La Vida Locavore - Recommended Diaries

Profiles in Fertility: Maintaining Garden Soil Organically

euclidarms — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:36:46 GMT

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

For 4,000 years prior to the advent of factory-made fertilizers, the Chinese used every bit of organic matter they could lay their hands on--including their own excrement--to return to the soil the nitrogen and other nutrients their vegetable crops removed. It was only through meticulous attention to the cycle of terrestrial rot upon which new life depends that Asian cultures managed to cultivate the same land intensively for centuries, and thereby sustain themselves.

Americans have never been quite so industrious. In colonial days, raising livestock and growing vegetables went hand-in-hand--but not always. Farmers who applied manure and cover crops to maintain fertility were called "improvers." Other farmers, citing a shortage of labor for soil husbandry, simply tilled their land until the soil was exhausted of nutrients. They then moved to greener pastures, something the western frontier seemed to offer in infinite abundance.

Today the frontier is long gone and modern "improvers"--otherwise known as organic gardeners--are left to ponder where to get the materials they need to maintain soil fertility. I should know. I go to great lengths to make the compost I use to feed my hungry kitchen garden here in the District of Columbia: snatching leaves my neighbors put at the curb in the fall; begging grass clippings from landscaping crews; hauling bags of coffee grounds from Starbucks; shoveling buckets of horse manure from a riding stables; religiously collecting our own kitchen scraps. Yet, it never seems to be enough.
My guess is that most urban and suburban gardeners operate at a soil deficit, meaning they don't generate enough compost or manure of their own to adequately fertilize their soil. Unlike the Chinese, our culture treats the organic matter we should be putting back into the soil as waste material, shipping it off to landfills or flushing it down the toilet. Thus, while we disdain industrially produced fertilizers and pesticides, organic gardeners remain largely dependent on fossil-fueled modern commerce to provide the soil amendments our crops require, be it compost, horse manure or fish emulsion. What's more, there is no agreement on specific practices when it comes to deciding what amendments--or cover crops--to use and how much.

I recently asked readers of my personal blog, The Slow Cook, as well as garden blogger friends and subscribers to the D.C. Urban Gardeners listserv, how they approach the question of maintaining soil fertility. Specifically, what do you use to improve your soil, and how much? As you can see from their responses, there is a wide diversity of approaches. In fact, organic gardening remains a kind of home-grown alchemy for which there seem to be as many different formulae for success as there are practitioners.

Among the most precise responses was this one from Joshua Wenz, who operates a professional vegetable gardening service. He also is a partner in the Neighborhood Farm Initiative, which grows produce for sale on a plot in the District of Columbia and teaches neophytes how to garden.

"To replenish soil fertility in my gardens and my clients' gardens," Joshua wrote, "I use:

"Compost (an inch or so a year)
"Nitrogen (N): Alfalfa meal, sometimes (but rarely) chicken manure. Twelve pounds, or about 36 cups per 100 sq feet per year. Easy to find on-line, but I haven't found it locally, which is where the chicken manure comes in handy
"Phosphorous (P): Colloidal Phosphate. FEDCO sells "Tennessee Brown" which is essentially gleaned from phosphate mining tailings. Purportedly has less heavy metals, and of course is recycled. Hard rock phosphate is all I've found locally. Colloidal phosphate seems to be preferred by organic growers to hard rock phosphate, but I can't seem to find anything that outright shows one is more sustainable or environmentally friendly than the other. Amount added depends on soil analysis and I only add every three years.
"Potassium (K): Greensand, or sometimes wood ash if pH is low enough. Available locally. Amount added depends on soil analysis, and also once every three years.
"For trace nutrients, kelp meal, azomite, other rock dust would probably work. I do that every three years as well."

On the subject of cover-cropping, or planting sacrificial crops that act as fertilizer, Joshua had this to say:

"Cover cropping is a bear. It requires following a strict schedule on when to mow
and till. You won't be able to work it in by hand. I have tried vetch/cowpea/oats
mixes, ryegrass, clover in raised garden beds with loose fluffy soil and it was
too tough to cut and work into the soil without a tiller. I now just pull it up
and use it as a mulch or toss into the compost.
"Buckwheat's easier, but done in six to eight weeks, and make sure to mow or till when
you don't want it to reseed anymore."

D.C. gardener Patrick Polischuk, who maintains four garden beds, each six feet long and two to three feet wide, offered this:

"Compost. How much? As much as I can. Two to three inches at planting and if I have enough, another surface application part-way through a crop's season...I make the compost in two big bins out of yard scraps, kitchen scraps, and most of my block's fall leaves."

Christa Carignan, who gardens behind her home in Rockville, Maryland, said this:

"I use homemade compost made from leaves and kitchen scraps, but unfortunately I never have quite enough to feed all five of my veggie beds sufficiently each spring/fall. I have two compost bins (one cubic yard each) and I am lucky if I get enough mature compost to put about one inch on all the beds once each year. Not enough.
"Last year I got a truckload of mushroom compost from Pennsylvania (only $25 for a pickup truck full + the kindness of family members to deliver it here). I added about three to four inches of mushroom compost last spring and it really gave my garden a good boost. I will do the same again this year."

