Catching Up with OrganicNation.tv: What’s a CSA?

Our own Dorothee Royal-Hedinger has returned to Chicago after three weeks on the road with her new project OrganicNation.tv, an exploration of the American sustainable food landscape focusing on the people, places and products that are shaping a new green economy and lifestyle.

Dorothee and her Organic Nation partner in green, Mark Andrew Boyer, learned a lot while traveling around the U.S. and they’re sharing it with us through a series of awesome informative videos including this one about CSAs.

The Organic Nation team visited the Thorpe Family Organic Farm in East Aurora, New York where Gail Thorpe shared how her farm is sustained through support from her local community. Check it out:

What is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)? from OrganicNation on Vimeo.

Organic Nation will be going back on the road shortly, and we’ll bring you updates as they come!

Link [OrganicNation.tv]

The World According to Monsanto

If this trailer doesn’t creep you out about genetically modified food, I don’t know what will. “The World According to Monsanto” is a french documentary directed by Marie-Monique Robin that paints a grim picture of a company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals.

According to the YouTube description,

Monsanto is the world leader in genetically modified organisms (GMOs), as well as one of the most controversial corporations in industrial history. This century-old empire has created some of the most toxic products ever sold, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and the herbicide Agent Orange. Based on a painstaking investigation, The World According to Monsanto puts together the pieces of the company’s history, calling on hitherto unpublished documents and numerous first-hand accounts.

Today, Monsanto likes to style itself as a “life sciences” company. The leader in genetically modified seeds, engineered to resist its herbicide Roundup, claims it wants to solve world hunger while protecting the environment.

In the light of its troubling past, can we really believe these noble intentions? Misleading reports, collusion, pressure tactics and attempts at corruption: the history of Monsanto is filled with disturbing episodes. Behind its clean, green image, Monsanto is tightening its grasp on the world seed market, striving for market supremacy to the detriment of food security and the global environment.

The Need to Fundamentally Rethink Food

A sustainable global food system is absolutely essential to a healthy future for humans and the environment, according to expert Tim Lang of the UK government’s newly formed Food Council. Lang warns that the current system is showing “structural failures” and is taking an “astronomic toll” on the environment.

From BBC News:

Professor Lang lists a series of “new fundamentals”, which he outlined during a speech he made as the president-elect of charity Garden Organic, which will shape future food production, including:

Oil and energy: “We have an entirely oil-based food economy, and yet oil is running out. The impact of that on agriculture is one of the drivers of the volatility in the world food commodity markets.”
Water scarcity: “One of the key things that I have been pushing is to get the UK government to start auditing food by water,” Professor Lang said, adding that 50% of the UK’s vegetables are imported, many from water-stressed nations.
Biodiversity: “Biodiversity must not just be protected, it must be replaced and enhanced; but that is going to require a very different way growing food and using the land.”
Urbanisation: “Probably the most important thing within the social sphere. More people now live in towns than in the countryside. In which case, where do they get their food?”

Professor Lang said that in order to feed a projected nine billion people by 2050, policymakers and scientists face a fundamental challenge: how can food systems work with the planet and biodiversity, rather than raiding and pillaging it?

Lang is suggesting that we get biodiversity into gardens and fields as soon as possible. Chef and food campaigner Raymond Blanc agrees, saying people must reconnect with their food by growing their own gardens and becoming more mindful of food waste.

Higher food prices have pushed an additional 40 million people into hunger in 2008, bringing the overall figure of undernourished people in the world to 963 million. The ongoing economic crisis could add millions more to that figure in 2009.

It’s absolutely essential that we all begin thinking of food in a new way, asking ourselves where it came from, how it was grown, how many resources were required to grow and transport it. Reconnecting with food will improve our health and help redistribute agriculture to ensure that large groups of people don’t depend upon food from a single region. We must use land more wisely so that we can feed more people with a larger variety of food.

