Honeybees can inhibit biodiversity

"The Problem with Honeybees," a November 4 article in Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-problem-with-honey-bees/ points this out, and names the critters for what they are, a "massively distributed livestock animal."

I'm mostly stashing this link here in case I want to follow up on it later. 

The Global Alliance for the Future of Food, a group of philanthropic organizations, has published a guide for government action on improving food systems. 

https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GA_SystemicSolutions-HealthyFoodSystems_GovtGuide_Oct2020.pdf

It's supported by a collection of case studies from around the globe:

https://futureoffood.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GA_SystemicSolutions-HealthyFoodSystems_CaseStudies_Oct2020.pdf

In the government guide the lenses through which issues are seen are those of health: human health, ecological health, animal health. Recommendations in this document are cross-referenced to insights from the stories in the case study document. A table documents which case studies reflect which recommendations. 

In the case study document little ikons show which of the recommendations are illustrated by each study. This strikes me as a very useful model for presenting information about food system change. Some people learn best from lists and tables, others need stories and visuals. Many reports would be improved by saying a little less but presenting in several forms and with differing approaches. 

Unlike in many international documents advocating for food system change, this one requires a bit of drill down to find the word agroecology. Also, none of the recommendations touch on access to land. 

Here's the short list of the recommendations:

1. Take an integrated and inclusive approach 
2. Set health-based goals and targets 
3. Implement mandatory health impact assessment on food policies
4. Use multiple, diverse policies 
5. Leverage agricultural subsidies 
6. Facilitate affordability of health-promoting foods 
7. Run health and food safety assessments of international trade agreements and policies
8. Support local and small entities 
9. Develop sustainable dietary guidelines (FBSDGs) and ensure public food procurement standards align with them
10. Foster ecological, food, and health literacy 
11. Invest in public health research and innovation  
12. Put the precautionary principle at the heart of the research and innovation agenda
13. Promote dialogue and collaboration
14. Support and commit to international action frameworks

W.K. Kellogg Foundation seems to be a central player in the Alliance. The other principle funder of this report was Fondazione Cariplo, associated with a commercial bank in Milan. 

Leading with food policy

How many politicians make the first policy roll out of their campaigns about food? Michelle Wu, angling for the office of Mayor of the City of Boston (election in 2021) has released a white paper on food policy. Wu sees food system change as integral to city planning, as well as a key to the road back from the Covid19 pandemic. She is quoted in an October 20 story on Boston.com

"It’s clear that food justice could lead our recovery from this pandemic, and it will be critical to making sure that we are addressing the needs in this moment but with the goal of transforming systems that already weren’t working prior to COVID-19.” 

I found the full report here: 

https://assets.ctfassets.net/1hf11j69ure4/5PJJnCGV7QIc7KgMiftjlr/51903afb4f82962d02d3665c2a02615e/Wu-Food-Justice-101920.pdf

Beef: It's what for (a planet destroying) dinner

Just filing this link here and promising to rev up this blog again after six weeks away with a long reflection soon.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/02/agriculture-cattle-us-water-shortages-colorado-river

A story that tells the tale of our messed up food system

and also reveals how messed up the USDA is.
It's appalling that our local produce aggregator and distributor, FEED Sonoma, with existing relationships with many small-scale farmers, was passed over, and a grant awarded to a personal care products distributor. What?!?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/05/22/trumps-signature-effort-direct-farm-surplus-needy-families-abruptly-withdraws-large-contract-amid-criticism-programs-rollout/
The article also includes a good summary of the situation with the food supply chain nationally, about which I hope to write more soon. Getting my head around anything has been difficult these past ten weeks.

For future reference

Because really - where are people getting all this extra time?
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/review/best-food-cooking-movies
There are a few movies here I'd like to see. Some again, but not Chef. I couldn't figure out why people raved about it. I think Big Night is among my most watched movies ever.

Stuck at home?

I don't know about you, but I am finding more than enough things to amuse me. I thought that on house arrest I might have to resort to cleaning, but so far I've only tackled a few deferred chores. There are so many extra opportunities in the knitting community I feel a bit overwhelmed with the choices. I've got food on hand, exchanges on the Bean Club Facebook group are frequent, and I will go out to the community garden to check on a few young things and to harvest the last of the sprouting broccoli and some more over-wintered chard. 
But now there is this: a one hour zoomed learning opportunity each day starting Monday the 23rd. 1 p.m. Eastern, 10 a.m. Pacific.
https://slowfoodusa.org/slow-food-live/

The End of Farming?

I'm not quite clear what the point of view of this article is, but it offers a nice ramble through the changes - or not - in British agriculture and rural land uses. There are many resonances here with our own issues in the United States. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/25/the-end-of-farming-rewilding-intensive-agriculture-food-safety

"Intensive agriculture prioritises a bumper harvest – the annual dividend – while the new approach [re-wilding, also known as environmentally friendly regeneration] emphasises the preservation of the initial capital – the land itself."

