Ms Piggy and the Owners (photo credit: the.piggery)

Those are some of the names of the sows that will be chopped up and delivered to homes in the NYC area this year. The Piggery is offering the first meat-only CSA in the Big Apple, and it is sure to get bacon lovers all hot and bothered.  Here’s the deal:

At the Piggery, animals are raised among the squeaking and squealing until they weigh about 250 pounds. Then they’re shipped to a USDA-certified slaughterhouse. The meat is returned to the farm, where Sanford and Marshall butcher, cure, cook and package it for customers in Ithaca and New York City.

Their top menu items include thick pork chops, bacon, creamy patés, sausages, salami, pulled pork and chorizo.

Customers can choose between a “whole hog” order which will cost $1200 per season, a half-hog at $600, and a quarterhog at presumably $300, although the website does not explicitly state its price.  A customer that goes half-hog can expect to get at least the following through the 24 week season:

I personally am dying to know what a Boston Butt is.

Now a key trait of CSAs is that the food is supposed to be local.  The Trumansburg-NYC trip is a stretch, clocking in at over 3 hours.  However, its a lot closer than the factory -farm meat that travels to the east coast via I-80 from the western skies. So for CSA lovers, it definitely is a judgement call.  And for the health conscious there is the matter of whether one should incorporate so much bacon fat into a diet.

Tom Philpott gives an inside look at what makes the American food system a massive contributor to global warming and pollution.  And no, its not due to cow farts.

I still remember a few years back when there was a huge piece on heirloom garlic in California, where upscale grocers were stocking a dozen different varieties of garlic with “chocolate undertones” and “whiffs of rose”.

Well the mad scientists on the farms have a new designer product - chicken.  I’m all for naturally grown, well fed and well cared for chickens, even though I personally do not indulge in the bird these days.  But isn’t chicken supposed to taste like, well, chicken?

Yes, they’re coming, and life as we know it will never be the same.  Imagine all the innocent organic veggie sandwiches with avocado and roasted red peppers and NO ALFALFA.  The horrors.

As mentioned earlier, GM corn has now taken over 90% of the market - more than Internet Explorer’s market dominance in its heyday.  And its impossible to stop - GM corn seed can be carried by the wind to land and cross pollinate with organic - no corn is safe in America.

And now it is the poor alfaalfa sprouts’ turn. Harmless, unoffensive, never hurt anyone.  And about to be extinctified. But it’s not just veggie sandwiches that will suffer - organic alfalfa is a major feed source for organic cows.  So goodbye organic alfalfa could mean goodbye (or really, really, REALLY expensive) organic meat and dairy.

The USDA is accepting comments on its impending decision for the next two weeks.  The folks behind the fabulous documentary FRESH has a petition you can sign in solidarity with the Alfalfa.

Sadly, its not food pills you pop in the microwave and out comes a Thanksgiving feast.  Luckily, it doesn’t require GMOs.  All that’s required is some coding and a well populated database:

“Food miles, food safety, animal well-being and exceptional quality are important issues that guide my purchasing practices,” said Joe McGarry, an executive chef with Bon Appetit Management Company. “FoodHub allows me to use these factors to sort through the database and find the best suppliers.”

Sophisticated search capabilities allow buyers, both large and small, to instantly discover ready suppliers with a few clicks of their computer keyboard. Conversely, sellers can use FoodHub search features to identify new buyer leads and build targeted customer databases. All registered users can complete an online profile that includes a detailed description of their operation and preferred methods for doing business. FoodHub supports both direct market relationships and leverages existing distribution channels to encourage growth in regional food sales.

Meet FoodHub.  Membership for buyers is a cheap $100 a year.  Another reason why Portland is probably the most kick ass American city.

Biologists decided it was high time to test out those new fangled GM corn varieties that Monsanto has been pumping out and now account for more than 90% of corn grown in the US.  Sure, there has been industry tests, but the more analytically minded among us have a hard time swallowing results that were bought and paid for.

