics my blog post about your business just might be considered more important than your business' web site. My 7 year old daughter just published her first book on Blurb. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for stock photography I can go to stock exchange and find it for free. And not only that, I'm even willing to upload my own stock photo library and let you use it for free. It's been a crazy time of upheaval in media. The audience is now the performer and the performer is the audience.

I wonder if it isn't time for an article titled, "The People Formerly Known as Consumers." Could it be that the same dynamics that have turned upside down the media landscape are also at work in the world of food and consumption? Is it possible that the free flow of information and opinion is overturning the old consumer producer/farmer relationship? Are we entering a time where awareness has grown enough to say that we're all farmers now, even if that isn't our vocation. I don't make a living as a photographer, or a journalist, or a food critic, or a publisher but I am all those things. I am a consumer...but I'm also a farmer.

The people formerly known as consumers are no longer content to stand by passively in the midst of our food systems and consumer lives.

To be continued...

Could Walmart Be the Savior of the Local Small Farm?

There is a must read article at the Atlantic Monthly describing Walmart's little known "Heritage Agriculture" program;

The program, which Walmart calls Heritage Agriculture, will encourage farms within a day’s drive of one of its warehouses to grow crops that now take days to arrive in trucks from states like Florida and California. In many cases the crops once flourished in the places where Walmart is encouraging their revival, but vanished because of Big Agriculture competition.

Ron McCormick, the senior director of local and sustainable sourcing for Walmart, told me that about three years ago he came upon pictures from the 1920s of thriving apple orchards in Rogers, Arkansas, eight miles from the company’s headquarters. Apples were once shipped from northwest Arkansas by railroad to St. Louis and Chicago. After Washington state and California took over the apple market, hardly any orchards remained. Cabbage, greens, and melons were also once staples of the local farming economy. But for decades, Arkansas’s cash crops have been tomatoes and grapes. A new initiative could diversify crops and give consumers fresher produce.

"Could" is the operative word in that sentence. It sounds like it's more an idea than a reality at this point. As much as I hate to admit it, it's going to take the Walmarts of the world to substantially transform certain aspects of local food systems. Our Farmers' Markets, food co-ops and specialty grocers have such a small share of the market that their impact is limited.

On the other hand the farmers' markets have something on offer that Walmart can never compete with; relationships. The markets facilitate relationships between farmers and customers and neighbors with neighbors. These interactions are too inefficient for the machinery of a bottom line business like Walmart.

Spokane Ag Expo and Main Market Food Co-op Make Interesting Neighbors

I ventured downtown on Wednesday to the Spokane Ag Expo put on by Greater Spokane Incorporated. A good friend is the president this year so he gave me a grand tour of the impressive display of towering tractors and introduced me to dozens of farmers. I heard many farmers talking about no till farming methods which sound like they are being adopted at a rapid rate on the palouse. I've written about issues of erosion and the promise of no-till farming methods here, here and here.

I received a tutorial on the high tech, no-till "drills" that insert the seed with air hoses, spray fertilizer through another hose with precision below the seed, and then pack it down all in one quick pass over the ground. One argument in the environmental conversation is that technology will be the key to moving toward sustainability. This is a limited argument, but in the case of no-till farming, technology is definitely the hero.

The most fascinating part of the trip was walking across the street to check out the new Main Market Food Co-op that had a soft opening a couple weeks back. I couldn't help but feel a disconnect between the massive displays at the ag expo and the small boutique feel of the co-op. I went from conversations about 800 acre "hobby" farms and a 100 acre's of Costco asparagus in Pasco to looking at a dozen humble baskets of fresh produce on display at the market. The co-op is a wonderful addition to the local food culture and eco-system in Spokane but the tractor at the expo that had tracks like a tank instead of wheels could literally roll right over the co-op building without slowing down. In terms of scale, they are two different worlds. And the divides and differences between the two go beyond that.

I don't have any big answers or insinuations to make. Just observing. There were two very different narratives about food and agriculture playing out in downtown Spokane this week. I'm wondering where they connect and meet. How might we facilitate connections?

Why "Too Big to Fail" Doesn't Work in Agriculture Either

We hear a lot these days about the dangers of "Too Big to Fail" banks, but we should probably be hearing more about "Too Big to Fail" agricultural companies who have dominant positions in the marketplace.

This article at the Daily Yonder is the best survey of the consequences of Monsanto's stranglehold on corn and soy crops in the U.S. It presents what I think is an even handed well researched perspective on the issue. It is a selection of excerpts from a report titled, "Out of Hand: Farmers Face the Consequences of a Consolidated Seed Industry." Take note that this is a report from farmers to farmers. 

Here are some key excerpts:

...four firms control more than 80 percent of beef packing; three firms control about 70 percent of soybean crushing; and three firms handle 55 percent of flour milling...

The prevailing leader, the Monsanto Company, accounts for about 60 percent of both the U.S. corn and soybean seed market through subsidiaries and technology (i.e., genetically engineered traits, such as Roundup Ready and Bt) licensing agreements with smaller companies. When looking specifically at genetically engineered traits in the U.S., more than 90 percent of the soybean and cotton acreage, and more than  80 percent of corn acreage, is planted with one or more of Monsanto’s traits.

