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? 

June is national Dairy Month

So a few thoughts on dairy, particularly in my corner of the world.
The dairy business is in trouble - or at least stressed - here. Milk is still the second biggest crop ($-wise) after wine grapes. It's close to 90% organic in Sonoma County, too, partly because the price of organic milk is not controlled the way conventional milk is. But there are sustainability advantages beyond income ones. So what's the problem?
1)The growth rate of organic milk sales has slowed. One wonders if the appeal has reached most of those who can afford the higher prices.
2) According to Albert Strauss, at a recent Food System Alliance meeting, organic dairies behave the same way as conventional ones, upping production when prices slide, compounding the problem.
3) Some processors have moved away from our area, in search of a lower cost of doing business, leaving producers scrambling. ( I stopped buying Wallaby yogurt when I realized it was no longer sourcing milk here, and was now effectively Dannon. I buy local milk and make my own using mesophilic cultures., that is, at room temperature on the kitchen counter.)

We hear we need to reduce our consumption of animal products in our diets to make an impact on greenhouse gas generation, but we also need to think about the positive effect of organic and resilient dairies, and buy the products of our local ones. (That is, organic milk and other dairy products that carry the name of a local dairy or creamery, not a general brand.) The best of them improve the pastures they use, pay attention to water quality, etc. And did you know that organic cows live longer lives? Information in sources varies, but it seems CAFO milk cows live a maximum of six years, averaging four or so. Organic dairy cows can be productive members of a herd into the double digits, and have a maximum life span well into their teens.

You can read about Strauss dairy and creamery here:
https://www.strausfamilycreamery.com/mission-practices/
And learn more about a family dairy near me, Beretta, here:
https://sonomarcd.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/SRCD_Beretta_Profile-in-Stewardship_2016_FINAL.pdf

Meanwhile, make sure the milk you consume is doing not just your body, but the environment and your local economy, good.

What didn't happen with the Farm Bill

Part of the cliff-avoidance legislative package left much of our agriculture sector still standing on the edge.

The 2008 Farm Bill was renewed until September.   Doesn't sound bad until you realize that no change is a reactionary move.  The kinds of programs we'd hoped to see more of - in support of small farms, conservation, generational transition among farmers, etc. aren't going to happen any time soon.   Subsidies of conventional crops, some of which are now seen as not much needed even by the farmers, will continue.
Here's a short story from this morning on NPR
http://www.npr.org/2013/01/03/168515101/farmers-frustrated-by-farm-bill-extension

Why did this happen?  Because even though the Sentate passed a new and more progressive farm bill in early summer, and the House Agriculture community moved it along, House leadership failed to bring it   to the floor.  So are all those rural folks going to continue to vote Republican?   Why?

Many ag advocacy organizations worked for a modified extension.  We here of the Interfaith Sustainable Agriculture Collaborative signed on.  But it just didn't have the traction needed.
The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition called the extension of the 2008 bill "awful" - which I think is more disparaging than using profanity would have been.

A quick internet search revealed that both sustainable and conventional agriculture leadership are complaining.  Conventional dairy farmers got caught in the price fixing bind.   Consumers may celebrate that milk prices do not rise, but it's inevitable that they will eventually as more dairymen and women go out of business.

A few useful programs in the 2008 bill had been unfunded since the fall - but they were refunded by this extension.  Some of them are even programs that help reduce negative environmental impacts of farming.  And SNAP is fully funded again for now, though the fiscal reactionaries are breathing fire in its direction.

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?

What are you beefing about now?

The latest Episcopal Ecological Network newsletter contained a rant from one member about not eating beef. I get this, having done it for ten years or more. (Unlike stopping smoking, I did not note the actual date, since, as far as I know, beef is not physically addictive.)

What I also get is that rants are not the way to change hearts and minds.

