This story has conflict, suspense, fast-moving legislators (oh, my!), and sexy terms like “conservation compliance,” so stick around.
The fast-moving legislators have already entered the stage and have been acting against type by drastically speeding up the normally glacial process of creating a new farm bill. The Senate Agriculture Committee on Thursday finished marking up a version of the bill that will now be sent to the full Senate. Read More >
Chicken coop, circa 1939, Florida
Let me begin by saying I would love a mobile chicken coop in my backyard. In fact, I plan to build one this summer, hopefully for less than 100 dollars. I’m lucky enough that with an afternoon of work and a trip or three to the hardware store, I think I can accomplish this. But although it would be wonderful if more people raised healthy egg-shaped protein in their backyards, this isn’t feasible for everyone.
Cue Williams Sonoma’s new “Agrarian” line.
For those less fortunate souls with little time but oodles of money, Williams Sonoma can provide you with a pre-assembled chicken coop for a mere $879.95 (1). Better yet, you can also purchase lettuce seedlings for just $16.95 each! (Yes that is the price for ONE seedling. But of course you’ll probably want 20 so that’s 339 dollars—but they come wrapped in burlap fabric with a cute bow!). Read More >
Stephen Colbert with a Xanax nugget
Last week, Stephen Colbert used his signature blend of mock-outrage and wit on a topic very familiar to those of us here at the CLF.
In a segment called “Thought For Food,” Colbert commented on news reports that cited a recently published CLF study that found antibiotics (some of which have been banned for use in poultry), caffeine, acetaminophen, antidepressants and antihistamines in feather meal, a poultry by-product made from ground up poultry feathers and then incorporated into animal feed and used as a fertilizer. Read More >
Winona LaDuke | April 2012
In a true sense of the words, Winona LaDuke is a force of nature.
An environmentalist, farmer, activist, writer, and advocate for native communities and ways of life, she is an Anishinaabe force to be reckoned with. As the Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year (1997), Ralph Nader’s vice presidential running mate on the 1996 and 2000 Green Party tickets, and recipient of the International Slow Food Award, her contributions have been widely recognized. But in January she was honored by an unlikely party—the Tucson United School District board, which became infamous for banning Mexican-American studies. Her response to the ban: “Recently, I had the distinction of becoming one of a select list of authors banned by the Tucson United School District. Now this is no small feat.” She went on to name the essay that had been specifically banned, and then wrote, “Interestingly enough, if I were going to ban one of my essays from a public school, this would probably not be the one.”
A few days ago, I was lucky enough to spend some time with Ms. LaDuke and ask which of her books is more ban-worthy. Read More >
In the weeks following the “pink slime” brouhaha, the responses have run the gamut—outrage, demands, disgust, defense, explanations, and excuses. I’d like to respond with a proposal that should help us reach some health goals, eliminate the need for pink slime filler, and prevent our hunger for “real beef” from causing more cow carnage.
Mark Bittman, in his column “The Pink Menace,” urges us to examine food system industrialization and the conditions that require the beef industry to use ammonium hydroxide to sanitize a product that, if it had been produced more responsibly, wouldn’t need to be sanitized. Tom Laskawy of Grist took a similar tack, pegging pink slime as the “tip of the iceberg” of what happens in meat production. Read More >
Carole Morison, independent chicken farmer
Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Justice raised a lot of hopes among contract farmers that they would finally get some help from the federal government in their struggles with corporate control of the livestock industries.
The department’s Antitrust Division held five workshops around the country that dealt with competition (or the lack of it) in agricultural markets. There were sessions devoted to poultry, dairy and beef/hogs.
At the poultry workshop in Normal, Ala., contract farmers had a forum to vent about their disempowering relationships with corporate integrators. Many spoke out despite fear of reprisals from the industry. DOJ’s antitrust chief, Christine Varney, handed her business card to any farmer who expressed such fears. They could call her directly if industry threatened them with retaliation for speaking out, she said. Read More >
Will Allen is proof that the phrase “down to earth” can be as literal as it is figurative. His ongoing relationship to soil and compost, and all the processes that produce them, keep him literally grounded.
The founder and CEO of the Milwaukee-based community food center known as Growing Power spoke to an audience of about 300 recently at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. While he’s very much at home in front of a crowd, you could get the impression he was missing his worms back home. In his slide show or on the Internet, you can find pictures of Allen with hundreds of worms in his giant hands (definitely Google-worthy). He gives much of the credit for his food production successes to those humble creatures. Read More >
Will Allen and Dave Love at CLF Aquaponics Project, 2012
Today, for a change, I will gush.
Why the gushing? Because I’ve been hanging around Will Allen, an urban farming pioneer with nearly cult-hero status among foodies and farmers. He’s an inspiration, an overflowing font of information, and the picture of humility.
The son of a sharecropper, Mr. Allen swore as a young man that he’d never return to farming—now he’s the CEO of a Milwaukee-based community food center that’s doing so many bold things with food systems that it’s hard to keep track of all his good works. (He’s also a former professional basketball player, a MacArthur fellow, and a spokesperson for First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign.) Read More >
In 2008, 143 million pounds of beef from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino, CA were recalled in what was the largest meat recall in U.S. history. The facility had failed to call in USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) veterinarians to inspect cattle that were too sick or weak to stand on their own (known as “downers”), something particularly troubling given that this can be a symptom of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (aka mad cow disease). Further compounding the issue, the facility was a major supplier of meat to the National School Lunch Program. In response to this violation coming to light, the USDA tightened its rules on downer cattle and California enacted a law banning the slaughter of downed cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats for human consumption.*
What makes this case so important, besides the sheer size of the recall, is the fact that the violation was not initially brought to light by FSIS inspectors. The recall, USDA investigation, and the subsequent policy response were all triggered by an undercover video investigation undertaken by the Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS). Read More >
Last week, Sylvia Nasar, author of Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius, addressed the issue of economics as it relates to food systems and the future, at the sixth session of the Baltimore Food and Faith Project’s Enoughness series. Complex and massive, the topic garnered a number of diverse responses. Here are two contrasting written responses, excerpted from attendees of the session.
Avram I. Reisner, PhD, rabbi of Congregation Chevrei Tzedek, Baltimore:
Sylvia Nasar gave an important presentation for us to hear, this morning, precisely because it so represented economic orthodoxy and failed to grapple with the very issues we are convened to consider. … We must be thankful for and preserve those gains [from the Industrial Revolution], no doubt. But her prescription for the future was continued productivity gain through the free market. And I, and I think all of us, question whether that is a reasonable prescription for the future. She presumes a continued escalator; that productivity can and will rise in the future as it has in the past. Is that likely? … Granting that humankind was not producing enough before the Industrial Revolution, are we now, and should we now remain in thrall to the old orthodoxy that rapid productivity growth is necessary? Read More >
This story has conflict, suspense, fast-moving legislators (oh, my!), and sexy terms like “conservation compliance,” so stick around.
