A fifty year farm bill...

Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry offer a serving of interesting opinion in today's NYT, with a piece on sustainable agriculture. I don't know the solution to all of the issues raised here, and in other articles, but it seems exceedingly obvious that we really must reconsider our agricultural policy and move towards a more secure, safe, and sustainable situation.

Letter to the President on Food Policy...

I am becoming increasingly interested in the web of food-agriculture-health-climate change policy, and found Michael Pollan's interview on NPR's Fresh Air to be quite enlightening. The original source of this interview is an open letter to the next president authored by Pollan, which appeared in the NYT magazine earlier this month.

Our agenda puts the interests of America’s farmers, families and communities ahead of the fast-food industry’s. For that industry and its apologists to imply that it is somehow more “populist” or egalitarian to hand our food dollars to Burger King or General Mills than to support a struggling local farmer is absurd. Yes, sun food costs more, but the reasons why it does only undercut the charge of elitism: cheap food is only cheap because of government handouts and regulatory indulgence (both of which we will end), not to mention the exploitation of workers, animals and the environment on which its putative “economies” depend. Cheap food is food dishonestly priced — it is in fact unconscionably expensive.

It is time to stop accepting the premise that food grown sustainably using the sun's power is more expensive. It is imperative that the negative externalities and implicit subsidies be considered when evaluating the true cost of this "food."

Lots more interesting stuff from Pollan can be found on his site. I would strongly recommend both The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food. I love the title for In Defense of Food, as it echoes one of the best books ever written, Crick's In Defence of Politics...

Lazy Locavores....

For all of my (somewhat many) lazy friends, there is a new option in eating local, which involves little, if any, sweat equity. I have to admit this seems a bit strange to me, but I do love the actual process of doing the sourcing / shopping for my food. I do however recognize that a little glamour in the local food movement might actually help in moving more people to a local diet. Of course and equally plausible result of this lazy food snobbery may be that the average Jane and Joe Sixpack family view the eating local movement as another strange action of the effete snobs on the hill.

Additional market note --- The Hill Farms Farmer's Market on Saturday morning features some of the best milk you can find from Blue Marble Farms. Currently they are running a special on skim milk (as it is a by product of cream production) for only $2 per half gallon. I believe that is a rate that is quite price point competitive with the non-local non-organic skim you would find in the grocery store.

Summer Veggies are the best...

even if we have to deal with summer's pests. We received our second CSA box from Greenspirit Farm last Saturday and it featured some of my favorite early summer treats: Garlic Scapes to be added to nearly everything I cook, succulent small head Brocolli, and late season earthy asparagus, which is especially good for omelettes. The Farmer's Market is in full swing at this point, featuring lots of options for the locatarian. One new local source that we have switched to is Sugar River Dairy, which offers wonderfully flavorful yogurt at a very competitive price. Add in some of those abundant strawberries from the market and you have a lovely addition to a summer lunch at Monona Terrace, overlooking Lake Monona.

Hope to see you at the market this Saturday, as green beans, brocolli and strawberries will all be in high supply.

That didn't take long...

The Donkey's addendum to the growing list of greivances provided at Mel-Anon.

As impressed as I have been with the Obama campaign, one of the lingering issues I have had is popping it's head up in today's NYT. At issue is Mr. Obama's support of ethanol as a viable renewable energy source.

Many economists, consumer advocates, environmental experts and tax groups have been critical of corn ethanol programs as a boondoggle that benefits agribusiness conglomerates more than small farmers. Those complaints have intensified recently as corn prices have risen sharply in tandem with oil prices and corn normally used for food stock has been diverted to ethanol production.

It seems to me that Obama is about as far from right on this issue as one can be without trying. His continued support of farm subsidies that primarily benefit the big corporate farm interests is a problem. These subsidies also create an inherent policy preference towards corn and soybeans, which we don't really need to produce at the level we do. (Maybe he should call Wisconsinite Ron Kind). He also continues to support the tariffs on Brazillian ethanol, which offers significant protection to these same corporate farm interests. Lest we mention, that the Brazillian ethanol is at least three times as efficient in rating energy output vs. input ratios. So, the Obama support of ethanol seems to me to be less about ethanol and energy independence than it is about keeping Archer Daniels Midland happy. This is a real issue, and I can only hope that the campaign wises up a bit.

