Climate Food and Agriculture

The Labor of the Land

Organic farming creates more jobs, U.K. study finds Organic agriculture has traditionally been linked to health and environmental benefits. Now it can add job creation to its portfolio: A study of nearly 1,200 farms in the United Kingdom and Ireland found that organic farming creates on average 32 percent more jobs than conventional agriculture. The […]

Beyond organic: A new label

If you haven't been following the discussion under this post about Wal-Mart selling organic food, I recommend you catch up. It's quite insightful, with a range of views well-expressed.

One note of consensus seems to be this: "Organic," at least as denoted by the USDA label, falls well short of genuinely sustainable agriculture. Tom is better qualified than I to give a comprehensive description of the latter, but one important element is locality. Food that is grown, sold, and eaten within a single regional foodshed is closer to sustainable than organic mega-farms.

So, as a couple of people have suggested, perhaps one step in the right direction is a new label, to supplement "organic." This raises two questions:

An innovative Alabama CSA shows the way forward.

When Wal-Mart announced plans to become the world's biggest purveyor of organically grown food last week, the polite applause from the enviro gallery grated on my ears. (Here's a spirited recent debate on Gristmill.) Even the New York Times editorial page could see through this move. While some greens cooed at at Wal-Mart's magnamity, the Grey Lady unleashed an appropriately cynical analysis:

There is no chance that Wal-Mart will be buying from small, local organic farmers. Instead, its market influence will speed up the rate at which organic farming comes to resemble conventional farming in scale, mechanization, processing and transportation. For many people, this is the very antithesis of what organic should be.... For "Wal-Mart" and "organic" to make sense in the same sentence, the company will have to commit itself to protecting the Agriculture Department standard that gives "organic" meaning.

I have no doubt that Wal-Mart's greenie admirers will hold the company's feet to the fire on that one. But the USDA's organic standards are already being drained of meaning. Rather than chide Goliath to behave nicely, enviros should consider helping David get his shit together. Check out what they're getting up to over in Birmingham, Ala.

He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tuna

California loses suit to make tuna companies issue mercury warnings California law requires products containing chemicals that could cause reproductive harm or cancer to have warning labels, but a state Superior Court judge has ruled that the law does not apply to mercury-licious canned tuna. Mercury has been shown to slow neurological development, thus the […]

The Fume, the Crowd, the Berries

EPA withdraws plan to approve toxic fumigant methyl iodide After contriving to approve toxic fumigant methyl iodide for use in strawberry fields forever, the U.S. EPA has withdrawn the plan in the face of fierce opposition from California officials, labor unions, and enviros. The approval of methyl iodide was to be the culmination of a […]

Check ’em out.

Last year, I tried to keep up with Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon and their campaign to follow a 100-mile diet. I failed, by only blogging about parts one through five. Since then, parts six through eleven have been published, which can now all be found on the 100-mile diet website:

My problem with David Kamp’s NYT review of Michael Pollan’s new book

In his review of Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, published in Sunday's NYT Book Review, David Kamp expresses a bit of received wisdom that needs rethinking.

Kamp, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and GQ who himself is writing a book about food, generally approves of Pollan's well-documented indictment of the dominant U.S. food system and exploration of its alternatives (which I reviewed here).

But to the big-picture problems presented by Pollan, Kamp demands big-picture solutions. And here is where I think Kamp, like many commentators on the vast-scale environmental troubles plaguing our culture, goes astray.

Under the Covers: Getcha grub on

Grub, as defined in the book of the same name by Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry:

grub* (grəb), n.

1. Grub is organic and sustainably raised whole and locally grown foods;
2. Grub is produced with fairness from seed to table;
3. Grub is good for our bodies, our communities, and our environment.

*Grub should be universal ... and it's delicious.

Last night, I went with a cadre of social Gristers to a book reading and signing by Lappé and Terry at the Elliott Bay bookstore. Their book, Grub: ideas for an urban organic kitchen, is half scary facts and figures about our food system and the chemicals therein, half earth- and people-healthy menu plans (complete with soundtrack suggestions and short poems and essays to compliment the meal), and 10 percent resource guide. (And apparently I suck at math.)

Much like the book, the reading was a good mix of factual bits and personal stories about the authors' relationship with food, spiced with bits of humor. Lappé, coauthor (along with her mother, Frances Moore Lappé) of Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet and cofounder of the Small Planet Institute and Small Planet Fund, joked about a book she reads when she needs a laugh, Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastics. Terry, a chef and founding director of b-healthy!, chuckled about his past forays into fruitarianism and even breatharianism before realizing he was a "grubarian," adding that "to embrace grub, you don't have to give up anything -- except maybe a mouthful of pesticides." The real fun, however, began after the bookstore event.

They Put the “Dies” In “Subsidies”

Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” traced back to farm subsidies You know that massive “dead zone” that shows up every year in the Gulf of Mexico? The oxygen-starved, life-free patch of water about the size of, oh, Connecticut? That’s your tax dollars at work. The zone is caused largely by nitrogen-based fertilizers, which flow downriver […]

SOL: Sustaining Ourselves Locally

According to the Current TV Studio blog, SOL, a viewer-contributed piece about a sustainable development project in Oakland, will be airing on TV.

I think this is a good example of how people like you, armed with a camera and a passion, can produce a short film that could potentially reach 28 million homes (according to a company press release [PDF]).

Here's the synopsis on Current:

This is specifically a piece on an urban sustainable development project in Oakland that consists of 9 people working together to do community environment work. Amazing project that focuses on everything from compost and farming to food justice.

Watch it now.