Urban farming is becoming more popular for those who don’t have yard space to start a garden, and buying food from local farmer’s markets is also a good choice.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: Steve Patterson

The Organic vs. Intensive Farming Debate

As consumers cut back on spending this year, will higher-priced organic foods look less appealing? In case you’re starting to hesitate in the grocery aisle, here’s a little refresher course on why organics are not only better for our bodies but also for our environment.

According to IFOAM,

organic agriculture:

• enhances soil structures
• conserves water
• mitigates climate change
• ensures sustained biodiversity

conventional agriculture:

• employs harmful inorganic fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides
• increases the suffocation of aquatic plants and animals due to rapid growth of algae
• spreads toxic dosages of herbicides and insecticides up the food chain to humans

Agribusiness Threatens World’s Tropical Forests

The Rainforest Action Network is challenging one of the fastest growing threats to the world’s tropical forests: the rapid expansion of industrial agriculture. Fueled in part by the growing demand for biofuels, U.S. agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge and Cargill are establishing soy and palm oil operations in some of the planet’s most biodiverse forests.

Soy has become a major contributor to deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest and its surrounding wooded savanna, the Cerrado, while palm oil plantations are expanding at a rate of 2.5 million acres per year into the tropical forests of Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.

RAN is calling on agribusinesses to protect these vital ecosystems by stopping industrial agriculture in these areas.

How can you help the world’s tropical forests? Join RAN’s Protect-an-Acre Program.

Genetically Modified Crops Reach 9 Percent of Global Crop Production

Frankencrops reached 9 percent of global primary crop production in 2007, according to Worldwatch Institute estimates published in the latest Vital Signs Update. The United States is still the leader in producing GMO crops, accounting for half of the global total.

From the Environmental News Network:

“GM crops are definitely not a silver bullet,” said Alice McKeown, a researcher for the Worldwatch Institute. “They sound good on paper, but we have yet to see glowing results.”

Even as GM crop area expands, tensions are building. The European Union is expected to offer new guidance on the crops by the end of the year.  Meanwhile, a new scientific study funded by the Austrian government suggests that a popular variety of GM corn reduces fertility in mice, raising questions about the technology’s safety.

Genetically modified crops are simply not the answer to poverty and food production problems. There is no evidence to support the claim that they are. We are already spraying crops with tons of chemicals that are altering the earth and our bodies – playing Dr. Frankenstein with them seems like an incredibly misguided approach.

Link [Environmental News Network]
Photo credit: Old American Century

Urban Farming in Cuba: Adapting to Survive

So, America is in a state of financial breakdown that is trickling down to the everyday consumer.  A lot of people are nervously asking themselves, what would we do if the worst happened? What if the credit system broke down entirely, and businesses – including grocery stores – couldn’t afford to operate?  It’s a fair question to ask, since all of this turmoil is making us realize how much we depend upon the current system to get by, even for the most basic of necessities.

We could actually turn to Cuba to learn a valuable lesson about getting by in such a scenario.  From Green Daily:

Cuba has dealt with worse. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, “[Cuba] lost 85 percent of its foreign trade, including food, agricultural imports and petroleum. Already crippled by the U.S. embargo, the country was financially devastated with its food supply hit hardest.” This, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle from the year 2000.

Fast forward to 2008. An Associated Press article printed in June talked about how, faced with food crisis, Cubans started farming in empty lots in urban centers (with support from the Cuban government). This agricultural shift prompted a cultural shift. Instead of eating rice and beans supplied by Eastern Europe, Cubans started eating tons of fresh greens. The farms also currently provide about 350,000 jobs nationwide.

The smart thing to do, really, would be to start doing this in America right now, regardless of how big of an impact this financial crisis ultimately has upon the everyday life of most Americans.  Reflecting on and preparing for worst-case scenarios shouldn’t solely be the territory of fringe conspiracy theorists – there are plenty of things that could happen that would necessitate being inventive about things like where our food comes from.

As we’ve mentioned here on EarthFirst many times before, we’re too far removed from the sources of our food, and it makes us very vulnerable.  We’d love to see urban farming take off all over America.  It’s a matter of taking not just your health but your potential survival in a crisis into your own hands.

