Posts by Melissa Byrne
Boycott Whole Foods
Published August 19, 2009 @ 12:40PM PT
I've been looking the other way for a long time each time I go to Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck. I mean, I already know that they profit off of creating an image of sustainability- mixing organic produce with conventional. I know that the CEO John Mackey is a libertarian who opposes labor unions (none of the Whole Foods are union), and in general opposes most the ideals I fight for in my life. But, Whole Foods make my shopping pretty easy and made it easy for me to check my values at the door.
But, no more.
It is one thing to disagree with a CEO like John Mackey. Fine. We all have different politics. But, its another thing when he is taking his money and influence to fight against everything I believe in. And, right now we are a critical tipping point on health care, and the need for a public health care option.
John Mackey decided to tke the politics of the teabaggers and make them acceptable for the Wall Street crowd last week in the Wall Street Journal.. He started by throwing out the "socialism" charge at President Obama and then goes onto to argue for Health Savings Accounts, deregulation, and getting rid of insurance companies from being able to discriminate against medical conditions. Oh, and he throws in as well, people are fat so that is why we have a health care problem ( solution- shop at Whole Foods, duh!).
Mackey argues against the public option with: "While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system"And that is where he lost me, and my whole paycheck. We need a strong public option. We need to be able to have a system that can compete with the massive insurance industry. Our small businesses, including small scare organic farmers, need real health insurance reform.
I am for a sustainable food system and I believe a important key is looking to make sure all the players up the chain are supported. Which means- we need to make sure workers are paid well ( ahem- EFCA), that farmers and employees on farms can buy health insurance ( ahem- public option), and that the companies we buy from support our values for real, not just market our values back to us.
So, I am taking my money to the farmers markets, UFCW organized grocery stores, and smaller natural food stores. I hope you follow suit.
If you're on facebook, you can join the Boycott Whole Foods group here.
[Update: Natasha here, minor URL edit and corrections made, sorry to bump in.]
Blighted: A Tomato Story from Utica, NY
Published August 17, 2009 @ 12:37PM PT
Two weekends ago, my good friend Annie told me she had some bad news for me. As we were celebrating our friends Reshma's wedding, I was a little taken a back. Bad news? What. Then, she proceeded to tell me that Nancy Grove, her sister in-law and my friend, lost her entire tomato crop to Late Blight. If we weren't at a wedding, I'd probably have started to loudly curse the food system that has enabled the Late Blight (aka Irish Potato Famine) to spread across the North East. But, I bit my tongue for once.
For me, Nancy's loss is personal. In June, I spent hours pounding these super heavy, taller than me, metal posts into the ground for the trellacing of her 600 tomato plants. It is amazing how spending a few hours of manual labor with 600 tomato plants builds a solid relationship. Needless to say, I was devestated to learn that all my hard work, and more so, all Nancy's hard work was for naught.
I know we've talked about Late Blight on here, you have read it in newspapers, or seen it on tv. But, I thought, given's Nancy's loss, I could use this opportunity to show you what it really means when a small scale, organic farmer loses her entire crop of tomatoes.
First things first
Meet Nancy. Nancy is one of the new generation farmers taking the nation by storm. Raised by an engineer turned bagel baking family in rural upstate NY, Nancy started her career canvassing for the Clean Air Council in Philadelphia before ditching the city for working with the earth. Nancy spent time working on the Heiffer International farm outside of Worcester, MA, before being an apprentice on Caretaker Farm near Williamstown, MA.
After her apprentice year, Nancy returned to the outskirts of Utica, NY- home of the famous Bagel Grove Bagels- to begin her own organic farm. Harpening back to the ideals that influence her work as a farmer, she aptly named her project, Old Path Farm. Starting in the first season, 2005-2006, Nancy was able to sign up CSA (community supported agriculture) members, sell at local farmers markets, and supply the Bagel Grove with seasonally available produce.
Now, Old Path Farm is in their fifth season growing 3 acres of eighty varieties of veggies. Nancy has a loyal membership base of 75 CSA members who buy in for $400/season ( June to October),and she sells at a few farmers markets in the Mohawk Valley.