The initial findings are not promising:

We present for the first time a comparative analysis of blood and organ system data from trials with rats fed three main commercialized genetically modified (GM) maize (NK 603, MON 810, MON 863), which are present in food and feed in the world. NK 603 has been modified to be tolerant to the broad spectrum herbicide Roundup and thus contains residues of this formulation. MON 810 and MON 863 are engineered to synthesize two different Bt toxins used as insecticides. Approximately 60 different biochemical parameters were classified per organ and measured in serum and urine after 5 and 14 weeks of feeding. GM maize-fed rats were compared first to their respective isogenic or parental non-GM equivalent control groups. This was followed by comparison to six reference groups, which had consumed various other non-GM maize varieties. We applied nonparametric methods, including multiple pairwise comparisons with a

False Discovery Rate approach. Principal Component Analysis allowed the investigation of scattering of different factors (sex, weeks of feeding, diet, dose and group). Our analysis clearly reveals for the 3 GMOs new side effects linked with GM maize consumption, which were sex- and often dose-dependent. Effects were mostly associated with the kidney and liver, the dietary detoxifying organs, although different between the 3 GMOs. Other effects were also noticed in the heart, adrenal glands, spleen and haematopoietic system. We conclude that these data highlight signs of hepatorenal toxicity, possibly due to the new pesticides specific to each GM corn. In addition, unintended direct or indirect metabolic consequences of the genetic modification cannot be excluded.

Yeah I had a hard time wrapping my head around the jargon also.  The short of it is, GMO corn poisons the liver and kidneys.

This is scary, scary stuff.  Corn syrup is pretty much in everything we eat.  Westerners have massively high intake of corn, and in the US, the vast majority of that corn is GMO. Ten years down the road, will we be seeing liver and kidney failure of epic proportions?

I’ve encountered this before, but its really quite amazing how irrational people can be about farming and livestock:

That won’t fly with folks like D.C. resident Greg Stewart, who’s resisting the aspiring chicken farmers. “Their neighbors have no desire for any type of country or rural feel to where they live,” said Stewart, a 44-year-old real estate agent.

That is a pretty broad stroke of the pen to decree “Their neighbors have no desire for any type of country or rural feel”, but I can’t say its the first time I’ve heard someone object on those grounds.  Apparently there are many who stereotype farms and rural living as poor and unsanitary and backwards.  In particular, I hear this from older folks who they or their family escaped poverty by moving off the farms and into the city a half century ago.  Times have changed, but people are always slower.

Just so we’re clear the zoning law provides for control over sanitary concerns and noise complaints. No roosters and no noxious smells allowed.

Even if you can afford the seeds, the inputs.  Even if drought and bugs don’t wipe out your crop.  Even if you can harvest a bumper crop, it don’t mean squat unless you can deliver it to market.

OK, now I feel doubly lied to.  Not only did the Food Network insinuate that the First Lady would play a key role in their White House Iron Chef, but now it turns out that the produce used in the cooking segment was not the same produce picked in the White House garden by the famous chefs.

At the beginning of the two-hour special, the chefs were shown picking sweet potatoes, broccoli, fennel and tomatillos from the White House garden. Then the chefs were seen walking into Kitchen Stadium, produce in hand. One problem: The show is filmed in New York City.

“Due to the production delay between the shoot at the White House and the shoot at Food Network, the produce used in Kitchen Stadium during the ‘Super Chef Battle’ was not actually from the White House garden,” said Food Network spokeswoman Lisa Krueger in a statement to The Talk.

Instead, the chefs used replacement produce, though only the same types of fruits and vegetables picked from the White House garden.

Replacement produce!  You can’t replace the Secret Ingredient on Iron Chef.  When you specifically name the ingredient to be produce from the White House garden, you can’t substitute fare from your local Whole Foods.  It’s like replacing Beluga with your local sushi takeout roe.  They may both be fish eggs, but no one is going to spend $5K for a kilo of sushi roe. Now I just want to slap Jane Seymour for each time remarked on how unbelievably “fresh” the produce tasted.

