Costco say it will ’study’ accepting food stamps at 2 of their stores.  What exactly is there to study?  Its just the right thing to do, to increase access for poor people.  Meanwhile farmers markets are jumping at the chance to do a 2 for 1 deal on food stamps.  Very cool program.

Obama did another Five Guys drive by today. I’m concerned that groupies are going to start staking out franchises near the White House soon.  First the Mrs., now POTUS? Maybe the Prez should try some Cosi?

As regular readers may have noticed, I am currently fascinated by the worldwide Dairy Crisis where the whlesale price of milk products have dropped so low, it is no longer economically viable to keep dairy cows alive, so into the grinder they go.

This is a worldwide problem, so The Ethicurean rightly points out how odd it is that this NYT article by Katie Zezima singles out organic milk for falling prices.  ALL milk prices are dropping. So why is she doing an entire article on organics?  While it is fair to point out the cost of converting to organic is another burden on these farmers, citing a rise in organic feed is not.  First off, most organic dairy farmers feed their herd grass, not feed.  Secondly, ALL feed costs have gone up, not just organic.

Some of the stories are heartbreaking.  And they are instructive - organics are not immune to price shocks and saying that they are is like saying housing prices will always go up.  Additionally, our small farms are less elastic than Big Ag industrial farms. Focusing on how to deal with the differences between big farms and small farms needs to be part of all agricultural legislation and government action.

The Ethicurean suggests that:

Wouldn’t it be cool if the U.S. government stepped in and said it would buy up all the surplus organic milk for the U.S. school lunch program? Now that would be a win-win PR situation.

The cynic in me can see a situation where that could become a PR nightmare.  Opponents of organics will decry it as massive wasteful spending and tie it to the economic situation.  While its a nice idea, the public is currently valuing frugality over healthy chemical and hormone free food, and it would be very easy for the opposition to win this fight.

Something that could be more a little more under the radar and could be spun on the PR front more successfully is a loan forgiveness program for organic farmers.  Farmers that are running into economic troubles this year could defer payments on loans they took out to go organic, or those loans could be forgiven all together. The program is helping farmers stay afloat, which is popular thing to do, and it removes the risk of going organic.

photo courtesy of flickr user Thomas Hawk

When I traveled through China several years back, we went as a tour, as at that time it was very difficult to get around China as an English speaker on your own.  Almost every night the tour bus would take us to a Friendship Restaurant which was the Chinese equivalent of an Applebees in my mind.  It was Chinese food, but they made alterations to appeal to what they thought Westerners like to eat.  Hence the dishes were overwhelmingly meat oriented and everything was cooked is heavy doses of oil.

Being vegetarian, they didn’t quite know what to do with me.  An American?  Who doesn’t eat meat? It was mind blowing to my captors. Invariably, they would serve me the same unidentifyable leafy, stringy greens cooked, of course, in mass amounts of oil, under the title, “Local Vegetable”.

After being served local vegetable for the umpteemth time, I finally worked up the courage to ask the tour leader while on the tour bus, “what is Local Vegetable?”  The tour leader points out the window at the weeds on the side of the highway, and proclaims: “Local Vegetable”. I had been eating weeds the whole trip.

Needless to say, I was not impressed with the Chinese cuisine after that experience. And I thought that my weed chomping days were behind me.  So it was very curious to me when dandelions started appearing on menus.  Or when, in the Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, Sandor Ellix Katz kicks things off with a recipe for chickweed pesto. Now we have Alex over at SlashFood giving tips on how to collect and cook your own weeds.  I’ve still yet to have a good wholesome weed infused meal yet, but I’m willing to keep an open mind.

Argentina, a country know for its prized meat production, now consumes so much of the cow flesh that they have become a net importer of beef. I know you didn’t think it was possible, but Argentinians actually chow down on the protein more than good ole red blooded Americans.  By a lot.

In what may be one of my favorite headlines yet, the AP in Ohio gives us a brief on a very fun program in a northern Ohio county jail, called, Doing Thyme:

Sandusky County Sheriff Kyle Overmyer got the idea for a vegetable garden at the jail in Fremont after he was forced to reduce his budget by $75,000 this spring.

