Farm Economics
Baltimore City Is First “Meatless Monday” School System
Published October 07, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT
Well, I will eat my hat. Baltimore City Public School system (BCPS) — of all places! (Have you seen The Wire? If not, why not?) — has received an award for pushing its school food program toward farms and gardens. If this problem-riddled school system can get its kids eating right, then what’s the matter with the rest of us?
Not only has BCPS been sourcing lunch ingredients from local farms, it has become the first school system in the U.S. to institute a Meatless Monday menu in all its schools, according to Forbes. As if that weren’t enough, the system has created a teaching farm, Great Kids Farm, and is organizing an effort to grow a garden at each of its more than 200 schools.
BCPS is certainly headed in the right direction. I wrote the other day about American’s distaste for the foods that can be grown most sustainably — that is, fruits and vegetables. As some of my commenters rightly pointed out, part of the problem lies in our school lunch program. We are teaching our kids bad habits early by loading up their daily diets with rafts of burgers, French fries, pizzas, tater tots and other processed concoctions (are there, in fact, any potatoes in tater tots? I think not).
It won’t shock anyone, then, that U.S. high-school students’ intake of fruits and vegetables was ranked as “poor” by a recent CDC study, according to the Wall Street Journal. The study found that fewer than 10 percent of teenagers eat their recommended daily allotment of plant foods. This is hardly surprising; if we’re not demonstrating the importance of healthy eating to kids in lower grades, of course they won’t start enthusiastically munching salads as soon as they hit high school.
So the 2009 Award for Visionary Leadership in Local Food Procurement and Food Education, presented to BCPS by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, is a needed light in the darkness of dietary deficiency. Awarding school systems that are working to help kids learn the value of a healthy bite is a sure way to raise awareness and encourage more to follow suit.
And if the system winning the award is more famous for violence and dysfunction than anything else, that just serves to put a little more heat on everybody else. If Baltimore City Schools can do this, anyone can do this. All that’s stopping us is the will to change — and of course the big agribusiness dollars that stomp that will into submission.
Photo courtesy of back_garage on flickr
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.
Where Dairy Isn't Cruel
Published August 05, 2009 @ 02:27PM PT
Before I even start getting into this post, I want to make one thing clear: I think that factory farmed dairy is just as, if not more, cruel than factory farmed meat production.
But with that said, the fact remains that not all dairy is cruel. I promise you.
I work for the first and (currently) only organic, grass-fed farmstead creamery in the state of Maryland. They produce organic creamline milk, yogurt and cheese that is sold at various farmers markets in the Washington, DC area.
Admittedly, I only sell for the family who owns the farm at farmers markets (and thus, do not actually work on the farm). But I've seen the farm, watched the cows being milked and cared for, and have never seen the slightest hint of cruel or inhumane treatment.
Even though more milk could be obtained with more intensive milking, cows on the farm are milked one time a day. No more, no less. This results in less product for the family, but happier (and healthier) cows.
Also, the cows diets consist almost entirely of grasses, as well as other plants and insects that are found in the fields where the animals are grazing. In years with lots of rain (as we've had on the east coast this year), the cows can survive on practically a 100 percent grass-based diet (as nature intended).
These cows are loved. More than (unfortunately) I've seen people loved in my lifetime. So, how can this sort of production be labeled as cruel or exploitative?
I feel like many of the anti-dairy advocates out there have never stepped foot onto a small dairy farm in their entire lives. If they had, they certainly would not be making blanket statements about how ALL dairy products are cruel regardless of their source. Because, most importantly, its simply not true.
Now yes, this kind of dairy production I don't believe would ever be economically viable on a large scale. There's just a cap on how much you can produce when you take animals out of the confined spaces of industrial farm operations.
So, I will readily admit that dairy you find in the grocery store (and at the vast majority of restaurants) will most likely continue to come from factory farms where cows are not treated with the respect that they, and all animals, deserve.
