John Ikerd is Professor Emeritus, University of Missouri - Columbia, MO
American farmers, on average, receive only about 20 cents of each food dollar spent. The remainder goes toward the expenses of processing, packing and distribution. Farmers who sell food direct to local customers, on the other hand, receive the full value for their product cutting out the costs to middlemen.
- My Top Ten Reasons for Eating Local, John Ikerd
http://web.missouri.edu/ikerdj/papers/Alabama-Eat%20Local.htm
----
“Get big or get out” is a refrain with which American farmers are all too familiar. Small farms are seen as being too small to survive, and thus, unworthy of serious consideration. For example, government programs, including publicly funded research and education, tend to focus on large, commercial agricultural operations as the future of American agriculture. In fact, the opposite is true. Most large, commercial farming today are too big to survive. Small farms are the future of farming in America. "
- Many Farms Are Too Big To Survive, John Ikerd
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/SFT-Too%20Big.htm
-----
"However, by managing more “intensively” the new farmers are able to net far more profit from each dollar of sales. They reduce their costs of purchased inputs through diversification, increase the value of their products through niche markets, focus on the things that they do best, and work together to do the things that they can’t do as well alone. As a result, their net return per dollar of sales may be 40 to 50 percent rather than the 15 to 20 percent for a conventional farm. Thus, the net returns on a farm with $100,000 in annual sales may be $40,000 to $50,000 and even a farm with $50,000 in annual sales may net $20,000 to $25,000 to support the small farm family. The bottom line is that 10 acres, intensively managed to produce high valued products, may generate more profits than 1,000 acres used to produce bulk agricultural commodities - corn, cattle, wheat, cotton, etc. Many small farms make some fairly big profits."
- Farming for Profit and Quality of Life, John Ikerd
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/SFTkeynote.html
-----
"Sustainable farming systems must be ecologically sound, economically viable, and socially responsible. All three are essential; more of one cannot offset a lack of either of the other two. The three dimensions of sustainability are not a part of some formal or legal definition, but instead, are a matter of common sense. If the land loses its ability to produce, the farm is not sustainable. If the farmer goes broke, the farm is not sustainable. And if a system of farming fails to support society, it will not be supported by society, and thus, is not sustainable.
- The Family Farm on the Cutting Edge, John Ikerd
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/YakimaFamilyFarms.html
-----
"The highest priority for American agriculture should be on reducing the fossil energy dependence of food production. Our current food system, including food processing and distribution, claims about 17% of total U.S. fossil energy use, with about one-third of this total used at the farm level.[9] In fact, we use about ten kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced, not counting the energy use in final food preparation. This means that even at the farm level, American agriculture uses about three kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced. In a world of rising population and dwindling fossil energy, the first priority of agriculture should be producing more food with less fossil energy.
- Agriculture after Fossil Energy, John Ikerd
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/Iowa-FmUnion-Energy.htm
-----
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Food growing - the big picture
This blog promotes sustainable local food production, growing your own, growing for local communities, using local resources without fossil fuel inputs, without relying on political solutions or ideologies. It's meant to contribute to the Transition movement, not because the future of safe, affordable food is assured or doomed but because it's uncertain. Excerpts below introduce only some of the concerns in this area. Much can be done, and much is being done. This blog is not connected to any site or organization, but for a sample of current food efforts on many fronts readers can check http://foodsecurity.org/links.html . We have nothing to sell you (unless you find us at our farmers markets).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(excerpts from sources)
by Harvey and Ellen Ussery
http://themodernhomestead.us/article/%28IH%29+Industrial+Food+Alternative.html
We are fortunate to live in an age of scientific agriculture and technologically advanced food processing. As a result, the American food supply is assured, in all its abundance and endless variety. Because of scientific agriculture and food technology, Americans enjoy the safest, highest quality, most convenient, and—most amazing of all—cheapest food supply of any nation on earth. What is wrong with this picture?
... An issue to which the average American eater has given entirely too little attention is that of food security. Our economy, both national and global, is dependent at every point on lavish use of cheap, abundant, easily accessible fossil fuels. Nowhere is this dependence more obvious than in our industrial food systems: Agriculture is heavily dependent on energy-hungry machinery, chemical fertilizers made from natural gas, and pesticides made from petroleum. The excessive processing and packaging of most modern foods are energy and resource intensive. The average bite of food on the American table has been transported 1500 miles from field to fork.
...We do not see any goal, challenge, or problem in isolation, but seek to put into place broader patterns in which the same project or effort answers several needs. This article focuses on strategies the homesteader can adopt to achieve greater integration of the various elements in the homestead, leading not only to bountiful harvests of wholesome food, but to emergent synergies, more efficiency, and ever greater diversity and ecological health.
Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
Friday, 01 April 2005
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=563
"Concentrate on what cannot lie. The evidence..." -- Gil Grissom
“Eating Oil” was the title of a book which was published in 1978 following the first oil crisis in 1973 (1). The aim of the book was to investigate the extent to which food supply in industrialised countries relied on fossil fuels. In the summer of 2000 the degree of dependence on oil in the UK food system was demonstrated once again when protestors blockaded oil refineries and fuel distribution depots. The fuel crises disrupted the distribution of food and industry leaders warned that their stores would be out of food within days. The lessons of 1973 have not been heeded.
Today the food system is even more reliant on cheap crude oil. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase. Moreover, at a time when we should be making massive cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in order to reduce the threat posed by climate change, the food system is lengthening its supply chains and increasing emissions to the point where it is a significant contributor to global warming.
The organic sector could be leading the development of a sustainable food system. Direct environmental and ecological impacts of agriculture ‘on the farm’ are certainly reduced in organic systems. However, global trade and distribution of organic products fritter away those benefits and undermine its leadership role. Not only is the contemporary food system inherently unsustainable, increasingly, it is damaging the environment.
The Food and Farming Transition
MuseLetter 199 / November 2008
by Richard Heinberg
http://archive.richardheinberg.com/MuseLetter/199
The only way to avert a food crisis resulting from oil and natural gas price hikes and supply disruptions while also reversing agriculture’s contribution to climate change is to proactively and methodically remove fossil fuels from the food system. The removal of fossil fuels from the food system is inevitable: maintenance of the current system is simply not an option over the long term. Only the amount of time available for the transition process, and the strategies for pursuing it, can be matters for controversy. Given the degree to which the modern food system has become dependent on fossil fuels, many proposals for de-linking food and fuels are likely to appear radical. However, efforts toward this end must be judged not by the degree to which they preserve the status quo, but by their likely ability to solve the fundamental challenge that will face us: the need to feed a global population of 7 billion with a diminishing supply of fuels available to fertilize, plow, and irrigate fields and to harvest and transport crops.
If this transition is undertaken proactively and intelligently, there could be many side benefits—more careers in farming, more protection for the environment, less soil erosion, a revitalization of rural culture, and more healthful food for everyone. Some of this transformation will inevitably be driven by market forces, led simply by the rising price of fossil fuels. However, without planning the transition may be wrenching and destructive, since market forces acting alone could bankrupt farmers while leaving consumers with few or no options.
Eating Fossil Fuels
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
-- Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately derived from the sun...
Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production...
In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt. ..
Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food... Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable.
...Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, 40 that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41
None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.
Successful relocalization means that you stop growing...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
http://thelocalizer.blogspot.com/2009/03/successful-relocalization-means-that_15.html
As relocalization efforts blossom globally, the discussions within local volunteer groups range from how to develop local food movements, alternative energy and conservation measures to climate change activities and the establishment of local currencies. Certainly such efforts reflect the need for these groups to maintain positive energies and attitudes by proactively engaging in project oriented activities that result in some visible outcome and are a building block for a positive future. Less common, although an underlying current in the foundational framework of most organizers and initiators, is the understanding that growth as we know it in all forms must cease.
The Future Of Food (1 of 2)
By Andrew Curry 14 February, 2011
http://www.countercurrents.org/curry140211.htm
The recent UK Government Foresight report on the future of the global food and farming system can’t be faulted for a lack of ambition. It takes on the whole of the global food system, and looks out to 2050. Much of what it says is valuable (and the supporting papers look to be a useful research resource), and this is to be expected, given the calibre of the advisers the project was able to draw on. But there are some telling gaps, and these largely come from a lack of decent futures work in the report.
How Expensive Is Food, Really?
By Sharon Astyk 14 February, 2011
http://www.countercurrents.org/astyk140211.htm
This is a lightly revised and updated version of a piece that ran at ye olde blogge and at Grist, but it seems just as pertinent now as it did in 2007 when I wrote it. At the time, some people doubted that the boom we were seeing in biofuel production, which was pushing up grain prices, would be followed by any kind of a bust. Farmers were predicting many, many good years - but we all know what happened. Farm incomes dropped by more than 20% during the recession. Just another reminder that busts are part of the boom and bust cycle, no matter how little we like to admit it. There is no doubt whatsoever that rising food costs are hurting people all over the world. More than half of the world's population spends 50% of their income or more on food, and the massive rise in staple prices threatens to increase famine rates drastically. Many people have already pointed out the intersections between the changes going on across North Africa and the Middle East and the current food crisis, and with all of us having spent more time in food crisis than out of it in the last three years, that seems to be an emerging norm.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(excerpts from sources)
by Harvey and Ellen Ussery
http://themodernhomestead.us/article/%28IH%29+Industrial+Food+Alternative.html
We are fortunate to live in an age of scientific agriculture and technologically advanced food processing. As a result, the American food supply is assured, in all its abundance and endless variety. Because of scientific agriculture and food technology, Americans enjoy the safest, highest quality, most convenient, and—most amazing of all—cheapest food supply of any nation on earth. What is wrong with this picture?
... An issue to which the average American eater has given entirely too little attention is that of food security. Our economy, both national and global, is dependent at every point on lavish use of cheap, abundant, easily accessible fossil fuels. Nowhere is this dependence more obvious than in our industrial food systems: Agriculture is heavily dependent on energy-hungry machinery, chemical fertilizers made from natural gas, and pesticides made from petroleum. The excessive processing and packaging of most modern foods are energy and resource intensive. The average bite of food on the American table has been transported 1500 miles from field to fork.
...We do not see any goal, challenge, or problem in isolation, but seek to put into place broader patterns in which the same project or effort answers several needs. This article focuses on strategies the homesteader can adopt to achieve greater integration of the various elements in the homestead, leading not only to bountiful harvests of wholesome food, but to emergent synergies, more efficiency, and ever greater diversity and ecological health.
Why Our Food is So Dependent on Oil
Friday, 01 April 2005
http://www.powerswitch.org.uk/portal/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=563
"Concentrate on what cannot lie. The evidence..." -- Gil Grissom
“Eating Oil” was the title of a book which was published in 1978 following the first oil crisis in 1973 (1). The aim of the book was to investigate the extent to which food supply in industrialised countries relied on fossil fuels. In the summer of 2000 the degree of dependence on oil in the UK food system was demonstrated once again when protestors blockaded oil refineries and fuel distribution depots. The fuel crises disrupted the distribution of food and industry leaders warned that their stores would be out of food within days. The lessons of 1973 have not been heeded.
Today the food system is even more reliant on cheap crude oil. Virtually all of the processes in the modern food system are now dependent upon this finite resource, which is nearing its depletion phase. Moreover, at a time when we should be making massive cuts in the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in order to reduce the threat posed by climate change, the food system is lengthening its supply chains and increasing emissions to the point where it is a significant contributor to global warming.
The organic sector could be leading the development of a sustainable food system. Direct environmental and ecological impacts of agriculture ‘on the farm’ are certainly reduced in organic systems. However, global trade and distribution of organic products fritter away those benefits and undermine its leadership role. Not only is the contemporary food system inherently unsustainable, increasingly, it is damaging the environment.
The Food and Farming Transition
MuseLetter 199 / November 2008
by Richard Heinberg
http://archive.richardheinberg.com/MuseLetter/199
The only way to avert a food crisis resulting from oil and natural gas price hikes and supply disruptions while also reversing agriculture’s contribution to climate change is to proactively and methodically remove fossil fuels from the food system. The removal of fossil fuels from the food system is inevitable: maintenance of the current system is simply not an option over the long term. Only the amount of time available for the transition process, and the strategies for pursuing it, can be matters for controversy. Given the degree to which the modern food system has become dependent on fossil fuels, many proposals for de-linking food and fuels are likely to appear radical. However, efforts toward this end must be judged not by the degree to which they preserve the status quo, but by their likely ability to solve the fundamental challenge that will face us: the need to feed a global population of 7 billion with a diminishing supply of fuels available to fertilize, plow, and irrigate fields and to harvest and transport crops.
If this transition is undertaken proactively and intelligently, there could be many side benefits—more careers in farming, more protection for the environment, less soil erosion, a revitalization of rural culture, and more healthful food for everyone. Some of this transformation will inevitably be driven by market forces, led simply by the rising price of fossil fuels. However, without planning the transition may be wrenching and destructive, since market forces acting alone could bankrupt farmers while leaving consumers with few or no options.
Eating Fossil Fuels
by Dale Allen Pfeiffer October 3 , 2003, 1200 PDT, (FTW)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
-- Human beings (like all other animals) draw their energy from the food they eat. Until the last century, all of the food energy available on this planet was derived from the sun through photosynthesis. Either you ate plants or you ate animals that fed on plants, but the energy in your food was ultimately derived from the sun...
Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production...
In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold.11 Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt. ..
Quite plainly, as fossil fuel production begins to decline within the next decade, there will be less energy available for the production of food... Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable.
...Given that the current U.S. population is in excess of 292 million, 40 that would mean a reduction of 92 million. To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. The black plague during the 14th Century claimed approximately one-third of the European population (and more than half of the Asian and Indian populations), plunging the continent into a darkness from which it took them nearly two centuries to emerge.41
None of this research considers the impact of declining fossil fuel production. The authors of all of these studies believe that the mentioned agricultural crisis will only begin to impact us after 2020, and will not become critical until 2050. The current peaking of global oil production (and subsequent decline of production), along with the peak of North American natural gas production will very likely precipitate this agricultural crisis much sooner than expected. Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6.32 billion people42 to 2 billion-a reduction of 68% or over two-thirds. The end of this decade could see spiraling food prices without relief. And the coming decade could see massive starvation on a global level such as never experienced before by the human race.
