environmental issues

From WWII to Syria, How Seed Vaults Weather Wars 

But though the need for seed banks is often associated with more stereotypically environmental, even futuristic, cataclysms (climate change; disease; pesticide-resistant insects) their history is inextricably tied up with something more banal and present-day—war.

…virtually no conflict has gone by without a devastating loss of seeds, often mitigated by a heroic rescue or underscored by a tragic attempt. Afghani mujahideen destroyed Kabul’s national seed collection in 1992. (Local scientists managed to smuggle some seeds into the basement of a few city houses, but by the time they returned to check on them a decade later, looters had dumped them on the floor in order to steal the storage jars.) During the Georgian civil unrest of 1993, just before the country’s Sukhumi Seed Station was destroyed, an 83-year-old botanist named Alexey Fogel escaped into the Caucasus Mountains with its entire lemon collection. Scientist Alexis Rumaziminsi, now known as the “bean boffin of Rwanda,” protected the many varieties of beans in his research plots during 1994’s civil war and genocide. The US-led invasion of Iraq resulted in the razing of the country’s national seed bank in Abu Ghraib—not to mention the implementation of American-style seed laws, which mean that if Iraqis want to buy new seeds, they will have to pay for yearly usage licenses.

Source: From WWII to Syria, How Seed Vaults Weather Wars | Atlas Obscura

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As oyster season revs up, new type of Gulf oyster turning heads in New Orleans 

When ecological concerns force new ideas, direct relationships make those ideas able to be introduced and tested in a simple and effective way:

Local awareness of off-bottom oysters got a boost in July when the Crescent City Farmers Market hosted a special event with a new producer, Grand Isle Sea Farm, which dished out sample crates of its harvest to local chefs.

Source: As oyster season revs up, new type of Gulf oyster turning heads in New Orleans

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Expo Milano 2015

US food rocks the Expo
Visitors enter the 42,000-square-foot barn-like structure on a wide ramp built from the reclaimed Coney Island boardwalk, which was destroyed by Superstorm Sandy. One side of the building is a living vertical farm the length of a football field which is harvested daily. Inside, a self-guided tour of interactive kiosks features videos of farmers, chef activists, research scientists and policy makers all speaking to the Expo’s theme of how it’s going to be possible to safely feed a population of 9 billion in the year 2050.

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Milan Southern Agricultural Park

During the Milan Expo 2015 the attention will be mainly focused on the Milan Southern Agricultural Park (Parco Agricolo Sud Milano), the “park of Expo 2015”, featuring 47 thousand hectares and representing one of the biggest areas aimed at feeding itself and the planet. An amazing space that coverss almost fifty per cent of the provincial area around Milan where historical farms, agricultural productions, natural, cultural and environmental resources are gathered and they might become the Biosphere’s Reserve. That means being awarded with the International praise from UNESCO for the keeping and protection of the environment within the program “Man and Biosphere”.

USA rocks Expo Milano 2015.

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A Taste of Plastic

A recent study found that people ingest as many as 11,000 plastic particles per year in their food, and that those who eat a lot of seafood may be consuming much more than that.
Orion Magazine writer Jourdan Imani Keith is a playwright, naturalist, educator, and storyteller whose work blends the textures of political, personal and natural landscapes to offer voices from the margins of American lives. In the latest issue of Orion Magazine she gives a personal view about ingesting particles of man-made items in seafood:

My tongue has not yet been able to discern cosmetics in my curried mussels or plastic pearls in my oysters, but in 2013 researchers in Belgium at Ghent University found that microplastics are present in food consumed by humans. The study showed that some Europeans eat as many as eleven thousand plastic particles per year. Coastal Salish tribes, Asians, and Asian Pacific Islanders in Washington State, and all who eat lots of fish and seafood, like I do, may also be consuming more microplastics than others. The potential risks for human health have not been studied. We don’t tend to think of plastics as part of our diet, but by the time they make it to our plates, it’s hard to say they haven’t become part of our food web.