If you've been reading this blog, I hope you've been reading the Minimalist in the Wednesday NY Times and the blog Bitten. If not follow this link for some sensible advice on how to move the meat off the center of your plate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/11/dining/11mini.html?ex=1370923200&en=8ffda17d995d2228&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Meanwhile I've been thinking - if it's methane we're concerned about, surely we need to cut down the amount of dairy products we eat, too. And some food alarmist did opine that cheese is addictive. Oh my. I can substitute some soy products for dairy, but others are really unappealing. There's also the fact that we have good local dairies here, but no local commercial soy growers. How does one weigh food miles vs. bovine flatulence when deciding how to eat green?

Global Wheat

I had a good weekend in the cluster, but realized when checking email on the road last night and showing my hosts some of my favorite blog links that I hadn't posted here in a week and a half. So I came home this afternoon and checked some of the food news. There were several pretty depressing articles in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/worldbusiness/09crop.html?ex=1362801600&en=c7d5732b39765933&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

This article on rising grain prices raises more questions than it answers.

To what extent is the push for biofuels driving up the prices for grain and other commodity crops? Why is it underplayed in this article?

I also wonder to what extent higher prices are being pushed by the rising price of fossil fuel inputs - synthetic fertilizers, for example - and to what extent are they being pushed by the increased cost of shipping inputs to the farm, running the farm machinery that applies the inputs, and shipping the grain to the mill and the flour from the mill, etc.

Frankly, if I am going to pay more, I'd rather pay it for organic local food than for an oil guzzling diet. Heck, why not just drink the oil directly? (I know, I know - but picture it.)

The article is clear that while those cost increases are pushing price increases - and probably pushing on farmers profits more - the big pull is the increased demand for wheat and other grains in countries where bread is not a traditional food. (The US exports half the wheat we grow.) While the rising standard of living in many places in the world is partly responsible, increasing demand for a western diet, the article implies that part of the cause is advertising. Among the greatest immoralities of advertisers has to be pushing foods that are not traditional and must be imported. Is pushing bread any different than pushing baby formula? (Remember the Nestle atrocities.)

Then there's another article where the details have been changed but the story is the same. Monsanto masquerades as a citizen group once again ("Afact" - where do they get these names?) this time in fighting the labeling of synthetic bovine growth hormone free milk and other dairy products.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09feed.html?ex=1362805200&en=56197f6ee92b4643&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
Sales of "Posilac" are down. What a shame.

The last lines in the article:

"Afact also listed 'integrity,' 'honesty' and 'transparent' as 'words we wish to embody.'
They could start by being more straightforward about who is behind Afact. "

Now add threats all over the local news of no salmon season this summer because of predicted minuscule runs. Ugh. Depressing is an understatement.

So divert yourself and watch this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hVrIyEu6h_E
a bit overstated but amusing.

And if you can handle more serious stuff (not specifically food), also check out another Free Range Studios offering, The Story of STUFF.

What's next, butter tastings?

The lead article in the food stories feed from Wednesday's NY Times was on small dairies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/20/dining/20dairy.html?ex=1361250000&en=8f587a2194cabc6e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

I've just gotten around to reading it now. On Wednesday, among other things, I was doing my weekly older person's discount shopping. Looking for some cream to make a quiche with, I discovered some that actually came in a GLASS bottle, from Marin's Strauss Creamery. I thought I'd fallen into a time warp.

None of this will solve the problems around wholesome local food for folks who aren't rich, but for those of us who can re-order our priorities, who can choose to buy less of the good stuff, it's a blessing.

Mirror, mirror on the wall

who's the biggest (and priciest) cheese producer of them all?

California is on its way to being number one, and my locale to reigning as #1 in high end cheese production.

In today's Press Democrat:
http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20071226/NEWS/712260301/1033/NEWS01

Frankly, if I want local cheese, I find I either have to go to the source, or make my local bigger (to include Humboldt and Del Norte counties). I can't afford the prices charged at local markets for local "artisan" cheese. (Too bad the cows aren't artisan. Organic maybe. No synthetic bovine growth hormone, certainly. But the increased yields of milk with fewer cows touted in the article can only mean that cows are being kept in a state for milking more months per year than is healthy for them or us.)