Successful relocalization means that you stop growing...
Sunday, March 15, 2009
http://thelocalizer.blogspot.com/2009/03/successful-relocalization-means-that_15.html
As relocalization efforts blossom globally, the discussions within local volunteer groups range from how to develop local food movements, alternative energy and conservation measures to climate change activities and the establishment of local currencies. Certainly such efforts reflect the need for these groups to maintain positive energies and attitudes by proactively engaging in project oriented activities that result in some visible outcome and are a building block for a positive future. Less common, although an underlying current in the foundational framework of most organizers and initiators, is the understanding that growth as we know it in all forms must cease.
The Future Of Food (1 of 2)
By Andrew Curry 14 February, 2011
http://www.countercurrents.org/curry140211.htm
The recent UK Government Foresight report on the future of the global food and farming system can’t be faulted for a lack of ambition. It takes on the whole of the global food system, and looks out to 2050. Much of what it says is valuable (and the supporting papers look to be a useful research resource), and this is to be expected, given the calibre of the advisers the project was able to draw on. But there are some telling gaps, and these largely come from a lack of decent futures work in the report.
How Expensive Is Food, Really?
By Sharon Astyk 14 February, 2011
http://www.countercurrents.org/astyk140211.htm
This is a lightly revised and updated version of a piece that ran at ye olde blogge and at Grist, but it seems just as pertinent now as it did in 2007 when I wrote it. At the time, some people doubted that the boom we were seeing in biofuel production, which was pushing up grain prices, would be followed by any kind of a bust. Farmers were predicting many, many good years - but we all know what happened. Farm incomes dropped by more than 20% during the recession. Just another reminder that busts are part of the boom and bust cycle, no matter how little we like to admit it. There is no doubt whatsoever that rising food costs are hurting people all over the world. More than half of the world's population spends 50% of their income or more on food, and the massive rise in staple prices threatens to increase famine rates drastically. Many people have already pointed out the intersections between the changes going on across North Africa and the Middle East and the current food crisis, and with all of us having spent more time in food crisis than out of it in the last three years, that seems to be an emerging norm.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Food Manifesto for the Future
A Food Manifesto for the Future
By MARK BITTMAN February 1, 2011, 10:28 pm
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/01/a-food-manifesto-for-the-future/\
?ref=opinion
For decades, Americans believed that we had the world’s healthiest and safest diet. We worried little about this diet’s effect on the environment or on the lives of the animals (or even the workers) it relies upon. Nor did we worry about its ability to endure — that is, its sustainability.
That didn’t mean all was well. And we’ve come to recognize that our diet is unhealthful and unsafe. Many food production workers labor in difficult, even deplorable, conditions, and animals are produced as if they were widgets. It would be hard to devise a more wasteful, damaging, unsustainable system.
Here are some ideas — frequently discussed, but sadly not yet implemented — that would make the growing, preparation and consumption of food healthier, saner, more productive, less damaging and more enduring. In no particular order:
- End government subsidies to processed food. We grow more corn for livestock and cars than for humans, and it’s subsidized by more than $3 billion annually; most of it is processed beyond recognition. The story is similar for other crops, including soy: 98 percent of soybean meal becomes livestock feed, while most soybean oil is used in processed foods. Meanwhile, the marketers of the junk food made from these crops receive tax write-offs for the costs of promoting their wares. Total agricultural subsidies in 2009 were around $16 billion, which would pay for a great many of the ideas that follow.
- Begin subsidies to those who produce and sell actual food for direct consumption. Small farmers and their employees need to make living wages. Markets — from super- to farmers’ — should be supported when they open in so-called food deserts and when they focus on real food rather than junk food. And, of course, we should immediately increase subsidies for school lunches so we can feed our youth more real food.
- Break up the U.S. Department of Agriculture and empower the Food and Drug Administration. Currently, the U.S.D.A. counts among its missions both expanding markets for agricultural products (like corn and soy!) and providing nutrition education. These goals are at odds with each other; you can’t sell garbage while telling people not to eat it, and we need an agency devoted to encouraging sane eating. Meanwhile, the F.D.A. must be given expanded powers to ensure the safety of our food supply. (Food-related deaths are far more common than those resulting from terrorism, yet the F.D.A.’s budget is about one-fifteenth that of Homeland Security.)
- Outlaw concentrated animal feeding operations and encourage the development of sustainable animal husbandry. The concentrated system degrades the environment, directly and indirectly, while torturing animals and producing tainted meat, poultry, eggs, and, more recently, fish. Sustainable methods of producing meat for consumption exist. At the same time, we must educate and encourage Americans to eat differently. It’s difficult to find a principled nutrition and health expert who doesn’t believe that a largely plant-based diet is the way to promote health and attack chronic diseases, which are now bigger killers, worldwide, than communicable ones. Furthermore, plant-based diets ease environmental stress, including global warming.
- Encourage and subsidize home cooking. (Someday soon, I’ll write about my idea for a new Civilian Cooking Corps.) When people cook their own food, they make better choices. When families eat together, they’re more stable. We should provide food education for children (a new form of home ec, anyone?), cooking classes for anyone who wants them and even cooking assistance for those unable to cook for themselves.
- Tax the marketing and sale of unhealthful foods. Another budget booster. This isn’t nanny-state paternalism but an accepted role of government: public health. If you support seat-belt, tobacco and alcohol laws, sewer systems and traffic lights, you should support legislation curbing the relentless marketing of soda and other foods that are hazardous to our health — including the sacred cheeseburger and fries.
- Reduce waste and encourage recycling. The environmental stress incurred by unabsorbed fertilizer cannot be overestimated, and has caused, for example, a 6,000-square-mile dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that is probably more damaging than the BP oil spill. And some estimates indicate that we waste half the food that’s grown. A careful look at ways to reduce waste and promote recycling is in order.
- Mandate truth in labeling. Nearly everything labeled “healthy” or “natural” is not. It’s probably too much to ask that “vitamin water” be called “sugar water with vitamins,” but that’s precisely what real truth in labeling would mean.
- Reinvest in research geared toward leading a global movement in sustainable agriculture, combining technology and tradition to create a new and meaningful Green Revolution.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Perfect Storm and Local Food Security
(excerpts from sources linked)
Achieving Food Independence on the Modern Homestead
http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/achieving-food-independence-industrial-homestead.html
I wrote this article as a handout for my presentation of the same title at the annual conference of Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, State College, PA, February 4, 2006. It was subsequently published in three installments in Countryside & Small Stock Journal (Sep/Oct 06, Nov/Dec 06, and Jan/Feb 07 issues).
Table of Contents
1: Industrial Food and the Homestead Alternatives2: Soil Fertility3: Organic Matter4: Minimizing Tillage5: Garden Year--Spring6: Garden Year--Summer7: Garden Year--Fall8: Garden Year--Winter9: Orchard and Woodlot10: Forest Garden11: The Lawn12: Livestock13: Poultry14: Ruminants15: Closing Thoughts on Livestock16: Local Foods17: Bringing It All Together
Current food production system due for collapse
ISIS Report 06/04/05
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableWorldInitiativeF.php
World grain yield fell for four successive years from 2000 to 2003, bringing reserves to the lowest in thirty years. The situation has not improved despite a 'bumper' harvest in 2004, which was just enough to satisfy world consumption. In too many food production regions of the world, conventional farming practices have severely depleted the underground water to the point where rivers and lakes have dried out, topsoil has been eroded away, and wild life decimated. At the same time, world oil production may have passed its peak; oil price hit a record high of US$58 a barrel on 4 April 2005, and is expected to top US$100 within two years. This spells looming disaster for conventional industrial agriculture, which is heavily dependent on both oil and water. The true costs of our current food production system are becoming all too clear (see Box 1). Getting our food production sustainable is the most urgent task for humanity; it is also the key to delivering health, ameliorating the worst effects of climate change and saving the planet from destructive exploitation. The benefits of sustainable food production systems are also becoming evident (see Box 2). The Independent Science Panel (ISP) and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) are launching this Sustainable World initiative to engage with all sectors of civil society to make our food production system truly sustainable.
John Ikerd, Agriculture After Fossil Energy
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/Iowa-FmUnion-Energy.htm
The world is running out of cheap fossil energy. Some dismiss the current energy crunch as nothing more than a short run phenomenon, arguing that we have used but a small fraction of the earth’s total fossil energy reserves. While there is truth to this argument, it masks far more than it reveals. The industrial era of the past 200-years has been fueled by cheap energy, first by wood from abundant forests and then by fossil energy from easily accessible sources. But the days of old-growth forests, oil gushers, surface veins of coal are gone. Most of the remaining reserves of oil and natural gas are buried far below the earth’s surface or deep beneath ocean floors. The remaining reserves of coal likewise are more costly to mine and to burn without degrading the environment. There are no more sources of cheap fossil energy. Industrialization, which has dominated modern society for the past two centuries, is coming to an end.
...The highest priority for American agriculture should be on reducing the fossil energy dependence of food production. Our current food system, including food processing and distribution, claims about 17% of total U.S. fossil energy use, with about one-third of this total used at the farm level.[9] In fact, we use about ten kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced, not counting the energy use in final food preparation. This means that even at the farm level, American agriculture uses about three kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced. In a world of rising population and dwindling fossil energy, the first priority of agriculture should be producing more food with less fossil energy.
By Ronnie Cummins Organic Consumers Association, October 14, 2008
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15140.cfm
OCA is happy to announce a new grassroots-powered campaign called Organic Transitions, inspired in part by the UK's fast-growing Transition Towns movement. Organic Transitions is designed to mobilize organic consumers and local communities to start planning and implementing “transition” strategies so as to survive and thrive in the turbulent times ahead, with organic food and farming providing the healthy cornerstone for a new, more localized and sustainable green economy.
First the bad, or shall we say the really bad, news. Not since the Great Depression have Americans been challenged by anything comparable to the current unfolding disaster: economic meltdown, global warming, climate chaos, escalating energy and resource costs, looming shortages, endless war, biodiversity erosion, and deteriorating public health—metastasized and abetted by a corporate elite and indentured federal government that apparently doesn’t know what to do, or, worse, doesn’t care. Even with likely regime change on November 4, we are in very deep trouble, according to leading scientists, economists, agronomists, and public health experts.
Fortunately a critical mass of people are waking up to the fact that we must get organized and find holistic solutions, not mere band-aids, for our crisis. Millions of us are heartened by the indisputable fact that organic, green, commonsense solutions for all of our life-or-death problems are at hand, including appropriate technology and innovative public policy and legislation. We don’t have to wait for Washington bureaucrats or corporate marketers to tell us what to do. We can join together with our fellow citizens and begin the absolutely essential process of organizing Organic Transitions committees and campaigns in our local areas, starting with local organic food buying clubs, house parties, and study and action circles.
Achieving Food Independence on the Modern Homestead
http://www.themodernhomestead.us/article/achieving-food-independence-industrial-homestead.html
I wrote this article as a handout for my presentation of the same title at the annual conference of Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, State College, PA, February 4, 2006. It was subsequently published in three installments in Countryside & Small Stock Journal (Sep/Oct 06, Nov/Dec 06, and Jan/Feb 07 issues).
Table of Contents
1: Industrial Food and the Homestead Alternatives2: Soil Fertility3: Organic Matter4: Minimizing Tillage5: Garden Year--Spring6: Garden Year--Summer7: Garden Year--Fall8: Garden Year--Winter9: Orchard and Woodlot10: Forest Garden11: The Lawn12: Livestock13: Poultry14: Ruminants15: Closing Thoughts on Livestock16: Local Foods17: Bringing It All Together
Current food production system due for collapse
ISIS Report 06/04/05
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SustainableWorldInitiativeF.php
World grain yield fell for four successive years from 2000 to 2003, bringing reserves to the lowest in thirty years. The situation has not improved despite a 'bumper' harvest in 2004, which was just enough to satisfy world consumption. In too many food production regions of the world, conventional farming practices have severely depleted the underground water to the point where rivers and lakes have dried out, topsoil has been eroded away, and wild life decimated. At the same time, world oil production may have passed its peak; oil price hit a record high of US$58 a barrel on 4 April 2005, and is expected to top US$100 within two years. This spells looming disaster for conventional industrial agriculture, which is heavily dependent on both oil and water. The true costs of our current food production system are becoming all too clear (see Box 1). Getting our food production sustainable is the most urgent task for humanity; it is also the key to delivering health, ameliorating the worst effects of climate change and saving the planet from destructive exploitation. The benefits of sustainable food production systems are also becoming evident (see Box 2). The Independent Science Panel (ISP) and the Institute of Science in Society (ISIS) are launching this Sustainable World initiative to engage with all sectors of civil society to make our food production system truly sustainable.
John Ikerd, Agriculture After Fossil Energy
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/Iowa-FmUnion-Energy.htm
The world is running out of cheap fossil energy. Some dismiss the current energy crunch as nothing more than a short run phenomenon, arguing that we have used but a small fraction of the earth’s total fossil energy reserves. While there is truth to this argument, it masks far more than it reveals. The industrial era of the past 200-years has been fueled by cheap energy, first by wood from abundant forests and then by fossil energy from easily accessible sources. But the days of old-growth forests, oil gushers, surface veins of coal are gone. Most of the remaining reserves of oil and natural gas are buried far below the earth’s surface or deep beneath ocean floors. The remaining reserves of coal likewise are more costly to mine and to burn without degrading the environment. There are no more sources of cheap fossil energy. Industrialization, which has dominated modern society for the past two centuries, is coming to an end.
...The highest priority for American agriculture should be on reducing the fossil energy dependence of food production. Our current food system, including food processing and distribution, claims about 17% of total U.S. fossil energy use, with about one-third of this total used at the farm level.[9] In fact, we use about ten kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced, not counting the energy use in final food preparation. This means that even at the farm level, American agriculture uses about three kcals of fossil energy for every kcal of food energy produced. In a world of rising population and dwindling fossil energy, the first priority of agriculture should be producing more food with less fossil energy.
