Organic methods: good for carrots and for the climate.
The Rodale Institute,
founded by organic farming visionary J.I. Rodale, is one of the
nation's leading organic-farming research and advocacy organizations.
Today, Rodale sits on a 333-acre farm near Kutztown, Penn., home to the
longest-running U.S. field trials study to compare organic and
conventional farming practices.
I had a chance recently to talk with the Institute's executive
director, Timothy LaSalle, about Rodale's vision, its work, and how it
sees agriculture as part of a crucial response to climate change. Our
conversation touched on some of the key findings of the Institute's
many decades of field studies, as well as what their findings have to
teach us about the relationship between farming and climate.
As you might expect from someone with a doctorate in "depth
psychology," LaSalle was fascinating to talk with -- and his vision
inspiring.
What's the vision and mission of the Rodale Institute?
We hold the firm belief that farmers can be our climate-change heroes.
Heroes? How can organic farmers make such a difference?
Timothy LaSalle.
Organic farmers are taking carbon out of the air. They're creating
robust and healthy crops that are ensuring against drought threat,
which will only get worse as climate change gets worse. And we're
improving the nutritional quality of our crops, too. At the very same
time, we're reducing costs: We're reducing the costs of destroying our
topsoil, of chemical agriculture and farm runoff.
What we're doing, though, is pushing up against
every special interest: the farm chemical companies, the genetically
modified seed companies, the commodity companies. But what we're
talking about is going to appeal to people, real people -- and people
are listening.
What's the organic farming-climate change connection?
Synthetic fertilizer and oil-based pesticides release carbon dioxide into the air. But the organic approach, which is truly regenerative agriculture, sequesters carbon: It takes carbon out of the air and puts it back in the soil.
If we pulled these synthetics out and put in
compost and cover crops and changed rangeland and valued old-growth
forests ... we could pull so much carbon dioxide out of the air it
would be phenomenal. Between improving forestry management, protecting
our grasslands, and promoting organic agriculture, I'm not sure we
couldn't mitigate climate change by sequestering so much carbon.
Of course, we'd still have to change our evil ways, too!
Explain a little more how this works.
With regenerative farming, we're building in the soil mychorrhiza
fungi, which creates a protein, an encasement, that has a 1,000-year
half-life. So it sits down there in the soil and holds carbon for a
long, long time.
When you pour fertilizer down there, you kill
the fungi and it volatizes into the atmosphere into carbon dioxide.
Agriculture as we now practice it is one of the biggest contributors to
global warming, but it could be one of the biggest mitigators.
Why do you prefer the term "regenerative farming" to "organic farming"?
I like to say "regenerative" because it gets at core principles: Some
people can grow "organic," but do so without the composts and cover
crops and without building the root systems that I'm talking about.
It's profound farming: We're saying this is the way nature wants to work.
We're also talking about grassland management.
Well-managed grasslands mean, for instance, letting large herds come
through to trample the grasses, kick up the soil, and move on. This is
the way the Earth existed long before we humans came around, and that's
what we need to foster.
The food and climate change connection has been so off the radar. Why do you think that's been the case?
Part of the reason more people haven't understood this connection is
because they hadn't been thinking the right way about farming. A
conventional soil scientist thinks in terms of chemicals, not in terms of biology, which is the true health of the soil. They weren't measuring much, because they weren't asking the right questions and they were missing the damage.
The way we have been farming has been taking
carbon out of the soil. There were soils in Illinois that had 20
percent carbon concentrations; today they have 1 percent. We need to put it back whence it came. The neat thing is that soils want this carbon. Let's give it to them.
I've heard that organic farming may also help us survive the vagaries
of global climate chaos because organic crops will be more capable of
dealing with erratic weather.
In severe weather, healthy organic soils, regenerative soils, are going
to sustain the crop better, are less prone to disasters, and are going
to hold the soil in place.
Organic farming can also help us deal with
another actor of global warming: droughts. We know that healthy,
carbon-rich soil holds water: 1 pound of carbon holds 40 pounds of
water. We know that we can put 1,000 pounds of carbon back into an acre
each season; that means 40,000 pounds of water will be in that soil. In
wet years it will permeate through the soil. The plants will do better.
