Go To Your Famers Markets And Buy Something

(Photo from CountryBlooms.org of a vender at Otsiningo's Market in Broome County, NY)

Many countries actually don't understand the US farmer's markets. They have local markets where they buy their food nearly every day, so of course the food is local, of course it's organic!

A college room mate of mine talked of life back in South Korea where an apple weighed a pound and the family would share it as dessert after dinner. The size of the apple is as foreign as the concept of sharing. But that is how the American culture has evolved. Even apples are mass produced and thinned to achieve the ideal single servince size. The big, small or "ugly" ones are tossed aside to be processed into something similar to apples.

Did you know "Ugly" tomatoes can not be shipped out of the state of FL? It's law! They taste the best, but don't conform to modern standards, so can only be used within the state. Go figure!

And yet, we wonder why our nutrition is poor and we dislike vegetables. How many children have had truly fresh vegetables? Or nearly grown in their own back yard? They think vegetables are found in cans, jars, pouches thrown into the microwave or as dried bits in instant soups. We have more than 1 generation of people in this ocuntry that has no gardening experience. How sad is that?

Well, rather than starting a garden, go to a local market. Go to Local Harvest - to find a Farmer's Market near you. Start buying some of your vegetables there. You will discover what spinach or beets or string beans or tomatoes are really supposed to taste like! The vegetables will be far more nutritious than anything you find in the stores - even Whole Foods! Remember - the deeper the color, the more nutritious it is.

When you discover the flavor and the nutrition - you *will* feel better - you'll not want the compost they sell as vegetables in the frozen food aisle at the grocery. You'll want this quality all year. That means you just might have to preserve them for yourself! It's easy, we've been doing it for generations. All you need to do is talk to the growers and negotiate for a bulk price. It will end up costing you less than grocery store prices, will use less energy to preserve than the industrial vegetables, and will be better for you.

You will discover what a bean looks like, what a beet looks like, what a *real* tomato looks like.

You will discover different ways of using those vegetables and fruits. If you ask the growers, they'll share their favorite recipes with you.

I had no clue summer squash was so versatile until I had a bumper crop beyond compare. A little research online and I froze 3 gallons to use throughout the winter - it was delicious!

Here's one my family loves! It's good old fashioned farm food - using ingredients common to most farms from pre WWII. It's the perfect spring and summer dinner.

Peas, Potatoes and Milk

Dice your potatoes to the size of peas. Cook with equal amount peas until almost soft. Drain.
Add milk. Heat to boiling. Add butter, salt, pepper.

Spoon over fresh white bread, enough so the milk soaks the bread - usually in a shallow soup bowl. Eat with fork or spoon.

You can do this with chopped string beans as well, for an equally delicious and nutritious meal.
If you want, add some chopped summer squash to the mix, after the beans and potatoes have cooked about half way.

You won't find this simple, yet delicious recipe in any cookbook. Which is why you must get to know the sellers at the farmers market. Go! Shop! Eat well! Support local farmers! It's a no-lose situation.

50-Year Farming Plan

Sent to me by Jerome Rigot

A 50-Year Farm Bill
By WES JACKSON and WENDELL BERRY
Published: January 4, 2009

THE extraordinary rainstorms last June caused catastrophic soil erosion in the grain lands of Iowa, where there were gullies 200 feet wide. But even worse damage is done over the long term under normal rainfall — by tthe little rills and sheets of erosion on incompletely covered or denuded cropland, and by various degradations resulting from industrial procedures and technologies alien to both agriculture and nature.

Soil that is used and abused in this way is as nonrenewable as (and far more valuable than) oil. Unlike oil, it has no technological substitute — annd no powerful friends in the halls of government.

Agriculture has too often involved an insupportable abuse and waste of soil, ever since the first farmers took away the soil-saving cover and roots of perennial plants. Civilizations have destroyed themselves by destroying their farmland. This irremediable loss, never enough noticed, has been made worse by the huge monocultures and continuous soil-exposure of the agriculture we now practice.

To the problem of soil loss, the industrialization of agriculture has added pollution by toxic chemicals, now universally present in our farmlands and streams. Some of this toxicity is associated with the widely acclaimed method of minimum tillage. We should not poison our soils to save them.

Industrial agricultural has made our food supply entirely dependent on fossil fuels and, by substituting technological "solutions" for human work and care, has virtually destroyed the cultures of husbandry (imperfect as they may have been) once indigenous to family farms and farming neighborhoods.

Clearly, our present ways of agriculture are not sustainable, and so our food supply is not sustainable. We must restore ecological health to our agricultural landscapes, as well as economic and cultural stability to our rural communities.

For 50 or 60 years, we have let ourselves believe that as long as we have money we will have food. That is a mistake. If we continue our offenses against the land and the labor by which we are fed, the food supply will decline, and we will have a problem far more complex than the failure of our paper economy. The government will bring forth no food by providing hundreds of billons of dollars to the agribusiness corporations.

Any restorations will require, above all else, a substantial increase in the acreages of perennial plants. The most immediately practicable way of doing this is to go back to crop rotations that include hay, pasture and grazing animals.

But a more radical response is necessary if we are to keep eating and preserve our land at the same time. In fact, research in Canada, Australia, China and the United States over the last 30 years suggests that perennialization of the major grain crops like wheat, rice, sorghum and sunflowers can be developed in the foreseeable future. By increasing the use of mixtures of grain-bearing perennials, we can better protect the soil and substantially reduce greenhouse gases, fossil-fuel use and toxic pollution.

Carbon sequestration would increase, and the husbandry of water and soil nutrients would become much more efficient. And with an increase in the use of perennial plants and grazing animals would come more employment opportunities in agriculture — provided, of course,, that farmers would be paid justly for their work and their goods.