Sylvie Rowand, who gardens in Rappahannock County, Virginia, had this to say:

"Compost, compost and more compost.
"I compost everything I can get my hands on. You could say I grow grass so I can make compost. When I used to live in the city, I would get several truckloads of shredded leaves from the city every winter, the grass clippings of neighbors who did not spray their lawn, coffee grounds from the office, and we'd take regular trips to Rock Creek stables (for manure).
"Today, I have grass fields, lots of garden debris, horse manure, straw, leaves - and as I say, whatever I can get my hand on. My best beds have four to six inches of compost on top. Actually my best beds used to be my compost piles. I have huge compost piles, and they change locations every year. When one is done, I just spread it a little and plant straight in. Now that the garden is reaching its physical limits - at least for a few years - I can focus on making compost to retop all the beds."

El, who gardens in Michigan, described her solution:

"Moving to the country AND getting animals. At first, I was gathering our pine needles until I realized there was poison ivy growing nearby, then I gathered bagged leaves from curbsides in town, then I asked a neighbor who had horses (and they gladly dumped pickup truck loads for me) and THEN we got the bagger for the lawn tractor. Then, we got enough animals to make a difference.
"Sigh. It's all a process, and I am still of the belief that one can never have enough compost or mulch...temporary surpluses, maybe, but not enough.
"I'm testing that theory though with the goats' output. Pee is much more highly activating than dried chicken poop. But! It takes me almost two hours to haul out the goat shed, and that's about 30 to 40 wheelbarrowloads of (mostly) straw. And: I do this monthly. Yikes!
"I have raised beds into which I regularly add about a foot or more of compost and mulch every year. (Compost: mostly used chicken/goat straw bedding, kitchen/garden scraps, and--it's true--all unusable guts/feathers/feet/heads of the poultry. Mulch: grass/leaf clippings the garden tractor picks up.)
"Other (more minor) practices: I plant potatoes, tomatoes/peppers, squash seeds and onion-y things directly into compost in their holes, hills or trenches. Everything else doesn't need it nearly as much; in fact, root crops (carrots, etc.) and the cole family tend to hate super-nitrogenated soils of the composted variety so they don't get anything. And the squash is the only plant I baby with compost tea."

Reader Luci Wilson offered this:

"Well, I'm kind of spoiled because I also keep a small flock of chickens and a handful of dairy goats, so I sheet mulch the straw bedding mixed with poop and ammonia from the goat pen on top of my (vegetable) beds each fall. That way in spring it's already partially composted, the winter rains have worked the nutrients into the soil and everything is already mulched. I just have to lay in the drip lines and drop my plants and seeds into the planting holes.
"I do compost the chicken manure and use it sparingly around the landscape."

Pattie Baker, who gardens behind her home outside Atlanta, Georgia, favors a complex scheme of cover cropping in her vegetable beds:

"I find gardening pretty hard and labor intensive-our red clay is such poor quality so it really takes a lot of time, effort and money to coax anything out of this land. My yields are never what I'd call bountiful. Perhaps we as a society have done so much damage and lost so much topsoil that we will never be able to replenish our soil enough. And not having enough on-site animal manure for continual renewal is a societal problem.
"I make sure every bed gets some cover crop action at some point every year. This doesn't have to be the whole bed-sometimes it's one edge of the bed, as with buckwheat or oats. As for sorghum, I usually plant a row of them along a fence or something as an edge, where it's not going to interfere with veggies too much . For instance I have one small bed that's very wet where I have mostly black-eyed susans, daisies and mint. I usually put a row of sorghum or Hungarian broom corn on the fence line in that bed, which I usually leave standing through the winter as birds eat the seeds and like to perch on the tall stalks. I usually throw a few seeds in other beds as well, and then grow beans up the stalks in late summer.
"With crimson clover (here we plant that in the fall and it grows all winter, flowering in May) and cowpeas (a summer legume cover crop), I usually do the whole bed and then till it in at various stages-the majority of the bed will get tilled in after just a few weeks of growth (then you let it sit for two weeks for the microbial action to do its job, then you either remove the debris to your compost pile, if you are planting seeds, or you plant directly into it, if you are planting transplants). With hairy vetch (which is an absolute lady bug magnet!), I pull it out and add it to the compost pile or let it decompose on the bed. I usually leave a small patch here and there of any cover crop I grow to flower and attract pollinators. Here is my BIG SECRET: rabbits don't touch a THING if they have crimson clover to nibble on. They LOVE it. It grows like mad and they eat it like mad, so I make sure that I have some all over the place. Crimson clover and hairy vetch keep coming back, by the way, so you plant it once and then just manage it year after year, letting it grow here, digging it in there, adding it to the compost pile from over there.
"Fun crimson clover fact: It is relatively EASY for kids to find four-leaf clovers in a nice-sized crimson clover patch. (Keeps 'em busy for a little while, too J)
"So, in short, here is the plan:
"Crimson clover and hairy vetch-plant in the fall (not sure if you can plant it now, but probably can) in any bed where you want to boost fertility for the summer crop.
"Sorghum, oats or rye (not winter rye grass), Hungarian broom corn-plant with first summer planting.
"Cowpeas, buckwheat-plant mid-summer for a couple weeks to boost fertility for second summer planting (you may not have a second planting like that in your climate) or to boost fertility for fall planting.
"Some people swear by winter rye, but I do find that one hard to pull up or till in by hand, so I've been avoiding it.
"The thing most folks don't know about cover crops? They are BEAUTIFUL. They add height and movement and color to the garden. And they attract so many other living things. I now find a vegetable garden without them to be almost barren.
"Cover crops are also terrific for starting new beds.
"Do I sacrifice growing space for cover crops? Gladly."