Just when I am wondering who does pay $20 a pound for cheese, my market sleuthing reveals this interesting phenomenon: the grocery cart in front of me in line holds three kinds of the pricey stuff - including a Humboldt County type I recognize as running $17 and up a pound - and a loaf of wonder bread. Will wonders never cease?

Dairy confessions and information

Confession: I do experience some guilt when, for ease and convenience, I buy something other than a local product which I know is available at another stop. I have felt that way for some time about my habit of picking up a quart of milk (for my tea) when in Trader Joe's - no longer a funky California company, but a nationwide one, and German owned.

Information: Then yesterday I actually read the milk carton (why have I never done this, when I read all the other labels?) and found out - lo and behold - it is milk from Northern California, bovine growth hormone free.

Then I got sceptical, so I decided to track down where it was from. There is a note on the carton with the number of the plant where it was packed (pasteurized). I never did find an on-line directory to lead me to the specific plant. But I did find a list of state codes. Any beginning with 06 are California.

You probably already know this, and I've just been a blind consumer.
But in case you don't, here is a list:
http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~ear/ims-toc.html#nucs

Dairy in the news

The New York Times food news feed is filled with dairy related articles this weekend.

The dairy industry will no longer be able to make weight loss claims for a diet containing low fat dairy products. Frankly, the claims did seem really silly to me, but what do I know.

All of this plays into the ongoing difference of opinion between dairy promoters and dairy detractors.

There are lots of things to object to in the American way of dairy. The cramped cows, the subsidized feed, the methane, the hormones. The Meatrix II - the mootrix? Is it really necessary to suggest three servings of dairy per day for everybody as the new food pyramid (which is so much better in other ways than its predecessors) does?

At the same time, adolescents and women of a certain age have been told just how great their calcium need is to grow/maintain healthy bones.

There seems to be a bit of a sea change, though. This year when I saw the nurse practitioner who provides my women's health care, she didn't harp on calcium in my diet, but vitamin D. Sunscreen and aging both reduce the amount of it one makes from sunshine - and that's assuming one gets away from the computer and climate-controlled auto and house interiors and gets some sunshine. Doctors and nutritionist are advocating a lowering of the calcium recommendations (to 600 or 700 mg per day), but vitamin D supplements for older folks. And it is possible, with care, to get the calcium from non-dairy, even non-soy, non-fortified sources.

I probably eat too many dairy products, even though I do not drink milk. No football fan, I'm still a cheese head. Cheese, bread and wine - those three great combos of natural processes and human ingenuity. Why do we bless God for bread and wine and not cheese? My challenge is to limit myself to 1 ounce of good cheese worth eating (not low fat) per day. I've always loved ice cream, but can convince myself that low (not non) fat yogurt and fruit "sundaes" are just as good, maybe better. And sometimes I want a breakfast egg cooked in a little butter. So, not eating meat, dairy is the major source of saturated fat in my diet.

In other dairy news, Stonyfield Farms will be bringing an organic yogurt product to Europe. I have to say that I've been finding good prices on local organic yogurt here lately and really enjoying it. It doesn't have that extra stuff added to make it stiff, and it tastes good.

But I have a reuse problem - the one quart yogurt containers. I follow the rule of thumb of using plastics five times before putting them in the recycling. I reuse pint containers all the time to freeze portions of soups, stews and chilis. When there's no more room left to write the contents on the lid, in the recycling they go. They are usually a little weird by then anyway. But I don't freeze large portions, so the quart containers just accumulate. I've been scratching my head to find a creative use for them, but no luck. Suddenly it dawned on me: it is time to buy another yogurt maker. I've had two in the past - the big simple one burnt out, and the little jars one I gave away - too fussy. So I need to get a new one - a simple one that will make a quart or more at a time, from the good local milk that is available to me.

And then I might make yogurt cheese for my fresh cheese needs. Another article talks of a return to plain foods, and identifies ricotta as one of the best of the lot. I love ricotta - but need to search out a local one that might be fresher or tastier - or make my own, or a reasonable substitute. I've linked the plain food/ricotta article, because I wanted to try every recipe in it. Especially the coeur a la creme with rhubarb sauce.