Civil Eats

Tuesday the Supreme Court heard its first oral argument involving genetically modified (GM) crops. Though the case, Monsanto Co. v. Geertson Seed Farms, has reignited the discussion over GM, or genetically engineered (GE) crops, it is still unclear what kind of impact the decision, which is expected by June, will have on the future of U.S. agriculture. Read More

In America we all grow up with images of what certain occupations look like, stereotypes of the folks we depend on for day-to-day functions in society.  The construction worker is a robust, manly kind of character.  The nurse is a nurturing, kind and vaguely attractive woman.  And the farmer, if you even thought about who grew your food as a child, is always a strong, hearty man enduring the elements and surveying his wide expanses of land.  Just like the illustrations in our very first books, we internalize what these roles “should” look like.  But as we all learn, hopefully, as we age is that stereotypes are never the reality. Read More

This week in New York City, get to know the nature around you (and eat some local, wild and seasonal meals featuring native plants, too) during Wildflower Week, from May 1st – 9th. Read More

If you’ve seen Food, Inc., you may remember watching Carole Morison walk through her chicken house gathering a handful of sickly and lifeless birds. It’s a chilling scene, and one that she tells the documentary’s audience occurred almost daily over the two decades she and her husband were contract farmers for Perdue. By the time the film was made, the Morisons had decided to end their contract with the company and Carole was in a rare position to act as a whistle blower. In exacting detail she described the harsh conditions for the animals and the people involved in such contracts and shed light on an industry often shrouded in secrecy. Now a consultant focused on local food systems, Carole visited the Bay Area recently to speak on several food and farming panels, including one held by the Center for urban Education for Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) called Inside the Hen House. My interview with her follows: Read More

Each year, NRDC recognizes sustainable food pioneers across the United States through the Growing Green Awards. OnEarth is publishing blog posts from this year’s four winners and two of the judges. All of the posts can be found here.

I got my first glimpse of sustainable agriculture from my father, a North Dakota farmer who had faced the ravages of the Dust Bowl and vowed never to let that happen to his land again. His livelihood depended on healthy soils, and with two kids to feed, taking care of the land meant taking care of his family. Read More

For many Jewish consumers, cooks, and eaters, opting for free-range chicken and organic, local potatoes isn’t merely an environmental choice, but a deeply personal one as well. Food has always played a central role in Judaism—from keeping meat and milk separate in a kosher kitchen, to warming up with a bowl of matzo ball soup—but now some Jews are aligning their cultural and religious values with what’s for dinner. These greener food traditions are a uniquely Jewish food movement. Read More

I was predisposed to like this food and family memoir. I have a healthy respect for the work of Kim Severson, who is a food writer, but also a reporter — in the dogged, determined, old-fashioned sense. Read More

Today the United States Supreme Court will hear argument in Monsanto v. Geertson Seed Farms, the first time ever that the High Court has heard a dispute involving a genetically engineered crops. The decision may have broad impacts on how genetically engineered (GE) crops are treated by U.S. regulators and courts. Read More

Each year, NRDC recognizes sustainable food pioneers across the United States through the Growing Green Awards. OnEarth is publishing blog posts from this year’s four winners and two of the judges. All of the posts can be found here.

Farming is in my roots.

I was born and raised in the Valley of the Hearts Delight, or as most people now refer to it: the Silicon Valley. My dad, grandfather and many before them were all farmers, and I grew up working in their prune orchards. The prunes were conventionally grown, so that meant applying fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides. It wasn’t until my chemistry and botany classes in college, though, that I started realizing the potential effects of all these chemicals. Read More

Each year, NRDC recognizes sustainable food pioneers across the United States through the Growing Green Awards. OnEarth is publishing blog posts from this year’s four winners and two of the judges. All of the posts can be found here.

Shepherd’s Grain started with two traditional Pacific Northwest wheat growers. We raised commodity wheat and sold it by the bushel to the commodity market, where it was mixed with anonymous wheat from all over the U.S. and exported to countries along the Asian rim.

Back then, the market didn’t reward growers for quality or good stewardship. We grew wheat at the lowest cost possible. We handed it over to the market, and couldn’t track how the wheat was processed or where it ended up. Read More

Temra Costa is a sustainable food and farming advocate and author of Farmer Jane: Women Changing the Way We Eat. Civil Eats will feature her profiles of some of America’s women farmers and food advocates over the coming weeks.

In a time when kids don’t know the difference between potatoes and rocks, it’s refreshing that grassroots organizations are working to rebuild their community’s food economy and teaching invaluable skills of food production and sustainability to our next generation of eaters. I feel sympathetic towards youth today, they have to juggle mixed messages about what to eat while our world goes streaming into cyber space. They are the ones that are charged with putting a new foot forward to solve our current challenges of industrial food and the obesity and diabetes epidemics. Organizations such as Growing Power in Milwaukee and Chicago, The Food Project, and our featured organization, The Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) in Buffalo, New York, are showing kids how food is grown and are simultaneously teaching them critical life lessons in health, nutrition, environment, and business.