And reader Amy described this system designed for a farm in Utah:

"We're just starting to farm an eight-parcel piece of land. We are doing a few passive solar greenhouses and a lot of open field.
"Our plan is use a bit of new technology and combine it with Old World know-how. The new technology is greenhouse plastic. The particular plastic we use creates diffused light so that low-growing plants (green manure cover crops) can thrive when planted between tall growing plants like our tomatoes and peppers.
"The green manure (legume cover crops) fix nitrogen on their roots. The plan is to allow them to grow, then come through with a sod cutter to kill the plant. The plant has to die for the nitrogen to be released into the soil.
"We'll be doing this both inside our greenhouses and in the field crops.
"When we rotate the crops we'll plant where the cover crop has been growing and grow cover crop where the plants have been growing."

Eliot Coleman, the Maine production gardener and author, says that a one-inch application of compost is "very generous." Coleman writes that once soil fertility is established, "a maintenance application of 1/4 to 1/2 inch per year should be more than enough to maintain and improve your garden's productivity."

Meanwhile, The Rodale Book of Composting advises applying "1/2 inch to 3 inches of well-finished compost over your garden each year," preferably about a month before planting. Spring is ideal.

As you can see, even Eliot Coleman and Rodale do not agree. Me, I suppose I follow the Eliot Coleman approach. I work about 1/4 inch of compost into the soil in spring, then apply a little more with each new planting. My compost is made with ground leaves and straw, kitchen scraps, coffee grounds from Starbucks and horse manure. I have never been able to make enough, but I'm getting closer each year. I have lots of beds to cover.

Our Post-Harvest Celebratory Dinner

Jill Richardson — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 05:50:23 GMT

Dinner tonight was divine. We ate the carrots, stinging nettles, and spring garlic we harvested earlier today, along with rice and black beans. See our pictures and recipe below.

First, Patrick prepped his ingredients:

Spring garlic, diced

Spring garlic is immature garlic, which looks similar to green onions but tastes like garlic.

Carrots, washed with tops removed

Stinging nettles, leaves only

Use gloves to pick these and be careful once you get them into the kitchen. The sting goes away when they are wilted or cooked. My hand still hurts from getting stung earlier today while weeding.

Step zero: Put 3/4 c. brown rice and water in the rice cooker and turn it on.

Step one: Saute garlic and carrots together (with oil and salt).

Step two: Heat black beans (ours were leftovers that we had soaked and cooked previously).

Step three: Combine beans and nettles with the carrots and garlic and stir as needed. Cook until the nettles are wilted.

This is only half the meal still in the pan, as Patrick put his on his plate already

Here's how it looks all together, with an avocado on top:

Ta-da! That's the dinner we grew and cooked! It was absolutely delicious, although next time I'd skip the avocado.

Fruit Tree Propagation: Success!

Jill Richardson — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 23:29:08 GMT

I'm now the proud mother of 4 baby fig trees! Back in January, I attended a fruit tree propagation workshop, which I wrote about on this blog. I came home from the workshop with 6 fig tree cuttings, 4 blackberry cuttings, 2 pomegranate cuttings, and 2 dragon fruit cuttings. The goal was to wait for each of them to take root. And, so far, 4 of the figs have done so:

Fig tree cutting with roots and some vermiculite sticking to it

It took about 6 weeks to two months for it to happen, but it did. And it didn't happen like I thought it would. As you can see here, the roots grew out of the side of the cutting. I had assumed they would grow out the bottom. A few weeks ago, I found my first evidence of success. This cutting had a few roots growing from it. I tried to transplant it by sticking it into a pot of soil and I knocked the roots right off. Oops. I felt rather ashamed and disappointed, and I put the cutting back in the vermiculite, hoping it would grow some more roots.

