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.

photo courtesy of flickr user World Economic Forum

Last night, Bill Clinton hosted an anything-goes meeting of the minds with a diverse group of bloggers to kick off the 5th Annual Clinton Global Initiative conference.  I was lucky enough to attend, and we got a few really good questions in about agricultural aid.  I’ll have more on the policy later, but I wanted to share one memorable line of the night.

Natasha Chart asked the former President about how they (aid organizations) plan to address the problem of seed patents turning peasant farmers into indentured servants of mega-seed companies like Monsanto.  While we didn’t get him to declare that this indeed is a problem in need of fixing, he did exclaim:

“If it were up to me, we’d do it all organically.”

Now Natasha had not even mentioned the word “organic” in her question. Clinton kinda pulled that out of no where.  It was unclear if that was the solution that he thought food activists want to hear, or even if he fully understands what it means for developing countries to go organic and has heard the arguments for and against an organic solution.

I for one, don’t think that we have to have an organic solution, but we do need a sustainable one. I’ll have more on Clinton’s comments from last night later.

Use the phrase “Green Revolution” these days and most people will think of new age windmills and solar panels.  But, back in the sixties, the Green Revolution meant something very different.  The term was coined in 1968 to describe the massive advances agriculture experienced during the preceding 20 years.

The Green Revolution was funded by the massive foundations of the time, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. These foundation still exist and are still amongst the largest in the world, however it could be argued that their contributions to the Green Revolution was their most defining success (with the eradication of certain diseases such as yellow fever as a close second). In the mid 1940s, the Foundations decided to partner with the Mexican government to develop a program to conduct agriculture research in hopes of developing high yield crop species.

In 1944, Norman Borlaug was hired away from DuPont labs to become the chief geneticist and plant pathologist of the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, and agriculture was never the same again. Borlaug developed over 6,000 varieties of wheat during his time in Mexico, including many disease resistant hybrids to protect against such blights as stem rust.  In 1953, Borlaug’s research lead to the creation of the semi-dwarf wheat, the plant that changed the face of hunger on Earth.

The semi-dwarf wheat produced wheat with tougher, thicker stalks 1/2 to 2/3 the height of normal wheat.  These stalks had been crossed with high yield wheat that produced double the head seed size of normal wheat.  Normally such large seed heads would cause the stalks to fall over, but the new shorter, sturdy stalks could support the weight.  With this discovery, wheat production doubled(pdf).

Mexico went from importing half its wheat in 1943 to self-sufficiency by 1956 and, by 1964, to exporting half a million tons of wheat.

Prior to the semi-dwarf wheat, it was a widely held belief that India, with its massive population who never be able to feed itself due to the fact that the country simply did not have enough farmland to yield the amount of crop necessary to support themselves.  Borlaug’s discovery changed all that.

The Green Revolution never quite made it to Africa for a number of reasons, including lack of government support and reliable irrigation systems. However, Borlaug’s discoveries did change the reality of life for much of Latin America and the sub-continent, and he is widely credited with saving over 245 million people.  Kinda of hard to match that.

The industrialization of food production and the creation of the terminator seed has reversed many of Borlaug’s advances.  Yet, thanks to him, we know such advances are possible, and know that we already have the necessary building blocks to feed the world.  Now we just need the political will.

Norman Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in relieving hunger across the world.  He died Saturday at the age of 95.

Both China and several Middle Eastern countries have started a dangerous food security policy of buying up farmland in Africa to produce food to be shipped back to their own people instead of buying food from food insecure and economically impoverished countries.  Now the practice of buying farmland has spread to Pakistan:

DUBAI: Saudi Arabia is in talks with Pakistan to lease an area of farmland nearly twice the size of Hong Kong in a bid to ensure food security, an official from Pakistan’s ministry of agriculture said on Tuesday. Gulf Arab states, heavily reliant on food imports and spurred on by a spike in prices of basic commodities, have raced to buy farmland in developing nations to guarantee supplies.

Over the past few weeks the Saudi government has been in talks with us to lease 500,000 acres (202,400 hectares) of farmland and we are currently in the process of locating which land we could give them, Tauqir Ahmad Faiq, regional secretary at the ministry of agriculture, said in an interview. In April, Pakistan said it would offer foreign investors one million acres of farmland for lease or sale and deploy special security forces to protect it. The land we will provide Saudi Arabia will be divided among the four provinces and they will be using it to grow a variety of produce such as wheat, fruits and vegetables, Faiq said by telephone from Lahore.

