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? 

"Health" isn't all there is

From an article in yesterday's Washington Post on organic vs conventional:

"Leave aside for the moment whether organic agriculture is better for the planet and whether organic livestock have better lives, although there’s a strong case for both of those arguments. Leave aside flavor, too, because it’s subjective and variable. What motivates many organic buyers, particularly the parents of small children, is health benefits, and there are two questions: Do organics do us more good (in the form of better nutrition), and do they do us less harm (in the form of fewer contaminants and pathogens)?"

I'm just not willing, even for a moment, to leave aside the health of the soil, the well being of animals and the flavor of my food.  This consumerist, reductionist, food as nutrients and toxins only mindset gets up my nose.  

There, I've said it and I'm glad!

organic history

THERE IS A GARDEN IN THE MIND, Alan Chadwick and the Origins of the Organic Movement in California, by Paul A. Lee (Greenwood Press, San Francisco, California, 2009) have a look at the website - http://ecotopia.org - to get a taste...

movie reviews en francais

The movies, not the reviews, are in French.

In the television dead zone that is Advent I have been happy about the existence of Netflix and Hulu. So much so that I may, after a dozen years, go back to being without a television.

The Gleaners and I is a 2000 treatment, with a 2002 update, of gleaners in France, inspired by Millais's painting. Agnes Varda documents her own attempts at gleaning and those of others. Not limited to fields, vineyards and orchards, gleaning goes on at farmers' markets, at the shore, in dumpsters and metaphorically. Vargas also explores the legal framework that permits gleaning.

I found Vargas' discoveries charming and never condescending - and I felt encouraged to see what more I might do to undertake some organized gleaning here. But I'm not sure I have the courage or the fitness levels required for dumpster diving!

The problem with watching French movies, of course, is that while I catch some of the language, I do depend on the subtitles, and that means I don't get much knitting done while watching them. Food Beware: the French Organic Revolution did leave me some moments to tune out a bit - it's a very heavy health and food-caused illness emphasis, which for me is not the primary reason to eat organic food. What I really liked, in this movie centered on reforming a school lunch program in an agricultural area of France, was watching the children eat. They sat at tables for eight or so, mixed ages, with the food served family style. The cooks actually came out of the kitchen, prodding some children to eat their vegetables, interviewing others about their reactions to what was being served. Oh that we would have a little more of this human community around our institutional food here in the U.S. Or even our family meals, dare I say it. Seeing the kids in their vegetable patch, watching the whole community get behind the transition to organics, and listening the challenges of agriculturalists in the area did hold my interest for much of the movie.

This coming week I will mostly be doing "my own work" which will include more blog updates including movie reviews.

"I don't believe in organic"

says Russ Parsons of the Los Angeles Times.

Check it out here:

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/la-fo-calcook1-2009jul01,0,2885942.story

Actually, he doesn't shun organic, but raises some questions about why it should not be the single issue in purchasing produce.

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!

Sometimes it's better to be illusioned

For some time I have been drinking soy milk - using the real thing in my tea, but otherwise sticking to soy beverage, or milk in fermented or cultured forms. I've developed a real fondness for Silk Very Vanilla.

I've taken care over the years to read the labels, and try to buy only organic soy products. It's not that I am so much worried about health risks - I just don't want to support the corporations who patent GMOs.

Well, it turns out, I wasn't paying attention - or thinking about the implications of organic.

There is now nothing on the Silk label which says organic, and most of their soy beans come from China. Even many beans purported to be organic (though it's difficult to assess) come from China or Brazil.

Silk is now part of Dean Foods, a large food product conglomerate. With the acquisition came the shift to Chinese soy, and, of course, the failure to continue to support organic soy production in this country, as the Organic Bytes newsletter points out. What could have been a force for market-based agricultural reform in this country became just another globally sourcing corporation, doing it as cheaply as possible.

Organic Bytes information source is the Cornucopia Institute
http://www.cornucopia.org/2009/05/soy-report-and-scorecard/
and there you can find a full report and a rating of all the soy products companies.
http://www.cornucopia.org/soysurvey/
Five bean companies produce soy foods which are wholly organic, made from small farm, US grown soy beans. The zero and one bean companies got there primarily by not disclosing much.
In the middle are companies that most likely do not use GMOs, but may use dangerous solvents (hexane) in production.

Most of the private labels and brands you would recognize at any super market are disastrous. Eden Soy is the only beverage brand I recognized with the coveted 5 bean rating.