Then about a week ago, three of the others grew roots. This time I transplanted them MUCH more carefully, gently holding them inside a mostly empty pot and adding soil around them so I wouldn't damage the roots. I moved them outdoors to a spot with very little sun. I did this for about an hour the first day, and then I brought them back in overnight before moving them back outside for good. Today I moved those three to a slightly sunnier spot. Then I checked this cutting to see if it had recovered, and it had - quite well actually! So I transplanted it as well (very gently this time!) and moved it outdoors to the same shady spot where I started the others. Cross your fingers and hope I don't kill my new baby trees!

As for the other plants, one of the dragonfruits was damaged by heavy rainfall, and one (perhaps two) of the blackberries became a cat toy. The others are just hanging out in moist vermiculate and hopefully growing some roots.

Special Wednesday Edition of Sunday Bread- NY Rye

Something The Dog Said — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:08:28 GMT

Welcome to a Special Mid-week edition of Bread Sunday! This week's recipe is kind of a request. Last week one of the folks on the thread asked for a "good Jewish or New York style Rye". The Dog always cringes a little bit when someone asks after "good" Rye, because, frankly, it is not an easy bread to make. It is what Mrs. Dog calls "Chicken or Egg bread" because to make the real New York style bread, you have to have rye bread. You also need to make a Rye Sour in advance. Still, when you are done you have a loaf of they very best sandwich bread in the world!

Rye Sour is a starter like Sour Dough bread uses. It can be kept alive for several weeks, if fed and stirred, though you do have to take the onions out after the first 24-hours.

Rye Sour

Ingredients:

2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
4 cups rye flour, stone ground is strongly preferred (you can find it at most mega marts or Whole Foods, if you are not boycotting them)
3 ½ cups hot water
2 packages dry yeast (4 ½ teaspoons)
1 table spoon caraway seeds

Special Equipment - a length of cheese clothe to tie the onions in.

Method:

Tie the onions pieces in a bag made from the cheese clothe. Set aside

In a large bowl, combine the water and rye flour. Stir to mix. Sprinkle the yeast over the mixture and work in. Stir in the caraway seeds.

When the mixture is well mixed take the onion bag and press it down into the center of the sour. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let over night (no longer than 24 hours!).

Remove the onions and scrape any of the sour that is clinging to the clothe back into the bowl. The sour is ready to use, or be refrigerated, well covered, until you are ready to bake your rye bread.

New York Style Rye Bread

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups of rye bread pieces
3 cups Rye Sour
1 package dry yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons caraway seeds (you can use more if you like, my wife gets overwhelmed if there is more than 2 tablespoons)
4 cups break flour
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water (hint, beat the egg first, then mix in the water)

Equipment - 1 baking sheet, dusted with corn meal or covered in parchment paper.

Method:
Soak in water half a dozen crusty slices of rye bread (you can use store bought for this the first time). Squeeze dry. Set aside 1 ½ cups, the rest (yeah there is some left over) can be frozen or refrigerated for a later batch.

In a stand mixer or a large bowl drop the squeezed-dry bread pieces. Add the rye sour. With a wooden spoon or the flat paddle of the mixer mix until the bread pieces are thoroughly combined with the sour.

Stir in the dry yeast, salt and half of the caraway seeds.

Add 2 cups of white flour and mix vigorously into the sour. Add more flour, ¼ cup at a time staring with first the wooden spoon and then your hands or with the paddle if you are using a stand mixer. The dough is going to be sticky at first, but will become elastic and smooth as you work it.

If you are using a mixer switch to the dough hook and knead for 8 minutes.

If kneading by hand (gotta build up those forearms!) turn out onto a well floured work surface. Use a strong push-turn-fold motion to knead the dough. Add sprinkles of flour if moisture breaks through, but don't overload the dough with flour, it is better if it is a little slack.

Rising:
Place the dough in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap and leave for about 30 minutes, or until it has doubled.

Shaping:
Punch down the dough and turn out onto a well floured work surface. Divide the dough into two pieces. The dough can be fashioned into round loaves by holding it in both hands and pushing the edges into the middle or long plump loaves by rolling the pieces under the palms of your hands on the work surface. Place the loaves on the backing sheet.

Second Rising:
Cover the loaves with wax paper and set aside to proof. You don't want to let the come to a full doubling, but closer to 3/4 . It should take about 20-30 minutes depending on how warm it is in your house that day. If you miss and they do double in size, don't sweat it, they will still be good, but leaving them a little under-proofed gives the crusty on the outside and tender of the inside texture which this bread is famous for.

Preheat:
Put the lower rack of your oven on the lowest setting. Place a broiler pan on this rack. Preheat the over to 450 degrees for twenty minutes (don't rush this part!) 3 minutes before baking pour 1 cup hot water in the broiler pan to produce steam. Be sure to wear oven mitts while doing this so you don't burn yourself with the steam.

Baking:
Cut the top of the loaves into a patter with a sharp knife or a razor blade. I like a tic-tac-toe patter but you can do X's or diagonal slices. Brush with the egg and water mixture. Sprinkle the rest of the caraway seeds over the top.

