The information we have been seeking

I'm still annoyed that CNN did not allow free streaming of the climate town hall, but I probably wouldn't have learned much about the candidates' positions on climate change in relationship to agriculture and the food system. It's not an interest of urban media, even though everybody eats.

Here's a gift from the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/climate-change-agriculture-presidential-debates/
I've not had time to study this and follow the links, and but until I do and can comment, here's the dope.

Food System Scorecard

Fun and informative:

http://foodpolicyaction.org/

See how your senators and representative voted, or have fun entering names of legislators in the news.  When it comes to food security and agricultural sustainability, is it any surprise that it's Pelosi 100 vs Boehner 0?

Community Garden legislation

was introduced in Congress last month.

One was a bill to make August National Community Garden Awareness Month. With lots of whereases - primarily from a food security standpoint - it seems to have gotten stuck in committee. Let's celebrate it anyway.

HR3225 is in the House Committee on Agriculture, and actually proposes grant support for community gardens. You can read the whole thing on Thomas. I'm most interested in the first reason it gives for community gardening - the environmental impact one, with health second, and educating around and about community gardens third.

My congressmember is a co-sponsor of the bill, but after three weeks no one in her office has called me back. One of my fellow Food System Working Group members here is trying to get a visit when she and her staff are at home this month.

It also seems that the agriculture appropriations bill for 2010 was amended (by Sanders, VT) to include funds for school community gardens, but I must admit to being a bit rusty at following all this bill history.

So now a generation has an excuse

not to like beets! Because Barack Obama doesn't like beets, and there won't be any in the White House garden. The beets are in at my garden - but only one other gardener has any planted. Why this anti-beet feeling in a culture that likes sweet things?

Was it Bush I who didn't like broccoli? There's some here. But I don't see the promised arugula on the plan. Must one plant it in the fall in the D.C. area?

So the White House vegetable garden seemed inevitable, and now everyone is taking credit for it, especially Alice Waters.

I've just looked over the plan and it makes pretty good sense. I'm happy to see they are confining the mint - but I wonder why not interplant the other herbs, especially the annual and tender perennial ones? and the chives? They all help with pest control or attract beneficials.

Hallelujah for the rhubarb - but I am wondering why so few carrots? - and why next to the dill with which they compete?

I assume the tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos and eggplants will go in after the peas and early lettuces.

And that in time they will realize the berry patch is way too small, and they need an asparagus bed!

If John Jeavons were there they would plant some grains, too. Perhaps grains and favas over next winter? They've got way more than enough land to plant staples, like grains and potatoes. Oh dear - have they shunned potatoes, too, but just not told us? Now is when they should go in...

Follow the link to see the garden plan:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/dining/20garden.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Changes in D.C.

Michelle Obama has served lunch at a soup kitchen which serves fresh and local
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/dining/11lady.html
and is promoting community gardening. Will they really tear up the south lawn as Michael Pollan suggested?

Well, even if they don't, Secretary Vilsack had an asphalt breaking party for Lincoln's birthday and is eyeing the jackhammered driveway as a potential garden now that spring is just around the corner, reported NPR yesterday morning.

Will Vilsack's proposed changes be "radical" though, as NPR suggested? My guess is it will be a little at a time.

Am I the last person to discover this blog?

http://obamafoodorama.blogspot.com/

I'm labeling this "politics" though it probably ought to be "politics, silly."

I'm heartened though, by the fact that the president-elect offered to buy shave ice for the reporters following him around Oahu.

We all should have voted for Cynthia McKinney

In spite of all the lobbying by organic, sustainable ag, and related consumer groups, Obama is about to appoint the dreaded Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, Secretary of Agriculture. The little lip service the president elect has given to agricultural issues has been just that, apparently. Vilsack is reportedly a fan of GMOs and a friend to Monsanto. Just what we need. GRRRRRRR.

Still waiting to see what the food and politics message is

I've been overwhelmed lately with just too many volunteer bits and pieces added to high demands in both part-time jobs. I've got a stack of things to blog about, and can't see much time to do so until next week.

But right this very minute I am so annoyed I had to say something.

I'm sure glad I haven't been holding my breath waiting for Obama's nomination of an agriculture secretary.

But I'm also annoyed with the press and with the sustainable/organic ag advocates.

First the press - why is agriculture not seen as an environmental appointment? Few things have more impact on air and water quality, conservation of land, soils, diversity. And, for heavens' sake - forestry is part of agriculture.

Then the lobbyists - a visionary journalist can not necessarily run a government department. In order to get reform there must be someone in the role who can deal with all the parties involved. We don't need a GMO advocate in Monsanto's pocket; but neither do we need a "crunchy granola" type.