Everyone is looking to gardening to save on food costs.  Even Ohio jails. Of course, the Canadians are way ahead of us. And San Quentin had one in 2006. Of course, San Quentin may not be around for much longer.

photo courtesy of flickr user frenkiee

I love food.  I think its fun, interesting, and important.  But I do not want food on my public transportation system.  DC Metro has a no food, no drink, no gum policy, and I truly believe its a major reason why our metro cars and stations are the Hyatts of public transportation, instead of the Super 8 accommodations New Yorkers deal with on the subway.  Besides, I have no interest in watching a half-eaten drumstick rolling around on the floor of the metro as I’ve personally seen on the DC MetroBus. Kthxbai.

Last week, the Dept of Ag announced a new round of subsidies for the ailing dairy sector:

The Dairy Export Incentive Program allocations of 68,201 metric tons of nonfat dry milk; 21,097 metric tons of butterfat; 3,030 metric tons of various cheeses and 34 metric tons of other dairy products, as well as individual product and country allocations will be made available through Invitations for Offers. Country and region quantities may be limited by the invitation.

The move was necessary, they reasoned, because US dairy producers are not currently competitive in the world market due to dairy subsidies in other countries, particularly in the EU.  Well, our European brethren wasn’t going to take this dairy smack talk sitting down. Or at least without denying any culpability.  See the “Who Me?” defense at work:

“On the United States, I don’t like to see that the Americans are using Europe’s reinstatement of export subsidies as an excuse to go ahead in this direction,” EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel told a news conference

“We did not introduce our export refunds until we had calculated the effect on the market … and we have not covered the gap between the EU and international price,” she said, speaking after a monthly meeting of EU farm ministers.

Which translates to: “um, ok, maybe we did something, but what we did isn’t to blame for your problems”.  They may be right, I have more research to do, but my understanding was that the cheap milk was coming from places like China and Russia, not the EU. Sounds like no one knows who’s to blame.

Fascinating TedTalk by Jonathan Drori about the amazingly vast and complex program that has saved over 3 Billion seeds.

It costs approximately $2800 to save a plant species.  Not a bad price.

Wow. That was quick. Dave over at Food Democracy Now put out a call for action at 3:30pm Eastern Wednesday.  He warned us about the following:

Last week, Washington State University announced that it was pulling Michael Pollan’s best-selling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma from its required Common Reading Program for all incoming freshman due to pressure from corporate agribusiness.

This is a serious problem.  As we have seen from other huge, consolidated industries, squelching opposing views by applying monetary pressure to instutions is a classic big business play. Luckily for us, Dave was keeping a watchful eye and caught this quick before it started spreading to other universities. By 9:30, the verdict was in:

We just got off the phone with the Washington State University’s President’s office and congratulated them on the decision to reinstate Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, as part of their Common Reading Program.

Within hours of sending out our alert, we received the good news from a supporter named Lynn:

“The power of numbers! By the time I called, 3:21 Pacific, the president’s office told me that they’ve gotten so many calls about this  and, thanks to a generous donation by an alumni, the program and the book has been reinstated. Food Democracy Now! rocks!”

While we appreciate that sentiment, we’d also like to give credit where credit is due.

We understand that food safety lawyer Bill Marler, a WSU alum and former Regents of the university, had a conversation with President Elson Floyd about the reading program this afternoon and offered to pay for Michael Pollan’s trip as well as pay for the full cost to cover the Common Reading Program.

Now that is democracy in action. Congrats!

Jill at Locavore gives an awesome write up on major elements of the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. The huge piece?  Gives the FDA mandatory recall authority. Huge! Going from advisory recalls to mandatory recalls is Progress with a capital P.  Most Americans don’t even know that if their food is contaminated all the US government can do is ask food companies nicely to alert their customers.

There is one element that I am slightly concerned with - the $1,000 registration fee that is required of all farm producers.  If you’re a tiny 100 acre family farm, that can only get by by supplementing with other part time work, then this is a problem.  What we really need is sliding scales based on previous year’s income. So If you’re farm only makes $30,000 a year you only pay something like $200. If your farm makes $1 million youpat $10,000. I’m totally making up numbers here, but you get the point. Sliding scales based on income or acreage is the long ball game. As I mentioned in my post about the food safety hearing, house members do seem to recognize the issue.

This post was originally published on CrooksAndLiars.com.

Are you movement?

I know many of us here consider ourselves to be part of the progressive movement. And for those of us who have been around for a while, we remember how lonely and uncertain it was. There was nothing but uphill battles to be fought against political Goliaths who had industry and riches behind them. And there was no way a rag tag bunch of outsiders armed with nothing but a little online savvy and a lot of righteous outrage was going to take on the system. But we proved everyone wrong, and while the fight is not over (universal healthcare) and there is still work to be done (public financing), no one can say that the progressive movement isn’t a force to be reckoned with.