One of the farmers quoted in the article, of the conventional-intensive sort, opines "that there is no in-between." 

Really? It seems that part of the press to maintain the get-big-or-get-out, input heavy style of farming as we have recently known it, is the need to feed more people in the coming decades. But I have to ask - isn't it just colonialism to think it our (affluent westerners) responsibility to feed the world? What about helping the 2/3rds world to develop appropriate, sustainable technologies to feed themselves? What about joining in the fight globally for economic and political reforms that increase access to land for small scale farmers? And why, on the home front here and in Britain, is it so black and white that we cannot encourage no-till practices, the restoration of hedgerows, and the return of mixed farming even in large-scale agriculture? 

Faux Spring garden report

This weather is lasting way too long. High 60s out at the garden today, and no serious rain in the 10 day forecast. I did some weeding. And I watered - yes, on President's Day weekend - the favas, garlic and sprouting broccoli. After a long wait, the sprouting broccoli is sprouting.

Here We Go Again

It's not a food story. Well, you can eat Cannabis, perhaps even consider it part of a balanced diet, but it's certainly not one of the four or five food groups and you won't find it on My Plate.
But it's the same old story of "get big or get out" in a state and country where rampant capitalism thwarts the integrity of human communities and their ecological context.
Here's an op ed from the Los Angeles Times:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-02-11/cannabis-farms-california-agriculture-regulations

Practical Farmers of Iowa

Mostly I just love the name of this group:
https://practicalfarmers.org/
But I like their purpose, too:
We use farmer-led investigation and information sharing to help farmers practice an agriculture that benefits both the land and people.
And the fact that it's a farmer-to-farmer kind of organization. 

And I skimmed this from their values.
Curiosity, creativity, collaboration and community
I want every group I am a part of to embrace these. 

I learned from a Civil Eats story today that the Leopold Center has been defunded. It really makes no sense to me how a party that defines itself as conservative - you know which one - is so short-sighted. Because not supporting research in sustainable and resilient agriculture trades the best of our past and our hope for the future away in the service of present day greed. 
There's a whole lot of bad stuff going on beyond D.C.

When there's nothing decent on Netflix

I'm not sure why I am just discovering this resource now: live streams and then archived interviews and panels on food system issues from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in cooperation with The Edible Schoolyard. https://edibleschoolyard.org/ee101
I must say that I find a little Alice Waters goes a long way, but the speakers are top notch and the topics timely. I'm going to watch a few of these - perhaps even some in real time this evening, or a week from tonight when they tackle regenerative agriculture - and then offer a few substantive reviews. Stay tuned.

Book review

Eat Less Water 

by Florencia Ramirez (Pasadena; Red Hen Press, 2017)

My overall impression of this book is that Ramirez tries to do too many things. Part travelogue, part
cookbook, with facts (some footnotes and references) and opinions, it’s an interesting book to stroll through or dip into, but a bit scattered in its argument. 

I do like the food-by-food chaptering, which encourages one to think about one facet of diet at a time. For example, with ecotarian goals I need to think more about the amount and sources of dairy in my diet. I’m not sure, though, that the numbers at the chapter’s head make sense. Does a pound of butter really require more than eight times the water to produce than a pound of cheese does? Maybe I ought to give up butter and just eat more cheese? Or it may be  that the numbers don’t tell the whole story, since the by-products of both cheese and butter making do have uses that share their water burden. I am also really sure that I don’t need to purchase milk from dairy cows treated with homeopathy. 

Which leads me to mention that I’m not sure the author’s always choosing organic in everything she

purchases is best. There are farmers using no or greatly reduced tilling whose crops are not certified

organic, and may be a better choice than products of large scale organic farms. 

On the positive side, I’m still pondering Ramirez’s instructions for purchasing flour. If you don’t know

how the wheat was irrigated, purchase flour from the Dakotas and Montana where it isn’t irrigated,

she instructs. I was happy a year or so ago, thinking closer is usually better, to find organic whole

wheat flour from California; am I wrong to be buying it? 

Finally, a big plus is the author’s inclusion of beverages: coffee, wine, tequila, and beer. I’m a

cider drinker myself these days; but do you know how many gallons it took to produce that

six-pack of beer? 

Climate Change and our food supply

I can't possibly include all the resources I have amassed in the short paper I'm working on for the Episcopal Networks Collaborative. So here's an article on one of my favorite fruits, cranberries - just so I won't lose it.
https://foodprint.org/blog/cranberries-climate-change/

Where I buy it when I don't grow it

Imwalle Gardens
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/10538928-181/santa-rosas-imwalle-gardens-a?fbclid=IwAR2M_Tiaf2vCr4Fk3LBcqJuzGaLRnXoRy6KEZMqxANr5GEYQ0D5wx4HWGUk&artslide=4&sba=AAS

And in season, Chiatri de Laguna Farm
https://www.farmtrails.org/business/chiatri-de-laguna-farm/

Both are less than two miles from where I live.

Winter gleaning