The world must learn to live and farm sustainably
By Taro Aso (Japan’s prime minister)
Published: July 5 2009 20:08
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d6e93cf6-6995-11de-bc9f-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Food security will be the highlight of the discussion when the heads of 27 countries and 11 organisations meet on Friday at the Group of Eight summit in L’Aquila. I expect substantial progress to be made, particularly on aid to countries affected by the food crisis. I will also make a new proposal to promote responsible foreign investment in agriculture, in the face of so-called “land grabs” – the growing trend for large-scale investment in farmland across the developing world.
A year has passed since this phenomenon first gained attention, and new deals continue to hit the headlines. The United Nations special rapporteur called for a set of principles, and the African Union discussed the issue at its summit last week. What is needed now is for concerned parties to frame a co-ordinated global response.
Japan, as the world’s largest net food importer and a major donor in agricultural development, believes it has a role to play.
...
We believe non-binding principles would promote responsible investment and sustainable farmland management. They should include, among other things:
● International agricultural investments, particularly sovereign interventions, must be transparent and accountable. Investors should ensure that key stakeholders, including local communities, are properly informed. Agreements should be disclosed.
● Investors must respect the rights of local people affected by investments, in particular land rights. They should also ensure the benefits are shared with local communities in the form of employment, infrastructure, skills and technology transfer.
● Investment projects need to be integrated into recipient countries’ development strategies and environmental policies.
● Investors must take into account the food supply and demand situation in recipient countries. Foreign investment must not aggravate local food insecurity.
● Deals for land and products should adequately reflect market values. Trade arrangements must adhere to World Trade Organisation rules.
Japan will work with key partners to develop a global platform to agree on principles and compile good practices. We call on interested parties to meet in September. We need a grand coalition with a common vision, for our interests are all entwined.
%^)
Monday, July 6, 2009
Saturday, July 4, 2009
Seafood Update
Greenpeace is particularly concerned with the oceans' health and they've just published an update of their report on seafood retailers.
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/carting-away-the-oceans.pdf
There are some things that may surprise you here: Target has passed Whole Foods in the rankings, WalMart is making progress, and Trader Joe's is in the basement due to a lack of transparency and blatant greenwashing. (I find I am going to TJ's less often these days, and being much more selective about what I buy. They still have some good deals - but it just ain't the same since going national under international ownership.)
Since we don't have a Target with fresh food in this area, it looks like the best bets are local stores or Safeway (groan). I think it's time to tell Raley's, our regional chain, they need to at least get out the red, yellow and green labels and stop selling red snapper and a few other things. Oliver's labels, and says they are cutting down on red items, but you couldn't prove it by me.
I note that in Massachusetts the best bet is Stop and Shop - and of course, local outlets where people will talk to you. But curiously Stop and Shop does not include the red/yellow/green in their ads - you have to go into the store.
Okay - my only question of Greenpeace is what in #*@#!! are "ocean quahogs"? The quahog, Venus mercenaria, is an intertidal species.
Okay - I checked on this. It's another genus (Artica islandica), hardshelled bivalve mollusc, that looks like a quahog, and lives on the North Atlantic sea floor. It is not a sea clam (Spisula solidissima). Apparently the issue is not its rarity, but that it must be taken by the most destructive kind of trawling.
Meanwhile, I am going to spend the rest of the day reciting those Genus species names of the East Coast clams. Aren't they great? And don't forget Mya arenaria the softshell clam (steamers).
http://www.greenpeace.org/raw/content/usa/press-center/reports4/carting-away-the-oceans.pdf
There are some things that may surprise you here: Target has passed Whole Foods in the rankings, WalMart is making progress, and Trader Joe's is in the basement due to a lack of transparency and blatant greenwashing. (I find I am going to TJ's less often these days, and being much more selective about what I buy. They still have some good deals - but it just ain't the same since going national under international ownership.)
Since we don't have a Target with fresh food in this area, it looks like the best bets are local stores or Safeway (groan). I think it's time to tell Raley's, our regional chain, they need to at least get out the red, yellow and green labels and stop selling red snapper and a few other things. Oliver's labels, and says they are cutting down on red items, but you couldn't prove it by me.
I note that in Massachusetts the best bet is Stop and Shop - and of course, local outlets where people will talk to you. But curiously Stop and Shop does not include the red/yellow/green in their ads - you have to go into the store.
Okay - my only question of Greenpeace is what in #*@#!! are "ocean quahogs"? The quahog, Venus mercenaria, is an intertidal species.