And organic systems can help us clean up the water we have: the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is caused mainly by agricultural pollutants; 94 percent of the pollution in the Chesapeake Bay is from agricultural pollutants.
I hear a lot of organic farming detractors say that the only way we are
going to feed the world is through chemical agriculture -- there simply
isn't enough organic fertilizer to farm without chemicals.
I would say just the opposite. Conventional farms are on a one-way
journey of addition. You need to keep adding more and more: more
fertilizer, more chemicals. And at the same time you're destroying
waterways and taking carbon out of the soils. Conventional systems are
feeding the plant on a short-term basis. We're feeding the soil.
Our studies are showing that organic systems
outperform conventional systems in terms of production, especially in
stress years, which we're going to have many more of in the coming
years. Those who say we can't feed the world with organic farming are
perpetuating a myth of falsity.
How did you get interested in organic farming?
I come from a chemical agriculture background and I used to believe in
it; I was reared on it. I was convinced that this was the technology
that was going to feed us. But I now realize that it's this kind of
farming that is causing us to lose topsoil every year, to deplete the
quality of our soil, to pollute our water. Today, I realize it's what's
going to kill us.
What changed for you?
It wasn't one epiphany, but a gradual awakening. I've traveled to 80
countries, including China, and I kept seeing, over and over, that what
we're doing is not working. I realized that the course we're on is not
sustainable and started critically thinking about my own training.
I also realized that your training can be your
impediment to growth, because it stops you from getting to solutions.
You're stuck in the paradigm and you can't get out of it. The
candlestick makers didn't invent the light bulb.
You talk about the potential for carbon sequestration if we converted
corn and soy to organic, but what would happen to the yield, especially
now that we're hearing so much about food shortages?
There can be a transition loss as a farmer learns a new methodology.
Yes, there might be some decline, and the longer we wait the more
difficult it will be. But we have learned a lot, and adept farmers
could make the transition immediately. If we converted all our land to
regenerative agriculture, we could see immediate benefits and not major
decreases in yield.
But to do this we need major policy change. I'm
currently suggesting legislation that we should be paying our farmers
to sequester carbon. We'd get farmers asking how they could get that
carbon into the soil. They'd learn to adapt pretty quickly.
Right now they're competing on how many tons of corn they can produce. That's the wrong incentive.
How could farmers measure how much carbon they're sequestering?
We're working with DEP in Pennsylvania to look at ways to measure it
quickly and easily on the farm. We're also starting to ask, Can we
start to read it from satellite? That's not feasible yet. That's some
of the research we'd love to do with NASA.
When we hear about carbon offsets, we're mainly hearing about forests, not soil.
Forests hold a huge amount of carbon. We know that, but even foresters
don't always understand the role of the soil in this story: Do they
understand the mychorrhiza fungal role? They tend to talk about the sequestration above ground when the important part is what's happening below ground.
We need to pay attention to "terrestrial
stewardship" -- to how we manage the Earth's land surface, how are we
reinvesting in forests and grasslands and in farmland. This should be
the cornerstone of the climate change conversation.
How does your work connect with the Farm Bill? Right now, virtually all
of the billions spent by the federal government for agriculture is not
going to the regenerative agriculture you describe, but to conventional
agriculture.
We're working with our legislators to get them to see what the 2012
Farm Bill could look like, to get them to see that we shouldn't just be
the commodity producers and the Cargills and ADMs. We should be paying
the farmers who truly benefit every citizen of the world.
Skewed View from the Berkeley Hills Why Michael Pollan and Alice Waters should quit celebrating food-price hikes
If grocery-store prices rise high enough, will consumers suddenly see
the wisdom of spending the same amount of money on healthier options at
farmers' markets? That's the logic that some sustainable-food
advocates, including renowned author Michael Pollan and restaurateur
Alice Waters, seem to be putting forth. But Tom Philpott sees it a
different way -- and says the solution lies in making sustainable food
more accessible. See how Washington State and others are getting it
done, in today's Victual Reality.