"The diversity of the farm is my favorite part," explains Nancy, "I'd be bored if we only grew one thing. Lettuce is big all summer. Carrots and beets are standard, as in Swiss Chard. Right now, the fall crops are starting to full out"
Blighted
Late in July, Nancy began to suspect the worse for her tomato plants. And, within a week, the climax of her farming season- nineteen varieties of tomatoes- went from going strong to rotting on the vine. But, before I tell you about the blighted plants and what she had to do, I want to walk you through all the hard work it takes to get the tomatoes from seed to your homemade salsa or gazpacho.
For some of Nancy's tomatoes, the work began last year with saving seeds from her successful crop. For the rest of the tomato plants, Nancy had to spend time and money ( both short supply for small scale organic farmers) to order seeds from a company.
Nancy explained, "We grow early hybrids and heirlooms...black trim, green zebra, and brandywine, among others. We spend about three hours with three hours planting all the seeds in the first of April." The major cost up front, besides the seeds, is the potting soil and the cost to heat the green house. For the next month, Nancy or another member of the farm, waters the tomatoes twice a day.
"A few weeks later," Nancy describes, "we have to transfer the seedlings into bigger pots in the greenhouse. That takes about ten hours." The seedlings stay in the bigger pots for another month and half, with twice a day waterings and energy being used to heat the green house."
While the tomato seedlings are growing in the green house, Nancy and her team wait for spring ground to thaw. Once the ground is workable, the Old Path Farm team begins the arduous task of preparing the tomato beds for the season. Imagine a track of land, and you need to turn this track of land into the perfect environment for six hundred of your favorite tomato seedlings so they can grow into adult tomato plants producing lots of fruit ( err, vegetables). For this process, the crew has to create rows which involves turning the soil, hoeing, and mulching. The mulch is pricey, but worth it since Nancy can count on 30% of her farmers market profits to come from the tomatoes.
Once the seedlings have become hardy, it takes fifteen hours of labor to transfer the seedings to rows out on the farm. This process is time consuming because the plants needs to be spaces correctly, groups by variety, and care needs to be taken to protect the root structure. Once the plants are in the ground, the team continues to weed, water, and watch the plants. During this process, the plants are suckered continuous- which is a way to keep the plants from growing all over the place.
A few weeks after transplanting, the work to trellace the growing plants begins. About 70 metal and wooden six feet high stakes are pounded into the ground after every fourth tomato plant. This takes one person about five hours and is wearing on the back. Once the stakes are up, every week or so, another loop of twine is strung between the stakes, allowing the tomatoes to be fully supported as grow towards the sky.
In a normal year, Nancy and her crew would continue to trellace, weed, and water, and the get ready for weekly harvests. But, this isn't an normal year thanks to big box stores selling late blight infected plants and a rainy season to create perfect conditions for the late blight. Instead of celebrating the hard work, in late July, Nancy realized her 600 plants were carrying this dangeous pathogen and she had to figure out what to do.
"We had no idea what to look for," explained Nancy upon seeing the stems and leaves with the blog. "I had heard about late blight but I had no idea how damaging it could be... some farms have alot more invested in tomatoes," said Nancy, who ended up taking a "crash course, of sorts," on late blight. Pete, another member of the farm, attended the Northeast Organic Farming Conference in Massachusetts in early August, where he went to a workshop on late blight but "no one knew what was best." Nancy told of one farmer she knew who "was going to burn his tomatoes and potatoes."
As her tomatoes from went from scrumptious to fungus, Nancy decided that she need to dedicated a whole work day to undoing a season of work, documented in the following photographs. Luckily, they were able to borrow a dump truck to make the work slightly easier. In short, Nancy and her crew had to pull up each of the six hundred tomato plants by the roots, which first involved undoing the trellaces and pulling up the stakes.
The metal stakes are spending the next twelve months baking in the sun to kill the late blight on them, while they are deciding if the wooden stakes need to be burnt. While they were pulling up the stakes and the plants, they had to be extra careful about the tomatoes. 
Each tomato carried they late blight in the form of spores, so even one being left behind could start its own out break and each tomato carries seeds which gladly will become volunteer plants, meaning that they reseed very readily. So, they spent a lot of time picking up each tomato and separating the plants for compost, and the tomatoes for being thrown away.
On a far, far, far corner of the farm, beneath a gray tarp, a season of work is heating up in compost. 