Now there are some new kids in town. Like the progressive movement, they have huge, fearsome opponents with an endless supply of funds. Like the early years of the progressive movement, no one is taking these new comers seriously yet. Like the progressive movement they are up against unbelievable odds. Yet their cause is true and right and they cannot fail.

They are the food movement.

The food movement encompasses an extensive battlefield covering everything from energy independence to salmonella outbreaks to equitable trade policies to caring for the neediest among us here and abroad. Their opponent is Big Food, with more resources than Big Oil and lessons learned from Big Tobacco. They are masters of manipulation and keepers of Congress, and for decades they have run amok unchallenged. But the status quo is changing. Organics are no longer the realm of the DFHs. Americans are asking why there is recall after recall. Food prices sky rocketed last year. Obesity exploded in the last decade. There is something very, very wrong about what we eat and how we eat it.

As for me, I became interested in food policy after learning about soil depletion and how it is leaving our produce with fewer and fewer nutrients. That’s right - even if you’re eating your carrots and apples, you STILL may not be getting your daily allowance of vitamins. And the kick in the shins? Those dietary requirements are written by food lobbyists who are motivated only by their bottom line. So who really knows anymore? That’s what the food movement is all about - giving people the access and information to start making food choices for themselves instead of Madison Avenue telling us all what to eat.

The food movement has some good starts. Books by people like Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser, and Mark Bittman are national best sellers. Movies like Supersize Me, Fast Food Nation, Food Inc and the upcoming Fresh are bringing the issues to the masses. Me? Along with several other fab food policy bloggers (check out my blogroll for some great suggestions) I’m doing my part to bring food policy into the realm of food consumers with GastroNomalies.com. GastroNomalies isn’t for the wonks – it’s for the rest of us who are just trying to figure this food stuff out and have a lot of fun doing it. Because food is FUN and if it stops being fun, then what are we all doing this for?

The food movement shares many common values and several common goals with the progressive movement. The two are natural allies. So stop on by.

www.GastroNomalies.com

One of the biggest struggles of promoting a healthy diet for people is that the notion of what is “healthy” is continuously changing.  Often this is no one’s fault.  As we have more trials done, and developing better testing, what we once thought was true about eating turns out to be false, and vice versa.

So its not all that surprising today, when I found this article by Jeannine Stein which reports that there is a new study that shows that controlling children’s diets does not cause obesity.

Researchers studied 789 boys and girls in nearly equal numbers, calculating changes in their body mass index between the ages of 4 and 7, and 7 and 9, to determine how their mothers’ restrictive feeding affected how much weight they gained — or didn’t gain. The data were from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development’s study of early child care and youth development.

Yet another reversal.  At first carbs were good for you, now they’re bad for you.  Used to be that fish was “brain food”, now it has dangerously high mercury levels. All these flip flops are a problem - they confuse consumers and frustrate them so that people tune out.  Unfortunately, there is little that we humans can do.  Science is science and it will continue to evolve.  The only thing we can do is apply the weight of history to these problems.  If humans have been eating something for hundreds or even thousands of years, chances are it won’t kill you. That’s why Pollan’s rule, “Eat more whole foods” resonantes with so many. Humans may have not had Lean Cuisine 200 years ago, but we sure did have broccoli.

Ben Smith over at Politico points out that potential Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor may indeed be a foodie.

Now just because the woman can speak eloquently about pig intestines and tongues, does not mean that she has a position on cloned dairy and fertilizer runoff creating dead zones in our seas. More interesting is whether anyone cares when it comes to the confirmation hearings.  What does a foodie Justice look like?  And what are the questions Senators should be asking? Should we be concerned how a Justice will rule on Monsanto suing farmers for patent violations?  Or whether mandatory food recalls are legal?  How about country of origin labeling?

Traditionally, the food fight has been a primarily legislative issues with the regular fights over how the farm bill will distribute the largess and de-clawing the FDA, USDA, and anyone else who might oversee our food. As the threat of class action suits of obesity and food contamination loom, we may be wise to take a look at the judicial branch as well.

H/T Walter

flickr image courtesy of Joe Shlabotnik

He recommends that you spray your tomato plants with epsom salt when they flower.  Discuss.

Dark Roast Blend gives us a round of truly great food art.  Please go check it out.

Also I should note that this post was sent to me by @god.  Seriously.