By Ronnie Cummins Organic Consumers Association, October 14, 2008
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_15140.cfm
OCA is happy to announce a new grassroots-powered campaign called Organic Transitions, inspired in part by the UK's fast-growing Transition Towns movement. Organic Transitions is designed to mobilize organic consumers and local communities to start planning and implementing “transition” strategies so as to survive and thrive in the turbulent times ahead, with organic food and farming providing the healthy cornerstone for a new, more localized and sustainable green economy.
First the bad, or shall we say the really bad, news. Not since the Great Depression have Americans been challenged by anything comparable to the current unfolding disaster: economic meltdown, global warming, climate chaos, escalating energy and resource costs, looming shortages, endless war, biodiversity erosion, and deteriorating public health—metastasized and abetted by a corporate elite and indentured federal government that apparently doesn’t know what to do, or, worse, doesn’t care. Even with likely regime change on November 4, we are in very deep trouble, according to leading scientists, economists, agronomists, and public health experts.
Fortunately a critical mass of people are waking up to the fact that we must get organized and find holistic solutions, not mere band-aids, for our crisis. Millions of us are heartened by the indisputable fact that organic, green, commonsense solutions for all of our life-or-death problems are at hand, including appropriate technology and innovative public policy and legislation. We don’t have to wait for Washington bureaucrats or corporate marketers to tell us what to do. We can join together with our fellow citizens and begin the absolutely essential process of organizing Organic Transitions committees and campaigns in our local areas, starting with local organic food buying clubs, house parties, and study and action circles.
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Permanent Intensive Beds
Why grow with permanent intensive beds?
from Paul at livingonthelandweb@gmail.com
There are places where food gardening can be done by tilling up a whole area and planting in single rows, and often requiring too much watering and weeding, and cost. But times like these need more efficient and sustainable - and often more inexpensive - use of space and inputs. And for the current growth of home, market, and community gardening to be sustained, the methods need to be both doable and rewarding. Too often they aren't. Some useful sources listed at the end of this article.
Efficiency
Not just trendy, permanent beds and aisles can make more efficient use of available space and inputs for growing. Beds can be intensively planted and allow the garden to produce much more vegetables by NOT leaving 18" aisles for tractor wheels between single rows. No tractors here. In intensive beds plants are spaced equally in each direction, depending on the room they need when mature. Do the math for carrots with recommended spacing between plants and the same spacing between rows - say, for a simple 3'x20' bed. Eight rows in a three foot wide bed? How many carrots total? Unsustainable industrial farming methods are also inefficient and impractical for home, market and community vegetable gardens.
Soil compaction
Beds are usually 3-4 feet wide to reach the middle from either side, and aren't walked on and compacted. Aisle width may vary as needed. Soil that is not compacted by feet or wheels allows better root growth and better plant growth. As such it needs little or no annual tilling or digging. It's easier to work in amendments. Uncompacted beds percolate irrigation more deeply, hold moisture better, and drain excess water more easily. Compacted soil is harder to water deeply and is more prone to waterlogging when it is watered deeply or gets too much rain. Either condition is hard on plants.
Inputs
Beds require less amendments, mulch, tilling, and irrigation than the entire garden because aisles need none of these. All inputs are concentrated on the growing soil in beds. This saves labor and money. Plus, the cost of a tiller can easily outweigh any savings from growing your own. Initial bed layout and digging in organic amendments can avoid buying a tiller altogether - and regular tilling brings weed seeds to the surface to sprout. With free or cheap local materials for amendments and mulch, startup costs can be limited more or less to simple hand tools.
Mulched beds
Organic mulch allows water to penetrate while reducing surface evaporation, conserving moisture, and greatly reducing weeding. In a wet climate beds may need to be slightly higher than aisles for better drainage. Mulch protects shallow roots from the sun's heat and moderates soil temperature which helps growth - and food production. It helps to keep the soil surface from being compacted and crusted by rain on bare soil. Water percolates down more easily. So besides saving water by not irrigating aisles area, less water also is needed for the bed soil. Winter mulch can protect soil from hard freezes in milder climates, and as Ruth Stout explained long ago you just pull the mulch aside in spring to let the sun warm the soil and plant. For transplants mulch can be pulled aside and replaced around plants. Coarser mulch material needs to be a little thicker layer than finer material. Bare soil is subject to erosion loss by wind and water, and is rarely best for growing. In field and forest nature works to remedy bare soil.
Amendments
With permanent beds, the labor and expense of amendments aren't wasted on aisles that get walked on. Organic amendments may vary including compost, green manure crops, animal manures, bone meal, and minerals. In composting, greens and browns ideally are combined in a ratio of more or less 1:20 for nitrogen in green matter to decompose browns such as aged manure. But the same materials may be worked into the soil directly, skipping the compost pile. Proper amendments also go beyond providing plant nutrients, by loosening soil structure for good root growth and moisture retention, and by providing raw materials for earthworms and microorganisms such as mycorrhizae that improve soil structure and healthy plant growth. Raising the level of organic matter becomes more practical and affordable when only the growing beds are amended.
Adaptations
Beds may need raising and framing under certain conditions such as sloping or uneven ground, thin, rocky, or hopeless topsoil, or too much rain. Where conditions permit beds can simply be laid out flat and marked with permanent stakes or other markers. Lumber or other materials may be used to define edges and keep bed soil or mulch in place if needed. Where space permits green manure crops such as legumes that add nitrogen and bring up subsoil minerals can be rotated with growing beds. Local conditions and resources often influence choices in growing, and have since the dawn of agriculture. In parts of New England rocks removed to clear garden space can be used to outline beds and hold warmth. There are endess variations and workarounds on ideas that work.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sources
Some of many sources on intensive beds and organic growing, available at low cost from http://www.bookfinder.com which includes many booksellers . I'm not an expert and we don't need to be experts if we combine what works best from those who are.
High-Yield Gardening: How to Get More from Your Garden Space and More from Your Gardening Season, Rodale Press
How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, by John Jeavons (& others by Jeavons)
Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. The Indispensable Green Resource for Every Gardener, Rodale Press
Getting the Most from Your Garden, Rodale Press
The Complete Book Of Composting, Rodale Press
Sunday, February 6, 2011
About Food, Egypt and Wall Street
A reader writes:
"We are seeing the consequences of over use of resources , exuberant enlightened self interest coupled with amoral ethical regimes. Place this with short sighted economic planning (the quarterly system) and we have the mess we are in now.
"Cheap energy has resulted in excessive food production , which has resulted in excessive population growth (population will follow the food curve) and it has to a point we can no longer expand food production to the point of supporting population levels let alone population growth. Too many people not enough resources equates to increased civil unrest from decreased economic opportunity , too many people and not enough resources leads to increase in food prices this leads to malnutrition and more civil unrest . Add to this a rapacious economic system whose regulations are set up and maintained by the very people who benefit from the said system .
"One does not have to call for revolution nor predict collapse it is self evident that it will happen as the various lobbying interests of industry and finance continue to influence legislation where there interests take preeminence over the common good and this will lead to civil unrest and food shortages (exacerbated by speculation, again enhanced by political manipulation by lobbyists) .
"It is ironic that the conservative element of our country which boasts about their moral high ground are funded by the amoral corporate system."
-------------------
My response (for those not watching the Superbowl today):
Yes, it's evident that some form of rough collapse will continue, with the dominant wealth stealing till there's little left to steal and the middle class is reduced to 3rd world living conditions. Even the "3rd rail" SS is now in the crosshairs. It appears the fraudulent Wall Street (US & EU) grab was so widespread that it was impossible for governments to even prosecute, and "austerity" or "stimulus" to save us (or them) is just digging the hole deeper. States are cutting into the bone now. If that's the case then the economy is beyond the tipping point, and resource depletion is now passing various tipping points as we sleep. Officially the peak oil plateau was hit in 2006. The argument now is only about how steep or gradual the downside will be.
As for food and population, we now know industrial food prices already are fueling riots and regime change in the Mideast and elsewhere. The underreported news is organic can feed the world, as Rodale Institute documented in 2008 based on the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report: "These conclusions also confirmed findings and recommendations of the recently released report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) panel, an intergovernmental process supported by over 400 experts under the cosponsorship of the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO (issued on 14 April 2008). The IAASTD report stated that “the way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.” "
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20081203/fp1
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/GreenRevUP.pdf
The problem with that option is twofold. First: the financial powers that nearly collapsed the global economy control the industrial food and financial system that makes the top 1% richer and makes industrial food unaffordable to one billion people, and Second: other resources (water, minerals, energy) can't even support the current population's consumption. Not to mention the effects of climate instability on failing grain production right now. And the financial system demands exponential growth just to survive. Facing all these brick walls we ask, can change come in time? Not while the powers that be pay reactionary elements to kill every effort to ease the transition to a more sustainable society.
"We are seeing the consequences of over use of resources , exuberant enlightened self interest coupled with amoral ethical regimes. Place this with short sighted economic planning (the quarterly system) and we have the mess we are in now.
"Cheap energy has resulted in excessive food production , which has resulted in excessive population growth (population will follow the food curve) and it has to a point we can no longer expand food production to the point of supporting population levels let alone population growth. Too many people not enough resources equates to increased civil unrest from decreased economic opportunity , too many people and not enough resources leads to increase in food prices this leads to malnutrition and more civil unrest . Add to this a rapacious economic system whose regulations are set up and maintained by the very people who benefit from the said system .
"One does not have to call for revolution nor predict collapse it is self evident that it will happen as the various lobbying interests of industry and finance continue to influence legislation where there interests take preeminence over the common good and this will lead to civil unrest and food shortages (exacerbated by speculation, again enhanced by political manipulation by lobbyists) .
"It is ironic that the conservative element of our country which boasts about their moral high ground are funded by the amoral corporate system."
-------------------
My response (for those not watching the Superbowl today):
Yes, it's evident that some form of rough collapse will continue, with the dominant wealth stealing till there's little left to steal and the middle class is reduced to 3rd world living conditions. Even the "3rd rail" SS is now in the crosshairs. It appears the fraudulent Wall Street (US & EU) grab was so widespread that it was impossible for governments to even prosecute, and "austerity" or "stimulus" to save us (or them) is just digging the hole deeper. States are cutting into the bone now. If that's the case then the economy is beyond the tipping point, and resource depletion is now passing various tipping points as we sleep. Officially the peak oil plateau was hit in 2006. The argument now is only about how steep or gradual the downside will be.
As for food and population, we now know industrial food prices already are fueling riots and regime change in the Mideast and elsewhere. The underreported news is organic can feed the world, as Rodale Institute documented in 2008 based on the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report: "These conclusions also confirmed findings and recommendations of the recently released report of the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) panel, an intergovernmental process supported by over 400 experts under the cosponsorship of the FAO, GEF, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, the World Bank and WHO (issued on 14 April 2008). The IAASTD report stated that “the way the world grows its food will have to change radically to better serve the poor and hungry if the world is to cope with growing population and climate change while avoiding social breakdown and environmental collapse.” "
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/20081203/fp1
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/files/GreenRevUP.pdf
The problem with that option is twofold. First: the financial powers that nearly collapsed the global economy control the industrial food and financial system that makes the top 1% richer and makes industrial food unaffordable to one billion people, and Second: other resources (water, minerals, energy) can't even support the current population's consumption. Not to mention the effects of climate instability on failing grain production right now. And the financial system demands exponential growth just to survive. Facing all these brick walls we ask, can change come in time? Not while the powers that be pay reactionary elements to kill every effort to ease the transition to a more sustainable society.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Growing Sources
Our unique selection of helpful sources to get growing or get better!
There's a lot more out there - of course - but these are fairly reliable in most particulars. My short list of seed sellers, scroll down. No endorsements implied in this blog, no financial interests.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Germination time & temps
http://www.heirloomseeds.com/germination.html
http://www.ourgardengang.com/Seedlings.htm
Seeding, growing chart
http://www.savvygardener.com/Features/veg_garden_calendar.html
How long till harvest
http://www.locavorenetwork.com/content/how-long-until-harvest
Gardening Calendar
http://organotill.org/calendar/
Vegetable Planting Guide and Recommended Planting Dates
http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/envirohort/426-331/426-331guide.html
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/426/426-331/426-331.pdf
Planting dates, plant spacing, time to maturity, etc.