I just had to get that last one in there. Yesterday someone I interviewed - in the rust belt - said she was not a "crunchy granola environmentalist". I let her know that I make my own and eat it almost daily. I still have no idea what she was talking about. Perhaps someone privileged enough to be an idealist about environmental activism? without regard to economic justice implications? If so, I'll borrow her phrase.

another Pollan report

This arrived in my email inbox last evening:

from http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/10/23/the_full_obama_interview/

Obama Response to Pollan Article!

"I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen [sic] about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That's just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board. For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation."

But there's the rub... What will need to be done in the short term that will work against reform in the long term?

BTW - in passing a few days ago I heard a caller to public radio suggest Michael Pollan for secretary of agriculture. Maybe not - journalism turned advocacy seems to me a different set of skills than administration and planning - with advocacy, of course.
But is there a likely candidate who has the skills and knowledge but is not bought and sold by industrial ag? Is there someone who will renew the traditional connection between environmental concerns and agriculture? (Forestry, after all, is a part of the Department of Agriculture.)

Fear mongering and elections

I wasn't going to say much about Proposition 2 here, because it seems to me such a no-brainer. We've all seen the Meatrix, right? And we like the A in the LOAF acronym for ethical eating - Animal friendly?

But last night I heard an ad on television which made me very angry. It appealed to people's fear of food borne illness (bird flu!), it appealed to people's xenophobia (food from Mexico!) and it appealed to people's romantic notions of "farmers" - who would all be out of business.

Right.

Please, let's not call people who own CAFO's farmers, with all the farmer in the dell images the word conjures up. Watch the Meatrix again, to deromanticize your notion of industrial farming.

Here's the link to Oprah's exploration of the topic:

http://www.oprah.com/dated/oprahshow/oprahshow_20081008_animals

And here's a nice quotation from the Nicholas Kristof opinion piece that apparently got her going on this topic. (Think of him as a former Oregon farm boy who eats meat.)

"I draw the line at animals being raised in cruel conditions. The law punishes teenage boys who tie up and abuse a stray cat. So why allow industrialists to run factory farms that keep pigs almost all their lives in tiny pens that are barely bigger than they are?"

And one more resource. The National Conference of Churches Eco-justice unit has published a children's curriculum on "Sacred Food" with lots of info about animal cruelty. I just learned of this today, but will review it soon. You will need to go to their site and sign in to download it, an unfortunate feature of their work.

Finally, I just noted on the Prop 2 web site that United Farm Workers support Prop 2. If you can't think about animal rights, think about human rights, and the tremendous toll it takes on workers in CAFOs to disregard the life and comfort of animals day in and day out. Dakota by Martha Grimes was my least favorite book she's written, but the descriptions of the stench, the stress and the learned callousness of those working in a CAFO made me shudder.

Michael Pollan's open letter

Now that my baseball season is over I continue to catch up on my food reading.

First, a pet peeve vindicated. Both Marian Nestle and Michael Pollan refer to "healthful" food. Of course, I want my tomato plants to be robust, and my chicken - if I ate it - not to be diseased - but when we speak of the effect of food on our bodies it is healthful food we desire and "healthful" we should use, not "healthy".

I'd heard of Michael Pollan's modest proposal in his open letter to the Farmer-in-Chief elect, to turn the South Lawn of the White House into an organic garden. But I hadn't realized the letter, which appeared in last Sunday's New York Times magazine, was so thorough.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

He begins with the thought that little has been said about food during the campaign (my observation, too, in these notes) but that three issues that keep coming up all have food policy dimensions: energy independence, climate change, and health care.

He also points out the international dimensions of food policy which sorely need attention, and food's interrelationship with national security.

"While there are alternatives to oil, there are no alternatives to food."

Pollan's basic proposal is to resolarize our food system.

Will we be able to produce enough food this way? The only way to find out, he figures, is to try. He points out some of the upside, and also identifies the challenging bit - the people needed to farm when sun energy, not fossil fuels, are the basis.

There are several little things he suggests that intrigue me. His idea of real estate developers needing to complete a "food system impact statement" is probably something we have needed for a couple of generations. Fortunately I live in a part of the world where there is now some attempt to confine sprawl and preserve ag lands - but not enough.

I also loved his idea for a second bar code on food products, which could be scanned by consumer devices, not just store equipment, and would tell the story of that food item's production and journey. This is way beyond COOL.

Perhaps dearest to my heart is push for decentralizing our food system in this country. "Whatever may be lost in efficiency by localizing food production is gained in resilience."

Conventional Food

I watched quite a lot of the coverage of the Democratic National Convention (a good thing to do when it's too hot to do anything), but I heard precious little about food issues - except a nod or two to rising prices. I hope I missed something.

Aside from food, in the economic justice dimension, I find it interesting that so many want to claim working class origins - but so few talk openly about the poor and the working class today. It's always the middle class we hear about.

Last evening Jon Stewart asked what kind of a silly remark is "We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For." Dear, dear. It's the title of a book by Alice Walker. And as far as food system change goes, I'm not sure we are the ones we've been waiting for, but it appears we are going to have to be the ones to do it.