Place in the hot oven. Midway through baking, turn the baking sheet around so the loaves brown evenly. Bake for 40 minutes, the loaves will have turned deep brown by then. Test for doneness by thumping the bottom of one of the loaves with your finger. If it is not hard and crusty, return the loaves to the oven for five to ten more minutes.

Cool on a wire rack.

The Dog did warn you that this bread is a bit of a pain in the ass. However if you have rye lovers in your household you will find yourself quickly using the rest of the sour and the soaked pieces to make more! Be sure to save some from each batch to start the next time!

The flour is yours.

New Study: Kids Who Eat School Food Are Fatter

euclidarms — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:55:44 GMT

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A new study from the University of Michigan finds that kids who eat the food served in schools are more likely to be overweight or obese than peers who bring lunch from home, and also are more likely to suffer from high levels of "bad" cholesterol.
The study, which examined the eating habits of some 1,300 Michigan sixth-graders over a three-year period, found that children who get their food at school eat more fat, drink more sugary sodas, and consume far fewer fruits and vegetables. The findings, presented last week at the American College of Cardiology annual scientific session, are said to be the first to assess the impact of school food on children's eating behaviors and overall health.

Specifically, 38.8 percent of students who routinely eat school lunch were found to be overweight or obese, compared to 24.4 percent of kids who brought their own food from home. The children consuming school food were twice as likely to drink sodas, and a measly 16.3 percent reported eating fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, compared to 91.2 percent of the kids who got homemade food.

"This study confirms the current and escalating national concern with children's health, and underscores the need to educate children about how to make healthy eating and lifestyle choices early on," said Elizabeth Jackson, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System, in a release put out by the university. "Although this study doesn't provide specific information on nutrient content of school lunches, it suggests there is a real opportunity to promote healthy behaviors and eating habits within the school environment. This is where kids spend a majority of their time."

It would be dangerous to read too much into a study that is based solely on student questionnaires and suggests correlations, not cause and effect, between self-reported eating habits and specific health issues. For instance, it could be that children who tend to be overweight or obese must eat the food served at school because they get it free courtesy of the federally-subsidized school lunch program. The researchers acknowledge that there could be a correlation "between socioeconomic status and heart health in children of low-income families who take advantage of free school meal programs."

The findings, based on what students reported about their eating habits during the entire day, not just at school, certainly suggest a strong link between what kids learn about food at home and the kinds of food they choose at school. But even parents who pack "healthful" lunches can never be sure what their children are actually eating, the researchers report, since most children in public schools are exposed to "competitive" foods -- those sold outside the regular lunch line -- that encompass all kinds of junk food, as well as the stuff sold in vending machines.

Amy Kalafa, producer of the food documentary Two Angry Moms, filmed herself having her eyes opened to her daughter's true eating habits when she checked the computer records in the school cafeteria. "All our efforts at home were being undermined by the school," Kalafa said yesterday. "When I casually asked for a readout, just to demonstrate how the system worked, I was genuinely shocked to learn that my daughter was regularly buying chips, fries, Rice Cispy treats and Pop Tarts. And it's not just about obesity. Diabetes and sugar sensitivity runs in my family."

My own 10-year-old daughter has noticeably put on some girth since switching last fall from home-made meals to the ones served in school here in the District of Columbia. Her pediatrician wasn't at all surprised. Her kids gained 10 pounds, she said, when they started eating school meals. When my daughter heard that, she decided to switch back to taking her own food.

What's more, only 7 percent of school food operations fully comply with the nutrtional standards laid down by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the federal meals program. During the week I spent recently in the kitchen at my daughter's school, it was clear that schools trying to feed kids on a budget rely heavily on industrially-processed convenience foods laced with additives and sugar. Fresh vegetables are a rarity.

A study of how schools use government donations of surplus farm commodities, conducted by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (PFD) two years ago, found that California schools ordered far more meat and dairy products and rarely touched the offerings of fresh vegetables and whole grains. The reason is simple enough: kids don't like vegetables and whole grains. Unless, of course, they've already been trained to like them at home.

The University of Michigan researchers said they are encouraged by a recent movement toward exposing children to fresh, local produce and programs that encourage children to walk to school and exercise more -- just the sort of things being pushed by Michelle Obama in her "Let's Move" campaign, as well as "Healthy Schools" legislation pending here in the District of Columbia. The USDA also is considering new school food standards developed by the Institute of Medicine that would put a cap on the number of calories served in school meals, reduce starchy foods, and increase servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The University of Michigan study comes as Congress considers re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, for which President Barack Obama has proposed splitting an additional $1 billion annually between school meals and other food programs. Some advocates say that amount is not even enough to put an apple on kids' cafeteria trays. Ann Cooper, the "renegade lunch lady," in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, says what schools really need is another $1 per day for each child in the federal program, which would work out to something like $5.4 billion a year.