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/vegtips.html
Transplant Production many useful links to other sources also
http://smallfarms.ifas.ufl.edu/crops/vegetables/transplant_production.html
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/HS126
Intensive gardening methods
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/intensive.html
Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers book
http://www.growingformarket.com/store/products/115
Hoophouse production
http://www.growingformarket.com/categories/Hoophouse-production
Row Cover Roundup
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1988-03-01/Row-Cover-Varieties.aspx
Season Extension Techniques for Market Gardeners
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/seasonext.html
Season Extension in Organic Vegetable Production Systems
http://www.extension.org/article/18366
Scheduling Vegetable Plantings for Continuous Harvest
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/continuousharvest.html
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/continuousharvest.pdf
Ripeness Guide
http://www.almanac.com/garden/vege/ripeness.php
Vegetable Yields
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/guide.html
When to Harvest Vegetables
http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-216/welcome.html
Planting and Harvesting Guide for Piedmont Vegetables and Herbs
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/plantingguide.html
Market Gardening: A Start-up Guide
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/marketgardening.html
http://www.growingformarket.com/
http://farmersmarketcoalition.org/
http://www.dripworksusa.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here is my short-short list of seed/plant sources online
selected from my long-long list...
http://www.gourmetseed.com/
http://www.seedsofitaly.com/
http://growitalian.com/
http://www.ortoland.it/
http://www.ingegnoli.it/
http://www.italianseedandtool.com/
http://www.paganocostantino.it/engindex.htm
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/
http://www.botanicalinterests.com/
http://b-and-t-world-seeds.com/
http://www.dixondalefarms.com/
http://www.seedsofchange.com/
http://www.burpee.com/
http://rareseeds.com/
http://www.oikostreecrops.com/
http://www.bountifulgardens.org/
http://www.comstockferre.com/
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/
http://www.filareefarm.com/
http://www.fungiperfecti.com/
http://www.highmowingseeds.com
http://www.horizonherbs.com/
http://www.irish-eyes.com/
http://www.kitazawaseed.com/
http://www.nativeseeds.org/
http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://www.tomatogrowers.com/
http://seeds.thompson-morgan.com/us/en
http://www.tomatofest.com/
There's a lot more out there - of course - but these are fairly reliable in most particulars. My short list of seed sellers, scroll down. No endorsements implied in this blog, no financial interests.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Germination time & temps
http://www.heirloomseeds.com/germination.html
http://www.ourgardengang.com/Seedlings.htm
Seeding, growing chart
http://www.savvygardener.com/Features/veg_garden_calendar.html
How long till harvest
http://www.locavorenetwork.com/content/how-long-until-harvest
Gardening Calendar
http://organotill.org/calendar/
Vegetable Planting Guide and Recommended Planting Dates
http://www.ext.vt.edu/pubs/envirohort/426-331/426-331guide.html
http://pubs.ext.vt.edu/426/426-331/426-331.pdf
Planting dates, plant spacing, time to maturity, etc.
http://www.thegardenhelper.com/vegtips.html
Transplant Production many useful links to other sources also
http://smallfarms.ifas.ufl.edu/crops/vegetables/transplant_production.html
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/HS126
Intensive gardening methods
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/intensive.html
Crop Planning for Organic Vegetable Growers book
http://www.growingformarket.com/store/products/115
Hoophouse production
http://www.growingformarket.com/categories/Hoophouse-production
Row Cover Roundup
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Organic-Gardening/1988-03-01/Row-Cover-Varieties.aspx
Season Extension Techniques for Market Gardeners
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/seasonext.html
Season Extension in Organic Vegetable Production Systems
http://www.extension.org/article/18366
Scheduling Vegetable Plantings for Continuous Harvest
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/continuousharvest.html
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/continuousharvest.pdf
Ripeness Guide
http://www.almanac.com/garden/vege/ripeness.php
Vegetable Yields
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/garden/mg/vegetable/guide.html
When to Harvest Vegetables
http://aces.nmsu.edu/pubs/_h/h-216/welcome.html
Planting and Harvesting Guide for Piedmont Vegetables and Herbs
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/chatham/ag/SustAg/plantingguide.html
Market Gardening: A Start-up Guide
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/summaries/marketgardening.html
http://www.growingformarket.com/
http://farmersmarketcoalition.org/
http://www.dripworksusa.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here is my short-short list of seed/plant sources online
selected from my long-long list...
http://www.gourmetseed.com/
http://www.seedsofitaly.com/
http://growitalian.com/
http://www.ortoland.it/
http://www.ingegnoli.it/
http://www.italianseedandtool.com/
http://www.paganocostantino.it/engindex.htm
http://www.johnnyseeds.com/
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/
http://www.botanicalinterests.com/
http://b-and-t-world-seeds.com/
http://www.dixondalefarms.com/
http://www.seedsofchange.com/
http://www.burpee.com/
http://rareseeds.com/
http://www.oikostreecrops.com/
http://www.bountifulgardens.org/
http://www.comstockferre.com/
http://www.fedcoseeds.com/
http://www.filareefarm.com/
http://www.fungiperfecti.com/
http://www.highmowingseeds.com
http://www.horizonherbs.com/
http://www.irish-eyes.com/
http://www.kitazawaseed.com/
http://www.nativeseeds.org/
http://www.seedsavers.org/
http://www.tomatogrowers.com/
http://seeds.thompson-morgan.com/us/en
http://www.tomatofest.com/
Thursday, February 3, 2011
2050 in America, Food and Farms of the Future
(excerpts, citations on website)
By John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri Columbia College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Joliet%20JC%20--%202050%20-%20Econ-Food-Farms.htm
Many more papers and books http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/
A “food revolution” is erupting all across America. Last spring Jamie Oliver, an outspoken British chef turned activist, called for a “food revolution” in America.[1] The occasion was the premier of a six-episode reality show on ABC Television. The premise of the show was that our physical health is linked directly to the foods we eat. In the first episode, Oliver pointed out that today’s children are the first generation whose members are expected to live shorter lives than their parents. It’s not the kids’ fault; they eat what their parents and other adults choose to feed them, or at least allow them to eat. Too often, this means whatever is cheapest, quickest, and most convenient. In our pursuit of quick, convenient, cheap food we are destroying the health of our children and the future of our nation.
Best-selling books, such as Fast Food Nation[2] and Omnivore’s Dilemma,[3] have awakened mainstream society to the dramatic changes that have been taking place in our food system. Video documentaries such as Future of Food,[4] Broken Limbs,[5] Food Inc[6] and Fresh; the Movie[7] provide gripping images of the negative impacts of our industrial food system on nature, our society, and even the future of humanity. They all tell the same story of a food system that is lacking in ecological, social, and economic integrity. The tipping point may be growing public concerns about diet related health problems and the associated costs of healthcare. The HBO network has a new multi-documentary project underway linking the rise in obesity and other diet related health problems to the industrialization of the food system.
The various books and documentaries also tell a story of hope for the future through the voices and images of the farmers and consumers who together are creating a new, sustainable food system. The farmers may label themselves organic, biodynamic, ecological, natural, holistic, or choose no label at all. The foods may be natural, organic, free-range, cage-free, locally grown, or any number of other distinctions from conventional, industrial foods. These farmers and consumers are creating a permanent, sustainable agriculture and a healthful, sustainable food system. They are creating a food system that has ecological, social, and economic integrity. These farmers and their customers are leading the “good food revolution.”
The “local food movement” is the most prominent dimension of the good food revolution at present. People tend to underestimate the importance of local food because they associate it with farmers markets and community supported agricultural organizations or CSAs – and more recently, with home gardens and community gardens. While these are and will continue to be important, the local food movement is probably most accurately defined by the growing number of retail food stores, restaurants, and institutional food buyers who are committed to sourcing as much food as possible from local growers.
The transformation is being driven by questions of sustainability. Sustainability is not just a buzzword; it is the fundamental question confronting both the developed and developing worlds of today. It asks whether our current way of life is sustainable – ecologically, socially, and economically. It asks whether we can meet the needs of the present without diminishing opportunities for the future. Virtually every major U.S. corporation, government agency, and non-profit organization now feels compelled to have a major sustainability initiative. These initiatives deal with issues of environmental protection, social equity, and economic viability. When we ask the deeper questions of sustainability, we realize that we eventually must change virtually every aspect of our economy, our society, and our individual lives.
Most important, we must change our economy. Rates of economic growth that we have come to consider as “normal” quite simply are not sustainable. The economy of the industrial era, particularly of the past century, was an aberration in human history. For example, if economic growth rates of 3% to 4% had persisted over the past 2010 years, since the year one, a global Gross Domestic Product of one-dollar at that time would have grown into a global economy that would provide every person on earth, all six-and-one-half billion of us, with enough money to spend a million dollars every second of every day of the year. Furthermore, every 20-yrs people would have twice as much to spend as the 20-yrs before. The US economy of some $10-trillion obviously cannot sustain growth rates of 3%-4% for another 2000 or even 100 more years.
The economic growth of the industrial era was possible only because of abundant supplies of easily accessible energy. First it was the old-growth forests, then surface coal, and for the last century shallow deposits of oil and natural gas. But the days of cheap, abundant energy are over. The old forests are gone, tops of mountains are being blown off to get the remaining coal, and the remaining reserves of oil and gas are deep beneath the ocean floor or in remote corners of the earth hardly touched by civilization. In addition, continued reliance on fossil energy poses unacceptable environmental risks, such as global climate change, that threaten the future of human life on earth. The alternative that eventually will replace fossil energy – wind, water, photovoltaics, and direct solar – will be less plentiful and more costly than fossil energy. Denial and neglect cannot change the hard, cold facts: the industrial era of economic growth is over.
Americans simply must accept the fact that the economic growth rates of the past century are not sustainable. The new post-industrial era must be an era of slow growth, at times even no growth. Yet it will be a time of human progress, if we successfully weather the transition. If we choose wisely, the transformation could well be a major step forward in the betterment of human life on earth. The father of Keynesian economic theory, John Maynard Keynes, anticipated this new era back in the 1920s. He wrote, “the economic problem may be solved, or at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not… the permanent problem of the human race.”[10] Man’s permanent problem will be “how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares… to live wisely and agreeably and well.” The challenge for the vast majority of Americans, as well as the rest of the so called developed world, is not to restore unsustainable economic growth, but instead to learn to live “wisely, agreeably, and well.”
In a more enlightened world of 2050, the so called lesser-developed countries of the world will not have consumed all of the earth’s natural resources in achieving sustainable levels of economic development. They will have learned that beyond about $10,000-$15,000 per person in Gross Domestic Product, roughly equivalent to per capita income, there has been no relationship between economic growth and overall quality of life.[12] In addition countries where people are more equitable economically, where there is less disparity between the rich and poor, people tend to be happier, regardless of their absolute level of income. Thus developing countries of the future will balance their modest needs for economic growth with the need to build stronger and more equitable societies. Their quality of life also will be enhanced as they fulfill their ethical responsibility to future generations by being good stewards of their nations’ natural resources.
In a more enlightened world, peoples’ lives will be more socially connected and their old age will be more economically secure. Once these social and economic security incentives for larger families are no longer present, global population will level out and stabilize at a comfortable carrying capacity for the earth’s resources. Increasing population will occur only if and when increases in efficiency of resource use make a larger population sustainable. Otherwise, there will be no further need for economic growth. The economic problem will be solved for all.
The enlightened America of 2050 will be organized quite differently from the centralized, consolidated, hierarchal society and economy of today. Much of the centralized political power would have been devolved to state and local levels. The federal government will return to its historic constitutional purpose of ensuring equal access to things to which all Americans have equal rights. State governments will focus on those things that can be and need to be done differently in different geographic regions and cultures within the country. This will leave local governments with the other things that must be done for the common good of society but cannot or will not be done by individuals, families, or other informal groups within communities.
The American society and economy will also have devolved, decentralized, and re-localized to better meet the needs of the post-industrial, sustainable society. American communities of the future, both rural and urban, will not be economically self-sufficient, but locally owned and operated businesses will be capable of meeting most basic day-to-day needs of their local community. Local businesses will be sustained by the commitment of the community to support its local economy. Large corporate manufacturers and retailers will be supplemental or secondary providers of goods and services but will not dominate local economies. Local builders will provide affordable, energy-efficient housing. Energy-generating residences and locally-owned electric utilities will meet most energy needs of the community with wind, water, and solar generated electricity. Local farmers will provide sustainably-grown foods.
Returning to the food system, by the year 2050, fossil energy depletion and environmental degradation will have made today’s industrial, global food system economically obsolete. It’s not just a matter of rising transportation costs. The economic feasibility of the entire industrial food system – production, processing, packaging, refrigeration, cold storage, mass merchandizing – depends on an abundance of relatively cheap fossil energy. The American food system currently claims about 20% of total fossil energy use and accounts for an even larger percentage of emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.[13] Without cheap fossil energy for fertilizers and fuel, agriculture will be forced to return to organic and other regenerative, sustainable approaches to production that rely on green plants to capture and store solar energy in the healthy, organic soils. By the year 2050, the American food system will have been forced to devolve to production and distribution to accommodate local and regional markets. National and global food markets will be primarily high-value, non-perishable, minimally-processed foods, such as coffee and spices. Americans will be healthier and health care costs will be in decline.
The American farms of 2050 will be smaller because sustainable farms are inherently more management and labor intensive, meaning more farms and more opportunities for farmers. Such farms will fit the new paradigm for technology development by employing more people in the process of producing a given amount of food. It takes knowledge, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship to produce food sustainably. Human scale technologies, such as the microcomputer, will make knowledge more easily acquired and creativity and entrepreneurship more effectively used. Even today, organic and other sustainable systems of food production can produce as much or even more than industrial systems per acre of land or dollar of investment. They just require more thoughtful, insightful, caring farmers. Why not have more such farmers?
Farmers markets, CSAs, and home gardens will grow in importance and more locally grown foods will move through local supermarkets, restaurants, and institutions. However, the food systems of the future will more closely resemble today’s multi-farm CSAs or local food cooperatives. Grown Locally,[14] Idaho’s Bounty,[15] and the Oklahoma Food Cooperative,[16]for example, are cooperative organizations of farmers and consumers that offer a variety of vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, cheese, baked goods, flowers, and herbs produced by local farmers. Many items are available as CSA shares, standing orders, or for week-by-week purchase. Customers have the option of on-farm pick-up, local delivery points, or delivery to the door. Websites allow producers to post what they have available each week, ensuring that products sold are available for delivery and allowing customers to place or revise their orders on the website. Such systems have the potential to be far more energy efficient and environmentally benign than are today’s systems of food production and distribution. In the world of 2050, with the next generations of the Internet and Fed-Ex, a global network of sustainable, community food systems will have replaced the industrial, global food system as the dominate source of food.
The most successful American communities in 2050, rural and urban, will be those learned from the “good food revolution” of the early 2000s. They will be communities that have preserved and restored the fertile farmlands that remained in the areas where most of the cities and towns in American were initially settled. They will be communities that understood that the local food movement was not just about restoring healthy diets and healthy bodies, although health is obviously essential to physical well-being. Local foods provide both the motivation and means of reconnecting people in meaningful personal and social relationships. Local foods also allow people to support their local farmers economically, and thus support their local economies. Through local farmers, people reconnect spiritually with the land and regain a sense of purpose and meaning in life through a commitment to stewardship of nature. The good food revolution is the precursor to the “good life revolution” – an ecological, social, and economic revolution.
However, none of these good things will be possible unless we abandon our pursuit of narrow, individual economic self-interest and return to the broader pursuit of happiness and quality of life. Obviously, we are physical beings, but the material needs are quite modest and well within the earth’s capacity to sustain a regenerative economy. We can’t sustain continual economic growth but we can sustain sufficient economic growth to meet the basic needs of all, if we choose to do so. We can sustain continuing prosperity even without economic growth, if we find the wisdom to focus our time and energy on relationships and ethics instead of economics. We can sustain prosperity through harmony and balance among the material, social, and spiritual dimensions of our lives. There are no limits to human betterment, if we cease our striving for wealth and focus on learning the true art of living.