Okay - I checked on this. It's another genus (Artica islandica), hardshelled bivalve mollusc, that looks like a quahog, and lives on the North Atlantic sea floor. It is not a sea clam (Spisula solidissima). Apparently the issue is not its rarity, but that it must be taken by the most destructive kind of trawling.
Meanwhile, I am going to spend the rest of the day reciting those Genus species names of the East Coast clams. Aren't they great? And don't forget Mya arenaria the softshell clam (steamers).
Friday, July 3, 2009
Food activity
I've been doing more with food lately than writing about it. I got my annual box of stone fruit from the Fruit Group in Cotati, and there are just a few nectarines left. The rest have been turned into salsa, conserve, jam and some unjarred goodies along the way. And I froze some to go into a crisp or cobbler with blackberries in a few weeks. It won't be long now for the free bounty of creekside berries - the fireworks I can hear as I type this are my first clue as to just what time of year it is.
In the garden we wait for tomatoes to ripen. I have lettuce, annual herbs, summer squash and beets, and I harvested my garlic. It's drying in the garage. Since the garages are somewhat loosely connected, I'm sure my neighbors wonder why they can smell garlic when they go to get their cars and motorcycles. I find the smell, the look, everything about it one of the more satisfying things I've done. It just did its thing underground from Thanksgiving to July 1 - et voila!
The one thing I have been thinking about is the opportunity to speak about food issues at Epiphany West at CDSP the last week in January. John Jeavons and I are going to be doing a three hour workshop, focusing on the boom in community gardens and the importance of small scale ego-agriculture. And I will have an opportunity to offer my CALL course on food and faith again in the spring of 2010. Seems like with increased interest in these things and the tie in to Epiphany West, we ought to be able to make it go.
And the one thing I have been writing, if you can call it writing, is compiling my tried and true preserve and condiment recipes from their various sources - scrawled over clippings and books with pages stuck together with jam! I was feeling the need to have them all in one place - for myself, and for some at the garden with whom I may share them.
In the garden we wait for tomatoes to ripen. I have lettuce, annual herbs, summer squash and beets, and I harvested my garlic. It's drying in the garage. Since the garages are somewhat loosely connected, I'm sure my neighbors wonder why they can smell garlic when they go to get their cars and motorcycles. I find the smell, the look, everything about it one of the more satisfying things I've done. It just did its thing underground from Thanksgiving to July 1 - et voila!
The one thing I have been thinking about is the opportunity to speak about food issues at Epiphany West at CDSP the last week in January. John Jeavons and I are going to be doing a three hour workshop, focusing on the boom in community gardens and the importance of small scale ego-agriculture. And I will have an opportunity to offer my CALL course on food and faith again in the spring of 2010. Seems like with increased interest in these things and the tie in to Epiphany West, we ought to be able to make it go.
And the one thing I have been writing, if you can call it writing, is compiling my tried and true preserve and condiment recipes from their various sources - scrawled over clippings and books with pages stuck together with jam! I was feeling the need to have them all in one place - for myself, and for some at the garden with whom I may share them.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
seeds of discontent
Harry Eyres, Slow Lane columnist for the Financial Times Life & Arts section, wrote on the weekend of June 13/June 14 2009 an extended review-essay of three new books on seeds - including a biography of Luther Burbank (1849-1926), who while working in a plough factory in Massachusetts found a two-year-old book by Charles Darwin on animal and plant breeding. The result is edible history - hybrids developed by Burbank in his 50 years in Santa Rosa, California, are still commercially important. Tho Monsanto seems to have taken some of his initiatives a bit farther and around a bend ...
An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds by Jonathan Silvertown (The University of Chicago Press)
The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants by Jane S. Smith (The Penguin Press)
Forgotten Fruits: The Stories Behind Britain’s Traditional Fruit and Vegetables by Christopher Stocks (Windmill)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b3340af8-56de-11de-9a1c-00144feabdc0.html
%^)
An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds by Jonathan Silvertown (The University of Chicago Press)
The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants by Jane S. Smith (The Penguin Press)
Forgotten Fruits: The Stories Behind Britain’s Traditional Fruit and Vegetables by Christopher Stocks (Windmill)
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/b3340af8-56de-11de-9a1c-00144feabdc0.html
%^)
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
How many things wrong can you find in this picture?
Or
Another Sunday, another atrocious story on Weekend Edition.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105381728&ft=1&f=1006
This time the story is about dairy farming in Saudi Arabia.
