The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Science & Nature => Topic started by: Carlos del Vaca on October 13, 2008, 09:14:47 pm
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Everyone's read the Michael Pollan "Farmer in Chief" article, right?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html
Real, real thought-provoking stuff, both in the article itself and the comments that follow. It includes a variety of policy proposals, some that should appeal to liberals and conservatives alike.
I myself am planning on planting a whole bunch more in the spring, both just because I enjoy it, and as a hedge on high food prices and all the factors he talks about in the article. I've had tomatoes and herbs since we bought the house in 2004, but I want to plant a bunch of squash and perhaps some lettuces.
Interestingly enough, farmers markets in the DC area are NOT much of a bargain, contrary to what Pollan maintains in his article. I think we have enough well-off, socially-engaged consumers around here that the farmers can jack up their prices and still sell plenty of veggies. Produce is routinely cheaper at Giant and Safeway (although frequently of lower quality).
Also, part of me WANTS meat to be more expensive, both to correct all the wacky policies and market goofiness that our current food system hath wrought, and to force me to buy and eat less of it. I KNOW I should buy free-range organic locally-raised meat, but that stuff is mad expensive, and dammit $1.99/lb chicken breasts at the grocery store are hard to argue with.
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Produce is routinely cheaper at Giant and Safeway (although frequently of lower quality).
Produce is always of lower quality at my Giant and Safeway than at the farmer's market. And I am not at all tempted by cheap chicken at either of those places. I rarely buy produce out of season and I will never buy an apple from Chile when it's apple season right here (at Whole Foods they're labelled so you can tell.)
But of course, I have no kids to feed or save to send to college. I am lucky to be able to afford to use my dollars for things that taste better and support my principles.
I used to plant a few vegetables, but there is the logical problem that they get ripe when they are in season around here - so they're more abundant and cheaper to buy. So now I only plant herbs and things I can't get like little Japanese peppers.
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my anthro class right now is basically about how horrible our food system is, so this article was interesting to read.
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I suppose you've read "The Omnivore's Dilemma?" If not, I recommend it for those contemplating the state of the food supply chain.
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What's next, a round of barber bashing?
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it is assigned reading for the class, so it is coming up.
the one I'm really excited about, though, is this book about the famine in china during the cultural revolution.
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What's next, a round of barber bashing?
Oh man, those barbers. Always being practitioners of a dying art.
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Oh man, those barbers. Always being practitioners of a dying art.
I personally don't think they should make very much money.
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What's next, a round of barber bashing?
All breaking into cars, commiting lewd acts on each other....
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All havin' their own call-in-radio show, puttin' on airs on Sirius. Can't even tell the two of 'em apart hardly, except that Rondé sounds like he's about to fall asleep half the time.
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Useful item: how to store your produce for maximum preservation (http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22145/57459-keep-fruits-veggies-fresh). Cukes on the counter? Here I've been putting them in the fridge.
My kids are a pain in the ass at times. We had baked apples last night, covered with butter, cinnamon and sugar, and they loved them. A couple nights ago, I served butternut squash, covered with butter, cinnamon and sugar... "I don't liiiiiiiiiike this!"
Nonetheless, the seeds from said squash have been dried out a bit and stored away for the spring planting.
Bonus non-food item: behold the ultra douche. (http://consumerist.com/5063424/ultra-douche) (SFW)
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man, how in the hell is there High-Fructose Corn syrup in my ICED TEA??
that is some fucked up shit. this is the day when I have HAD ENOUGH.
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Squash is good. Especially with butter, sugar and cinnamon. Jor kids eez crasee, man.
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Squash is even better with olive oil and garlic, cut up in cubes and baked for a long time.
I wish I had known that about cukes, I just threw out three that got all slimy.
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squash is meant to be made into sopaipillas, and not the bastard mexican dessert variety.
they are a food you eat with some meat and cheese and everyone just has a great ol' time.
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I fried yellow squash last night. Great stuff.
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Squash is even better with olive oil and garlic, cut up in cubes and baked for a long time.
this
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man, how in the hell is there High-Fructose Corn syrup in my ICED TEA??
that is some fucked up shit. this is the day when I have HAD ENOUGH.
