"The destiny of nations depends on the manner in which they feed themselves."-Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste (1825)
Our relationship to food not only determines our health and well being but what we choose to buy directly impacts the supply and demand of the food chain. Perhaps the old adage, "we are what we eat" is truer than ever. We put it in our bodies, buy it, prepare it with love and share it with friends and family. Some of us are lucky enough to grow it. Yet today only three companies control 20% of the world’s seed supply, Pioneer (now owned by DuPont), Monsanto (now owned by Pharmacia, formerly know as Upjohn) and Norvartis (the spawn of the merger of Sandoz and Ciba-Geigy). Monopoly control of anything as precious as the resource of seed for food is a formula for catastrophe. Seeds grown for generations are now replaced by Genetically Modifed Organsims (GMOs). Our farmers are caught in a cycle of dependency. Three quarters of the world’s crops of soybeans, corn and canola are grown in the US. The corporate seeds are designed with a “terminator gene” and cannot be replanted from the previous season’s crop. The farmers are forced back year after year to buy seeds rather than reap the cycle of self-sustaining, biotic communities that have been maintained for millennia.
The worldwide food crisis is real. In America, we are truly blessed with an abundance of choices. Do not doubt that a fork has the capacity to dig a grave or till fertility for all of the future generations to come. From Haiti to Egypt rising food prices have sparked civil unrest. The jump in prices for basic staples is stretching household budgets to the limits.This coupled with foods packed with pesticides demand you think before you buy. Common sense says you should avoid eating foods with ingredients you can't pronounce! "Several government reports conclude that 60 – 90% of all types of cancer in the U.S. are related to environmental factors ranging from food preservatives and additives to toxic chemical substances." - Douglas Costle, EPA .
310 pesticides currently monitored by the FDA have not even been classified with regard to the threat they may pose to human health. A conventionally grown apple contains 27 different pesticides and herbicides these days. Yikes! Also, children are at a greater risk since their immune and nervous systems are still developing. Start by demanding organic produce in our local super markets. Most produce managers that we have encountered and raised this issue with have been open to accommodating our request. Have a thought? Contact us.
Nielsen Company, a market research firm, reported that organic food sales rose only 4 percent in the four week period ending October 4th, compared to 20 percent a year in recent years. What's keeping shoppers from purchasing organic food? Cost. No question. And who can blame them? But let's understand why and what we can do about it. Organic food usually will cost at least 50 percent more than conventionally grown food and sometimes much more than that. There are several reasons, some of them pretty surprising. First, organic food is more expensive to produce. Without cheap fertilizers and pesticides, farmers have to do a lot more manual labor, and people are much more expensive than petrochemicals.
By Sloan Barnett - The Huffington Post , November 10, 2008
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The Protein Pyramid
Fish devasted by food market.
Per capita meat consumption more than doubled over the past half-century as the global economy expanded. It is expected to double again by 2050. Which raises the question, what does all that meat eat before it becomes meat? Increasingly the answer is very small fish harvested from the ocean and ground into meal and pressed into oil. According to a new report by scientists from the University of British Columbia and financed by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science, 37 percent by weight of all the fish taken from the ocean is forage fish: small fish like sardines and menhaden. Nearly half of that is fed to farmed fish; most of the rest is fed to pigs and poultry.
Editorial - The New York Times , November 10, 2008
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Food For The Soul
Food has a profound capacity for meaning and fostering community.Food serves memory, which deepens experience.
By Thomas Moore - Resurgence , Nov 05,2008
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Dear Mr. Next President -- Food, Food, Food
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration -- the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril.
Michael Pollan - The New York Times , October 21, 2008
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Local foods get starring role on menus
Local foods support local farmers.
Even though he's a new father and a new chef in town, Tim D'Souza of Idlewyld Inn is trying hard to get out to area farms in and around London. He realizes the importance of incorporating locally produced food on his menu. So when he can, D'Souza zips out into the countryside and chats with farmers and vendors. "Any time a chef goes into a new position, we work a lot. So I don't get a lot of free time. I have been able to get away for a few hours on my day off," he said. "You develop relationships and get to know people and products. It's a growing process."
By Kathy Rumleski - The London Free Press | Ontario, Canada , October 12, 2008
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Farmer in Chief
Reform food production now.
Dear Mr. President-Elect,
It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.
By Michael Pollan - The New York Times , October 12, 2008
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Using Electrons To Treat Organic Seeds
Electrons kills fungus & viruses.
Sales of organic products are booming: Consumers want their food to be untainted. To avoid the use of fungicides yet nevertheless protect plants from disease, researchers have developed a method that involves bombarding seeds with electrons to kill fungal spores and viruses. Whereas a few years ago, organic products were sold exclusively by small health-food stores, they can now be found in the majority of supermarkets. A growing number of consumers prefer to buy organic food that has been grown without the use of chemical pesticides. Conventional farming practice involves treating seeds with a mixture of chemicals: Fungicides to protect the emerging seedlings from attack by microscopic fungi, insecticides against wireworms, aphids and biting insects, herbicides to suppress weeds. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Electron Beam and Plasma Technology FEP in Dresden have developed an alternative to fungicide treatment.
ScienceDaily , October 10, 2008
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Why Take Food Seriously?
Good Ole Home Cookin!
Our relationship with food is changing more rapidly than ever, and like many others, I’ve watched in awe. As a food journalist and author for 30 years, my perspective has been unusual: I’ve worked with influential people in the field while remaining in frequent contact with my readers, who are some unknowable percentage of the home-cooking, food-obsessed segment of the public. I’ve never been more hopeful. (In fact, I was never hopeful at all until recently.) Each year, each month it sometimes seems, there are more signs that convenience, that mid-20th-century curse word, may give way to quality — even what you might call wholesomeness — just before we all turn into the shake-sucking fatties of “Wall-E.”
By Mark Bittman - The New York Times , October 10, 2008
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The Biotech Façade
We deserve the truth!
When genetically engineered (GE) food was commercially introduced in 1994, it was touted as a solution to some of the world´s food problems. However, the promised advantages have never been realized. GE crops do not benefit consumers, do not feed the world, do not help the environment, and are not rigorously regulated – despite myths propagated by the multi-billion dollar biotechnology industry and its many front groups. Food prices are soaring, people continue to go hungry, and the use of pesticides with GE crops is escalating. The Center for Food Safety coined GE crops "biotech snake oil: a quack cure for hunger" and said the tremendous hype surrounding biotechnology has obscured the facts.
By Beth H. Harrison - The American Chronicle , October 06, 2008
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Edible herbs and flowers at one of Jacobs Farm's
Jacob's farm's edible herbs/flowers.
A Santa Cruz County jury has awarded $1 million to an organic farm in Santa Cruz whose edible herbs were contaminated by pesticides applied to vegetables on nearby farms. Lawyers for Jacobs Farm / Del Cabo said today that organophosphate pesticides evaporating after application and then blowing onto the organic herbs made it impossible for Jacobs Farm to sell significant portions of its 2006 and 2007 harvests of sage, rosemary and dill. While there are rules in place to control pesticide drift from aerial spraying, neither federal nor state governments regulate evaporative drift of pesticides.
Environmental News Service | Santa Cruz, CA , September 29, 2008
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