(excerpts, citations on website)
By John Ikerd, Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri Columbia College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Joliet%20JC%20--%202050%20-%20Econ-Food-Farms.htm
Many more papers and books http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/
A “food revolution” is erupting all across America. Last spring Jamie Oliver, an outspoken British chef turned activist, called for a “food revolution” in America.[1] The occasion was the premier of a six-episode reality show on ABC Television. The premise of the show was that our physical health is linked directly to the foods we eat. In the first episode, Oliver pointed out that today’s children are the first generation whose members are expected to live shorter lives than their parents. It’s not the kids’ fault; they eat what their parents and other adults choose to feed them, or at least allow them to eat. Too often, this means whatever is cheapest, quickest, and most convenient. In our pursuit of quick, convenient, cheap food we are destroying the health of our children and the future of our nation.
Best-selling books, such as Fast Food Nation[2] and Omnivore’s Dilemma,[3] have awakened mainstream society to the dramatic changes that have been taking place in our food system. Video documentaries such as Future of Food,[4] Broken Limbs,[5] Food Inc[6] and Fresh; the Movie[7] provide gripping images of the negative impacts of our industrial food system on nature, our society, and even the future of humanity. They all tell the same story of a food system that is lacking in ecological, social, and economic integrity. The tipping point may be growing public concerns about diet related health problems and the associated costs of healthcare. The HBO network has a new multi-documentary project underway linking the rise in obesity and other diet related health problems to the industrialization of the food system.
The various books and documentaries also tell a story of hope for the future through the voices and images of the farmers and consumers who together are creating a new, sustainable food system. The farmers may label themselves organic, biodynamic, ecological, natural, holistic, or choose no label at all. The foods may be natural, organic, free-range, cage-free, locally grown, or any number of other distinctions from conventional, industrial foods. These farmers and consumers are creating a permanent, sustainable agriculture and a healthful, sustainable food system. They are creating a food system that has ecological, social, and economic integrity. These farmers and their customers are leading the “good food revolution.”
The “local food movement” is the most prominent dimension of the good food revolution at present. People tend to underestimate the importance of local food because they associate it with farmers markets and community supported agricultural organizations or CSAs – and more recently, with home gardens and community gardens. While these are and will continue to be important, the local food movement is probably most accurately defined by the growing number of retail food stores, restaurants, and institutional food buyers who are committed to sourcing as much food as possible from local growers.
The transformation is being driven by questions of sustainability. Sustainability is not just a buzzword; it is the fundamental question confronting both the developed and developing worlds of today. It asks whether our current way of life is sustainable – ecologically, socially, and economically. It asks whether we can meet the needs of the present without diminishing opportunities for the future. Virtually every major U.S. corporation, government agency, and non-profit organization now feels compelled to have a major sustainability initiative. These initiatives deal with issues of environmental protection, social equity, and economic viability. When we ask the deeper questions of sustainability, we realize that we eventually must change virtually every aspect of our economy, our society, and our individual lives.
Most important, we must change our economy. Rates of economic growth that we have come to consider as “normal” quite simply are not sustainable. The economy of the industrial era, particularly of the past century, was an aberration in human history. For example, if economic growth rates of 3% to 4% had persisted over the past 2010 years, since the year one, a global Gross Domestic Product of one-dollar at that time would have grown into a global economy that would provide every person on earth, all six-and-one-half billion of us, with enough money to spend a million dollars every second of every day of the year. Furthermore, every 20-yrs people would have twice as much to spend as the 20-yrs before. The US economy of some $10-trillion obviously cannot sustain growth rates of 3%-4% for another 2000 or even 100 more years.
The economic growth of the industrial era was possible only because of abundant supplies of easily accessible energy. First it was the old-growth forests, then surface coal, and for the last century shallow deposits of oil and natural gas. But the days of cheap, abundant energy are over. The old forests are gone, tops of mountains are being blown off to get the remaining coal, and the remaining reserves of oil and gas are deep beneath the ocean floor or in remote corners of the earth hardly touched by civilization. In addition, continued reliance on fossil energy poses unacceptable environmental risks, such as global climate change, that threaten the future of human life on earth. The alternative that eventually will replace fossil energy – wind, water, photovoltaics, and direct solar – will be less plentiful and more costly than fossil energy. Denial and neglect cannot change the hard, cold facts: the industrial era of economic growth is over.
Americans simply must accept the fact that the economic growth rates of the past century are not sustainable. The new post-industrial era must be an era of slow growth, at times even no growth. Yet it will be a time of human progress, if we successfully weather the transition. If we choose wisely, the transformation could well be a major step forward in the betterment of human life on earth. The father of Keynesian economic theory, John Maynard Keynes, anticipated this new era back in the 1920s. He wrote, “the economic problem may be solved, or at least within sight of solution, within a hundred years. This means that the economic problem is not… the permanent problem of the human race.”[10] Man’s permanent problem will be “how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares… to live wisely and agreeably and well.” The challenge for the vast majority of Americans, as well as the rest of the so called developed world, is not to restore unsustainable economic growth, but instead to learn to live “wisely, agreeably, and well.”
In a more enlightened world of 2050, the so called lesser-developed countries of the world will not have consumed all of the earth’s natural resources in achieving sustainable levels of economic development. They will have learned that beyond about $10,000-$15,000 per person in Gross Domestic Product, roughly equivalent to per capita income, there has been no relationship between economic growth and overall quality of life.[12] In addition countries where people are more equitable economically, where there is less disparity between the rich and poor, people tend to be happier, regardless of their absolute level of income. Thus developing countries of the future will balance their modest needs for economic growth with the need to build stronger and more equitable societies. Their quality of life also will be enhanced as they fulfill their ethical responsibility to future generations by being good stewards of their nations’ natural resources.
In a more enlightened world, peoples’ lives will be more socially connected and their old age will be more economically secure. Once these social and economic security incentives for larger families are no longer present, global population will level out and stabilize at a comfortable carrying capacity for the earth’s resources. Increasing population will occur only if and when increases in efficiency of resource use make a larger population sustainable. Otherwise, there will be no further need for economic growth. The economic problem will be solved for all.
The enlightened America of 2050 will be organized quite differently from the centralized, consolidated, hierarchal society and economy of today. Much of the centralized political power would have been devolved to state and local levels. The federal government will return to its historic constitutional purpose of ensuring equal access to things to which all Americans have equal rights. State governments will focus on those things that can be and need to be done differently in different geographic regions and cultures within the country. This will leave local governments with the other things that must be done for the common good of society but cannot or will not be done by individuals, families, or other informal groups within communities.
The American society and economy will also have devolved, decentralized, and re-localized to better meet the needs of the post-industrial, sustainable society. American communities of the future, both rural and urban, will not be economically self-sufficient, but locally owned and operated businesses will be capable of meeting most basic day-to-day needs of their local community. Local businesses will be sustained by the commitment of the community to support its local economy. Large corporate manufacturers and retailers will be supplemental or secondary providers of goods and services but will not dominate local economies. Local builders will provide affordable, energy-efficient housing. Energy-generating residences and locally-owned electric utilities will meet most energy needs of the community with wind, water, and solar generated electricity. Local farmers will provide sustainably-grown foods.
Returning to the food system, by the year 2050, fossil energy depletion and environmental degradation will have made today’s industrial, global food system economically obsolete. It’s not just a matter of rising transportation costs. The economic feasibility of the entire industrial food system – production, processing, packaging, refrigeration, cold storage, mass merchandizing – depends on an abundance of relatively cheap fossil energy. The American food system currently claims about 20% of total fossil energy use and accounts for an even larger percentage of emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.[13] Without cheap fossil energy for fertilizers and fuel, agriculture will be forced to return to organic and other regenerative, sustainable approaches to production that rely on green plants to capture and store solar energy in the healthy, organic soils. By the year 2050, the American food system will have been forced to devolve to production and distribution to accommodate local and regional markets. National and global food markets will be primarily high-value, non-perishable, minimally-processed foods, such as coffee and spices. Americans will be healthier and health care costs will be in decline.
The American farms of 2050 will be smaller because sustainable farms are inherently more management and labor intensive, meaning more farms and more opportunities for farmers. Such farms will fit the new paradigm for technology development by employing more people in the process of producing a given amount of food. It takes knowledge, creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship to produce food sustainably. Human scale technologies, such as the microcomputer, will make knowledge more easily acquired and creativity and entrepreneurship more effectively used. Even today, organic and other sustainable systems of food production can produce as much or even more than industrial systems per acre of land or dollar of investment. They just require more thoughtful, insightful, caring farmers. Why not have more such farmers?
Farmers markets, CSAs, and home gardens will grow in importance and more locally grown foods will move through local supermarkets, restaurants, and institutions. However, the food systems of the future will more closely resemble today’s multi-farm CSAs or local food cooperatives. Grown Locally,[14] Idaho’s Bounty,[15] and the Oklahoma Food Cooperative,[16]for example, are cooperative organizations of farmers and consumers that offer a variety of vegetables, fruits, meats, eggs, cheese, baked goods, flowers, and herbs produced by local farmers. Many items are available as CSA shares, standing orders, or for week-by-week purchase. Customers have the option of on-farm pick-up, local delivery points, or delivery to the door. Websites allow producers to post what they have available each week, ensuring that products sold are available for delivery and allowing customers to place or revise their orders on the website. Such systems have the potential to be far more energy efficient and environmentally benign than are today’s systems of food production and distribution. In the world of 2050, with the next generations of the Internet and Fed-Ex, a global network of sustainable, community food systems will have replaced the industrial, global food system as the dominate source of food.
The most successful American communities in 2050, rural and urban, will be those learned from the “good food revolution” of the early 2000s. They will be communities that have preserved and restored the fertile farmlands that remained in the areas where most of the cities and towns in American were initially settled. They will be communities that understood that the local food movement was not just about restoring healthy diets and healthy bodies, although health is obviously essential to physical well-being. Local foods provide both the motivation and means of reconnecting people in meaningful personal and social relationships. Local foods also allow people to support their local farmers economically, and thus support their local economies. Through local farmers, people reconnect spiritually with the land and regain a sense of purpose and meaning in life through a commitment to stewardship of nature. The good food revolution is the precursor to the “good life revolution” – an ecological, social, and economic revolution.
However, none of these good things will be possible unless we abandon our pursuit of narrow, individual economic self-interest and return to the broader pursuit of happiness and quality of life. Obviously, we are physical beings, but the material needs are quite modest and well within the earth’s capacity to sustain a regenerative economy. We can’t sustain continual economic growth but we can sustain sufficient economic growth to meet the basic needs of all, if we choose to do so. We can sustain continuing prosperity even without economic growth, if we find the wisdom to focus our time and energy on relationships and ethics instead of economics. We can sustain prosperity through harmony and balance among the material, social, and spiritual dimensions of our lives. There are no limits to human betterment, if we cease our striving for wealth and focus on learning the true art of living.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Winona La Duke on Food, Energy and Sustainability, children on GMOs
A talk that just about covers all the themes of food/energy sustainability. Not to be missed.
Food, Energy and Sustainability
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kk_OPzOnME&NR=1
April 03, 2010
"The seeds remember the earth from which they came..."
Winona La Duke speaking in Vancouver Washington in February 2010. Winona speaks at length about the work she and her people are doing in the areas of food and sustainable energy production. (Winona is a Harvard grad who ran as Nader's VP candidate)
Seed Sovereignty Declaration
January 29, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jx1iUGGuRI
This video features a reading of the Seed Sovereignty Declaration that was drafted by members of the New Mexico Acequia Association and the Traditional Native American Farmers' Association. (Interesting it included opposition to GMOs in 2006 before there was a YouTube. Beyond opposition to GMOs it focuses on the positive, food sovereignty)
Food, Energy and Sustainability
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Kk_OPzOnME&NR=1
April 03, 2010
"The seeds remember the earth from which they came..."
Winona La Duke speaking in Vancouver Washington in February 2010. Winona speaks at length about the work she and her people are doing in the areas of food and sustainable energy production. (Winona is a Harvard grad who ran as Nader's VP candidate)
Seed Sovereignty Declaration
January 29, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jx1iUGGuRI
This video features a reading of the Seed Sovereignty Declaration that was drafted by members of the New Mexico Acequia Association and the Traditional Native American Farmers' Association. (Interesting it included opposition to GMOs in 2006 before there was a YouTube. Beyond opposition to GMOs it focuses on the positive, food sovereignty)
Monday, January 31, 2011
Food news - prices, sustainability, scarcities
Three Challenges To Sustainabilty
By Arty Mangan on Jan 13, 2011
http://www.bioneers.org/campaigns/food-farming-1/blog/three-challenges-to-sustainabilty
The dominant systems in place today- energy, food, agriculture, economy, education etc.- are unsustainable, and so by definition will fail. What are some of the obstacles to designing long-term, truly sustainable systems and how do we overcome them?
Food Label Lies: How to Sort Truth From Hype
by Lisa Gosselin, Eating Well Magazine, via The Huffington Post,
http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/10/food-label-lies-how-to-sort-truth-from-hype-2/
I live in Vermont. I have cows and goats as neighbors. I buy chickens from the farm a mile down my road. I’m the editor of EatingWell Magazine, for pete’s sake, which champions wholesome, local food and healthy eating. So you would think I’d know what terms like “all natural” mean. Especially when “All Natural” appears on a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which is made exactly 10.3 miles away from my house.
Welcome to the food deserts of rural America
by Steph Larsen 22 Jan 2011 6:00 AM
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-21-welcome-to-the-food-deserts-of-rural-america
The paradox of our unhealthy food system is that many rural towns lack healthy food access, even as the food we eat is grown in rural places. To put it simply, our current food system is failing the very communities that grow our food... So how is it possible that people in farm country have a hard time finding food? In short, it's complicated.
There are lots of ideas out there, from the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University to federal resources laid out on the Center for Rural Affairs page on rural food access to news stories and inspiring videos about a 17-year-old who saved the grocery store in Truman, Minn.
Rural communities need entrepreneurial skills to start and run a successful business. They also need young and energetic farmers willing to grow food and teach others how to do the same.