But this latest study points to something even more ominous that should occupy the attention of federal lawmakers: a growing bifurcation of the food system wherein poor kids are routinely subjected to cheap processed food that damages their health, while kids from wealthier families get access to the best our local farms have to offer. That is the underlying message of the growing Farm to School movement: that all kids deserve fresh, wholesome food, not just the ones whose parents shop at Whole Foods or the farmers market.

More studies like this one will undoubtedly show that school food quality is a social justice issue that demands immediate attention. And while some politicians might be loathe to pay for improving it -- that is, if they think about it at all -- it is also a health issue with potentially devastating consequences for the national budget.

Book Review: Eating History by Andrew F. Smith

Jill Richardson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:20:41 GMT

Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine by Andrew F. Smith was the third of three books I recently read that trace American food and agricultural history (the other two are The War on Bugs by Will Allen and Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis). As I said before, the three books provided complementary information to give readers a full picture of how our food and agriculture came to be as they are today. That said, if you have to skip one of the three books, skip this one.

The 30 turning points chosen traced several different plotlines - manufacturing, packaging, and transportation advances; war; the making and defining of gourmet food in America; the roles of nutrition reformers; and the role of marketing. Surely those broad categories leave out many of the 30 chapters in the book, but they also encompass quite a few of them. In some parts, the book reads like the TV show "Unwrapped," and it's written from an impartial point of view (thus not criticizing a number of developments that play roles in making food less healthy). In most cases, I feel that it was probably just fine to provide an unbiased view (as the book is intended as a history book, not a call to action), but in the section on genetically modified foods, "unbiased" turns into "overly favorable" and in fact, wrong.
In the very beginning, transportation was quite costly. This theme runs through all three books. With the opening of the Erie Canal, and later, the transcontinental railroad, non-local food could compete with local food on price. I found the first chapter particularly interesting, as it describes Oliver Evan's automated mill. The first mills in the U.S. required a lot of manpower, and when a man named Oliver Evans invented a more efficient mill, nobody wanted it. The workers didn't want to lose their jobs, and the mill owners didn't want to cough up the money required for the initial capital investment. The new mill was not only more efficient; it was also better at making refined white flour (which people then preferred, not knowing it was less healthy).

Chapter two builds on chapter one, telling the story of the Erie Canal. Prior to the opening of the canal, upstate New York could not sell flour to New York City and beyond due to the prohibitive cost of transportation. With the canal reducing transport costs, many cities along the mill built the new style of mill and the savings from the more efficient mill more than offset the cost of transporting flour. Thus, Americans learned (for the first time) to buy the cheapest product instead of buying locally produced food.

War plays a major role in shaping American food as well. First, when the South seceded from the United States, Congress could finally pass through bills that Southern Congressmen had opposed, including four related to food: the transcontinental railroad, the creation of land grant universities, the creation of the USDA, and the homestead act. Just like the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad lowered transportation costs and made non-local food a cost effective reality for more Americans.

The war also gave some of the first canners enough business (by selling canned foods to the government to feed soldiers) to become profitable. Along the same lines, the war exposed soldiers to canned foods, perhaps speeding up their introduction and acceptance. The Civil War also homogenized American cuisine (which differed regionally before the start of the war), as men from around the U.S. came together and tried foods they'd never tried before.

The invention and refinement of canning opened up a whole new possibility of prepared foods, reducing the amount of growing, storing, and cooking that Americans had to do themselves. Other advances in packaging, freezing, and microwaving continued this trend throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (and no doubt still today). Changes in marketing tracked the changes in packaging and transportation, and they also get a mention in the book. Perhaps most significant were the insane marketing gimmicks of the early 20th century (when marketing food was brand new and television did not exist yet) and the invention of the supermarket. Both supermarkets and marketing changed the way we buy food and thus the way we eat. (The book doesn't say it but in recent years we've seen an enormous shift in food shopping from supermarkets to supercenters like Wal-Mart, Sams, or Costco. Perhaps a future edition of this book would include that as a trend.)

A track of the book that somewhat surprised me was the making and defining of gourmet food. This began with the French restaurant Delmonico's in New York City, which first opened in 1835. Other French restaurants followed, taking advantage of the upper class American love affair with French food. Over 100 years later, Gourmet magazine started during a time of war, when Americans (who still loved French food) couldn't go to France to get the real thing. Obviously the magazine was a tremendous success. The book also tells about early influential cookbooks, and the two themes join up in the form of Julia Child, who taught French cooking in a way that average people could understand it, both in her cookbook and on TV. I suppose the modern day heirs to these two historical tracks are Alice Waters with her restaurant Chez Panisse and the very popular Food Network (both are included in the book).

As the book describes the industrialization of food and agriculture, it also tells of those who advocated for organic and healthy foods. One chapter is devoted to Jerome Rodale's Organic Gardening, also mentioning Sir Albert Howard and Frances Moore Lappe. It's good that we're enough of a blip in history that a food historian sees fit to include us in this book.