I did, though, find good reviews (you can get the full info on any manufacturer by clicking on its name in the survey) of several companies whose other soy products I buy in the 4 bean section.

I got so interested in it all that I moved on to Cornucopia's updated organic dairy survey. I was so pleased that little Loleta Cheese in Humboldt County got 5 cows! Many northern California dairies got 4 cows, as did Sunnyside Organic Milk, the house brand of several regional grocery chains. So if you go to Raley's, Lucky or Food Maxx, don't spend more for the national brand organic milk with the bucolic scene on the label. Choose the less expensive Sunnyside Brand from Stockton, California - the most transparent store brand in either study.

Which to buy organic

I've been looking for the simplest iteration of which produce to buy organic, and which it's okay to buy conventional - for a pesticide residue and health perspective.

This would seem to be it:
http://www.foodnews.org/walletguide.php

You can download a printable wallet guide
http://www.foodnews.org/EWG-shoppers-guide-download-final.pdf
so you don't have to come up with a mnemonic for the 12 items highest in pesticide residues, and the 15 lowest. Although it might be fun to come up with an anagram of their first initials. The dirties only have one vowel, though, so fat chance of an acronym there!

And yes, I Phone users, there's an app for that. The food lists, not making up acronyms...

More press and more confusion

seems to be the result of the groundbreaking for the White House vegetable garden.

The article in today's NY Times seems to be a typical mishmash and rehash.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22food.html
Besides, aren't you tired of Alice Waters? or of Whole Foods being held up as a paragon of a reformed food system?

This shorter piece by Mark Bittman makes more sense
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/weekinreview/22bittman.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

I love the quote from Marion Nestle:

"Organic junk food is still junk food."

It's right up there with a note I made from a recent Pollan interview in Mother Jones:

"If you are willing to make it yourself, have all you want." He was referring specifically to french fries, but think about all the other things it might apply to. If it involves lots of work - and lots of fat - this maxim will save you.

The current Mother Jones issue, by the way has a provocative article, getting beneath the consumer hype of "organic". "Organic and Local is so 2008."
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/02/spoiled-organic-and-local-so-2008

Actually, the most interesting thing I have read lately is a book I finished studying just this week, written before 2008. I think it must have been the author's dissertation - it certainly was written in academese. But it raised all the issues about organic in California - how the movement started, where it went astray, what it is not addressing.

Julie Guthman, Agrarian Dreams: the Paradox of Organic Farming in California
University of California Press, 2004.

"Organic" as a certifiable label really is all about inputs, that is, it is a label geared to the consumer system - growers as consumers as well as shoppers. It does not address processes, nor does it address justice issues. (I think I'll save a little rant about farm workers - and how they are mostly neglected in all this - for Cesar Chavez day.)

What organic means is that farmers are using different inputs than non-organic/conventional growers. No more, no less. Well, except perhaps for European certification schemes.

The organic movement in California was not an attempt to recover a more wholesome agrarian tradition. Most agriculture in California has always been done on a large scale. The organic movement as it arose in the 60s and 70s came from urban idealists, back-to-the-land romanticism.

Conversion to organic in California has been driven by cost (some things are just relatively easy and maybe even cheaper to grow organically, like grapes and tomatoes) and by wholesalers as much as by a vision of sustainability or ecological agriculture.

And most of the organic food available in the supermarket is grown on a large scale. Small scale growers make it through a combination of restaurant contracts and direct marketing, with CSAs probably having the most positive impact on small-medium integrated farming with just labor practices.

There can be enough

The Oakland Institute continues to be a great source of information on global food system issues. Recently they published this paper on ecological agriculture:

http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/?q=node/view/499

It's a kind of meta-study, summarizing information that supports the conclusion that yields from ecological agriculture are adequate to feed the world's population. In fact, there is lots of evidence that organic agriculture improves yields considerably in the developing world, as much as 80%.

The increased yields are greatest for rain fed crops.

The next time some suggests to you that bio-tech interventions are necessary to feed the world, send them this paper to read.

Meanwhile, I am puzzling over why the aggregate data for organic agriculture in the developed world show a slight decline in yields over "conventional". Is this in the transitional stage from industrial ag with fossil fuel inputs to organic? Is it because of the scale of agriculture in the developed world? (Though surely not every rich country has the large scale agriculture of the Central Valley or Iowa!) Is it because of irrigation? Is it because we are unwilling to put the labor into ecological agriculture on a large scale?