Spears of Spring The Age of Asparagus dawned in Roman times, but the time to eat it is now
Asparagus is old news: Marcus Apicius, ancient Rome's answer to Rachel
Ray, was buzzing about it ages ago (literally). But when spring
arrives, few foodies can resist the pull of the noble garden spear.
Chef Kurt Michael Friese says he'll soon be stalking wild asparagus in
the Iowa countryside, and harvesting the cultivated stuff from his
garden. His fever for the spring spear is so intense that he's already
getting the fire ready for grilled asparagus. He reveals his secrets
for making that simple dish even more sublime, with a recipe you don't
need to have a chef's chops to follow.
Subscribe
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OPINION & ANALYSIS
Who owns your tomato? Another big horticultural seed company bought by Monsanto. by Matthew Dillon
Got food? Farmworker Awareness Week is a chance to recognize the people whose labor means we can eat. by Fawn Pattison
Here in the United States,
upwards of 70 percent of corn and 90 percent of soy are genetically
modified. Given that corn and soy end up in just about everything --
livestock rations (and thus meat, milk, and eggs), nearly all processed
foods, and even our gas tanks, avoiding genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) is tricky.
One way is to shun all processed food and animal products, and
simply eat fruit, non-soy veggies, and non-corn grains. (I assume U.S.
fruits and veggies aren't GM, despite a recent, and likely erroneous, report to the contrary.)
A less strenuous way, theoretically, would be to buy only
certified-organic foods, since USDA code restricts GMOs from organic
food. But that strategy is iffy, because GMOs are capable of
"contaminating" non-modified seed strains. Corn, particularly, is a
"promiscuous pollinator" -- pollen from GM fields can blow onto organic
fields, introducing their "traits" into crops.
Reuters reports
that organic farmers, processors, and retailers are organizing to fight
GMO contamination. They want the USDA to set up a system to test and
certify organic foods as GMO-free.
Evidently, the problem isn't abstract. Albert Straus, who runs the highly regarded Strauss Organic Family Creamery in northern California, supplements his pasture-based feed system with organic corn for lactating cows.
He started testing the organic corn he buys a year ago, and found that fully one-third of it had been contaminated by GMOs.
The Organic Center
acts as a kind of shadow USDA, digesting the latest peer-reviewed
research on organic food, translating it into English, and issuing
summary reports.
Consumers won't want to miss the center's newest one on pesticide residues
[PDF]. It contains one of those handy guides on which conventional
fruits and veggies convey the most toxic traces to eaters (here's a
handy two-pager
[PDF] for the fridge), as well as a blunt and important discussion of
the plant- and mineral-based pesticides allowed in organic production.
But what really caught my eye was the bit about milk -- and how it brims with industrial-chemical and pesticide residues.
The Organic Center points us to 2004 testing of 739 samples of
conventional milk, performed by the USDA's Pesticide Data Program.
Here's what they found.
Ninety-six percent of samples contained DDE, "a breakdown product
of DDT, which was banned from agricultural use in the early 1970s. DDT
is very persistent and remains to this day in many cropland soils; its
soil half-life (time required for 50 percent to dissipate) is generally
between 15 and 30 years, depending on soil and climatic properties."
Nearly 99 percent contained diphenylamine (DPA), a "'high volume'
industrial chemical used for many purposes in manufacturing rubber and
plastic parts, and in making certain drugs."
Forty-one percent of samples contained dieldrin, a "long-banned" organochlorine pesticide.
Endosulfan sulfate, an endocrine disrupter, turned up in 18 percent of samples.
Nearly 9 percent of samples contained a lovely-sounding chemical
called 3-hydroxycarbofuran, a "highly-toxic breakdown product of the
carbamate insecticide."
The USDA didn't comprehensively test conventional against organic
milk. However, 10 of the 739 samples were labeled organic -- and "just
like virtually all samples, all 10 samples contained DPA and nine had
DDE residues," the Organic Center reports.
Clearly, that bit needs more study -- 10 samples can tell us little.