A Taste of Plastic

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Waterloo, Louisiana: An Open Letter to New Orleans – Antigravity Magazine

The published letter linked below was written by one of our region’s most innovative direct marketing bakers, and (obviously) one with a great deal of sensitivity and wisdom. Graison has struggled with getting the ends to meet in his tiny business (even while he is unquestionably the region’s preeminent bread baker), much less in it pulling him to the place he dreams his business should be.
He and I have talked a few times about the lack of support for small producers in our region and I can assure you that he is ready to talk with or work with anyone willing to further the needs of he and his peers, but to little avail.
I recommend that people read his essay and also read between the lines of what would drive a full-time baker to spend his time writing and publishing this. If you want my response now, it is because he knows what is at stake is his entire future and the future of the healthy food revolution that may never reach maturity unless we deal with the issues that small businesses face everyday: the lack of infrastructure support, duplicative regulations, half-hearted allegiance to local ingredient sourcing among shoppers, refusal by many (most?) to address vital environmental concerns in food work, commodity-type products taking most of the shelf space-if and when local is even invited, the lack of skilled workers available, necessary policy changes not handled by organizers of food initiatives and so on.
So ask yourself-are you doing everything you can as often as you can for your anchor vendors?
Waterloo, Louisiana: An Open Letter to New Orleans – Antigravity Magazine.

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The Law of Seeds

“The Law of Seeds” is a Bill of Rights for seeds, created by Beth Grossman. She scribed these rights with a quill pen on eleven vintage seed bags that are also painted with images of the stages of germinating corn from seed to mature plant. This traveling art exhibit evokes an appreciation of the wonders of seeds and the importance of protecting this precious source of our food chain. Brisbane, CA was the first U.S. city to adopt this Law of Seeds as a Proclamation. As the exhibit travels, the artist hopes to encourage other cities to develop, adopt and enforce rights of nature.

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Organic Farmers Object to Whole Foods Rating System

Matt Rogers, associate global produce coordinator at Whole Foods, said the program was an attempt to help consumers make choices, and he noted that by forbidding some if not all pesticides and awarding points for conservation and reduced water use, Whole Foods is raising the bar for conventional suppliers and inching them closer to organic standards.

“Organic is an incredibly deep standard, and at Whole Foods we celebrate that in very consistent, long-term ways,” said Mr. Rogers, who worked for more than three years to put the program together. “But the organic standard does not cover water, waste, energy, farmworker welfare, and all of these topics are really important, too.”

That means, however, the conventionally grown produce may end up with a higher rating. For instance, photos taken at a Whole Foods store in Capitola, Calif., and included with the farmers’ letter show a heap of conventionally grown asparagus from Mexico that is rated “best” for $4.99. Yet another photo, taken at a Whole Foods some 30 miles north in Cupertino, shows a pile of organic asparagus from Durst Organic Growers that is rated “good,” the lowest Responsibly Grown rating, for $7.99.

“This program is our reaction to a fast-moving marketplace that gives us an opportunity to engage on these issues with our supply chain in a way we haven’t been able to before,” Mr. Rogers said.

Supply chain? oh he means farmers and harvesters.

Organic Farmers Object to Whole Foods Rating System – NYTimes.com.

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Great Places Awards, Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario

Big fan of the Fayetteville food work I have seen and heard about.

The EDRA 2015 Place Planning Award recipient, “Fayetteville 2030: Food City Scenario,” asks the question, What if Fayetteville’s projected growth enabled the city to sustain its food budget through a local urban agriculture network? And what kind of infrastructure would a city have to develop if it cultivated a local food system? While the large metropolis sponsors the most efficient carbon footprint per capita, moderate scale cities like Fayetteville are better equipped to evolve resilient food-secure environments given the interconnectedness and metabolic alignment among their natural ecosystems, infrastructure, and urban fabrics. Food City’s transferable set of planning tools, established by the University of Arkansas Community Design Center, not only assists to embed high-quality food production into American urbanism, but shows how urban infrastructure can also deliver important ecosystem services.