I noticed today that my bread has a "NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP" blurb on the wrapper. I didn't know if I should feel good that mine is clean, or worried that other bread had it.
HFCS... is there nothing it can't do?
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If the recession causes more people to plant gardens I am all in favor of more recession action.
I have a neighbor that thinks we are going to have to start eating squirrels.
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I have a neighbor that thinks we are going to have to start eating squirrels.
I have a friend who thinks that students here will eventually have to turn the place into a farm and work part time to keep the school in business.
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i want to start a business where I distribute/make Coke without HFCS. Will make so much cash.
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I have had that idea many times. Would be so easy.
Also, kombucha, do you know how easy it is to make that stuff? And they sell it for like 3 or 4 dollars a bottle. I could make the exact same drink, sell it for 2.50 and the actual cost of making it would be like 10 cents (these are like 12 or 16 oz bottles of sweetened tea, well that is the part that cost money). I understand bottling and shipping will be a lot more, but still.
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It's been done. You can get Coke made without corn syrup in Canada and I believe also in Mexico. Also, at certain times of year, the Kosher coke does not have it.
Also, I don't know which objection to corn syrup you subscribe to but - the Coke without it tastes better.
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http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/03/passover-treat-coke-with-real.html
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Real sugar coke from Mexico is readily available here in Houston. It comes in old school glass bottles (http://juantornoe.blogs.com/hispanictrending/images/mexican_coke.jpg) too.
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Cheerwine made with real cane sugar is available in some locations.
IE, it is not available in the nice grocery stores near my house, but if I am down town and go into a gas station it'll be there.
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Real sugar beverages can be found where there are communities of immigrants who are used to that kind of awesome.
While I agree that it tastes better, I dont understand the hate that HFCS gets in this country. Its made from CORN. CORN, its a plant, americans grow it, its cheap, its abundant, its not a chemical. Does the word "Fructose" trip you up, or what?
(HOLY COW, DID YOU GUYS KNOW THAT IF YOU CLICK ON THE NOTEPAD THING NEXT TO YOUR POST, YOU CAN EDIT IT RIGHT HERE IN THE PAGE. SWEET BABY JESUS!)
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it encourages the inefficient, non-sustainable (although I hate how that word gets bandied around) factory-farm monoculture system. cheap, empty calories are what is sending our health down the toilet. the result of bizarre subsidy policies which have created a really strange food supply situation in this country.
sure it's corn, but it's corn without any of the nutrients.
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Oh fuck the environment. The environment does nothing but whine these days. The problem is that the stuff tastes bad.
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That cucumber advice is basically going to change my life. Also, I've been storing my onions next to my potatoes. That chart doesn't make it clear what happens when you store them apart, but I'm keen to find out.
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The whiffs of social engineering made me pucker up though. It's not like that hasn't already been going on with the current framework and corporate/national franchise shilling. Certainly FOOD has an almost intrinsic social component to it all the way down the delivery, preparation, consumption line. Me and mine, in fact, are already practicing the line the author proposes and certainly fall into the group he mentions as the available market group for his ideas. I suspect an awful lot of us here do, gauging by the food discussions we get into.
But man do I have an aversion to policy as a stick to prod social behaviour. The public health issues the author raises make me think this is a not small pillar to his support of the proposal.
I'm also not sure I buy how blithely the necessity for labor to migrate from urban areas to the farmlands is covered. Crop harvesting isn't exactly cherry picking [wink wink] work. Neither is re-tilling, fertilizing (with the raw product) and all the other manually intensive labour that goes with it. The sort of programs necessary to support this kind of relocation, adaptation and retraining are not a small item, I'm thinking.
I should probably read the article before responding but...
The US Farm Bill that just got passed again this year (heads up, in 5 years it'll happen again) is a huge and confusing program of subsidies and regulation. Much more of the former, mind you. It covers things from agriculture to cattle production to loans and disaster relief and what your kiddies eat at school. The crops subsidized are cotton, wheat, soybeans, corn, (and rice?) etc. Mono-culture crops that require intense irrigation and chemical treatment with increasing fertilizer use due to deminishing crop yeilds but that are fairly easy to harvest and store with little requirement for transport deadlines. Anything else is a "commodity."