I'd like to see studies that differentiate between varieties of organic
ag --
pasture-based systems and the confined style favored by
mega-organic dairies like Aurora and Horizon.
But the presence of all of this industrial crap in our milk supply is surely alarming. As the Organic Center states:
The fact that over one-quarter of the conventional milk
samples tested in 2004 contained endosulfan or a carbofuran metabolite
is deeply worrisome, given that these chemicals are among the
pesticides found in numerous toxicological studies to pose serious
developmental risks during pregnancy and to infants and children as
their bodies grow and mature.
I like how all of this information has been sitting around since
2004, not going much of anywhere even as the USDA pushes milk as a
healthy dietary staple, even -- if not especially -- for pregnant women
and children, the very folks most vulnerable to pesticides.
About four years ago, I attended a workshop by Jonathan White, the maverick New York State cheese maker/baker/dairy farmer of Bobolink Dairy.
Photo: iStockphoto
Like a Southern Baptist preacher thundering from the pulpit -- only
with a Northeastern accent and lots of good humor -- White had a
message to deliver. He exhorted conventional dairy farmers to sell half
of their herds, invest the proceeds in cheese-making equipment, and
turn their remaining cows out to pasture.
Don't give your money away to feed, seed, or fertilizer suppliers,
and don't give your milk away for pennies to the big processors, he
exhorted. Feed your cows grass and turn their milk into cheese, and
then sell it directly to consumers.
He promised salvation for those who followed his advice: near-zero
input costs, higher revenues, and -- unheard of for conventional dairy
farmers -- steady profitability. White admitted that his message met
with resistance among his jaded peers. White summed up their attitude
like this: "My grandfather lost money doing it this way, my father lost
money doing it this way, and I'll be damned if I won't lose money doing
it this way, too."
They'd often engage in a bit of gallows humor at their plight, White
added: "I lose money on every gallon, but I try to make it up on
volume." That simple sentence sums up the treadmill faced by farmers
who work within a highly consolidated, industrialized food system.
White noted that when he visits conventional dairy farms, he often
teases farmers by standing next to the tap through which their milk
flows into the dairy truck, to be mixed with the milk of their peers
and hauled off to the corporate-owned processing plant, where it's then
pasteurized, packaged, and sold profitably to supermarkets throughout
the area. Pointing to the tap, White tells the farmers, "You should
really have that hole stopped up. The value of your farm is leaking out
through that thing."
White's presentation focused on a literally dying breed: small-scale
conventional dairy farmers. Large operations that confine cows into
feedlots, with their economies of scale and proximity to the few
remaining dairy processing facilities, now dominate conventional milk
production.
Are the same economic forces now shaping the organic milk market?
That's the message of a fascinating recent debate on Gristmill between
Ed Maltby of the Northeast Organic Dairy Producers Alliance and Gary
Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm. Malby opened with this post; Hirshberg quickly countered; and Maltby answered here.
Maltby opened with an indisputable fact: organic dairy farmers are
struggling. Their expenses -- fuel, energy, health care, and feed --
have skyrocketed, while the price they receive from processors has been
relatively stagnate. Maltby quoted several organic farmers who are
barely hanging on under the circumstances.
Hirshberg didn't dispute this characterization. "These are difficult
times for the organic dairy industry," he conceded. Hirshberg should
know. Stonyfield ranks as by far the largest U.S. organic yogurt
producer. As of 2004, it was claiming to
hold a "a 77% dollar share of the U.S. organic yogurt market" -- a
position I doubt has declined much, if at all, in the years since.
It also must be noted that while Hirshberg is a famously independent
player, he and his company ultimately answer to European yogurt giant
Groupe Danone, which owns 85 percent of Stonyfield shares.
So the farmers represented by Maltby and the Northeast Organic Dairy
Producers Alliance -- many of whom run 50-60 cow operations -- are
dealing with a multibillion-dollar entity in Stonyfield/Danone.
Hirshberg makes the case that Stonyfield has acted as a benevolent
giant. It only buys milk from real family farms that regularly give
cows access to pasture -- not the industrial-organic confinement
operations called out by the Cornucopia Institute, that great documenter of corporate attempts to hijack organic.