But at the same time, if I'm getting all of my dairy from a family I trust and who I KNOW for a fact treats their animals well, how am I supporting cruelty?
Instead of advocating for the complete destruction of the dairy industry, I think animal rights activists should also (I say also because I do think their time fighting the injustices of factory farming is well spent) promote and support the small farmers out there who treat their animals as well as they treat their children.
I await your comments.
(Photo credit: NickPiggott on Flickr)
Senate Cuts Animal ID Funding By Half
Published August 05, 2009 @ 02:05PM PT
Woohoo! I get to say nice things about the Senate!
I'm pleased to report that my usual causticity can be suspended for the duration of this post to applaud the Senate's unanimous consent vote to cut funding for the National Animal ID System. Go, Senate!
Jill Richardson at LaVidaLocavore has reposted the press release by R-CALF USA, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, and I think that the most salient point in the entire debate is encapsulated in this paragraph of their statement, here:
3) No food safety benefits. NAIS will not prevent food borne illnesses from e. coli or salmonella, because the contamination occurs at the slaughterhouse, while NAIS tracking ends at the time of slaughter. Thus, NAIS will neither prevent the contamination nor increase the government's ability to track contaminated meat back to its source. In addition, NAIS will hurt efforts to develop safer, decentralized local food systems. ...
If the program fails in its main, stated goal, if it is in fact structured such that failure is inevitable, what are we spending all this money for? As a liberal, progressive, believer in the possibility of government to do good, I have a deep and abiding interest in money given to the government not being wasted. When it's wasted, it creates an instant opportunity cost against something good and useful being done with that money.
Of the money that remains in the program, the Senate directives limit its use to rule-making activities, and on that front, I have a suggestion: lay the groundwork to institute premise ID, instead of animal ID.
I was talking a couple months ago with Margaret Krome, my former internship supervisor and policy program director at the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, about how NAIS implementation has gone in Wisconsin. She said that at this point, they've just done premise registration, which sidesteps many of the concerns raised directly by Amish communities and does actually provide a public health benefit.
Krome explained that when there were animal disease outbreaks, the premise registry let public health officials target their notification efforts to the right people. This registration simply lets officials know that there are livestock on the property and what type. That's actually useful to know should there be an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease, scabies, or what have you. It also isn't burdensome to farmers, needing to be neither expensive nor time-consuming. See? Useful.
Anyway, cheers again to the Senate for showing such good sense. It seems in short supply these days.(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
Agriculture's Phosphorus Crunch
Published August 04, 2009 @ 08:16AM PT
From Parke Wilde at the U.S. Food Policy blog, industrial agriculture's much-needed phosphate fertilizer supply is running into trouble as growing demand meets environmental and space constraints on phosphate mining (pictured here.)
Fertilizer-hungry industrial crops need vast amounts of phosphorus, and it has increasingly come from mineral phosphates that need to be mined at great financial and environmental cost. It used to come from well-managed animal manure, but even this is applied in excess in certain areas. All around, phosphates applied to fields are further ruining the planet's water supply:
Even more highly concentrated in farm runoff than pesticide residues are plant nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus.
... In the [federal government's 1998 National Water Quality Assessment], phosphorus levels exceeded suggested EPA standards in 80 percent of stream samples. High phosphorus levels promote the growth of nuisanceplants and algae, which can kill fish and other aquatic life by reducing levels of dissolved oxygen in streams. These algal blooms can also damage municipal water systems. ...
- The Fatal Harvest Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, edited by Andrew Kimbrell, in the Water section, by Mark Briscoe
And as we're mining phosphorus that's then often ending up in rivers because the stripped-down agricultural ecosystems created by industrial farming can't take it up, we're wasting much of the phosphorus in existing manure sources. Animals eat plants, plants eat us and our waste; it worked for a good long time. Then, as Michael Pollan says, we turned a perfectly good solution into a set of problems:
... I asked the feedlot manager why they didn't just spray the liquefied manure on neighboring farms. The farmers don't want it, he explained. The nitrogen and phosphorus levels are so high that spraying the crops would kill them. He didn't say that feedlot wastes also contain heavy metals and hormone residues, persistent chemicals that end up in waterways downstream, where scientists have found fish and amphibians exhibiting abnormal sex characteristics. CAFOs like Poky transform what at the proper scale would be a precious source of fertility - cow manure - into toxic waste. ...