Pakistan already has serious problems feeding their population as it is:

Pakistan is a low-income, food-deficit country with a predominantly rural population. Recent economic performance has been strong despite hardship due to increasing oil prices and a devastating earthquake in the country’s north in October 2005. Real GDP growth in 2005-2006 stood at 6.6 percent.

The population is estimated at 141.5 million, with an annual growth rate of 2.6 percent. Despite the improved economic picture almost 85 percent of the population live on a marginal income of less than US$ 2 per day. One third of the population lives on even less below the poverty line, and do not have the means to provide for a healthy life.

Pakistan is a country of over 176 million people attempting to eek out a living on a plot of land barely twice the size of California.  Of that land, only 24% is arable. This is not a recipe for sustainability.

There have been numerous “The sky is falling” articles in the past few days after the Ag Dept announced that they fore-casted US farm profits to be down 38% from 2008.

However this is not the full story.  Yes farm profits will most likely be down by over a third, but only after net incomes surged over 50% during the period of 1006 - 2008.  In fact, this year US farmers will make almost as much as they did in 2006 - $54 Billion versus the $58.8 Billion they made in 2006. In truth the real problem here is the volatility of the farming sector:

Surging grain prices from the ethonal bonanza and soaring world prices due to speculation and fear created an agriculture “bubble” not unlike the housing bubble.  The real question should be - how do we stabilize prices for farmers who can’t adjust as quickly as Wall Street mavens?

No, silly, its not where cows go when they die.  It’s the future of agriculture:

The NYT had an op-ed by Dickinson Despommier, a professor who’s been on the forefront of vertical farming.

I’ve been out bacheloretting this weekend and have been a very bad blogger.  While I’ve been gone, many are abuzz with the new cover story from Time “Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food“. It’s a mammoth article which I have not gotten completely through yet.  The pork industry has though, and they don’t like it one bit. The editorial “Time Trashes American Agriculture“, from Pork Magazine has all sorts of scathing, caustic retorts to the piece, although it is laughably short on rebuttals.

Obviously, Time thinks it appropriate that American agriculture discontinue feeding as many people as it currently does at a reasonable cost. After all, what do they have to worry about? Those who are priced out of Time’s idyllic food production scenario likely are neither subscribers to their magazine nor customers of their advertisers.

The article laments the fact that “American farmers now produce an astounding 153 bushels of corn per acre.” The reader is led to believe that it would be much better if the yield was half of that, with our “cattle chewing contentedly on the pasture.”

The “story” leads the reader to wonder if the author or editorial staff of Time have ever produced an ounce of food for themselves or others, or if all their ramblings are tossed in from the sideline. They are not part of the solution of feeding people, they are part of the problem.

Big Ag really is starting to sound like a broken record.  Have a problem with our food system?  You are anti-American and everything this country stands for.  Want our food system to be more sustainable?  You’re an elitist who wants everyone else to starve.

So, once more with feeling.  Our food system benefits big corporations, not small family farmers.  We produce more food than we could ever eat in the US.  However we produce calories, not nutrients and the ensuing health problems are killing us all.

Amusing article in Ghana bemoaning the lack of interest that Ghanian youths show in agriculture jobs. Amusingly claims that in developed countries like the US, agriculre is an elite field.

Back in the late nineties, I drove down from Seattle to San Fransisco.  Along the way, I had a rather unusual experience at the border of Oregon and California.  A government employee asked me if I was carrying any fruits and vegetables.  Now, this is fairly common when traveling internationally - usually the custom forms will ask you the same thing.  But that was the first time I was ever asked for interstate travel.  As far as I know, California is the only state with a border protection agency.

With farm receipts totalling over 36.5 Billion with a B, you can’t blame California for being cautious.  There diligence pays off, as they may have escaped the plight of Florida citrus:

State agriculture officials say tests on bugs found by a dog inspecting packages at a FedEx facility showed they carried a disease capable of devastating the state’s citrus industry.

…

Also known as citrus greening, the disease has caused billions of dollars in losses across Florida.

Seems Florida has been a victim of the global economy.  Luckily for California, they have the checks and balances in place to hopefully avoid the same fate.  Free Market is good - with a healthy dose of regulation.

Today I got a smaller haul at my local Farmers Market, but it was still delicious.

Locally-grown shrimp (in Michigan!)