I don't know about you, but I do not eat cotton T-shirts for breakfast. I derive some protein from wheat gluten in my mostly vegan diet, but primarily I'm buying "vegetables." We have corn syrup in everything we consume because farmers and (more importantly) HUGE agribusinesses like monsanto and its subsidiaries reap huge profits off ag subsidies because they produce so damn much. And some chemists determined that you can make everything from sugar substitutes to packing material with all that corn the big producers grew too much of and now these artificially cheaper ingredients are used all over. But if we were paying a real price for corn your meat wouldn't be so cheap so you'd be less but higher quality animals, international markets would be more stable because immigrants wouldn't be fleeing their crashing economy due to lower crop prices thanks to our artifical price floors and the hard work of family farms would be focused on producing diversified products to sell year round and in competitive markets where true quality (nutrition and choice) would be the selling point as these commodity crops would be funneled into local markets and not stored in a warehouse in Florida by the millions and shipped out across the country all at once.
My point: If you read through the Farm Bill, especially sections like the WIC program (all the food welfare programs are under this bill) or the school lunch budget, a federal program is determining what can or can't be bought for food and how. You bid for year's supply of shitty cardboard pizza the same the custodians buy their toilet cleaner in bulk. Simply freeing up how budgets are allocated without an policy-as-a-prodding-stick approach can make a huge difference. It is really difficult (or impossible) for local governments to get approval for changes to their school budgets when fed money is at stake, but imagine if the buyer for a whole district wanted to improve the quality of the slop kids are getting these days by hiring a chef or two to write and teach recipes based on seasonal (local, to ensure freshness) produce?
In Louisville groups have been advocating for a central processing facility so that farmers out in the state can take non-subsidized produce and make value added products to cover their costs, and in the same way a central kitchen could prepare incoming local food for mass consumption. More nutritious, more environmental responsible, money goes to struggling local farmers, and your kids have better attention spans, less sick days, and when kindergardners are eating butternut squash for free lunch, they're gonna keep expanding their pallet. While the spending policy changes, most everything else to process and prepare this food is in place.
More and more I am amazed at the connections of food with health, community, and the evironment. It makes sense that in our society the process we use to feed ourselves reflects and shapes our community. Food is the fuel for body and mind cycled through our system of human ecology. "vote with your fork" is a slogan central to my everyday life.
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Well hey there Bea.
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bea, it sounds like you are at the place I am at.
except that I am not going to become vegan, at all.
i just had my final in a class which is all about that.
it is so interesting to learn how these companies and the USDA have decided what we will eat.
I like Pollan's simplest explanation: "don't eat anything that someone's great-grandmother would not recognize as food."
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US Farm Bill
There's a chapter in the P.J. O'Rourke Book, Parliament of Whores, specifically addressing the omnibus farm bill. You would like it quite a bit. The conclusions are fairly similar (some differences, given that it was written in 1991) - The key here is that there is a concerted effort to keep food about as expensive as it was in 1915.
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Re-reading from the past...I'm surprised no one else has taken an opinion with my last paragraph Bea has quoted. I look really askance at plans that involve people relocating from urban areas to rural/agriculture jobs.
Sounds like a challenge, so I went back and re-read it. And I don't really take exception to it, largely because I agree with your last point in your post just now--farming is pretty damn far from a glamorous, high-profile job in this country. Hell, we made fun of the kids in FFA jackets in high school, assumed they were all morons. So how Pollan is going to persuade people to go out to the sticks and start farming is very much an open question.
Of course, now with my reading "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and about Joel Salatin's methods, I'm all like "That guy is a GENIUS! I wanna do that too!"
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If I could get a plot of land to farm in a state where they are cool with marijuana I would be on that real quick.
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If I could get a plot of land to farm in a state where they are cool with marijuana I would be on that real quick.
I think that may be the problem - America is full of people who love to grow things, are intelligent about planting methods, careful (even obsessive) about their harvest, and who take pride in their agricultural skills.
Unfortunately, they all grow weed.
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Oh I mean I don't need a whole crop or anything, just a nice small setup for myself, but yeah, I get where you are going.
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Unfortunately, they all grow weed.
Well, what with the subsidies and all, its tough to be competitive with your homegrown soybeans. Hell, legalize the weed and the government will put the homegrowers out of business toot-sweet.