For the next few years, the organic matter of the plants decomposing will fight off all the remaining spores of the late blight, and eventually Nancy plans to have scientists from Cornell test the materials. Meanwhile, it is hoped that the pulling of the tomato plants will help preserve the land in the main part of the farm. But, " a huge concern is next year- this year is bad enough. How do we prevent this from over wintering", wonders Nancy.
Nancy's says that her CSA members have been supportive and understanding of the late blight. She's been adding in extra vegetables to compensate from the of tomatoes, usually thought of as the climax of the farming season. She's gotten about ten condolence letters form her members all with the same message "We love your veggies. We'll be here next year." But, this has caused a domino effect at the farmers market. Since she is adding extra greens and other veggies the weekly boxes, she has less to bring to market. She expects to lose at least 30% of her farmers markets profits this season.
All in all, Nancy has not been able to put a dollar on the losses sustained to Old Path Farm his year. From the time invested to the new boxes, stakes, and materials she has to purchase, it is going to cut into her bottom line. Yet, she is luckier than other farmers. She had the time to take a full day to address the problem, and because she grows a large variety of vegetables, she is able to keep on going this year.
Nancy hopes that next year, people buy their tomato seedlings direct from a farmer ( Some even have seedling CSA's) and avoid stores like Home Depot or Wal-Mart. She explains "( the box stores" are a source of homeland insecurity and that its a food system set up for catastrophe. If this were as important as Britney Spears, then people would care about food systems. I've learned how insecure our food system is, and we cannot shelter ourselves from society or our greater eco system. There are no real boundaries that protect us."
Nancy's one hope is that "this is a kick in the butt for organic farmers to get healthier soils so they blight won't knock us down."
Those of us who love farm fresh organic veggies need to realize we have a role to play here. We need to spend our dollars at local farms and realize our actions have consequences. One quick trip to a box store could end up with a farmer like Nancy having to pull up her whole season of work in one day. We need to be our farmers keepers.
(Thanks to Ed Grove for the photos. Thanks to Nancy Grove for the interview and letting my hangout on Old Path Farm. I'll come back next year for staking!)
Sustainable Infrastructure: The Rodale Institute
Published July 28, 2009 @ 11:52AM PT
Who's gonna teach us to farm? Who's gonna teach us how to farm well? Where do we go? Well, here in Pennsylvania, we are blessed to have to the Rodale Institue, a fifity-something year old organization that has been testing and perfecting organic and sustainable farming, sharing their best practices with the world at large. Located in Kutztown, the Rodale Institute describes itself as:At Rodale, they offer a Gardner's Workshop- teaching canning, pruning, building garden containers, and extending the gardening season. For the farmer, you can sign for a 15 hour on line course teaching you how to convert your conventional farm to organic practices. And, for the interested sustainable foodie, you can even give yourself a self-guided tour of the Rodale Institute farm for free!
Rodale goes beyond the nitty gritty farming to also looking at nutrition and access.
On their website, you can can read about the difference between organic and conventional tomatoes or how children are more impacted by pesticides, and a series on raw milk. Also, Rodale highlight a special CSA in Washington state for food stamp customers.
As the sustainable food movement grows, we need institutes like Rodale so we can grow, learn, and have a long lasting memory. The "other side" has organization, echo chambers, and political capitol ready at the their disposal to keep us eating GMO corn and growing CAFO's. We might be the little ones, but with institutes like Rodale on our team, we can make it happen.
Fined! Food Name Calling Laws
Published July 27, 2009 @ 07:18AM PT
Like every good progressive sustainable foodie, I recently saw Food, Inc a my local independent movie theatre. While I'll reserve my race/class analysis of the movie for a later post, I did find a few strong take-aways around CAFO's, the supply chain for the meat industry, and most outrageous, to me, the veggie libel laws.
Since the mid-1990;s, 13 states passed laws limiting free speech rights of folks being critical of corporate agriculture. In Colorado, its's actually a felony to be critical of the cattle industry ( no word if its a felony to be critical of the law). As a sustainable foodie, if I were to write that X's states cattle industry treated their cattle with disregard for the live and used hormones that makes people, I could either be sued or arrested. Sadly, it's not like these laws are protecting mom and pop farms- they are protecting the food industrial complex people--- men in suits who don't know a lick about farming but know about money.