- 1/2 lbs of large fresh shrimp, grown and harvested locally at The Shrimp Farm Market, the country’s only inland shrimp farm. ($5)

- 1 small bag of freshly popped kettle corn from JW Kettle Corn ($3)

- 1 pint of fresh, locally grown raspberries ($4)

- 1 pint shelled peas, locally grown ($3)

- 4 oz of “Ohhh Maple” Chevre (goat cheese) from Greenbush Farms, a certified environmentally-conscious  local farm. The cheese is flavored with maple syrup, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves ($5)

- 2 zucchini, locally-grown ($1)

- 1 quart of locally grown Michigan cherries ($5)

- 1 lbs of hot Italian sausage, made with locally-grown, sustainable grass-fed, dry-aged beef from McLaughlin Farms Ltd ($6.75)

Total spent: $32.75

While it may seem high, I’ve noticed that what I’m spending at the grocery store has significantly gone down. Frankly, I’d much rather spend my money supporting local agriculture at a Farmer’s Market than at a supermarket that’s shipping in foods from out of state, and in some cases, out of the country.

Not a bad day at the Farmers Market! (h/t to Betsy for the fabulous food photos of our trip today!)

My favorite Big Ag lobbyist is back!  Brownfield made his column a little harder to find, but luckily we were able to ferret out Steve Kopperud’s latest.  And he’s not too happy right now.  See the Washington Post is supposed to be a paper of record of the lobbyists, for the lobbyists, by the lobbyists, so how in the world did that nasty Pearlstein column about the huge payoff Big Ag got in the new climate bill happen?

Let me start off by saying, I think Steve’s right - it was derogatory for Pearlstein to refer to the generic farmer as “Elmer”.  Wasn’t cool.  Of course, Steve, dubbing your opponents as “babbling” and “unenlightened” isn’t the most mature thing to do either.  So why don’t we call it even?

Nope, the issue I have with Steve’s latest is the core (unattributable) premise he makes to take a hatchet to the Washington Post piece.

Scoop is offended farmers and ranchers are not included in the emission reporting requirements of the act because, as both the Bush and Obama Administrations discovered, it would be nearly impossible to calculate the individual greenhouse gas output of each and every farm in America. What Scoop doesn’t mention/might not know is that all of ag is determined to be so small a contributor to overall greenhouse gas emissions, that trying to measure and cap emissions just didn’t make economic or common sense.

One of the reasons food production is so small a contributor is the steps it’s taken over the last several years to control exactly what House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is browbeating her colleagues to pass today, namely reducing the carbon footprint.  Agriculture was aggressively reducing its footprint before anyone knew what a carbon footprint was.

OK, please tell me how in the world you think you can get away with claiming, “all of ag is determined to be so small a contributor to overall greenhouse gas emissions, that trying to measure and cap emissions just didn’t make economic or common sense” when we all know that agriculture production creates more greenhouse emissions than transportation does.  From the UN:

Using a methodology that considers the entire commodity chain, it estimates that livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions, a bigger share than that of transport. However, the report says, the livestock sector’s potential contribution to solving environmental problems is equally large, and major improvements could be achieved at reasonable cost.

It is pointless for me to continue and refute the rest of Steve’s piece, because if he’s in denial about this basic fact then the entire logic that follows will be incomprehensible.

But don’t tell Big Ag that, they’re busy with their fingers in their ears, singing “Lalalala I can’t hear you” at the top of their lungs.

Coolest job ever: teacher for U.S. Agency for International Development Farmer to Farmer Program. Travel the world and teach farmers how to be more sustainable.

Windmills on farms make a crazy amount of sense, and if you’ve ever driven down I-80 in Iowa you can see them already sprouting up like giant mechanical sunflowers. With the right incentives, they are also insanely affordable.  Like this farmer in Massachusetts who cobbled together multiple sources to pay for 90% of his wind turbine:

The Red Apple Farm wind generator was paid for through a combination of money from the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, federal and state agricultural grants and a federal income tax credit. The combination paid for 90 percent of the cost of installing the wind turbine.

Uganda’s finance minister has presented the country’s budget for the coming year, and the principles behind it sound extremely promising.  The financial plan has an agriculture first focus, with supporting roles for irrigation, transportation and energy. This is makes sense for a number of reasons.  Uganda is still incredibly poor even 30 years after the mass destruction caused by Idid Amin.  About half the population lives in poverty, defined by the UN as living on less than $1.25 per day. However their land is very fertile, particularly in the south which is bordered by Lake Victoria which provides consistent rainfall and moderated tempatures.  Approximately 80% of the workforce is in agriculture already. The average age in Uganda is an astonishing 15 years.  And the AIDS rate has dropped from 18.5% to 5% in the past 15 years. All these factors points to a strong, resurgent workforce in the coming years.