And the price Stonyfield pays the farmer-owned cooperative Organic
Valley -- through which it sources milk for its yogurt -- has risen 34
percent in the last four years. (According to Maltby, farmers
themselves have seen only a 20 percent increase). Hirshberg seems to
realize the hike has not been enough of a raise to cover farmers'
rising costs, but he points to an important mitigating factor:
[T]here has been an explosion of low-priced, competitive,
private-label organic yogurts supplied by producers of non-family-farm
milk, creating intense downward price pressure in the market.
Hirshberg is right on this score. Stonyfield is competing with
private-label "organic" yogurts that source milk from mega-dairies that
confine their cows, feed them organic corn, and mock the "access to
pasture" stipulation of USDA organic code. The USDA's efforts to rein
in these fake-organic dairies has been feeble at best; what few actions
it has taken came only after well-documented hell-raising by the
Cornucopia Institute.
However, Stonyfield also licenses its name to HP Hood, a large dairy
processor based in New England. Under the Stonyfield name, HP Hood
markets organic fresh milk in the Northeast. Hirshberg says nothing
about the price HP Hood pays to organic farmers; Maltby charges that
pay hikes in response to higher production costs have been paltry.
Hirshberg and Maltby both paint a picture of an industry under
pressure -- squeezed by high input costs and ruthless competition from
corporate farms.
Each makes an appeal for protecting his own interests. "Stonyfield
Farm's mission is to drive consumer support for organic family farmers
while proving it is profitable to be an organic processor," Hirshberg
declares.
Maltby counters that the profitability of organic processors can't
come at the expense of the farmers that supply them. Farmers face
precarious finances; they don't have "the deep pockets of Dean Foods,
HP Hood, or Danone," Maltby writes. He points out that several New
England dairy farmers have already switched back to conventional
production, because the cost-price conditions are actually more
favorable.
I stand with Maltby. Stonyfield's marketing literature brims with
allusions to happy farmers and happy cows. Consumers should pressure
the company to pay more to farmers -- a multinational giant like Danone
can handle a period of low profitability more easily than farmers can.
And if Stonyfield and other large organic-milk buyers won't budge,
farmers should seriously consider the advice of Bobolink Dairy's
Jonathan White, mentioned above: exit the commodity market altogether,
and begin selling cheese directly to consumers.
But consumers want access to both family-farmed milk and cheese, so let's hope Stonyfield and other big buyers budge.
I have heard mention of community-supported
agriculture programs but don't really know what they are. The name
sounds very cool, but can you let me in on the specifics?
Bryties
Redding, Calif.
Dearest Bryties,
The springtime alarm is sounding, and your
question is perfectly timed. Some of you might be experiencing hints of
spring right now, some not (like me! I'm in a secret location where the
all-time snowfall record is under threat) -- but regardless, it's the
time of year for all of us to look into community-supported agriculture
possibilities for the growing season.
Join a CSA and your kids could be this cute.
Photo: iStockphoto
Last August, we went over a few of the details
of community-supported agriculture. The timing was off. Let's do a
brief review -- I'll switch it up for those who do click back -- and
then wade into serious proselytizing.
It costs money to run a farm. Farmers need cash
to buy seeds, babies, fertilizer, compost; fix equipment, pay
employees, pay the mortgage, etc., long before they will sell a single
lettuce leaf or lamb. These investments are risky, in a way, because if
there is a crop failure, the farmer can't recoup through sales, and
risks going into debt or going broke. Community-supported agriculture
is one solution to this inherent problem. In a CSA, consumers provide
farmers with operating capital, in essence buying their food ahead of
time and taking the risk of crop failure along with the grower.
How might this work in your actual life? This
month, you would look around at your local food co-op, or online, and
discover a few CSA farms in your area. Get their publicity materials,
which could be a website or a small flyer. The materials will give a
cost, an amount of food, and a description of the system by which you
will get the food. For example, for $450 you might get a "full share"
at a vegetable farm, enough veggies to feed a family of four on a
regular basis. For a little less money, some farms will let you buy a
half share, which is handy if you're a single person
or smaller household. You would pay that money now -- this is the
farmer's operating capital, up front. On a regular schedule -- say,
every Wednesday from May to October -- the farm will harvest a box full
of various veggies for every member, including you, and leave it at a
drop site, which might be a house in your neighborhood, or a local
store, or a farmers' market.