- The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
In fact, there are indications that the application of properly composted manure feeds a soil ecosystem that retains more phosphorus and produces less nutrient-contaminated runoff. That's not only good for what grows in a given patch of soil, but a sensible way to retain valuable and finite nutrients.
It could well be that the world is already past peak phosphorus, but "[f]ortunately, phosphorus - unlike oil - can be recycled. Responses to a phosphorus peak include re-creating a cycle of nutrients, for example, returning animal (including human) manure to cultivated soil as Asian people have done in the not-so-distant past [4]." Collected food waste can also be composted to return its store of phosphorus to the soil and prevent dispersion away from agricultural ecosystems.
Even if phosphorus doesn't peak until 2030, as David A. Vaccari pointed out in Scientific American, we're now dispersing this critical nutrient much faster than natural land ecosystems would:
... Land ecosystems use and reuse phosphorus in local cycles an average of 46 times. The mineral then, through weathering and runoff, makes its way into the ocean, where marine organisms may recycle it some 800 times before it passes into sediments. Over tens of millions of years tectonic uplift may return it to dry land.
Harvesting breaks up the cycle because it removes phosphorus from the land. In prescientific agriculture, when human and animal waste served as fertilizers, nutrients went back into the soil at roughly the rate they had been withdrawn. But our modern society separates food production and consumption, which limits our ability to return nutrients to the land. Instead we use them once and then flush them away. ...
Industrial agriculture's lack of responsiveness to this critical problem is basically nothing and to no great shock.
An agriculture that recycled nutrients wouldn't need as much, if any, of their synthetic or mined fertilizers. An agriculture that was adapted to local conditions wouldn't want their needy, greedy crop varieties, nor would it raise huge monocrop deserts to feed the industrial food processing beast. A sustainable agriculture would not be pouring into our rivers and oceans one of life's critical limiting nutrients at a rate far faster than it can be recovered to the land.
That sustainable agriculture, it wouldn't be run by the same people who profit from industrial agriculture today. So even if it kills us, the world's agribusiness companies and agribusiness-friendly governments are going to hold onto the current stupidity as long as they can get away with it. Because they just don't give a damn about anything besides concentrating profits, and power, in the hands of the few.
The House Food Safety Bill in Brief
Published August 01, 2009 @ 02:19PM PT
First, the food safety bill wasn't going to pass. Then it did.
The Agriculture Committee, including the ranking minority member, has had a great deal of input apparently, and they are well satisfied.
Eddie Gehman Kohan of Obamafoodorama, writing at Civil Eats, notes again the importance of putting the force of law behind food recalls. Now, even recalls involving deadly bacterial contamination, such as recent E. coli scares, are entirely voluntary and do not require retailers to stop selling products that may be affected.
The Consumers Union is pleased and Rep. Henry Waxman has given his assurances that the bill isn't intended to interfere with standard organic practices or the maintenance of on-farm biodiversity.
Nonetheless, as LaVidaLocavore's Jill Richardson points out, the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition has ongoing concerns about the flat facility fees that won't fund the program but will mostly end up collecting fees from the greater number of small processing facilities that exist. Further, that organic farmers won't be exempted from following new standards that contradict with established organic practices, potential barriers to farm-to-institution provisioning, traceability exemptions for products that are identified by origin all the way to the consumer and the likelihood that product-specific exemptions have been handed out unfairly.
The Washington Post has an overview of the main provisions, which include an increase in the frequency of FDA inspections at high risk processing facilities.
Hopefully, they'll rub the burrs off in the Senate, but there's some important things in this bill.(Photo credit: kimberlyfaye on Flickr.)