Food-cost shocks ripple worldwide from Iowa
10:20 PM, Jan. 29, 2011
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110130/BUSINESS/101300340/Food-cost-shocks-ripple-worldwide-from-Iowa?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage
Shoppers who have seen hamburger prices increase as much as 10 percent in recent months will pay even more for burgers, steaks and other meat products as a result of a commodities boom that is putting money in Iowa farmers' pockets while it rocks the rest of the world.
One estimate has meat prices rising 4 percent this year. Food cost increases in 2011 are likely to jolt consumers because they follow a three-year period of flat or declining prices.
The higher prices are the result of decreased supply and increased demand. As U.S. cattle and hog herds have reached their smallest levels since 1958, export demand has risen by as much as 50 percent in recent months. Another factor is an 85 percent increase since last summer in the price of corn, a commodity that is economically and emotionally symbolic to Iowa because it is the prime feedstock for cattle and hogs.
[and... who's pushing this?]
USAID Administrator Highlights Private Sector Partnerships to Reduce Hunger and Poverty at the World Economic Forum
http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2011/pr110128.html
WASHINGTON, DC – At the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah gathered with the CEOs of Unilever and Monsanto to support the launch of WEF's global framework titled "Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture." The show of support emphasizes USAID's leadership in creating synergies between the public and private sectors to meet the global food security challenge.
Championed by 17 global companies and supported by key public and civil-society leaders, the New Vision framework outlines priorities and examples to illustrate the role businesses can play in meeting global food and nutrition needs through accelerated, sustainable agriculture-led growth. Through the U.S. Government's Feed the Future initiative, the New Vision for Agriculture will aim to leverage private-sector investment to scale up agricultural growth in food-insecure countries. The 17 global companies that champion the initiative are: Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores and Yara International.
Water Is Life
By Arty Mangan on Jun 22, 2010
http://www.bioneers.org/campaigns/food-farming-1/blog/water-is-life
Ethics and economics compete for fair distribution of water among people, industry & ecosystems as rural New Mexico communities and Central Valley California farmers face serious challenges.
By Arty Mangan on Jan 13, 2011
http://www.bioneers.org/campaigns/food-farming-1/blog/three-challenges-to-sustainabilty
The dominant systems in place today- energy, food, agriculture, economy, education etc.- are unsustainable, and so by definition will fail. What are some of the obstacles to designing long-term, truly sustainable systems and how do we overcome them?
Food Label Lies: How to Sort Truth From Hype
by Lisa Gosselin, Eating Well Magazine, via The Huffington Post,
http://organicconnectmag.com/wp/2010/10/food-label-lies-how-to-sort-truth-from-hype-2/
I live in Vermont. I have cows and goats as neighbors. I buy chickens from the farm a mile down my road. I’m the editor of EatingWell Magazine, for pete’s sake, which champions wholesome, local food and healthy eating. So you would think I’d know what terms like “all natural” mean. Especially when “All Natural” appears on a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, which is made exactly 10.3 miles away from my house.
Welcome to the food deserts of rural America
by Steph Larsen 22 Jan 2011 6:00 AM
http://www.grist.org/article/2011-01-21-welcome-to-the-food-deserts-of-rural-america
The paradox of our unhealthy food system is that many rural towns lack healthy food access, even as the food we eat is grown in rural places. To put it simply, our current food system is failing the very communities that grow our food... So how is it possible that people in farm country have a hard time finding food? In short, it's complicated.
There are lots of ideas out there, from the Rural Grocery Initiative at Kansas State University to federal resources laid out on the Center for Rural Affairs page on rural food access to news stories and inspiring videos about a 17-year-old who saved the grocery store in Truman, Minn.
Rural communities need entrepreneurial skills to start and run a successful business. They also need young and energetic farmers willing to grow food and teach others how to do the same.
Food-cost shocks ripple worldwide from Iowa
10:20 PM, Jan. 29, 2011
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110130/BUSINESS/101300340/Food-cost-shocks-ripple-worldwide-from-Iowa?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage
Shoppers who have seen hamburger prices increase as much as 10 percent in recent months will pay even more for burgers, steaks and other meat products as a result of a commodities boom that is putting money in Iowa farmers' pockets while it rocks the rest of the world.
One estimate has meat prices rising 4 percent this year. Food cost increases in 2011 are likely to jolt consumers because they follow a three-year period of flat or declining prices.
The higher prices are the result of decreased supply and increased demand. As U.S. cattle and hog herds have reached their smallest levels since 1958, export demand has risen by as much as 50 percent in recent months. Another factor is an 85 percent increase since last summer in the price of corn, a commodity that is economically and emotionally symbolic to Iowa because it is the prime feedstock for cattle and hogs.
[and... who's pushing this?]
USAID Administrator Highlights Private Sector Partnerships to Reduce Hunger and Poverty at the World Economic Forum
http://www.usaid.gov/press/releases/2011/pr110128.html
WASHINGTON, DC – At the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland USAID Administrator Dr. Rajiv Shah gathered with the CEOs of Unilever and Monsanto to support the launch of WEF's global framework titled "Realizing a New Vision for Agriculture." The show of support emphasizes USAID's leadership in creating synergies between the public and private sectors to meet the global food security challenge.
Championed by 17 global companies and supported by key public and civil-society leaders, the New Vision framework outlines priorities and examples to illustrate the role businesses can play in meeting global food and nutrition needs through accelerated, sustainable agriculture-led growth. Through the U.S. Government's Feed the Future initiative, the New Vision for Agriculture will aim to leverage private-sector investment to scale up agricultural growth in food-insecure countries. The 17 global companies that champion the initiative are: Archer Daniels Midland, BASF, Bunge, Cargill, The Coca-Cola Company, DuPont, General Mills, Kraft Foods, Metro, Monsanto Company, Nestlé, PepsiCo, SABMiller, Syngenta, Unilever, Wal-Mart Stores and Yara International.
Water Is Life
By Arty Mangan on Jun 22, 2010
http://www.bioneers.org/campaigns/food-farming-1/blog/water-is-life
Ethics and economics compete for fair distribution of water among people, industry & ecosystems as rural New Mexico communities and Central Valley California farmers face serious challenges.
Food Price Bubble? grow your own
An era of cheap food may be drawing to a close
Reuters poll: Higher grain prices will persist, spurring more global unrest
updated 1/30/2011 1:36:58 PM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41311106/ns/business-retail/from/toolbar
U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices -- which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 -- will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts.
The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further. The expectations may also strengthen importers' resolve to build bigger inventories after a year in which stocks of corn and soybeans in the United States -- the world's top exporter -- dwindled to their lowest level in decades.
Rampant Speculation Inflated Food Price Bubble
By Stephen Leahy
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54274
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 28, 2011 (IPS) - Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude.
Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of each.
Now they've turned to basic commodities. The result? At a time when there has been no significant change in the global food supply or in food demand, the average cost of buying food shot up 32 percent from June to December 2010, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Nothing but price speculation can explain wheat prices jumping 70 percent from June to December last year when global wheat stocks were stable, experts say.
"There is no food shortage in the world. Food is simply priced out of the reach of the world's poorest people," said Robert Fox of Oxfam Canada in reference to the estimated one billion people who go hungry. "Hunger is not a food production problem. It is an income problem," Fox told IPS.
The conditions that created the 2007-08 price hike and food riots have not changed, he said. It is no surprise to see record-high food prices and riots again in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and elsewhere.
Weather used to be the big determinant of food prices, but not anymore. Trillions of dollars have been pumped into food commodities markets in the last few years thanks to deregulation of commodities trading in the U.S., reports Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
In an analysis of the food price crisis of 2007-08, De Schutter documents how the U.S. government passed legislation in 2000 deregulating the food commodity markets and for the first time permitted speculation on speculation.
Here's how it used to work. In January, Farmer Brown would sign a contract to sell his 2011 future crop to a grain trader like industry giant Cargill for 100 dollars a tonne. In the fall, Cargill would then sell Farmer Brown's grain at whatever price they could get to a bakery or feedlot company for cattle. These "futures" contracts insulated both the farmer and the grain trader from wild price fluctuations.
Now, after the passage of the U.S. Commodity Futures Modernisation Act in 2000, Cargill could sell Farmer's Brown "futures" contract to an investment bank on Wall Street for 120 dollars a tonne, who could in turn sell it to a European investment company for 150 dollars a tonne and then sell it to a U.S. public pension fund for 175 dollars a tonne and so on. Add in some complex financial instruments like 'derivatives', 'index funds', 'hedges', and 'swaps', and food become part of yet another highly-profitable speculative bubble.
Reuters poll: Higher grain prices will persist, spurring more global unrest
updated 1/30/2011 1:36:58 PM ET
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41311106/ns/business-retail/from/toolbar
U.S. grain prices should stay unrelentingly high this year, according to a Reuters poll, the latest sign that the era of cheap food has come to an end. U.S. corn, soybeans and wheat prices -- which surged by as much has 50 percent last year and hit their highest levels since mid-2008 -- will dip by at most 5 percent by the end of 2011, according to the poll of 16 analysts.
The forecasts suggest no quick relief for nations bedeviled by record high food costs that have stoked civil unrest. It means any extreme weather event in a grains-producing part of the world could send prices soaring further. The expectations may also strengthen importers' resolve to build bigger inventories after a year in which stocks of corn and soybeans in the United States -- the world's top exporter -- dwindled to their lowest level in decades.
Rampant Speculation Inflated Food Price Bubble
By Stephen Leahy
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54274
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 28, 2011 (IPS) - Billions of dollars are being made by investors in a speculative "food bubble" that's created record food prices, starving millions and destabilising countries, experts now conclude.
Wall Street investment firms and banks, along with their kin in London and Europe, were responsible for the technology dot-com bubble, the stock market bubble, and the recent U.S. and UK housing bubbles. They extracted enormous profits and their bonuses before the inevitable collapse of each.
Now they've turned to basic commodities. The result? At a time when there has been no significant change in the global food supply or in food demand, the average cost of buying food shot up 32 percent from June to December 2010, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Nothing but price speculation can explain wheat prices jumping 70 percent from June to December last year when global wheat stocks were stable, experts say.
"There is no food shortage in the world. Food is simply priced out of the reach of the world's poorest people," said Robert Fox of Oxfam Canada in reference to the estimated one billion people who go hungry. "Hunger is not a food production problem. It is an income problem," Fox told IPS.
The conditions that created the 2007-08 price hike and food riots have not changed, he said. It is no surprise to see record-high food prices and riots again in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan and elsewhere.
Weather used to be the big determinant of food prices, but not anymore. Trillions of dollars have been pumped into food commodities markets in the last few years thanks to deregulation of commodities trading in the U.S., reports Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.
In an analysis of the food price crisis of 2007-08, De Schutter documents how the U.S. government passed legislation in 2000 deregulating the food commodity markets and for the first time permitted speculation on speculation.
Here's how it used to work. In January, Farmer Brown would sign a contract to sell his 2011 future crop to a grain trader like industry giant Cargill for 100 dollars a tonne. In the fall, Cargill would then sell Farmer Brown's grain at whatever price they could get to a bakery or feedlot company for cattle. These "futures" contracts insulated both the farmer and the grain trader from wild price fluctuations.
Now, after the passage of the U.S. Commodity Futures Modernisation Act in 2000, Cargill could sell Farmer's Brown "futures" contract to an investment bank on Wall Street for 120 dollars a tonne, who could in turn sell it to a European investment company for 150 dollars a tonne and then sell it to a U.S. public pension fund for 175 dollars a tonne and so on. Add in some complex financial instruments like 'derivatives', 'index funds', 'hedges', and 'swaps', and food become part of yet another highly-profitable speculative bubble.
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Food and Farming Transition
Post Carbon Institute - Spring 2009
http://www.postcarbon.org/report/41306-the-food-and-farming-transition-toward
Summary
The American food system rests on an unstable foundation of massive fossil fuel inputs. It must be reinvented in the face of declining fuel stocks. The new food system will use less energy, and the energy it uses will come from renewable sources. We can begin the transition to the new system immediately through a process of planned, graduated, rapid change. The unplanned alternative-reconstruction from scratch after collapse-would be chaotic and tragic.The seeds of the new food system have already been planted. America's farmers have been reducing their energy use for decades. They are using less fertilizer and pesticide. The number of organic farms, farmers' markets, and CSA operations is growing rapidly. More people are thinking about where their food comes from.
These are important building blocks, but much remains to be done. Our new food system will require more farmers, smaller and more diversified farms, less processed and packaged food, and less long-distance hauling of food. Governments, communities, businesses, and families each have important parts to play in reinventing a food system that functions with limited renewable energy resources to feed our population for the long term.
books I can't do without
A few books stand out as practical how-to's in my walls of gardening books. Not theory or ideology, just indispensable. I hit used book stores, thrift stores, but to order online I use only http://www.bookfinder.com . These are the ones I can't do without for market growing. Some are more timely now than ever before.
Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. The Indispensable Green Resource for Every Gardener, Rodale Press
High-Yield Gardening: How to Get More from Your Garden Space and More from Your Gardening Season, Rodale Press
Getting the Most from Your Garden, Rodale Press
The Complete Book Of Composting, Rodale Press
How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, by John Jeavons (& others by Jeavons)
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, by Eliot Coleman
The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, by Eliot Coleman (& others by Eliot Coleman)
The Garden Primer, by Barbara Damrosch
The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, by Carol Deppe
Start With The Soil, by Grace Gershuny
Stocking Up III: The All-New Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide, Rodale Press
Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques & Recipes: Old World Recipes and Techniques, Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Rodale's Ultimate Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. The Indispensable Green Resource for Every Gardener, Rodale Press
High-Yield Gardening: How to Get More from Your Garden Space and More from Your Gardening Season, Rodale Press
Getting the Most from Your Garden, Rodale Press
The Complete Book Of Composting, Rodale Press
How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine, by John Jeavons (& others by Jeavons)
Four-Season Harvest: Organic Vegetables from Your Home Garden All Year Long, by Eliot Coleman
The New Organic Grower: A Master's Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, by Eliot Coleman (& others by Eliot Coleman)
The Garden Primer, by Barbara Damrosch
The Resilient Gardener: Food Production and Self-Reliance in Uncertain Times, by Carol Deppe
Start With The Soil, by Grace Gershuny
Stocking Up III: The All-New Edition of America's Classic Preserving Guide, Rodale Press
Keeping Food Fresh: Old World Techniques & Recipes: Old World Recipes and Techniques, Chelsea Green Publishing Co
Saturday, January 29, 2011
LiveBlogging Edible Institute 2011 #EI2011
LiveBlogging Edible Institute 2011
Posted on January 29th, 2011 by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
http://networkedblogs.com/dD6WR
Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, CA and the 2011 edition of Edible Institute at the Hotel Mar Monte. Today and tomorrow I’ll be liveblogging the goings on here for those of you who couldn’t make it and for those who did but mighta missed something. Since it’s live please forgive typos and so on – I’ll put on my editors hat at the end of the day.