Link [Green Daily]
Photo credit: City Dirt

Skyscraper Farms Could Feed Millions by 2050

As the years have marched on and technology has progressed, one very important aspect of life has suffered: food quality.  Instead of using space wisely and growing food as locally as possible, we’ve come to rely on factory farms and produce shipped from hundreds – sometimes thousands – of miles away.  But, just because there isn’t space on the ground for traditional farms doesn’t mean urban areas can’t have fresh, local food.  Skyscraper farms have the potential to not only bring food production back to the local level – they could divert a major worldwide food shortage.

Scientist Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, came up with the concept and hopes to see it implemented on a worldwide scale as soon as possible.

From Mail Online:

The revolutionary scientist proposes gleaming 21 storey skyscrapers that could potentially be as productive as 588 acres of land and grow up to 12 million lettuces a year.

He said the farms, projected to cost £45m to build and £2.7m a year to run, would be both environmentally friendly and economically profitable.

Dr Despommier created his concept in 1999 with graduate students during a class on medical ecology.

With the world’s population expected to increase to 3 billion by 2050 and almost 80 per cent of farming land in use, the idea has never been more relevant.

City planners and developers across the world have regarded Despommier’s idea with suspicion, but we can’t see why.  It seems so basic, so obvious, that we can’t believe people haven’t already begun doing it.  What’s the hold up?  We want to see these things built ASAP!

Link [Mail Online]

More Farmers Should Use the Lounge n Pick

Farmers, are you tired of your wives and daughters lounging around in the sun, soaking up rays while you’re out plowing the field and picking the harvest? Well, now you can put them to work with guaranteed 50% less complaining.  They won’t have to actually touch dirt at all, and the risk of coming into contact with insects is minimal.  With the Lounge n Pick, you can even employ paraplegics and the elderly.  The convenient removable cover allows your harvesters to sun themselves on nice days, and be shielded from the rain when necessary.  The convenient conveyer belt system delivers your harvest directly into containers at the end of the line.  It can be yours for only $999.99!*

*Fashionable camouflage bench pads extra.

Link [Wacky Archives]

Chocolate May Go Extinct Due to Unsustainable Farming Practices

How to get guys to care about global warming? Threaten their beer. How to get women to care? Start talking about chocolate going extinct. (That’s not sexist, is it?)

The Nature Conservation Resource Council (NCRC) recently announced that within 20 years, chocolate may be as rare as caviar. The reason seems to be unsustainable farming practices. Whereas chocolate, in its native state, grows in rainforest conditions with high biodiversity, it’s now farmed by clearing the forest and using hybrid seeds to produce higher output in a shorter amount of time. This leads to soil erosion and a shorter lifespan for the cacao trees, which will eventually lead to an overall shortage of cacao.

From Triple Pundit:

While many a chocoholic may lament this news, I wish to provide our readers with a little firsthand “reality check.” Most of the world’s cacao is grown in West Africa. While living in Ghana during my study-abroad year as an undergraduate, I was struck by the fact that, even though Ghana is a net exporter of cacao, most of the country’s inhabitants could not afford to purchase a Cadbury or Hershey’s bar. Although I shared many a fresh, delicious cacao fruit with my Ghanaian friends, actually eating a chocolate bar was considered a luxury.

For Ghanaians, “no chocolate 20 years from now” is now. Such reminders are necessary to place in perspective predictions of ecological change and impacts on human populations. While we, in wealthy, industrialized countries, may fear with trepidation the loss of resources and biodiversity associated with global warming, it is important to remember that half the world’s peoples are already living that reality.

Start breaking your dependence now, people. I know I’ll have to. But a world without chocolate sounds like a sad, sad place. What will we put in s’mores?