The folks over at Center for Science in the Public Interest have a list with links each state's don't speak the truth to power food name calling laws.
What gets me so upset about this waste of time by state governments, is that instead of working to ensure a safe, healthy food supply, they are more worried about projecting the industry. That is lame. I'd rather see food inspections, incentives given to grow and produce healthy foods, and a meat industry that must treat and slaughter animals humanely.
Do you know someone fined for speaking the truth to power as a sustainable foodie?
Is Your Steak Protected from the Sniffles?
Published July 25, 2009 @ 09:19AM PT
Perhaps my only happy memory of getting sick as a child was taking the yummy bubblegum flavored amoxicillan. I was always happy when it was prescribed and loved the bright pink color and cool feel of the refrigreriated liquid suspension as it passed through my inflamed throat. I'm not five any more, and now when I am sick, I try to do anything to avoid taking an antibiotic. I , for one, am more scared of drug resistant super bug ( think the antihero to superman!) then a little common bacterial infection. And, fortunately, both doctors and patients are coming on board with moderating the use of antibiotics. Sadly, this is not the case across American's factory farms, CAFO's ( confined animal feeding operations), where these industrial farmers push antibiotics into animals nonstop. Not only are these antibiotics bad for the animals, bad for the humans who eat the animals, they are bad in a public health sense. The more our diseases get play around with our antibiotics, the stronger and smarter they get in defeating them.
Thanks to the diligent and passionate work of the Union of Concerned Scientists, yesteraday the New York Times's editorial page published a strongly worded opinion calling for the passage of H.R. 1549/S. 619, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, which according to the Times " would allow veterinarians to prescribe antibiotics to treat individual animals or prevent disease, but it would sharply restrict the routine feeding of antibiotics to farm animals — the practice most closely associated with the development of drug-resistant pathogens."
There is hope that the bill, sponsored by Senator Kennedy and Rep. Louise Slaughter, will have a fighting chance to become law. The editorial noted that , "Despite that danger, the Food and Drug Administration had been reluctant to restrict routine agricultural use of antibiotics. The F.D.A.’s principal deputy commissioner, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, signaled a welcome change in direction recently, testifying on behalf of a new bill, the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act. "
You can help this bill become a law. Please take a moment to send a letter to your Congressional offices. You can click here to send the letter through the Union of Concerned Scientists.
A Yummy Find...
Published July 22, 2009 @ 10:09AM PT
Just wanted to share with you a blog I came across today. As you can tell, I'm really into local foods, but I am more interested in how everyday people are able to incorporate local eating in their lives. Take a moment and look www.tonyfood.com, a blog about a guy in the DC and his quest for local food. Besides info about farms in the DC metro area, I'm drawn to his use of how he makes his food, including grilled pizza!
Enojoy!
Blue Light Special in Aisle 9- Late Tomato Blight
Published July 21, 2009 @ 12:47PM PT
As if a lot of us did not need another reason to hate on the ( insert your favorite brand) big box stores, it looks like they sold tomato plants infected with late tomato blight fungus to consumers, and now we might have an epidemic on our hands, err in our gardens. For those who remember high school history class, this is the same fungus that caused the Irish Potato famine. While it would be fun to go and bash on big box stores, I'd rather get you the signs and symptoms of the blight, so you can protect yours and your neighbors tomatos. Since this is a fast spearding, airborne fungus, your care for your own plants will help minimize the devestation all around you.
Disease facts
Late tomato/potato blight: Late blight has irregular, greasy-appearing, grayish areas and white mold on leaves that can expand rapidly. Not to be confused with early blight, a less-serious disease noted by dark brown spots on older leaves.
If you suspect it: If white mold is not obvious, put leaves with suspicious spots in a plastic bag with a moist paper towel. Hold for one day and check for mold.
If you have it: Do not put infected plants in compost piles. Put plants in plastic bags, seal them, put them in the sun for several days to kill them and then put the bags out for trash collection.
Eating: You can eat tomatoes from blighted plants as long as they are not moldy or rotten.
Prevention: Difficult because infection can spread by windblown spores. To reduce the odds: Don't moisten leaves; place plants far enough apart to allow air circulation; and don't plant tomatoes and potatoes in the same spot each year.