One wonders if the anyone will care enough to write a paper exploring this sharp contrast between developing and developed countries' agriculture. It's be an interesting report to read.

Why organic matters

An article in the science section of the NY Times earlier this week caused me to think about why organic matters. It's not because eating organic will make you healthier or more righteous. It might make you healthier, and whether or not it contributes to righteousness is not ours to judge. But it will contribute to a lessening of the planetary overload with nitrogen, an important factor in climate change and other environmental impacts.

http://piee.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/htm/Behavior/becc_conference.php#2008%20BECC%20Conference%20Registration

We've been carboned to death with warnings about the big C, but there is also the big N. Life is made up of many elements, and the nitrogen cycle matters just like the carbon cycle and the water cycle and many other less studied cycles.

Dead areas in the oceans are largely there because of nitrogen run off from crop land fertilized with synthetic fertilizers. Much nitrogen is wasted in growing that favorite source of sweetening and ethanol, corn. The Times article reports that with raising beef about 6% of the nitrogen inputs actually end up in the meat we - make that you - eat. The rest is run off - or gas off.

Plants - except legumes which can fix it from the air - must have nitrogen to grow, and it's in every amino acid. But too much of a good thing is not wonderful.

In organic farming, nitrogen inputs are from natural sources, like composted animal manures and plant material. These forms of nitrogen are both less concentrated and more readily assimilated by the growing plants. Hence much less nitrogen is lost to air and water where it can cause harm.

The reason to choose organic when possible, then, is not about me or you, but about the health of the planet. It's also a reason to push for consideration of nitrogen, not just carbon, in national environmental legislation.

The article points out that one of the reasons no one talks about nitrogen is that environmental activists want simple messages to deliver to their audiences. This is what gets us stuck in the "change a light bulb for Jesus" mentality. Much easier to give people one thing to worry about, and one thing to do, rather than encouraging to them to think about complex topics. But the interplay of environmental stresses and issues is complex. And the impact of one basic human activity, such as eating, on all of them requires careful thought about many impacts.

I'm still struck by the British movement to have the label "organic" reserved for produce which has not been flown in, no matter how it has been grown. Surely somebody there understood the interrelationship of climate change impacts from transportation and from industrial farming. We need more of that kind of thinking.

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.

To market, to market

I've been thinking a lot recently about industrial organic, and who buys (can afford) organic food. Several articles this week have converged on this topic.

A friend sent me a link to a Globe and Mail article - another person, this time a Canadian sociologist, questioning what happened to the environmental and economic justice values of the organic farming movement. She suggests that most organics are really "yuppie chow." (I like that!)

Irena Knezevick writes in her paper (as quoted by the G&M)
"Organic foods have less and less to do with the ethics of environmentalism, anti-globalization and social justice, indeed less to do with organic agriculture as a concept, but more and more with hip consumerism, cultural and economic capital and the moral pedestals of those who have the luxury to make such purchasing choices."

This brought to mind my own modest consumer research project last week. I decided that if we are having an Oliver's Market (high end local rising chain) in my neighborhood, I had better overcome my reverse snobbery and try once again shopping there. I had to pass by the one in Cotati between my book group and a potluck, so I stopped in. The people - not the staff, the people who shop there - really do seem part of the yuppie chow crowd, a group with which I would prefer not to identify. But focusing on the merchandise, what I saw was that there was a lot of local food, things were well labeled, and the specials were worth shopping. Standard prices are high, but when something is on sale it really is. And 60+ get a 10% discount on Wednesdays.

The Globe and Mail article also touches on a lot of the problems we hope our U.S. Farm Bill will address: declining numbers of farmers, loss of small diversified farms, erosion of quality in rural life, excessive subsidies for industrial agriculture. It reminded me of meeting with some rural folks from Saskatchewan when I went to the Anglican Church's General Synod in 1989. Amazing that there is just beginning to be some wider recognition (outside of those who live and minister in rural North America) of the problems almost 20 years later.

Read about it here:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070530.wfood30/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20070530.wfood30

Back to organics. There was also an interesting article in the news feed I get from the BBC earlier in the week. The modest proposal of the Soil Association, which certifies organics, is to remove the certification from food stuffs flown into Britain, since clearly food miles are part of the equation if one really cares about the planet. (Rather than just one's own personal health - when any organic, even one that's travelled halfway around the world will do.)