Link [Triple Pundit]
Photo credit: Flickr user Fimb

Giant Dead Zone in Gulf of Mexico to Grow Larger After Midwest Floods

Everything is fine, pay no attention to the GIANT DEAD ZONE in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. At least, that’s the stance the government seems to be taking. The EPA has released a ‘plan of action’ to tackle the problem, but no funds have been allocated to the inevitably very expensive project and a tangle of federal agencies involved in the plan ensures that they’ll all just be running around bumping into each other like dumbasses while nothing gets done.

The dead zone in the Gulf has been caused by chemical-laden runoff from farms in the Midwest, which flows down the Mississippi and pours millions of tons of nitrogen, phosphorous and other fertilizer into the Gulf of Mexico. What results is a ‘hypoxic event’, where the fertilizers cause algae to bloom out of control and suck all of the oxygen out of the surrounding waters, causing the water to become barren, killing sea life in the area.

The dead zone is getting ever-larger and recent flooding in the Midwest promises that it will be much worse this year. While this should be a major priority for the government, TIME Magazine reports,

A 2007 report by the National Research Council called for more aggressive leadership by the EPA to coordinate and oversee state activities along the Mississippi, but the agency doesn’t seem ready or able to seize that role. The plan itself reports that “resources are insufficient to gain the goals” of the task force. “We seem to be going in the opposite direction,” says Donald Scavia, a professor of natural resources and the environment at the University of Michigan. “We don’t seem committed to fixing the problem.”

Not that it’s an easy one to fix. Most of the nutrient pollution that ends up in the Gulf comes from the hundreds of thousands of farms in the Midwest. The only sure way to shrink the dead zone is to reduce the amount of fertilizer running off those farms. But thanks in part to the push for corn-based ethanol and the skyrocketing price of food crops, U.S. farmers are planting more acres for corn than they have since World War II — including 15 million more acres last year than in 2006. Although there are measures farmers can take to limit fertilizer runoff, those changes are expensive, and there’s little federal funding to support such conservation. The just-released action plan relies mostly on voluntary activities. “We need Congress to act as if this is going to get done,” says Doug Daigle, a member of the task force. “The state governments will contribute, but this has to be initiated by the Federal Government.”

The dead zone in the gulf is one of 150 in the world. Clearly, we as a nation need to change our agricultural policies, which have allowed this problem to occur in the first place. Hopefully, experts will find some way to alleviate the problem before it wipes out all life in the beautiful Gulf of Mexico.

Link [TIME Magazine]
Photo credit: Flickr user blmurch

Peak Oil, Peak Water… Peak Dirt?

Right now, there are proclamations of peak everything: peak oil, peak water, peak rice, peak metal, even peak guano. But would you ever have thought it possible to run out of dirt? It seems limitless, but in truth dirt is far more complicated than most people realize, and there were bound to be some consequences to the farming methods and chemicals that have been used in recent history.

From Planet Green:

Really, Peak Dirt- the world is losing soil 10 to 20 times faster than it is replenishing it. Drake Bennett in the Boston Globe tells us that dirt is complicated stuff, made from sand or silt, then years of plants adding nutrition, bugs and worms adding their excrement, dying and rotting.

“The resulting organic matter feeds a whole underground ecology that aerates the soil, fixes nutrients, and makes it more hospitable for plant life, and over time the process feeds back on itself. If the soil does not wash away or get parched by drought, it very gradually thickens. It takes tens of thousands of years to make 15 centimeters of topsoil, about 6 inches’ worth.”

Till it and plant a monoculture like corn on it and that soil gets depleted rapidly, so farmers add fertilizer, lots of it. The philosophy was “Well, if your soil’s degraded, just put some more fertilizer on, or till it another time and you can get the same crop yield,” says David Laird, a soil scientist.

So, what’s causing it? Lloyd Alter explains on Planet Green that ethanol, peak oil and meat are to blame. ‘Excessive demand for grain’, caused mainly by ethanol and meat production, has caused a huge increase in the use of fertilizer. Luckily, scientists are working on replenishing the soil with traditional farming methods, biochar and making soil from scratch. Check out the Planet Green article for the details.