The book picked out some things I would have expected (like corn flakes, TV dinners, the founding of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, and McDonalds), and others that I had never heard of, or had heard of but would not have considered as so influential on history. I was quite surprised that some of the unhealthy parts of our diet were initially invented by people intending to create health foods. J.H. Kellogg invented corn flakes as an easy way for people at his sanitarium (who may not have had all of their teeth) to eat corn instead of less healthy breakfast foods like sausage or bacon. He opposed marketing, and he would certainly roll over in his grave if he knew how much sugar went into cereals that bear his name these days. (His brother, W.K. Kellogg, was less principled and he's the one who made Kellogg's Corn Flakes a household name. As you may imagine, doing so required quite a bit of marketing.)

If you are reading this book as part of my trio of books on food and ag history, this book provides a lot of details on technology that explain why things happened as they did, whereas Vileisis focuses more on how marketing and demographic changes affected the American people and their diets. Often an invention will show up in this book, but the American public will not accept it en masse for several decades, as described in the Vileisis book. Certainly many themes come up in both books, with only one of the two providing complementary bits of information. For example, Eating History tells of the invention of a calorimeter, which can measure the number of calories in food. Kitchen Literacy skips this, but tells about the beginnings of the Home Economics movement (which Eating History skips), when home economists urged women to feed their families scientifically, based on the number of calories or other nutrients in the food.

All in all, this is a great book, and I'm glad I read it.

Memorial will remember victims of dangerous pet food

Deep Harm — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:56:27 GMT

Attention, pet owners: You are the beneficiaries of an extraordinary gift.

Five acres of serene, forested land in Oklahoma have been donated for a memorial sanctuary where, at no cost to owners, every pet that has fallen ill or died due to dangerous pet food will be remembered with a personalized memorial stone. The sanctuary, named "Vindication," is located at Keystone Lake in Oklahoma and is expected to open this June. The donor hopes that Vindication will comfort grieving owners.

They all mattered to someone,
They all matter in Vindication.
Vindication will Never Forget Them; Nor why They Died.

TruthAboutPetFood.com

Plants, benches and memorial stones, will line pathways winding through wooded acres - all a gift to you from an anonymous donor, a family of modest means who lost six pets to melamine-contaminated pet food and decided that "enough is enough."

Susan Thixton, at TruthAboutPetFood.com, who also knows the pain of losing a pet to dangerous food, is leading the effort to spread word to every owner of a pet sickened by petfood. Considering that many thousands of pets may have died from the melamine incident alone, this is a daunting goal. Your help, gentle readers, will be critical to success.

What you can do

1. Go to TruthAboutPetFood.com and read more about Vindication.

2. Register the names of pets you may have owned that were sickened or killed by pet food.

3. Pass along word of Vindication to other pet owners.

Cross-post this diary (in its entirety if you wish) to other websites. You have my permission in advance. Tweet and email the news to others and post it on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Print out the flyer posted at TruthAboutPetFood and post it wherever pet owners gather in your community--animal hospitals, groomers, doggy daycares, dog parks and pet supply stores--as well as general gathering spots, like coffee shops and dry cleaners. Fax or email the Vindication press release to media outlets, particularly those in your hometown, and bloggers. (Don't forget freebies like City Paper.)

Check back at TruthAboutPetFood.com/Vindication for updates. A donation page should be available there, soon, to accept voluntary contributions toward the perpetual maintenance of Vindication.

Never forget

What happened to pets in 2007--and continues to happen--is a national disgrace. Both food manufacturers and government officials betrayed hundreds of thousands of beloved family members for company profits. Then, after witnessing a flood of illnesses and deaths, manufacturers failed to destroy the contaminated food. Instead, they sold recalled pet food to farmers to feed to livestock meant for human consumption and continued to mislead consumers about the threat from melamine. For more on that, see my series of diaries exposing the deceptions.

Sadly, those responsible for this deadly debacle received only a slap on the wrist - a modest fine and probation. But, that need not be the end of the story.

Vindication is ours. As you read this Vindication is being sculpted by the donors into flowering gardens with handmade stones lining the cascading pathways. Careful selections of flowers are being chosen; flowers will bloom both day and night. At the very front of our land will be 16 handmade stones circled into the pathway beginning. These 16 stones signify the 16 "official" pets that died at Menu Foods testing laboratory long before the deadliest recall in world history was announced.
From the Remembered 16 Circle will be pathways that cascade over our land. Each stone lining each pathway will be handmade and personalized with the name of a pet killed or sickened by pet food. Each innocent victim will be remembered. Thousands of pets - each with their own personalized pathway stone will be honored here.
TruthAboutPetFood.com

In closing

Of the many diaries I have written, none has given me more satisfaction than this one. The creation of Vindication, possibly the first memorial related to food safety, is a deeply touching and generous act; a loving hug to grieving pet owners. It is also an important message in the making that will put food manufacturers and regulators on notice that wrongdoing will not be forgotten.