Follow the goings on on the Twitter machine via the hashtag #EI2011
We’ve a heckuva lineup today, including a keynote from no less than Dr. Joan Dye Gussow, who is a serious food producer, a writer, and officially a retiree from Teachers College, Columbia University where she is Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita, former chair of the Nutrition Education Program, and where she still teaches her course on nutritional ecology every fall. Her latest book is called (I adore this title) “Growing, Older.”
Things are scheduled to start rolling here in about 20 minutes, so the first update from here will happen in about an hour or so. Take a look at the schedule of events, and please check back throughout the day (and again tomorrow).
But first, a word from our sponsors – a quick shoutout to the folks that helped make this thing happen:
St. Germaine
Green Project Consultants
and Verterra.
OK, we’re getting underway here with a welcome from Edible Communities co-founder Tracey Ryder. Shoutouts to the above sponsors, staff, and the instigator of all of this, Edible San Francisco publisher Bruce Cole.
Dr. Gussow has taken the stage, and is saying a few nice things about our humble publications, and says she’s going to start with her “Cassandra role.” Says she’s “spent several years depressing college students.”
“I feel the need to confess that I don’t feel as if I belong here,” Gussow says, on account of feeling not as up-to-date on all the foodie-goings-on these days. She then reveals that she’s an Iowa girl, originally – she grew up in Orange City – way up in the northwest corner of the state, and named not for the fruits – somewhat obviously – but for William of Orange.
Dr. Gussow is concerned about what she calls the “Frivolity of the US food supply.”
“Whenever you don’t understand something I’m saying, simply assume I’m trying to be funny.”
She’s touching now on her first book, The Feeding Web, which came out in 1978 – a true harbinger of the coming food movement which told of the absurdity of the food supply. “People need to ask where all those marshmallow-enriched purple cereals in their technicolor food supply were coming from.”
Rodale Press, she tells us, did the first study of how much of our food might possibly be produced locally in light of the first energy crisis in the late 70s. At the time she had a student at the time who did an independent project on her native Haiti about how the only US aid going on there was that we had taken their hogs, sent them Iowa hogs, which they were to raise and send to the US. This while Haitians were starving under Papa Doc.
her first attempts to get people to eat seasonally and locally “sank like a stone” because people thought that for example people who live in the northeast would starve and “what would the people of Iowa do for vitamin C?” Check in on my own Edible Iowa for some answers to that question.
She’s not trying to urge everyone to grow their own food and recognizes that that’s not realistic, but says its vital to link their life to nature – and food’s a great way to do that. “If we win our war with nature, we lose.”
“We have just elected – or the corporations have, or whoever’s in charge now – a strange group of people who don’t believe in climate change to add to the people who don’t intend to do anything about it.”
“Business as usual is no longer an option, but we’re doing business as usual.”
She highly recommends (as do I) Bill McKibben’s brlliant book Eaarth.
She’s optimistic about the growing availability of local foods. “People who used to admit embarassingly that they lived in Brooklyn now brag about it.”
But, “Those with an investment in the status quo will not give up without a fight.”
Fear is an obstacle, she says. But it’s being addressed by films like Food, Inc, and Foer’s book “Eating Animals.”
Those that say organic can’t feed the world fail to realize that they had their chance and haven’t succeeded, so maybe we should try it. GMO’s have failed thus far to broadly increase yields, says Gussow.
“We have an sustainble food supply, and Michael Pollan said that what unsustainable means is that it will end.” And that, she says, gives her hope.
Ooo, a nice shoutout too to the Slow Money Movement.
“I believe the local food movement is building a model for supporting us when the end of the current scene comes, and it will come” She urges us to take a stand too for economic and social justice.
“Living as if our food is infinite on a finite planet.”
“We know that we are all a guilty party,” she tells us, “including those who grow their own food in New York and then FLY to California to talk about it”
Quoted Jim Hightower quoting his father “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
“Hope is the lesson nature keeps teaching me”
“We need to pay more for local food from local farmers and that’s going to have to be OK.”
And with that, a big standing O for Dr. Gussow.
Question time: and the first asks what DOES she eat in January? Answer briefly is that she does a lot of puttin’ up (need to know more about how? Check out Sherri Vinton’s book Put’em Up).
Another asks her to comment on state and federal budget cuts resulting in universities funding and being funded by big ag and chemical companies, etc. She blames some of it on California passing Prop 13. Reminds me of the famous Oliver Wendall Holmes quotation “Taxes are the fee I pay to live in a civilized society.”
Break time, and then our first panel on “Will Urban Ag Change the Way we Eat”, with:
Annie Novak: Founder and director of Growing Chefs, field-to-fork food?education program; the children gardening program coordinator for?the New York Botanical Gardens, and co-founder and farmer of Eagle?Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint. Annie has worked with the CENYC?Greenmarket, Slow Food, and Just Food advocating and growing urban?agriculture throughout NYC. Her work in agriculture has been featured?in New York Magazine, Edible Brooklyn and the Martha Stewart Show?among other press.
David Cleveland: Professor, Environmental Studies Program University?of California Santa Barbara. Recent work: Trade offs between ?Agriculture, Open Space, and Urbanization. The ?value of land: Agriculture, food and urbanization in the Goleta?Valley, California.
Ashley Atkinson: Director of Project Development and Urban Agriculture?- Greening of Detroit Ashley gardens with passion and is?growing a new economy in her community that could change the way? Detroit uses its open spaces. As the Director of Project Development?and Urban Agriculture for the Greening of Detroit, Atkinson is?developing Detroit’s premier market farm from a 30-acre city park?filled with sewer pipes; all on a budget of $40 per week.
And moderated by:
Kerry Trueman is the co-founder of EatingLiberally.org, a netroots website & organization that advocates sustainable agriculture, progressive politics and a less-consumption driven way of life. She blogs regularly at Eating Liberally, right here on Huffington Post, and Civil Eats.
OK, a few Pixie tangerines and we’re back with the aforementioned panel
Deborah Kane of Edible Portland (among a lot of other fantastic exploits, like FoodHub) is handling introductions.
Annie’s talking about all the benefits of green roofs (rooves?) and showing some pictures of her work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Novak: “Beekeeping seemed like a great idea because it was illegal at the time and that was stupid.”
And a shout out from Novak to the great work of Growing Power
David Cleveland is talking about “What does localizing mean? – changing the way we eat or greenwashing?”
The question is, is localization the answer to the problems in our dominant agrifood system?
Part of the problem is we don’t truly know if localizing is helping because there are no solid statistics on it. So he set out to get some.
It doesn’t help on greenhouse gasses because of transportation, because a farmer’s pickup is less efficient than 18 wheelers. But most of the fossil fuels in industrial ag are used in things like nitrogen fixing and pesticides.
Pushback coming from the likes of Walmart because local food is starting to eat into their bottom line “The L word is beginning to replace the O word”
Cleveland urges us to keep labor in mind – is the local food raised by local hands? California relies on noncompetitive labor for producing it’s 50% share of the fruit, vegetables and nuts America eats.
He points out that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began in no small measure because of food prices.
Ashley Atkinson is now talking about her work in Detroit. mentions she doesn’t like the term “food desert.” Thinks it’s inaccurate
“There are 50K vacant lots in Detroit that are ready to be farmed.”
The growers with Grown in Detroit have agreed not to sell their food outside Detroit until their food access problems inside Detroit are lessened.
Everything she has shown – gardening, beekeeping, chickens, etc. is illegal in Detroit but “we do it anyway” – big applause.
And a shoutout to the fine work of Brother Nature
Question about dealing with municipalities and all the illegal stuff they just mentioned. Ashley says Just Do It – ask for forgiveness rather than permission. “If we’d asked for permission we’d have never done what we did”
Gary Nabhan asks if the food miles issue is dead. David Cleveland says yes and we should recast the issues around local and sustainable food.
Another break, and then we return with panel #2:
Activists and Advocacy: SOLE Food’s Message for Change.
Tom Philpott moderator. Grist food editor, Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
PANELISTS:
Ralph Loglisci: Project Director for the Johns Hopkins Healthy Monday ?Project. Before joining the Center for a Livable Future, Ralph served?as the Communications Director for the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute?of Bioethics. However, it was his work as the Communications Director?for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production that Ralph?became aware of the intricate connections between food systems, the?environment and public health.
Debra Eschmeyer: Marketing & Media Manager of the National Farm to? School Network and the Center for Food & Justice. She works from a ?fifth-generation family farm in Ohio, where she continues her passion?for organic farming raising heirloom fruits and vegetables. Prior to ?joining CFJ, Debra was the Project Director at the National Family ?Farm Coalition in Washington, DC where she focused on U.S.?agricultural policy and food sovereignty initiatives among grass roots? domestic and international rural advocacy and other social justice ?networks.?? She also blogs right here at HuffPo.
Dan Imhoff: Co-founder of Watershed Media, a researcher, author, and ?independent publisher who has concentrated for nearly 20 years on?issues related to farming, the environment, and design. He is the ?author of numerous articles, essays, and books including Food Fight:?The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, Paper or Plastic:? Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World; Farming with the? Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranches; and Building with? Vision: Optimizing and Finding Alternatives to Wood.
Philpott:
The rise and fall of the American industrial machine has lead to local food systems in these communities like Detroit, need to move beyond the 3-5 percent
Federal policy perpetuates the current dominant food system
Why aren’t policy makers learning from detroit and other local food systems? Need to push policy in these directions.
Last two admins were abysmal, then Michele Obama using soft power to effect change, but President Obama is still putting agribiz based people in his administration.
Eschmeyer
She helped make farm-to-school competitive grant program possible
Points out that Republic budget cutters do not have direct subsidies on their hit list, but to have Americorps, NEA, Organic Certification, and ObamaCare.
Urges people to help collect data that support these ideas, for example: $1 spent on local food circulates $3 in the community – that’s a low estimate.
Collaborate with people smarter than you. And join the Community Food Security Coalition, among many others.
Highlight your heroes – like Ashley (above)
“Every ingredient has a lobbyist,” but Eschmeyer believes Edible Communities could be the “lobbyist” for the good food movement.
Ralph Loglisci:
Is studying the effect of the Meatless Monday thing, seeing if their is science behind how well it works.
A shoutout to the Center for a Liveable Future blog
Points ou that this is not an elitist thing – we want good healthy food for EVERYONE. Reminds me of Josh Viertel’s recent video question to President Obama: “Why do Fruit Loops cost less than fruit?”
Dan Imhoff describes himself as a “reluctant wonk”
A Manure lagoon is now eligible to be part of a farm environment protection plan
Talks about how industrial ag says “you don’t understand agriculture”
The Tea Party could actually be an ally to the real food movement – cutting $5billion in subsidies, and how good food can be an economic engine
The map of the disaster relief farms and the non subsidized farms are the same
Says he is rewriting Food Fight:?The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, for the new 2012 Food & Farm Bill
References the issue brought up by Mission Readiness. (See my essay on the subject called Why Johnny Can’t March)
New Food & Farm bill should include:
Delink nutrition title from land and farm title
No subsidation without social obligation
“Getting perennial by the next centennial” – taking a much longer view of agriculture
A Suburban and Urban Ag title
One size doesn’t fit all: Regs are currently made only for big ag.
MUST get urban people involved in the Food & Farm bill
Now LUNCH! Back in an hour or so.
Posted on January 29th, 2011 by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
http://networkedblogs.com/dD6WR
Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, CA and the 2011 edition of Edible Institute at the Hotel Mar Monte. Today and tomorrow I’ll be liveblogging the goings on here for those of you who couldn’t make it and for those who did but mighta missed something. Since it’s live please forgive typos and so on – I’ll put on my editors hat at the end of the day.
Follow the goings on on the Twitter machine via the hashtag #EI2011
We’ve a heckuva lineup today, including a keynote from no less than Dr. Joan Dye Gussow, who is a serious food producer, a writer, and officially a retiree from Teachers College, Columbia University where she is Mary Swartz Rose Professor Emerita, former chair of the Nutrition Education Program, and where she still teaches her course on nutritional ecology every fall. Her latest book is called (I adore this title) “Growing, Older.”
Things are scheduled to start rolling here in about 20 minutes, so the first update from here will happen in about an hour or so. Take a look at the schedule of events, and please check back throughout the day (and again tomorrow).
But first, a word from our sponsors – a quick shoutout to the folks that helped make this thing happen:
St. Germaine
Green Project Consultants
and Verterra.
OK, we’re getting underway here with a welcome from Edible Communities co-founder Tracey Ryder. Shoutouts to the above sponsors, staff, and the instigator of all of this, Edible San Francisco publisher Bruce Cole.
Dr. Gussow has taken the stage, and is saying a few nice things about our humble publications, and says she’s going to start with her “Cassandra role.” Says she’s “spent several years depressing college students.”
“I feel the need to confess that I don’t feel as if I belong here,” Gussow says, on account of feeling not as up-to-date on all the foodie-goings-on these days. She then reveals that she’s an Iowa girl, originally – she grew up in Orange City – way up in the northwest corner of the state, and named not for the fruits – somewhat obviously – but for William of Orange.
Dr. Gussow is concerned about what she calls the “Frivolity of the US food supply.”
“Whenever you don’t understand something I’m saying, simply assume I’m trying to be funny.”
She’s touching now on her first book, The Feeding Web, which came out in 1978 – a true harbinger of the coming food movement which told of the absurdity of the food supply. “People need to ask where all those marshmallow-enriched purple cereals in their technicolor food supply were coming from.”