Thoughtful farmers and consumers everywhere are already making many necessary changes in the production and marketing of food. But we also need a national agricultural policy that is based upon ecological principles. We need a 50-year farm bill that addresses forthrightly the problems of soil loss and degradation, toxic pollution, fossil-fuel dependency and the destruction of rural communities.

This is a political issue, certainly, but it far transcends the farm politics we are used to. It is an issue as close to every one of us as our own stomachs.

Wes Jackson is a plant geneticist and president of The Land Institute in Salina, Kan. Wendell Berry is a farmer and writer in Port Royal, Ky.

Factory Farms Effluent

These are exerpts of the article on Grist.com. For the entire article, please click on the title - it'll take you directly to the article...

Agriculture has long been a top source of water pollution in the U.S., but in the last two decades the scale of the problem has grown dramatically with the proliferation of large-scale pork, poultry, beef, and dairy facilities, known as concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs). From 2002 to 2005, the CAFO industry in the U.S. expanded by about 22 percent -- with substantially more animals per facility, and ever-larger piles of their droppings

Today these facilities are responsible for some 500 million tons of animal manure a year -- three times more waste than humans in this country produce, activists say. According to a 1998 report from the Department of Agriculture and U.S. EPA, CAFO muck has fouled roughly 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and groundwater in 17 states. More recent data show that 29 states have reported water contamination from these feedlots.Last week, the EPA proposed a rule [PDF] that purports to address this problem. It would revise a set of rules issued in 2003 that revamped the permitting process required of CAFOs under the Clean Water Act, with the aim of better tracking discharge levels at each facility and holding factory farms accountable for their water pollution.

"The loophole basically renders the Clean Water Act meaningless when it comes to regulating the fecal discharge from CAFOs," says Merkel. "It says to these massive facilities, 'Hey, figure out if you need a permit to pollute, and then come and get one.' It's appalling."The agriculture industry, meanwhile, is applauding the proposed rule. Don Parish, senior director of regulatory relations for the American Farm Bureau Federation, says it would lighten the regulatory burden on CAFOs. Obtaining permits, he says, is "an onerous process. When you have a permit, every 'i' that you don't dot and every 't' you don't cross is a problem, and creates substantial liability concerns."

"In 2003, EPA's position was that if you're a large-scale facility, it's nearly impossible not to have some amount of discharge," says Merkel. "Therefore all large facilities should have permits."

And yet today the vast majority of factory farms still don't have permits for this runaway pollution: Of the roughly 18,800 CAFOs currently in the United States, the EPA says only about 8,500 have permits.

US Meat Industry Hit By Credit Crunch

From The Grist.org
Like lambs to slaughter?
Smithfield, Pilgrim's Pride, and other meat giants get credit-crunched
Posted by Tom Philpott at 4:14 PM on 29 Sep 2008
Read more about: food livestock business Wall Street economy investing

As I've written so many times before, a very few companies essentially control U.S. meat production.
Their business model is crude, but for years has been effective: You place lots of animals in a tight space (or "contract" with farmers to do so), stuff them with corn and soy (made cheap chronic overproduction mandated by U.S. farm policy), boost their growth with all manner of hormones and antibiotics, and move these unhappy creatures to vast factory-like slaughterhouses, to be done in by some of the lowest-paid, least-protected workers in the U.S.
All down the line, the model relies on the genius of deregulation: lax oversight of the titanic waste generated at factory animal farms, feeble enforcement of labor code, bungling responses to the food-safety crises generated by Big Meat.
I've learned recently that the industry relies on another jewel of deregulation: the cheap and easy credit that has been sloshing through our financial system for years now. Turns out that running massive meat empires -- and gobbling up competitors in an endless race to get bigger -- requires lots of loans.
Guess what? Wall Street has imploded, and its battered survivors aren't keen on loaning. As a result, at least two gigantic meat companies look in danger of collapse.

Actually, Big Meat has been staggering since 2006, when U.S. farm policy underwent a sudden shift.
For more than 30 years before then, policy had focused on encouraging dirt-cheap corn and soy. The meat industry fattened in those years. According to a report [PDF] from Tufts researchers Elanor Starmer and Tim Wise, federal crop subsidies saved the meat industry $35 billion between 1997 and 2005 alone
But then, in 2006, President Bush and the Congress dramatically ramped up ethanol mandates while holding already-generous subsidies and protective measures in place. The policy caused a surge in feed prices -- and dealt a major blow to the profits of Big Meat.
Now, with their profits razor-thin, the industry finds itself squeezed by the credit crunch. On Friday, Smithfield Foods -- the world's largest hog producer and pork processor -- had to "reassure investors ... that it was in compliance with its debt covenants and had adequate liquidity," Reuters reports.
Observers of the financial meltdown will remember that Lehman Brothers, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Bear Stearns all made similar reassurances -- before plunging into an abyss.
Investors seem less than sanguine about Smithfield's prospects. As of late Monday morning, Smithfield shares were down 15 percent.
Chicken giant Pilgrim's Pride finds itself in even worse shape. That company has fallen behind on loan payments, avoiding bankruptcy only by negotiating temporary relief from creditors. More ominously, it has "retained advisers to review its operations and refinancing strategy." That's code for "somebody please buy us at a fire-sale price soon, or we're going belly up."
Investors are betting on the worst-case scenario. In late Monday-morning trading, Pilgrim's Pride shares had surrendered 20 percent of their value. The company's shares closed at $18.50 as recently as last Tuesday. Today, they're fetching about $2.80.