Vindication logo

Photo Credits
Kitten: CarbonNYC at Flickr.com
Dog: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) at Flickr.com

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

Last Week's Antitrust Workshop

Jill Richardson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:08:47 GMT

Friday, the DOJ (Department of Justice) held the first of a series of "workshop" to deal with antitrust issues in agriculture. This first one was in Iowa, focusing on issues of concern to farmers. In anticipation of the event, a broad coalition of family farm, anti-hunger, religious, environmental and public policy groups established the website Bust Big Food (obviously in support of government action in breaking up corporations that prevent fair competition in the marketplace).

WHY Hunger says the following about competition in food and agriculture:

There are 2 million farmers and 300 million consumers in the US. Standing in the middle are a handful of corporations who control just about everything that happens to our food between the farm and our plate -- how much it costs, how it's grown, where it comes from, what's in it, and who sells it. Most of what probably matters to you about why food isn't healthier, safer, tastier, or all around better is affected by that narrow bottleneck of power between producers and consumers.
Standard economics holds that if the top four companies in any industry control over 50% of the market, that industry is no longer freely competitive. Right now, the top four companies control 85% of the nation's beef, 70% of pork, and 60% of the nation's poultry. Three corporations process over 70% of the nation's soy. Just one company controls 40% of our milk supply, and Monsanto holds patents on 80% of corn seed. Our food system has become one of the least competitive sectors of the marketplace.

If you want to send comments to the DOJ, please do so here (the deadline was Dec 31, 2009 but it seems that they are still accepting comments).
The night before the first workshop, many of the same groups behind the Bust Big Food website came together in a town hall format. Their goal was to allow everyone to speak, including people who would not be heard at the official DOJ event. You can see a video of this town hall here:

WHY Hunger wrote the following about the town hall:

Last night in Ankeny, Iowa, just north of Des Moines, a standing-room-only crowd of over 250 people called on the Justice Department and USDA to "bust up big ag!" and put the needs of people before corporations. Today is the official listening session where the government agencies will hear from all interested parties on the issue of corporate concentration in the food system - particularly, this round addresses "Issues of Concern to Farmers" - but the scheduled panels today are heavy on business and light on actual farmers. Several local groups organized Thursday's town hall as a venue for farmers to voice their real concerns.
The evening began with a panel of independent farmers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri addressing concentration in seeds, dairy, and livestock; a representative from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; and good food advocates talking about consumer issues (I had the great privilege to be one of those last speakers).
And then the floor was open to public comments. About 50 people spoke, almost all of them farmers. They told heartbreaking stories: The 29th anniversary of one man's parents was a farm foreclosure. "The American Dream has turned into the American nightmare" for a southern Iowa dairy farmer, whose milk prices have been so low he can't afford his feed costs. The 15-year-old son of a fifth generation dairy farmer wants to become the sixth generation, but if things don't change in the next six months, they're not going to have a farm.
Things are dire for farmers - as they are for so many of people who don't have control over their food - but they're ready to fight. They made powerful demands of the Department of Justice and Congress to enforce antitrust laws and break up the hugely concentrated ag industries. But government isn't quite the last hope; people are. A family farmer from near Des Moines wanted to talk about power: "Industry cannot turn one wheel unless people make those machines work," he said. "We have the power here, and we need to understand what that power means."

Then came the DOJ event itself. Two cabinet members were present - Attorney General Eric Holder and Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. According to Reuters:

Holder told the crowd of farmers, labor and consumer groups and corporate representatives that the Justice Department sees erosion of competitive markets as a significant threat to the U.S. economy, thus a national security matter.
"We want everybody to have a fair shot," said Holder. "Big is not necessarily bad, but big can be bad if power that comes from being big is misused. That is simply not something that this Department of Justice is going to stand for."

As the hearing was held in the heart of corn and soy country, much of the hearing as devoted to discussing Monsanto's control over the seed market. Monsanto sent a Vice President to the workshop, who of course denied any wrongdoing by Monsanto. Unfortunately, according to Business Week, the Supreme Court may have paved the way for a Monsanto victory.

It seems, from this NPR story about the workshop that Iowa's other major farm product - hogs - came up on the agenda as well:

Jim Foster with his old open-air hog barns in Montgomery County, Mo., will be in Ankney, Iowa, for those sessions, and he is one of the producers looking for change. "Bought this place in '63 when I got out of college and got married, been here ever since," Foster said.
It hasn't been easy keeping this rambling operation together. Big packing companies took over most pork production years ago. That drove down prices and drove most of Foster's neighbors out of the industry.
Twenty-five years ago, Montgomery County had about 200 independent hog farmers. Foster is one of two now. He's got just one steady buyer for his hogs.

I'm loving all of the national attention on Monsanto's wrongdoing, but this story about hogs reminds us that seeds are but one of many concentrated and anticompetitive industries. Hopefully these hearings will address and take action on all of them, not just corn and soy seeds.