Monsanto manufactures glysophosphate (Round Up) and the portions of the article dealing with this chemical were the most eye opening.

If you are a corn, cotton, or soybean producer in the Southeast or Mid-South, effects of glyphosate’s prolific use is seen in fields and felt in pocketbooks. (Glyphosate is Round-up.) Glyphosate-resistant weeds are now established in 19 states and deemed a serious economic problem, at times adding more than $20 per acre.  Weed specialists refer to resistant weeds as a “train wreck” making their way across the country...

Some of the worst resistance is found in pigweed (Palmer amaranth). Resistant pigweed now infests hundreds of thousands of acres in the Southeast. For example, 70 to 80 percent of Macon County, Georgia, dubbed the “epicenter” of glyphosate-resistant Pigweed, is infested with the weed, and farmers were forced to abandon 10,000 acres in 2007.151

Here are the recommendations from the report:

What Should Change

1. The Department of Justice should closely examine anti-competitive conduct in the industry.

Biotechnology firms have merged with or acquired a significant number of competitors, and though some have drawn antitrust scrutiny, no meaningful action has been taken to deal with anti-competitive players. Farm commodity prices are falling and will not sustain escalating seed prices, which continue to put these firms’ primary customers – American farmers – at a disadvantage. Independent seed companies say that the licensing agreements they sign to access GE traits unreasonably restrain competition. Because independent seed companies are important distribution channels for new seed varieties, this market needs to be protected from predatory practices. 

2. Change patent law and establish Plant Variety Protection Act as sole protection.

By establishing the PVPA as the sole means of intellectual property protection over plants, farmers could regain the right to save seed and the right to choice, as plant breeders would have better access to plant genetics that are currently off limits to innovation because of patents.

3. Change the Bayh-Dole Act (Patent and Trademark Law Amendments Act). 

The Bayh-Dole Act as applied to seed patenting and agricultural innovations should be re-evaluated and reformed to prohibit mandates for seed patenting and exclusive licenses relating to technologies and innovations developed through publicly funded research, because such patents and exclusive licenses are reducing farmer choice, reducing researcher access and directly contributing to this increasing trend of monopoly power, higher prices and/or other anti-competitive practices.

Michael Pollan, Oprah and #Agchat

I missed Michael Pollan's appearance on Oprah today. The clip above with John Stewart probably gives you the gist of what he had to say. Even more interesting to me than what Pollan had to say is my growing awareness of how the farming community, at least a significant portion of it, really resents that Michael Pollan is so prominent in telling the story of agriculture. There is a growing sentiment that farmers should be the one's to tell their own story. See the Twitter response below for a sense of how some farmers feel about it.

@RadicalOmnivore No one said farmers are good communicators, that is the problem, we don't talk about what we do, we just do it.

Don't believe evrythng u hear @Oprah about food & how it's produced. Talk 2 a farmer 2 hear the real story, we live it evryday. #agchat #mom

@Oprah, please invite farmers on to tell your viewers how we raise food & protect our livestock, Pollan doesn't raise food, we do. #agchat

DayAngus Dear @Oprah I am going out to help my daughter feed a balanced diet of grain & hay to her cattle. #agchat #meatcamp

I was introduced last week to the #agchat hashtag on Twitter when my recent posts on the American Farm Bureau and farmers (here and here) caught the attention of people in that conversation. I was surprised to find the following headline ricocheting all over Twitter and Facebook linking to my blog;

@Chrischinn: After the suicide of a dairy farmer, critic of #ag now understands "it's hard to be a farmer." http://bit.ly/84zpi3 #agchat

I'd never really thought of myself as a "critic" of the agricultural community but there it was, I was the repentant critic. I prefer to think of myself as an ag advocate but, oh well.

I do think they are on to something when those on #agchat talk about the importance of telling the story. In general us consumers live in the midst of fragmentation and part of what is happening in the local food movement is that we are seeking to recover the story of our food. In the midst of powerful forces at work in the marketplace that rely on storyless efficiencies and disconnected commodities, we're choosing to live into a new story of connection in relationships with the people that produce our food and consumer goods. We're peeling back the veneer of pastoral scenes on our food packages dreamed up by marketing departments, and we don't like some of what we're seeing. We want to know the stories of our farmers.

I was talking to a farmer friend yesterday, and he said the problem isn't the farmers, but rather the large corporations that are controlling the food supply. It's not the ranchers, but the massive feedlots scattered across the country owned by a few corporations. It's not the growers but the few corporations that have a stranglehold on the seed supply. I think he's on to something. Between the farmers who want to tell their story and the consumers who long to reweave the story of their consumer lives are corporations that want to control the story on both sides of the equation. I think I should stop here lest my blog ends up on #evilglobalcorporationchat on twitter. :)

Ultimately businesses will adapt to the demands of the consumers. We want to hear the stories of our farmers, and we want our farmers to hear our stories, why we want good clean healthy food. Let's get to work telling and listening and the corporations will follow.