Media coverage of local food movements...

I think it's great that the Isthmus is giving significant coverage to the concept of locally provided food. I found the article to be quite informative and it seemed to offer a number of fair and valid observations regarding a number of organizations.

Perhaps, the most salient point made, is one that is often made, but should not be forgotten:

Still, amid its successes, the local-food movement is suffering growing pains. There is, for example, the problem of access. Local food can seem a bourgeois taste, one enjoyed by customers of pricey fine-dining establishments and precious natural-foods supermarkets.

The locatarian / locovore / local food / slow food movements must work hard to avoid becoming too much of a snootish and pretentious endeavor. I will admit that it was my love of great tasting food that got me started in the conceptual movement of sourcing more of my diet from closer to home, but I now believe it is more than that. And to make a real difference in the broader scheme of things, pretentiousness must be mitigated.

Organic food prices soar...

The organic food movement has taken off in the past five years in America, with sales up over 125% during that time. This same five year period saw ever growing numbers of farmers and acres of crop land going organic. According to an article in today's NYT Business section, this trend has slowed dramatically with the new heightened prices of all commodities.

The organic movement is based around the premise that consumers have a higher willingness to pay for food that is grown without the aid of chemicals, fertilizers and hormones. This premise seemed to hold true over the recent past, as the market share of organics grew significantly. The problem with this assumption now, however, is that many believe there is a likely inflection point in the food markets -- whereby, consumers will forego purchasing the organic goods due to the high absolute price. The interesting thing about this is that it doesn't appear that organics are decoupling from their normal 20-100% premium over conventional foodstuffs. Instead, the fear is that there is a pyschological barrier involved and that $7 a gallon milk is something the consumer cannot tolerate. For exmaple, two years ago a gallon of "regular" milk was around $2 and organic milk was about $4, which was a 100% price premium. Now with regular milk at $3.39 and organic at approximately $6.65 (once again roughly 100% premium), the market may begin contracting. It seems to me that in the stumbling economy, this slight (but very real to some) absolute increase, along with the aforementioned pyschological impact of the pricing, could very likely put a huge downward pressure on demand for organic goods. Another possibility proposed by a friend is related to this mindset, as he postulated that the growth in the organic food sector was due almost exclusively to the faddiness of it and the additional disposable income from a subset of the population. He may be right...

I know that at home we try to use some organic products, but have focused more on the local sourcing aspect of our food and this increase in costs has played a role in keeping us from moving more into the organic marketplace. Even with an increase in disposable income, we are often made aware of the price disparity of our food choices compared to the "cheaper" alternatives. I hope we won't have the need to leave the local food market, but I will be interested to note if there is any marked change at the big Dane County Farmer's market this year.

Spring has sprung...

Other than baseball, my favorite thing about spring is the thoughts of a wonderful garden. Given my limited amount of personal outdoor space on the condo grounds we are going to go through a CSA to augment our weekly trips to the Dane County Farmer's Market this year. We have choosen to use Green Spirit Farm in Dodgeville as our CSA this year. Our choice was primarily based on their reputation for some very good berries. I hope to be able to get back to my roots (pun intended), and plant some semblance of a mini-garden this year as well. I'm thinking some hearty tomatoes should be fun.

An interesting food and gardening article appeared in today's NYT, which may interest my fellow fans of food. With the price of transport so high, are we headed for a return of victory gardens?

CHOW --- A really damn good program....

CHOW -- Cooking Healthy Options in Wisconsin -- is a program featuring chefs in the classroom and is supported by the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch organization. This is a really nice program, and I can speak personally to the fact that Tory Miller is very good with the kids.

If you have some time to get involved, this is one of those that won't disappoint.