Link [Planet Green]
Photo credit: Flickr user Crystl

The Banana is Heading Toward Extinction

Did you know that the variety of banana that we eat today isn’t as tasty as the one our parents and grandparents enjoyed prior to 1960? That’s right, we’re missing out on better bananas. Sad. Well, enjoy the variety we have left, because it’s next.

From The Scientist:

The banana we eat today is not the one your grandparents ate. That one – known as the Gros Michel – was, by all accounts, bigger, tastier, and hardier than the variety we know and love, which is called the Cavendish. The unavailability of the Gros Michel is easily explained: it is virtually extinct.

Introduced to our hemisphere in the late 19th century, the Gros Michel was almost immediately hit by a blight that wiped it out by 1960. The Cavendish was adopted at the last minute by the big banana companies – Chiquita and Dole – because it was resistant to that blight, a fungus known as Panama disease. For the past fifty years, all has been quiet in the banana world. Until now.

Apparently, Panama disease is back, and Cavendish bananas aren’t resistant to the new strain. There is no cure, and nearly every banana scientist says that although the disease is currently spreading through Malaysia and hasn’t yet hit Latin America, where our bananas come from, it’s only a matter of time. Dun dun dun!

Soon, the only choice we have left may very well be a genetically modifided (GMO) banana. In order to survive the Panama disease, it will have to be carefully created in a biotech lab.

What I think is most amazing about this story is that there are banana scientists. Who knew?

Link [The Scientist]
Photo credit: Flickr user Sister72

Chow Down on Insects to Help the Environment

Doesn’t the sound and texture of insect exoskeletons being crushed between your teeth make your stomach growl? Especially when their crispy outsides break open and you get that gush of mushy innards all over the inside of your mouth. Some people describe the grayish, greasy meat of the giant water bug as “perfumey, tastes like salty apples”.

Sorry if I just ruined your lunch, but, eating insects is being called a great new way to help the environment. David Gracer, a composition teacher at a Rhode Island community college, has made it his goal to persuade Americans to eat insects in an attempt to “shake up how we all think about our food supply”.

Discover Magazine has it:

Gracer wants people to move away from getting their protein from traditional livestock such as cows, pigs, and chickens because raising livestock has a huge negative impact on the environment, regardless of whether the animals belong to subsistence farmers in developing countries or a Western industrial conglomerate (see “Warning: Contains Pork By-Products,” page 40). A United Nations report released in 2006 calls the livestock sector “one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.” The report notes that, among other adverse impacts, livestock production is responsible for 18 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions. (That’s more than what is produced by transportation worldwide.) And the problem is only going to grow, with global production of meat reaching 465 million tons by 2050, double the amount produced in 2000.

Other benefits of insect eating include the fact that raising them has a low impact on the environment, and that they’re low in fat. Somehow, though, I can’t see even the poorest of the poor in America being desperate enough to bite into a cockroach patty sandwich. Considering that America has a narrow view of what is deemed acceptable to eat, broadening our horizons enough to include insects on the menu is probably no more than a pipe dream. More power to those who can stomach it!

Link [Discover Magazine]

Photo credit: Flickr user Barnaby

Pollution is a Bitch: Flowers Losing Their Scent, Bees Losing Their Way

A rose by any other name smells as sweet as umm… well… not much.

A new study suggests that flowers are actually losing their aroma due to pollution from automobiles and power plants. Some are also guessing that this finding might explain why bees are dwindling in numbers in some areas of the world.

Researchers at the University of Virginia have been studying how the scents of flowers travel in the wind, finding that the scent molecules bond with pollutants such as ozone. The result: floral aromas are destroyed. Pollution is actually chemically altering flowers.

“The scent molecules produced by flowers in a less polluted environment, such as in the 1800s, could travel for roughly 1,000 to 1,200 meters [3,300 to 4,000 feet]; but in today’s polluted environment downwind of major cities, they may travel only 200 to 300 meters [650 to 980 feet],” said study team member Jose D. Fuentes.