Additionally, this was just dumb.  It’s a 3 hour trip from DC to NYC, there is no reason why they couldn’t use the same produce if it was planned properly.  Or they could have filmed in DC.  Either way, this was a pointless lie, and an obnoxious one at that. The Food Network may have been served extra helpings of viewers for its White House special, but how many viewers are now left with a sour taste in their mouth?

Some how my spam filter didn’t catch this.

So much of the urban farmer movement has to do with the reallocation of resources for more effective means.  Now before you get your panties in a bunch, no, there ain’t no communism lurking here.  What we’re talking about is efficiency so don’t you worry your little shriveled free market heart now.  There’s tons of resources going unused, and the brilliance is in the connecting of these resources to skilled laborers to take advantage of them, or consumers who want them.

And so I bring you: Ample Harvest.

Have an over-abundance of tomatoes from those energizer bunnies of the garden?  Just can’t come up with another squash dish.  Ample Harvest helps you find a food pantry near you to dump your excess produce.  Healthy whole foods for the hungry and no more rotting vegetables in your pantry.  Win-win.

The kids these days are betting it all on the farm.  I personally don’t know if I should be flabbergasted that a 26 yr old was making $110,000 a year, or impressed that she gave it all up for $7/hr pulling weeds and harvesting crops.

Stanley, 26, who’s working in a camisole tank top, lives in an uninsulated barn on the farm and spends more than 50 hours a week weeding, mulching, harvesting and selling at farmers markets.

Just a year ago, she was making $110,000 a year at Cisco Systems in Herndon, often telecommuting from the two-bedroom condo she owns in Georgetown. Now, she makes $7 an hour. She and Jabbar, along with Jabbar’s fiance, Steve Hirschhorn, work for Chip and Susan Planck on Wheatland Vegetable Farms in Loudoun County.

The monetary sacrifice is commendable, but one has to wonder how sustainable it is.  $7/hr is not a living wage, and until that problem is solved, farming will continue to be the toil of the poor and the food obsessed elites.

As the dairy world is crashing and burning, its kinda nice to read a happy cheery story about how one dairy is making things work for them and their (somewhat) urban area. They’re expanding, while others are selling off their herds:

One of the family’s biggest decisions in recent history was to install a double-12 milking parlor, known to dairymen as a DeLaval Champion VLP parlor. The family started milking from the unit in April and is in the process of completing an office setup, which includes office space, a meeting and break room for employees, and a place to shower and clean up.

Not only are they expanding, they are also cultivating respectful relationships with the locals:

“We’re in a highly developed area as far as urban pressure,” he said. “Half the ground we farm is in Jackson Township (pop. 38,000). We have fantastic neighbors and we try to be good neighbors.”

Still, there are some things that have to be done, and spreading manure is one of those. But the family tries to avoid spreading during the winter, when it would fail to penetrate the ground, and also makes a second use of some of its resources, including water that is recycled during the milking process.

Not only do these fantastic farmers really care about their neighbors, but they also get how regulation can help, rather than hurt farmers:

Burkett, who is a state trustee with the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation, said farmers are calling for more regulation, because they want to assure consumers that farmers are doing a good job.

“And that is happening, but we want to make sure that when it’s not happening, that there’s a method that it’s dealt with,” Burkett said. “Animals deserve fair treatment and one bad act reflects poorly on whole industry.”

The Center or Science in the Public Interest put out a list this week of the Top 10 riskiest foods based on the number of outbreaks and the number of people who got sick. And those lucky duckies are:

Nestle announced today that they will halt their buys from Zimbabwe’s dictator, Mugabe. Seems the former owner of a dairy farm in Zimbabwe was strong armed into selling to Mugabe’s wife. After the Telegraph reported the incident, calls for boycotting Nestle quickly spread throughout the Internet.

Those wacky mad genius scientists have figured out a way to splice bull sperm, termed sexed semen,  to get mostly just female calves.  In general, a very useful thing if what you’re looking for is dairy cows, as bulls are not very helpful. Of course with the dairy crisis this year, everything just compound the problem.  However, in general this is a great leap in efficiency.

Now, could we please take this technology and apply it to baby chicks?  Cause my stomach turns a little bit every time I think about the baby chick grinder story. Kthnxbai.