All of the 2015 Environmental Design Research Association awards here

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Reclaiming, Relocalizing, Reconnecting: The Power of Taking Back Local Food Systems

A rare Wednesday post on the 45th anniversary of Earth Day.
A new report by Friends of the Earth Europe looks at five examples of European communities successfully taking on the challenge of creating new systems that honor wise stewardship, local wealth and health and civic engagement. Its an inspiring report; share it widely.

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Another detractor and another clear need for better data and reporting

The article found here

For those of you who have read my “Big Data, Little Farmers Markets” blog posts linked here, and the Farmers Market Metrics pilots many of us have worked on, you know this is the kind of media that concerns me. I will fully agree that farmers markets have limits to their ability in carrying food equity on their shoulders, although I am not sure that markets ever promised that.

The findings extracted for this article lack necessary context and since the original academic article is behind a paywall, many are left to wonder how closely this piece extrapolated the best ideas from the study. However, I won’t be surprised if this small study did say exactly what has been used here, but I’d hope it made allowances for the small scope of the research and the lack of comparable metrics between community food systems and the industrial retail sector.

Farmers’ markets offered 26.4 fewer fresh produce items, on average, than stores.
Compared to stores, items sold at farmers’ markets were more expensive on average, “even for more commonplace and ‘conventional’ produce.”
Fully 32.8 percent of what farmers’ markets offered was not fresh produce at all, but refined or processed products such as jams, pies, cakes, and cookies.

As those of us know that are working constantly to expand the reach of good food, there has never been a belief among those that run markets that our role was to replace stores, especially the small stores and bodegas likely to be present in many of the boroughs of NYC. Instead, the lever of markets is meant to offer alternatives AND to influence traditional retail by changing everyone’s goals to include health and wealth measures that benefit regional producers, all eaters and the natural world around us.
As far as being more expensive, one might wonder if that the study did not compare the same quality of goods; these price comparisons often compare older produce with less shelf life to just-picked and carefully raised regional goods. I have bought much lettuce this year from a few of my neighboring markets that lasted 3-4 weeks in my refrigerator, which I have never been able to match with the conventional trucked-in produce seen in my lovely little stores that I frequent for many of the staples I need. Additionally, the price comparisons I have conducted or have seen have shown most market goods to be competitively priced or cheaper in season, so this study may need a larger data set or maybe a longer study period.
Generally speaking, refined or processed foods available from cottage producers at a market are markedly different from what is seen in the list of ingredients in most items on a grocery store shelf. Using fruit or vegetable seconds for fresh fruit spread or salsa is common among market vendors and extends the use of regional goods. And of course, balancing one’s diet means allowing for a treat on the table after that good dinner and may actually lead to less junk food later.

And finally, the article does not even consider the positive impacts found in markets for regional producers or neighborhood entrepreneurs; that omission in these type of articles is always a warning to me that we are reading an author who has spent little or no time quantifying the needs of the entire community being served in the market. If you require proof of the need to show the multiple impacts of farmers markets, the author’s curt conclusion should make that need clear:

Sure, they’re a great place to mingle. But as to whether they are a net nutritional plus for the neighborhood, the answer appears to be: Not so much.

(someone needs to introduce this guy to the idea of social determinants of health.)

Even so, as mentioned in those Big Data and FMM posts (a new Big Data post is coming soon), even these weak arguments are still based on data and analysis which means WE need to do a better job as well. It’s high time that we started to publish regular reports from the front lines of farmers markets, CSAs and other food and civic projects that use our own good data to show the impact that we are making everywhere rather than just keep rebutting these viral pieces that offer incomplete or inaccurate snapshots.

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What the Frack? Beginning Farmers’ Energy and Pollution Dilemma – Hobby Farms

An important post for markets to share with their farmers.
What the Frack? Beginning Farmers’ Energy and Pollution Dilemma – Hobby Farms.

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