And now Uganda has a plan.

The government wants Uganda to become the region’s food basket and to use its location to develop as a regional trading hub. Simply stated, economic policy initiatives will aim to increase agricultural production and productivity, increase agro-processing and value added, and make the investments in infrastructure and human resources to bring this about.

This is a country on the cusp of joining the developing world.  One of the most challenging geographical elements of Uganda has been that it is a landlocked country, meaning that it too often has been dependent on its unreliable neighbors in order to ship exports internationally. However, if Uganda can position itself to become the new bread basket of central Africa, it would benefit from the needy neighbors all around them. Additionally, Uganda has strong trading partners in Europe for their coffee trade that has the potential to expand into other crops. The Economists summarizes the agricultural aspects of the plan:

Agricultural production and value added. Pests and diseases, lack of inputs and technology, the weather and inadequate extension services have been identified as the biggest constraints. To address these problems, the government will provide various vaccinations for cattle and poultry; 25 new crop varieties will be introduced; and 20m disease-resistant coffee seedlings and 4,000 tons of cotton seeds will be made available. Drought is to be tackled by the construction of dams and piped storage facilities. Commercial farming and agro-processing will benefit from new agricultural credits worth NUSh30bn (US$14.3m) from the government, with matching funds from financial institutions, including commercial banks, for on-lending. Additionally, the Uganda Development Bank will provide credits worth US$7m for agricultural lending, and the Islamic Development Bank has earmarked US$100m for water development.

The vaccinations is great news, along with the 25 new crop varieties.  A key component to economical stability and sustainability is crop diversification., that way when one crop goes bad, it doesn’t take down the entire country with it. The focus on coffee seedlings and cotton seeds is a little disturbing as these are cash crops meant for Europe, however it is unreasonable to expect a country to completely switch gears from one year to the next.

The “lack of inputs and technology” is a cause for concern, primarily because these are code words for the elements of agriculture that comprise the yoke that the developed world places over the 3rd world.  We will have to wait and see how much of the plan hinges on Monsanto seeds and petroleum based fertilizers shipped in from donor states.

Greetings from the Mitten State! I’m the newest foodie on the block, and am honored to be joining the ranks of some of my favorite fellow foodies and friends, Ali S. and Robin M.

I’m originally from the most populated part of the state, and for the better part of a decade, I’ve lived in the Capitol City. I got to know both Ali and Robin through my work as a political blogger aka Liberal Lucy, and now I’m a small-business owner. That aside, behind my political work, being a foodie is my next favorite thing to do in the entire world. I’m a big fan of Asian foods, organics, and all things locavore. I think cooking food is one of the most pleasurable things you can do, and it’s an amazing way to not only give of your talent, but also of yourself, because ultimately what you create can embody every emotion the heart can feel - from the playful to the passionate to the sensuous. But enough about me.

Every weekend, I make a point to head over to one of my favorite local farmer’s markets. Michigan’s second-largest industry is agriculture, and our farmers don’t let us down. In case you didn’t hear about the collapse of the Auto Industry (ha!) things are even tougher here in Michigan than they are in many other states. With the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, unemployment could reach up to 20%. For many of us foodies, a trip to the Farmer’s Market used to be just a trip of fun and choice. With such tight times upon us, I’ve noticed larger than normal crowds both this year and last at the Market as folks are looking to do more with less, making it more a trip of necessity than anything.

On a typical weekend, I can find eggs, veggies, fruits, herbs, fresh cut flowers, plants, home made Middle Eastern, Chinese, Czech, and gluten and dairy-free food, along with canned goods, meats, fresh fish, cheeses, honey, and a local favorite, freshly popped kettle corn. Also within the last several years, I’ve seen an increasing number of markets that are accepting food stamps, and it’s something that our state has aggressively promoted. It’s good to see that even our poorest citizens are getting increased access to the healthiest of foods, all while promoting the spirit of locavorism.

I find this trend of getting back to basics in both in how we spend, where we spend, and what we spend it on both interesting and reflective of the tough times we’re in. Perhaps like it did for our parents and grandparents before us, this time will lead us all to a lifestyle of healthier eating done more consciously.