This means more than a lack of au naturel floral scents for us humans to enjoy. It could also have potentially disastrous fallout in the natural world. Bees depend on scent while seeking flowers out. If they can’t find the flowers, they can’t pollinate them – and guess what that means? Not just a decline in bee population. Bees are significant pollinators of many agriculture crops and native plants. The effects of flowers losing their scent could mean problems with food sources the world over. Scary indeed – do you need any more reasons to cut your carbon emissions?!

This news seems to provide a grim window into a sci-fi future that could have come from the mind of a literary great: one in which food has lost its flavor, and nature has lost its color. Sure, 1984 is my favorite novel and I’m known for gloom-and-doom paranoia, but is it not getting more and more likely?

Link [LiveScience]

Photo: Flickr user zaphodsotherhead

Developing Nations Struggle to Cope with Rising Food Prices, Once Again The Poor Get Screwed

I live on the edge of town, with real farmland about a quarter mile away. The fields in one direction have been in alfalfa for a decade. Around the corner, in a second field, they’ve been growing tomatoes for about as long. A couple of months ago, I drove past and saw machinery in both places, and thought for a dark moment that it was another suburb going in–but no. With the housing market collapse, those days are gone. Instead, wheat sprouted and grew, hundreds of acres of it. The wheat is now tall enough that, when the wind blows through the fields, it looks like it should have its own inspirational soundtrack.

Why did they switch to wheat? Because the price has gone through the roof, which is having grim repercussions all over the world. From the International Herald Tribune:

Egypt’s government is struggling to contain a political crisis sparked by rising world food prices. Violent clashes have broken out at long lines for subsidized bread, and the president, worried about unrest, has ordered the army to step in to provide more.

The crisis in the world’s most populous Arab country and a top U.S. ally in the Mideast is a stark sign of how rising food prices are roiling poorer countries worldwide….

The issue in Egypt centers on subsidized versions of the flat, round bread that is a staple of people’s diets. Acute shortages of subsidized bread, which is sold at less than one U.S. cent a loaf, have caused long lines at distributors, prompting violence at some sites in poor neighborhoods in recent weeks.

At least seven people have died, according to police.

At first, one might hold Egypt’s kludgy government responsible, but as the article explains, economists place the blame “mainly on the rising cost of wheat on the world market, where prices have tripled in the last 10 months.” World food production has been a single integrated entity for a long time now, and it does respond to prices; hence, the ketchup tomatoes down the block from me made way for wheat. The problem is that it will still take months for that food to reach mouths in, say, Egypt, and hunger won’t wait that long.

Link [International Herald Tribune]

Photo Credit: Flickr user MrBologna

How Now See Through Cow- Front Row View on a Bovine Stomach

Behold the fistula.

It’s guaranteed to creep people out, but in the world of cows and other such creatures, it’s routine. “Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula.” There is a reason:

Agricultural scientists learn about the digestive system of cattle by putting holes in cows–and the cows stay alive and well. These cows (fitted with a sealing cover called a “cannula”) each have a hole into their stomach. Through this hole one can extract food caught mid-stream through the digestive system.

Fistulated cows are used to research the digestibility of different foodstuffs for cattle. One can feed the cow, then later catch the food while it’s digesting to see how it’s doing. Without fistulated cows, one would have to look at external factors in order to garner information about the best food for cows–none of which are as accurate as food sampled right from the stomach.

The site explains that cows with fistulas live longer since it’s easier to treat them when they have illnesses in their digestive systems. I can add that a fistulated cow is liable to have a long life because she’s more valuable. Apart from giving milk, having a fistula is the nearest thing, in a cow, to having a useful talent.

I know about these things because it so happens that, in my life, fistulas are pretty routine. I work at UC Davis, where we have a big experimental dairy herd, and a number of the cows are fistulated. Although, jeez–the fistulas in these photographs are huge compared to ours. They’re like portholes. You expect to see someone inside the cow, peering out.

Link [Oddity Central]