Food Prices
Want to Beef Up Your Local Chops? Try Meat-Sharing
Published November 21, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Does the locally raised, grass-fed meat you find at the farmers market trump your budget? The cost of sustainable meat is high, which is good since it means we might view it as a little more precious and occasional than many Americans do. But is there some way to directly support local farmers and get meat a little cheaper?
Why not try meat-sharing? The concept isn't new — it's basically a community-supported agriculture program for meat — but its popularity is picking up steam as interest in local food soars. The Oakland Local introduces readers to the Bay Area Meat CSA, which advertises itself with the straightforward tagline "buy good, healthy meat directly from local ranchers."
Mark Markovich, a satisfied customer who had bought 70 pounds of meat with some friends from Morris Grassfed Beef, ticked off a list of benefits: keeping money local, helping ranchers support themselves, reducing your carbon footprint. "You’re helping support the entire ecosystem," he told Oakland Local. "People talk about eating within a 100-mile radius of their homes. We can do that here. From field to fork, I know exactly what is going on with the food I’m eating.”
The Website Local Harvest lists CSAs by zip code, including many that provide meat.
Photo courtesy of tvol via flickr
My $80 Thanksgiving Turkey
Published November 13, 2009 @ 11:08AM PT
The argument can be made that paying $80 for a turkey this Thanksgiving is just a typical example of elitism in the sustainable food movement. And that might be somewhat true.
However, I say that it is an example of paying for what's important to you, and for me, that's knowing not only who raised the bird on my table but how it was raised as well.
This Thanksgiving, I'll be serving a 10-12 pound heritage breed turkey from EcoFriendly Foods, a cooperative that sources sustainably produced meat from small farms throughout the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia; and here's why.
Somewhere around 99% of the turkeys consumed in America every year are the genetically engineered "Broadbreasted White" variety. These turkeys, the ones you find in the grocery store, are raised in (I omit "on" for a reason) factory farms, and have been manipulated to the point that they cannot even stand on their own most of time.
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.
In Response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" Part 2
Published August 28, 2009 @ 02:45PM PT
(This is the second in a two-part response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" article written by Blake Hurst, a self-admitted "industrial" farmer from Missouri, a few weeks back for The Journal of American Enterprise Institute. The first part of my response can be found here.)
To continue my critique of Hurt's article, I'd like to now discuss the way he characterizes the acute need for the continuation of industrial animal agriculture. I purposely chose not to deal with this topic in my first post as I knew it would require its own space and time.
Part of the problem with agriculture today, as Nicholas Kristof points out in his recent New York Times Op-Ed, is that the profession has largely lost its soul over the past several decades as industrial farming practices have taken hold. This is not to say that there aren't any family farming operations in this country--in fact, there are many--but the way that we view the production of food has changed dramatically. There is no place where this is more true than in animal agriculture.
It's quite clear from Hurst's article that he is no animal rights activist. In his view, animals are commodities that are to be raised in a manner that maximizes the financial return for farmers with very little (legitimate) concern paid to the environmental and food safety costs incurred by this kind of production.
This is part of the lost soul of American agriculture. Where once farmers treated animals well in order to ensure a long, healthy and productive life, now many farmers choose to treat their animals as badly as possible while still turning a profit. We have lost respect for the key role animals have played (and always will play) in the history of our agricultural progression.
In Response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" Part 1
Published August 17, 2009 @ 09:34AM PT
(This post is the first in a two-part response to "The Omnivore's Delusion" article written by Blake Hurst, a self-admitted "industrial" farmer from Missouri, a few weeks back for The Journal of American Enterprise Institute.)
More than simply being a piece praising modern technology and the rise of industrial agriculture, "The Omnivore's Delusion" is a show of utter frustration toward those the author calls "Agri-intellectuals" and their constant indictments against anything that is not small-scale, local and organic.
Although I don't agree with everything Hurst says (like his assertion that sustainable food advocates are decidedly anti-technology), I certainly understand and empathize with where he's coming from.
But what I think neither Hurst nor the "Agri-intellectuals" understand is that we have two distinct agricultural systems in the United States, and we need both of them equally.
Those of us involved in the sustainable food movement are drawn to the cause, largely, because we reject the idea that food should be an untraceable commodity with nothing but a multi-million dollar corporation standing behind it. We like to view food as having (to steal some language from one of my favorite organizations) a face, a place and a taste.
If you really think about that, it's somewhat of a selfish goal. We are imposing our values onto the people who grow our food, largely without the knowledge of what it takes to actually get that food onto our plates. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of farmers who share our food values and choose to grow either organically or sustainably, and almost exclusively for local markets. But we must understand that, for farmers like Hurst, this is neither a practical nor desirable opportunity.
Real Healthcare Reform Starts with Healthy Food
Published July 28, 2009 @ 12:49PM PT
Yesterday there was the startling report that 10% of all healthcare costs are due to obesity. That totals up to more than $147 billion a year. Considering that the current healtcare bills that are winding their way through Congress are wearing price tags in the $1 - $1.5 trillion range, it is clear that obesity is playing a large role in the spiraling costs.
While so many politicians wax poetic about keeping down costs, a sugar tax has been roundly panned as a non-starter. This is not surprising. As with tobacco, often public sentiment lags behind actual data. America still has a culture that believes that if you're fat, well it's your own damn fault:
Being poor in 21-st century America doesn’t mean not having enough to eat, but often it means being part of a culture where fattening, processed foods are not only relatively cheap and convenient, but socially acceptable. It also means having the kind of job that often isn’t all that rewarding, and you really just need to unwind after work instead of stopping at Whole Foods and whipping yourself up a nice tofu stir-fry.
This, perhaps, is what Bingaman really wants the USCO-OP ( United States Council on Overweight and Obesity Prevention) to change. Because let’s be honest: poor people know that green chile cheeseburgers will make them fatter than steamed salmon will, and they know that doing an hour of exercise will make them fitter than watching an hour of television. They know these things, but often they’ve had a long, hard day at work and they’re tired and hungry and just want to be left alone with their remote control and their burger and their Dr. Pepper.
This attitude is what is going to hold us back from really doing something obesity. Yes, people should exercise, but that's not the whole story. We also live in a society where children drink more soda than milk and soda is one third the price of milk. Until the cost of food reflects the ill side-effects, people will still reach for the green chile cheeseburger, which btw costs one fourth the price of the steamed salmon. And elitists who don't realize that should really shut their traps and not tell poor people how to eat.
So we have an attitude problem. Which is going to be a huge hurdle to clear. One the other side though, is greener pastures. Turns out that countries like Great Britain are already experimenting with sugar taxes. While we won't know for years what are the potential health affects, we do know it has the potential to raise some serious dough:
And here's the payoff: Conservatively estimated, a 10% tax levied on foods that would be defined as "less healthy" by a national standard adopted recently in Great Britain could yield $240 billion in its first five years and $522 billion over 10 years of implementation -- if it were to begin in October 2010. If lawmakers instituted a program of tax subsidies to encourage the purchase of fresh and processed fruits and vegetables, the added revenue would still be $356 billion over 10 years.
Buying Local--- Slightly Easier
Published July 17, 2009 @ 11:27AM PT
First in a three part series on buying local.