Here's the story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6694251.stm
The accompanying video clip is worth watching. Apparently part of the problem is that most organic produce is imported, and most of the UK produce on offer in supermarkets is conventionally grown. A basket of local seasonal produce racked up a total of 1100 food miles; while a basket of organics rang up 32,000 food miles. No - no mistake on those zeroes - organic asparagus flown from Thailand to Britain will do that, especially if you throw in lots of fruit from Israel and South America.

One more note: I finally saw both in print and on television (what was I watching? reading?) ads for Target's "Archer Farms" line. Talk about greenwashing! It's like they watched the Meatrix and created a caricature of the caricature of the happy farm shown there.
See and hear it here:
http://sites.target.com/site/en/supertarget/archer_farms.jsp#
Aw shucks!

Why didn't I think of this?

I'm spending time with the web today, reviewing and updating resources for the upcoming inaugural meeting of our diocesan ecological network on June 2.

Here's one thing I stumbled upon - an acronym that makes sense:

LOAF
Locally produced
Organically grown
Animal friendly
Fairly traded

If you read the article below you'll have to do a little Brit to American translating, but it's quite an interesting and balanced piece. And how about that acronym?
http://www.christian-ecology.org.uk/loaf-principles.htm

On the same site I read about supermarket tours. What a concept. Helping people to read labels, ask questions, and pursue the LOAF principles when they shop.

Moderation in all things...

including moderation. attributed to Mae West

Two articles in this Wednesday's New York Times have prompted me to do a little preaching on this theme.

The first article is about organic and related movements among grape growers and wine makers. "When the Wine Is Green" discusses the movement toward sustainability in the vineyards. Since I live in the wine country and care about the health of the land, I am all in favor of sustainable grape growing. I think sustainable is actually more progressive than organic, though it's generally understood that sustainable is a label used by those who don't want to go through formal organic certification. What I mean is - if you are organic and haul in manure from miles and miles away, that's not necessarily sustainable.

What I think is outlandish is "biodynamic" grape growing. I do know, having grown up on the Farmer's Almanac, that those who work the land have traditionally planted and done other tasks according to the phases of the moon. I think at some level this may make sense - though I don't know why. Since the moon does have a measurable effect on any body of water, it can affect weather patterns, etc.

But doing all one's gardening astrologically has to come under the heading of woo-woo science.

Steiner, who brought us biodynamic gardening, also brought us Waldorf schools. I love the fact that they teach knitting, but find their spirituality questionable, and wonder why any Christian parent would send their child to a Waldorf school. But then, I know many church folk aren't very reflective or questioning about pop spirituality in its various manifestations.

I'd also like to file a comment about organic wine. Organic grapes, si; organic wine, non. Organic wine is like home canning, only more risky, and someone else is doing it and expects you to pay a premium price for it.

The other article was on the locavore movement. Or loco-vores or yokel-vores as I learned are variations. If you can't get local grains or flour, and you like bread, go ahead and buy some. Do no be like the woman described in this article who bought local grain even though it had mouse droppings in it, and sieved them out. My word, hasn't she heard of hanta virus? dangerous strains of E.coli?

When I attended the local harvest fest in Willits last fall, I overheard someone say, "After all, the spice trade has been going on for millennia." Amen. Do as much of your food sourcing locally as you can, give up the produce flown in from Chile in winter - but if you need to buy salt or flour or whatever, just do your best to find out where it's from and make your peace with it. This is about consciousness, not about purity codes!

One other thing I was reminded of in Willits: preserving food is a lost art, but we would all have a lot more variety from our local sources if we revived it. A member of the LDS church, where, especially in rural areas, such traditions have been kept alive, had some demos and lots of information there in Willits. And while some may say, "get a freezer" I'd like to point out that freezing is the most energy intensive method of long term food preservation. Freezing requires energy inputs from the beginning of the process until you take the fish you caught last summer out to thaw. Canning and drying are energy intensive at the beginning, but then not. And properly canned foods last longer than frozen.

It's not practical for most of us to do pressure canning, and animals really do best, at least for modern tastes, with freezing (well, maybe drying/smoking works for some of it). But I regularly can applesauce and tomatoes, make the occasional batch of ketchup, and make jams, butters, chutneys of unwanted fruit. It's easy, and it sits on the shelf not requiring anything until I use it to liven up dull meals in seasons when there's not much variety in fresh produce.

I was fortunate to have a grandmother and mother who knew how to do these things, and to be around rural elders working for the church in Nevada who did, too. If you don't know how, find someone to teach you before it's too late.