Rodale Press, she tells us, did the first study of how much of our food might possibly be produced locally in light of the first energy crisis in the late 70s. At the time she had a student at the time who did an independent project on her native Haiti about how the only US aid going on there was that we had taken their hogs, sent them Iowa hogs, which they were to raise and send to the US. This while Haitians were starving under Papa Doc.
her first attempts to get people to eat seasonally and locally “sank like a stone” because people thought that for example people who live in the northeast would starve and “what would the people of Iowa do for vitamin C?” Check in on my own Edible Iowa for some answers to that question.
She’s not trying to urge everyone to grow their own food and recognizes that that’s not realistic, but says its vital to link their life to nature – and food’s a great way to do that. “If we win our war with nature, we lose.”
“We have just elected – or the corporations have, or whoever’s in charge now – a strange group of people who don’t believe in climate change to add to the people who don’t intend to do anything about it.”
“Business as usual is no longer an option, but we’re doing business as usual.”
She highly recommends (as do I) Bill McKibben’s brlliant book Eaarth.
She’s optimistic about the growing availability of local foods. “People who used to admit embarassingly that they lived in Brooklyn now brag about it.”
But, “Those with an investment in the status quo will not give up without a fight.”
Fear is an obstacle, she says. But it’s being addressed by films like Food, Inc, and Foer’s book “Eating Animals.”
Those that say organic can’t feed the world fail to realize that they had their chance and haven’t succeeded, so maybe we should try it. GMO’s have failed thus far to broadly increase yields, says Gussow.
“We have an sustainble food supply, and Michael Pollan said that what unsustainable means is that it will end.” And that, she says, gives her hope.
Ooo, a nice shoutout too to the Slow Money Movement.
“I believe the local food movement is building a model for supporting us when the end of the current scene comes, and it will come” She urges us to take a stand too for economic and social justice.
“Living as if our food is infinite on a finite planet.”
“We know that we are all a guilty party,” she tells us, “including those who grow their own food in New York and then FLY to California to talk about it”
Quoted Jim Hightower quoting his father “Everybody does better when everybody does better.”
“Hope is the lesson nature keeps teaching me”
“We need to pay more for local food from local farmers and that’s going to have to be OK.”
And with that, a big standing O for Dr. Gussow.
Question time: and the first asks what DOES she eat in January? Answer briefly is that she does a lot of puttin’ up (need to know more about how? Check out Sherri Vinton’s book Put’em Up).
Another asks her to comment on state and federal budget cuts resulting in universities funding and being funded by big ag and chemical companies, etc. She blames some of it on California passing Prop 13. Reminds me of the famous Oliver Wendall Holmes quotation “Taxes are the fee I pay to live in a civilized society.”
Break time, and then our first panel on “Will Urban Ag Change the Way we Eat”, with:
Annie Novak: Founder and director of Growing Chefs, field-to-fork food?education program; the children gardening program coordinator for?the New York Botanical Gardens, and co-founder and farmer of Eagle?Street Rooftop Farm in Greenpoint. Annie has worked with the CENYC?Greenmarket, Slow Food, and Just Food advocating and growing urban?agriculture throughout NYC. Her work in agriculture has been featured?in New York Magazine, Edible Brooklyn and the Martha Stewart Show?among other press.
David Cleveland: Professor, Environmental Studies Program University?of California Santa Barbara. Recent work: Trade offs between ?Agriculture, Open Space, and Urbanization. The ?value of land: Agriculture, food and urbanization in the Goleta?Valley, California.
Ashley Atkinson: Director of Project Development and Urban Agriculture?- Greening of Detroit Ashley gardens with passion and is?growing a new economy in her community that could change the way? Detroit uses its open spaces. As the Director of Project Development?and Urban Agriculture for the Greening of Detroit, Atkinson is?developing Detroit’s premier market farm from a 30-acre city park?filled with sewer pipes; all on a budget of $40 per week.
And moderated by:
Kerry Trueman is the co-founder of EatingLiberally.org, a netroots website & organization that advocates sustainable agriculture, progressive politics and a less-consumption driven way of life. She blogs regularly at Eating Liberally, right here on Huffington Post, and Civil Eats.
OK, a few Pixie tangerines and we’re back with the aforementioned panel
Deborah Kane of Edible Portland (among a lot of other fantastic exploits, like FoodHub) is handling introductions.
Annie’s talking about all the benefits of green roofs (rooves?) and showing some pictures of her work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Novak: “Beekeeping seemed like a great idea because it was illegal at the time and that was stupid.”
And a shout out from Novak to the great work of Growing Power
David Cleveland is talking about “What does localizing mean? – changing the way we eat or greenwashing?”
The question is, is localization the answer to the problems in our dominant agrifood system?
Part of the problem is we don’t truly know if localizing is helping because there are no solid statistics on it. So he set out to get some.
It doesn’t help on greenhouse gasses because of transportation, because a farmer’s pickup is less efficient than 18 wheelers. But most of the fossil fuels in industrial ag are used in things like nitrogen fixing and pesticides.
Pushback coming from the likes of Walmart because local food is starting to eat into their bottom line “The L word is beginning to replace the O word”
Cleveland urges us to keep labor in mind – is the local food raised by local hands? California relies on noncompetitive labor for producing it’s 50% share of the fruit, vegetables and nuts America eats.
He points out that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began in no small measure because of food prices.
Ashley Atkinson is now talking about her work in Detroit. mentions she doesn’t like the term “food desert.” Thinks it’s inaccurate
“There are 50K vacant lots in Detroit that are ready to be farmed.”
The growers with Grown in Detroit have agreed not to sell their food outside Detroit until their food access problems inside Detroit are lessened.
Everything she has shown – gardening, beekeeping, chickens, etc. is illegal in Detroit but “we do it anyway” – big applause.
And a shoutout to the fine work of Brother Nature
Question about dealing with municipalities and all the illegal stuff they just mentioned. Ashley says Just Do It – ask for forgiveness rather than permission. “If we’d asked for permission we’d have never done what we did”
Gary Nabhan asks if the food miles issue is dead. David Cleveland says yes and we should recast the issues around local and sustainable food.
Another break, and then we return with panel #2:
Activists and Advocacy: SOLE Food’s Message for Change.
Tom Philpott moderator. Grist food editor, Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
PANELISTS:
Ralph Loglisci: Project Director for the Johns Hopkins Healthy Monday ?Project. Before joining the Center for a Livable Future, Ralph served?as the Communications Director for the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute?of Bioethics. However, it was his work as the Communications Director?for the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production that Ralph?became aware of the intricate connections between food systems, the?environment and public health.
Debra Eschmeyer: Marketing & Media Manager of the National Farm to? School Network and the Center for Food & Justice. She works from a ?fifth-generation family farm in Ohio, where she continues her passion?for organic farming raising heirloom fruits and vegetables. Prior to ?joining CFJ, Debra was the Project Director at the National Family ?Farm Coalition in Washington, DC where she focused on U.S.?agricultural policy and food sovereignty initiatives among grass roots? domestic and international rural advocacy and other social justice ?networks.?? She also blogs right here at HuffPo.
Dan Imhoff: Co-founder of Watershed Media, a researcher, author, and ?independent publisher who has concentrated for nearly 20 years on?issues related to farming, the environment, and design. He is the ?author of numerous articles, essays, and books including Food Fight:?The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, Paper or Plastic:? Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World; Farming with the? Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on Farms and Ranches; and Building with? Vision: Optimizing and Finding Alternatives to Wood.
Philpott:
The rise and fall of the American industrial machine has lead to local food systems in these communities like Detroit, need to move beyond the 3-5 percent
Federal policy perpetuates the current dominant food system
Why aren’t policy makers learning from detroit and other local food systems? Need to push policy in these directions.
Last two admins were abysmal, then Michele Obama using soft power to effect change, but President Obama is still putting agribiz based people in his administration.
Eschmeyer
She helped make farm-to-school competitive grant program possible
Points out that Republic budget cutters do not have direct subsidies on their hit list, but to have Americorps, NEA, Organic Certification, and ObamaCare.
Urges people to help collect data that support these ideas, for example: $1 spent on local food circulates $3 in the community – that’s a low estimate.
Collaborate with people smarter than you. And join the Community Food Security Coalition, among many others.
Highlight your heroes – like Ashley (above)
“Every ingredient has a lobbyist,” but Eschmeyer believes Edible Communities could be the “lobbyist” for the good food movement.
Ralph Loglisci:
Is studying the effect of the Meatless Monday thing, seeing if their is science behind how well it works.
A shoutout to the Center for a Liveable Future blog
Points ou that this is not an elitist thing – we want good healthy food for EVERYONE. Reminds me of Josh Viertel’s recent video question to President Obama: “Why do Fruit Loops cost less than fruit?”
Dan Imhoff describes himself as a “reluctant wonk”
A Manure lagoon is now eligible to be part of a farm environment protection plan
Talks about how industrial ag says “you don’t understand agriculture”
The Tea Party could actually be an ally to the real food movement – cutting $5billion in subsidies, and how good food can be an economic engine
The map of the disaster relief farms and the non subsidized farms are the same
Says he is rewriting Food Fight:?The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, for the new 2012 Food & Farm Bill
References the issue brought up by Mission Readiness. (See my essay on the subject called Why Johnny Can’t March)
New Food & Farm bill should include:
Delink nutrition title from land and farm title
No subsidation without social obligation
“Getting perennial by the next centennial” – taking a much longer view of agriculture
A Suburban and Urban Ag title
One size doesn’t fit all: Regs are currently made only for big ag.
MUST get urban people involved in the Food & Farm bill
Now LUNCH! Back in an hour or so.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Intensive beds for home or market - a better plan in few words
[doesn't matter what you call it; I didn't invent anything here but rely on many useful techniques from others inc. Eliot Coleman, John Jeavons, and years of Rodale Press books & Organic Gardening]
Intensive beds can raise production with less work and cost per pound of production. For example, usually beets or spinach are planted 6 inches apart in a row with 18 inches between rows. Instead plant them 6 inches apart in a row with 6 inches between rows. Make this a permanent bed 3 or 4 feet wide with a 1-2 foot aisle to walk on, just leaving enough aisle to get through without stepping on the beds and the right width to reach the middle from both sides. This way you can more than double the number of plants in the same garden space. Do the math. Double the plants, double the production.
Beds do not always need to be raised or framed at all. Drainage problems or thin topsoil may call for raised beds. You can experiment with a couple beds over a year or two. But it's a simple matter to convert a large single row garden to permanent beds. Just stake corners for beds, string around each bed, mulch the beds and stop walking on them.
Larger plants or vining plants need more space to grow of course. With squashes for example you won't get more plants in the same garden area, but by growing them in permanent mulched beds you can still conserve water and cut down weeding and insect damage. So you can get better production from the same number of squash plants or whatever with less inputs.
Mulching beds conserves moisture and keeps the soil and roots cooler in hot summers. And you only water the beds, not the aisles. So even though twice the plants are growing in the same garden space, water requirements do not go up. This also helps to prevent plant stress and insect damage. The sun bakes bare soil and the feeder roots near the surface, and the resulting stress invites insect damage. Mulch pays for itself in productivity and time saved.
Without empty aisles between single rows, plants grow to shade the mulch and soil, further reducing soil temperature and evaporation, and reduce light to any weeds that make it through the mulch. Each beds becomes a microclimate.
Beds make more efficient use of mulch and soil amendments. To get the same production with single file rows, you'd need to at least double the size of the garden. To mulch twice the space would mean double the amount of mulch. Only the beds need mulch. It also keeps down weeds, and walking in the aisles compacts the ground and keeps down weeds in the aisles. This saves time and effort.
By not compacting the bed soil with your feet the soil under mulch stays looser which helps root growth and production. You can save labor since there's no need to till up the whole garden next year and keep bringing weed seeds to the surface to sprout. Leave beds and aisles where they are; just add amendments to the surface and remulch for the winter. That makes permanent beds. If you're using driplines just pull the mulch and lines aside to add amendments, then replace.
True, adding mulch once a year is some time or expense, but the cost of not mulching or trying to mulch twice the garden area is far greater. And with healthy soil and mulched beds you won't need to till and cultivate, and that's time and money saved. Once the beds have a healthy level of organic matter, it only takes yearly addition of compost and whatever amendments on the surface, under mulch, to maintain fertility. The secret to surface decomposition is constant mulch and regular moisture. If you ever noticed old fence posts rot and break off at the soil surface instead of down in the soil, that's nature's way. The best decomposition works at the interface between the surface and the detritus covering it.
Some say you have to loosen the beds every year with a tool called a U-bar. It costs over $200 so let's just keep it mulched and save the money. Let the earthworms do the work, since they're not being chewed up all the time with tillers.
Okay, you've just doubled production. Now double it again by double cropping. Grow early and late vegetables in the same beds. This can get a bit tricky and takes experimenting. This usually means starting transplants early spring and more transplants to be ready when a bed is finished with the early plants. Other season extension techniques can be used such as floating row covers, cloches, cold frames, or greenhouse. Identify cool weather plants for spring like spinach, and those that do well with fall frost like cabbage, and those that need all summer to mature like tomatoes and peppers. Some need to be staggered for continuous market production, like carrots and beets. Some need late fall planting like garlic, but they harvest here in June or July and free up the beds for later crops. Some crops can be interplanted, started in beds before the plants there are finished. Perennials like asparagus or sunchokes need areas all to themselves all year - if you have room. But even growing perennials in permanent mulched beds keeps them contained and happy.
Now that's four times the production from the same garden space. And four times the sales at the market. If twice the plants is too much work, just grow vegetables in half the garden and use the other half to grow legumes or compost crops or small livestock.
This can be done without the cost of machinery, and with free local organic amendments, without any fossil fuel inputs at all. Of course it's not suited to large farming operations. But with far more production per acre or per square foot, who needs big farms? It is suited however to small local production in a million communities across the country, and can provide healthy food for market or neighbors, and good income for those with a little room to grow (or work with someone who has room). More importantly, it's part of the solution to the problems of freshwater depletion, topsoil loss, peak oil, climate change, pollution, health care costs, and unemployment. We don’t need permission, votes, grants, or foundation funding to do it. It’s a grassroots thing.
~~ tradingpost paul
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