After paying money in March, the only thing you
would need to do is pick up your veggies every week and eat them.
Usually, though, you can participate much more if you like by working
on the farm or going to parties and other farm-related events. The
model I describe is just the basic one; there are many variants, and
CSA is not only for vegetables.
Did I mention that CSA is a model used by
fairly small farms? Often people just getting going on their veggie
farm, who want to feel connected to their consumers and have a role to
play in their communities, use CSA. I do know farms on the larger end
of small that still use CSA as a steady income to help stabilize
operations and have good community relations.
I've left no room for proselytizing. Well, CSA
is GREAT. It's a real gift to a farmer to place faith in them, to give
them cash to get the work done, and to participate with them in the joy
of food. You get a special box full of amazingly yummy vegetables (or
whatever they grow) every week, which forces you to eat creatively and
healthily. I'm getting hungry just thinking about it.
OK, you're ready to go, right? Is everyone
reminded about CSA sufficiently? Go read my other articles. The end of
the first one gives directions for finding CSA on the web if your local natural foods store can't help, or if you don't have a natural foods store. The second talks about how to deal with unfamiliar foods, and I'll give the secret here: butter.
Broccoli rabely,
Umbra
Yours is to wonder why, hers is to answer (or try). Please send Umbra any nagging question pertaining to the environment -- but first check out her FAQs!
The
claims made in this column may not reflect the views of this magazine.
Neither the magazine nor the author guarantees that any advice
contained in this column is wise or safe. Please use this column at
your own risk.
Umbra Fisk is Grist Research Associate II, Hardcover and Periodicals Unit, floors 2B-4B.
Hey you, in the supermarket line -- yeah, you, the one with the stuffed cart. Are you ready to pay up for those groceries?
You'd better be, pal. That's the message from Bill Lapp, former chief
economist for the food giant Conagra. "I think [U.S.] consumers are
more prepared than we realize to accept higher prices on food and I
think that's part of our future," Lapp recently declared. "It's largely been set in stone for us already."
For decades, average Americans have spent just 10 percent of disposable
income on food -- the lowest proportion in the world and almost surely
the lowest in the history
of the world. Of course, that means well-off people pay considerably
less than that -- and low-income people pay considerably more.
Indeed, as we head into this future that's been "set in stone for us
already," it's important to note that 10.9 percent of U.S. households,
representing 12.6 million families, already qualify as "food insecure"
by USDA standards. For these folks -- and for people in the global south who have been rioting
in response to being priced out of the food market -- spiraling costs
may be impossible to accept, no matter what the former Conagra guy
says. They will be forced into wrenching decisions -- what to eliminate
from their budgets to keep the food coming.
Perhaps with this demographic in mind, Burger King recently ran an ad campaign
in Bay Area subway stations featuring giant images of sausage biscuits
and sweet rolls. "Now you can pay rent and eat," the text declares,
heralding "10 items available for $1 each."
But how do I live with myself?
Courtesy Cecily Upton
As I've written before, such cheap, unhealthy food
plays a key role in our economic system, sustaining a low-income
service workforce in an era of falling wages. Now, even as prices rise
for corn and soy -- key inputs in the industrial-food system -- the
Burger King ad may herald the shape of things to come: a scramble to
keep supplying cheap food amid elevated raw-material costs.
Giant corporations like Burger King have the economies of scale and
market power to hold prices down, mostly by leaning on their suppliers
(i.e., farmers). In Florida, source of the fast-food industry's winter
tomatoes, Burger King has steadfastly refused to pay farmworkers an
extra penny per pound picked. According to Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser,
the penny-per-pound raise would double the wages of thousands of
workers now mired in poverty and cost Burger King about $250,000 -- a
fraction of annual profits, and even less than an average executive's
salary.
