The New Traditionalists: Young Small-Farmers
Published October 26, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
A friend recently told me she sits in her cubicle daydreaming about the charm of an agrarian life. She finds it ironic that she now longs to do precisely what her Lithuanian ancestors struggled so mightily to escape. They worked their fingers to the bone as peasant farmers to provide better futures to successive generations, on down to my present-day friend who has had the opportunity to get an education and become a well-paid professional with a comfortable life away from the hot sun and taxing fieldwork.
"It's funny," she mused, "that now I just want to go work on a farm."
Well it turns out she's not the only one. Mike Smith reported last night that in the U.S., young people -- often college grads who might have had lucrative desk jobs -- are discovering the appeal of getting their hands dirty.
More and More Young People Take To Sustainable Farming
Published October 25, 2009 @ 06:18PM PT
Newspapers sure do love their human-interest recession stories. When those stories involve people quitting their jobs for something more fulfilling, that's even better. But the perfect story, of course, is people taking to the land, turning to farms, and making a fresh start. Of course, we love every word of it — especially as so often it's toward sustainable and organic farms.
The latest update on the trend is a long piece in the Washington Post explaining the story of a young woman who went from making $110,000 a year to making $7 an hour. But it's not all clichéd stories of going back to the land. It's reported that farmers are getting a boost and a better chance at success thanks to Community Supported Agriculture, "a system that lets customers pay in advance for a weekly share of a nearby farm's crop."
Last Spring, we heard about the young adults who are "Leaving Behind the Trucker Hat," quitting Williamsburg, and scratching an itch that wasn't relieved by a little backyard gardening. Indeed, eighteen month ago someone making a documentary on about the trend explained "Young farmers are an emerging social movement." On average organic farmers are younger, and the number of small farms is indeed growing dramatically. Perhaps the next farm census will shed statistical light on how true the trend is in farming outside of these cases.
One thing is for sure: There is a dramatic change happening. And the trend is toward sustainability. The number of sustainable farms on a list for prospective students has increased from six in 1989 to 1,400 now — 236 alone were added in the first five months of this year. It really doesn't matter who's running them, but as students from Yale report, a summer spent working on a sustainable farm provides an incredibly enriching experience.
Smart Choices Labeling Gets the Axe
Published October 23, 2009 @ 01:25PM PT
Score one for reason and honesty! Thanks in part to the intrepid efforts of Change.org and its awesome concerned citizens, the Smart Choices labeling scheme, which sought to peddle clearly unhealthy foods as wise eating choices, has been halted, reports MSNBC.
After the FDA decided to bash some skulls over this blatantly misleading marketing efffort, the food industry players in charge of the initiative, including Kellogg Co., Kraft Foods and General Mills, have decided to call it all off for now. Smart Choices officials said that they will "postpone" the program and avoid encouraging any more use of the labels until the FDA makes a judgment.
I think this is one "postponement" that might well end up lasting forever. Good work to all those who signed our petition and took other action in response to this outrageous nutri-washing campaign!
Photo courtesy of Mykl Roventine via flickr
FDA Hits Back Against Stupid Food Labeling
Published October 23, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
UPDATE: Smart choices labeling scheme gets the axe!
Thank goodness, the FDA has sat up and noticed that someone is trying to pass Froot Loops off as health food. The agency's target is the Smart Choices front-of-package (FOP) labeling scheme, an effort by industry players to claim that experts say their foods, including some high-sugar and high-fat items, are better-for-you selections.
The program has drawn widespread ridicule, consternation and resistance, including a petition organized by Change.org in which 4,000+ signatories prevailed on The American Dietetic Association, the American Diabetes Association and Tufts University to request that the Smart Choices board remove their names from the initiative's Website. In September, Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Agricultural Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies, called for the FDA to launch an investigation into the program.
You know things are bad when the box with the blatant misspelling is the one labeled “smart” and members of congress are up in arms.
Investing in the World's Farmers
Published October 23, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Is empowering small farmers in the developing world the best way to help people escape poverty? Bill Gates is betting it is.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the foundation he runs with his wife, has committed $120 million to the project of getting smallholder farmers the resources and support they need to up their crop yields and yank themselves up from hunger and deprivation.
In his first major speech on agricultural development, delivered last week at the World Food Prize event in Iowa, Gates explained his belief in the need to invest in more effective seed varieties, targeted training, increased market access and policy initiatives that advantage small farmers, according to a foundation press release.
Nutritional Bang for Your Grocery Buck
Published October 22, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
In an economic climate where people are pinching their grocery pennies and a food climate where the unhealthiest food is often the cheapest — or at least the most obviously cheap — it’s great to hear that someone’s come out with a most-nutritional-bang-for-your-buck assessment tool to prevent our thin wallets from killing our health.
Nutrition expert Adam Drewnowski, a professor at the University of Washington, presented his new Affordable Nutrition Index (ANI) at the American Dietetic Association’s Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo this week, Reuters reports. It is apparently the only tool to rate food according to how much nutritional value a dollar can buy.
Drewnowski did research that revealed how experts tend to silo food, nutrition and price considerations instead of regarding them as integrated elements in our eating lives. He is trying to steer the conversation toward addressing the fact that people account for many factors at once in making food-shopping decisions.
Foods to Eat to Cut Emissions: Chicken, Honey, Whole Wheat
Published October 21, 2009 @ 09:17AM PT
We have been told that agricultural accounts for 51% of emissions and that eating meat is the single worst thing you can do to the environment (provoking 60 comments on both sides in a recent post). And we also know that sometimes flying food half way around the world is a bad idea, and sometimes it's better than growing it out off season in greenhouses. But what should we be eating?
Benno Hansen explains the familiar foods vices in a comprehensive blog post based on a peer reviewed journal article. It explains that we should avoid steak and cod, and not eat proteins like cheese and eggs in excess, as we do currently. And if we want to replace these food with foods that are better for the environment, for the meat eaters, the evidence points favorably to chicken.
For the meat eaters, chicken is six times less polluting to produce per kilo than steak. Small scale chicken production can help keep pests down, with chickens also able to recycle food waste, and live most anywhere in the world. In place of cod, herring is suggested. It is forty times less polluting that chicken, whilst in terms of protein efficiency domestically produced wheat scores even higher.
The others winners are fresh carrots, potatoes and honey, all causing very little greenhouse-house gas emissions. Also apples, even when they are shipped in by boat. So best avoid the lasagne, and choose whole wheat or potato based dishes as much as possible.
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