My first question is: what are those folks doing drinking milk anyway? Aren't they low on the lactase scale? Surely there are food that are both more appropriate both to produce and to the local cultural diet than cow's milk.
Second question: While I guess I can understand why a Saudi royal would want something he saw in California, why twice as big? Think about the stench when driving certain highways in California - stench from dairy and beef feedlots. Now multiply that.
Third question: Do they recycle any of the waste water from this operation - or is it all so polluted with excrement that it would take too much time or room to do so. I'm thinking about all that water used to cool the cows in 120F heat.
Fourth question: Didn't anybody realize that this was the desert, and that aquifers run dry - and won't be replenished given the decreasing rainfall in the desert latitudes?
Fifth question: Have people no sense of justice, of the human right to food? The most appalling thing about this piece was the report that countries like Saudi Arabia, because they've decimated their own natural resources with inappropriate agriculture, are buying tracts of land in places like Ethiopia and Sudan - countries of deep-seated food insecurity. Is no intervention possible to stop this? Will those who have oil buy land, water and food - at the expense of the lives of those who don't?
Or is this just a more blatant form of normal corporate colonialism?
Another Sunday, another atrocious story on Weekend Edition.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105381728&ft=1&f=1006
This time the story is about dairy farming in Saudi Arabia.
My first question is: what are those folks doing drinking milk anyway? Aren't they low on the lactase scale? Surely there are food that are both more appropriate both to produce and to the local cultural diet than cow's milk.
Second question: While I guess I can understand why a Saudi royal would want something he saw in California, why twice as big? Think about the stench when driving certain highways in California - stench from dairy and beef feedlots. Now multiply that.
Third question: Do they recycle any of the waste water from this operation - or is it all so polluted with excrement that it would take too much time or room to do so. I'm thinking about all that water used to cool the cows in 120F heat.
Fourth question: Didn't anybody realize that this was the desert, and that aquifers run dry - and won't be replenished given the decreasing rainfall in the desert latitudes?
Fifth question: Have people no sense of justice, of the human right to food? The most appalling thing about this piece was the report that countries like Saudi Arabia, because they've decimated their own natural resources with inappropriate agriculture, are buying tracts of land in places like Ethiopia and Sudan - countries of deep-seated food insecurity. Is no intervention possible to stop this? Will those who have oil buy land, water and food - at the expense of the lives of those who don't?
Or is this just a more blatant form of normal corporate colonialism?
Friday, June 5, 2009
Ancient no-till crop rotation
I've been reading Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity.
This is not my usual fare, edited as it is by a couple of M.D.'s and very anthropocentric. But hey, it's a pretty good book - coffee tablish, but very well-crafted essays, including two relating specifically to the food system.
In the chapter on "GM Foods and Organic Farming" they quote Virgil on green manures and no-till methods:
in Part I of "The Georgics"
Sow in the golden grain where previously
You raised a crop of beans that gaily shook
Within their pods, or a tiny brood of vetch,
Or the slender stems and rustling undergrowth
Of bitter lupine...
Thus will the land find rest in its change of crop,
And earth left unplowed show you gratitude.
This is not my usual fare, edited as it is by a couple of M.D.'s and very anthropocentric. But hey, it's a pretty good book - coffee tablish, but very well-crafted essays, including two relating specifically to the food system.
In the chapter on "GM Foods and Organic Farming" they quote Virgil on green manures and no-till methods:
in Part I of "The Georgics"
Sow in the golden grain where previously
You raised a crop of beans that gaily shook
Within their pods, or a tiny brood of vetch,
Or the slender stems and rustling undergrowth
Of bitter lupine...
Thus will the land find rest in its change of crop,
And earth left unplowed show you gratitude.
Monday, June 1, 2009
A World of Contrasts
After a many-houred drive home from Bakersfield yesterday, along Highway 99 through what I want to think of as the trail mix belt - nut trees on one side of the road, grape vines on the other, and Selma, the raisin capital of the world - noting the billboards advertising herbicides, and others will pleas to support agricultural water - it was a nice suprise to hear this story about organic farming in the Punjab on NPR this morning:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104708731&ft=1&f=3
The online prose is less favorable to organic than the radio report - wonder why? - but still there is one well-placed ag commission official promoting 70% organic for India as a whole. Imagine!
Give Monsanto a kick in the pants!
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104708731&ft=1&f=3
The online prose is less favorable to organic than the radio report - wonder why? - but still there is one well-placed ag commission official promoting 70% organic for India as a whole. Imagine!
Give Monsanto a kick in the pants!
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