McDonald's and Taco Bell had agreed to the raise in the last couple of years, but Burger King threatened
to shift its tomato buying to Mexico rather than pay up. Burger King's
refusal scuttled the deal, and now tomato workers make the same old
poverty wage. Evidently, in this new age of pricier food, corporations
will literally pinch pennies to keep costs down.
Looking Beyond the Sticker Price
On the consumer side, the trend to higher prices often means a scramble
to economize. I saw that in a recent trip to a supermarket in a
low-income section of North Carolina's Triangle area. In the meat
aisle, I saw people carefully comparing prices, and gravitating to sale
items.
I asked one woman, scrutinizing a beef chuck roast on sale for half
off, what she thought. She told me chicken prices had gotten much
higher, so she was surprised to find herself buying more beef for her
family -- something she didn't used to do so much. "There's been some
good sales on beef," she said, plopping the roast into her cart.
As she spoke, I remembered reading that prices for beef hadn't risen as
rapidly as those for chicken; the big beef producers had been reluctant
to pass on their higher costs to consumers, hoping to protect their
market share. And since four giant companies slaughter 83.5 percent of
U.S. cows, such companies are masters of maintaining profitability by
cutting costs.
But low costs in the supermarket come at a price.
The massive recent recall
imposed on a smallish beef packer in California -- sparked by
revelations that workers had tortured "downer" cows and pushed them
into the food supply -- comes to mind. For a beef packer facing severe
cost pressures, hustling severely sick cows into the food supply might
have seemed like a rational choice.
Likewise, beef and dairy feedlot operators are rushing to replace
expensive corn with cheaper "distillers grains" in their feed rations.
Use of distillers grains, a waste product from the corn-ethanol
process, seems to significantly increase the incidence of the deadly E. coli 0157 virus in cows, among other environmental and public-health consequences.
I wonder what other corners are being cut to keep those "good sales on beef" coming.
Every Downer Cow Has a Silver Lining
Americans, particularly low-income ones, find themselves at a
precarious juncture. Not only are food prices rising rapidly for the
first time in decades, but gas prices hover near all-time highs, even
adjusted for inflation. Adjustable mortgage rates -- the only kind
people with shaky finances can hope for -- continue their upward swing.
Last year, 1.5 million U.S. families got hit with foreclosures, and
Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke recently warned
of more of the same in the year ahead. The economy, meanwhile, seems
tilted toward a recession. That means job cutbacks, and downward
pressure on wages.
As Naomi Klein shows in her recent book The Shock Doctrine,
such economic crises have often been used to consolidate corporate
power. You can see Klein's thesis at play in Burger King's recent
actions: squeezing low-income workers in one area in order to make
money selling cheap food to low-income workers in another.
But shocks also open opportunities for positive change.
As prices for industrial food inch up, food grown close to home, free of increasingly expensive agrichemicals
and not shipped cross-country with ever-more-dear gas, has a chance to
be more competitive. Now more than ever, it's critical to patronize
your nearby farmers' market, buy a CSA share, participate in (or start) a local-food council in your area, and harangue your congressional representatives
to support Community Food Projects -- federal programs, funded by the
farm bill, designed to bring healthy, affordable food into low-income
areas.
Amounting to just $10 million annually -- equivalent to a rounding
error in the context of the mammoth farm bill -- Community Food
Projects currently stand in jeopardy of being cut [PDF]. Don't let the scoundrels get away with it.
Got a question about where your last supper came from? Fork it over.
Grist contributing writer Tom Philpott farms and cooks at Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
Meat Wagon: Beef behemoth If deals go through, three firms will own 90 percent of the U.S. beef market
Back in the good old days, four companies processed 83.5 percent of the
beef consumed in the U.S. After a flurry of recent deals, the beef
industry really got consolidated. If the deals go through, just three companies will process 90 percent of beef. What can this mean? Tom Philpott takes a look...
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2008 Classes @ BADSEED / Downtown KC
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What's the vision and mission of the Rodale Institute?
We hold the firm belief that farmers can be our climate-change heroes.