This brings us to Zoe Holloman, an educator and organizer for MAP Read More

The South is a traditional and friendly culture. Albeit folks down here are known for being set in our ways, but we would do anything for our neighbors and we definitely love our college basketball. I’m from the South and have also lived in the Northeast and California where I fell in love with the locavore culture in San Francisco and Sonoma county. However, after moving back to North Carolina recently, I have found the Triangle area to be quite a gem for a locavore lover. Read More

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN), who last year called those who spend money on organic produce “dumb,” may become the unlikely champion of a Farm Bill in 2012 that could create opportunities for more sustainable farmers.

This week, the House Agriculture Committee held the first hearing on the 2012 Farm Bill, the main piece of legislation that every five years establishes our nations food and agriculture policy. The Farm Bill affects farm payments, supplemental nutrition assistance programs (SNAP, formally called food stamps), international trade, conservation programs, the opportunities in rural communities, agriculture research, food safety, and more. Currently 70% of farm payments go to the wealthiest 10% of producers of corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice. These kinds of oversights are the result of a Farm Bill that has been largely cobbled together over time.

But it seems the House Agriculture Committee is gearing up for a more serious overhaul this time around. Read More

An iron-clad rule for government bureaucrats of all ranks: thou shalt not question the American habit of eating more than a half pound of meat per day. The folks responsible for churning out millions of pounds of steaks, chops, nuggets, and burgers–and vast, toxic manure cesspools–are sensitive souls. Hurting their feelings is … mean! From the Hill:

The Farm Bureau is none too happy with the EPA today for publishing a blog post urging Americans to give up meat. Read More

This is part six of a six-part series on seed starting. Part one can be read here. Part two is here. Part three is here. Part four is here. Part five is here.

While the forecast calls for a brief return to a wintery chill the next few days, the calendar is progressing headlong into spring, and the earliest daffodils–along with the just-unfurling green buds on the dreaded and omnipresent multiflora rose–are here. Soon, the earth will warm, and your seedlings will eagerly sink their bound roots into the big, living universe of your own garden’s soil. Read More

“Once upon a time, diabetes was rare.” So states Dan Hurley in his book, Diabetes Rising, an investigation into the rising, the reasons and the remedies for both types 1 and 2 diabetes. As early as the prologue, Hurley asserts his determination to belie what he calls the “misleading, mistaken, or outdated” conventional wisdom surrounding diabetes, specifically:

“Type 1 is rare and strikes out of the blue, due in part to a genetic risk, set off by perhaps a virus or some other kind of stress. To treat it, you take insulin, test your blood sugars, and carefully watch what you eat…Type 2 is far more widespread, and spreading fast along with America’s waistline. It’s caused by eating too much and exercising too little…” Read More

John Jeavons expects that 20 years from now most of the world’s people will be struggling to eat.

Jeavons, a developer of sustainable agriculture methods, delivered this dire message at a three-day workshop I recently attended. Although his vision might seem to approach the apocalyptic, this class was not “How to Build Your Own Backyard Bomb Shelter” or “The Book of Revelation Explained!” It covered a more humble subject, one to which we moderns have paid far too little attention: soil. Read More

Here in Iowa we have an event called RAGBRAI – The Register’s Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa – the oldest, largest and longest non-competitive ride in the world.  Simply put, roughly 15,000 of us dip our back tires in the Missouri River one July Sunday Morning, then pedaling past the cities, fields and farms we dip our front tires in the Mississippi River 6 days later, having ridden an average of 465 miles.

When the ride started 38 years ago, riders rolled past countless fields dotted with little lean-to style huts – shelters for the hogs that have been raised here since the European settlers came in the early 1800s.  Since then, though, the huts have all but disappeared, replaced by long, narrow steel buildings with pairs of 6-foot exhaust fans on each end and large lagoons outside. Read More

Among the adherents of the food security movement in the United States, many idolize Cuba’s experience in building a vibrant urban farming sector. This idealization is due to the lack of information available on the Cuban system, as caused by the travel embargo and media blackout there. Compounding this situation is the vast difference between the Cuban and American political and economic systems.

Cuba’s accomplishments are undeniably astounding, inspiring and a testament to the country’s flexibility and pragmatism: 350,000 new well paying jobs (out of a total workforce of 5 million) created in urban agriculture nationally; 4 million tons of fruits and vegetables produced annually in Havana, up ten-fold in a decade; and a city of 2.2 million people regionally self-sufficient in produce. These accomplishments have been supported by an extensive network of input suppliers, technical assistance providers, researchers, teachers and government agencies.

Yet, Cuban urban agriculture, no matter how inspiring, is largely irrelevant to Americans. Read More

Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, and more than 80 farmers, public health, environmental, and organic food organizations today sent a letter to Michael R. Taylor, Deputy Commissioner for Food at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and to Kathleen Merrigan, Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), expressing serious concerns that a proposed U.S. position on food labeling would create major problems for American producers who want to label their products as free of genetically modified (GM)/genetically engineered (GE) ingredients. A copy of the letter can be found online [PDF]. Read More

The Agriculture Committee of the US Senate has taken a first big step forward toward President Obama’s call for improved child nutrition by requesting an additional $450 million per year to fund better school lunch. Those seeking a healthy food and agriculture across the nation applaud the Committee’s approval of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, though more will be needed to improve the healthfulness of the food served in our lunchrooms. At the same time, it took one big step backwards by suggesting that over $4 billion dollars needed to fund that Act should be taken out of two existing Farm Bill programs.

The Committee wants to rob Peter to pay Paul and few people seeking healthy food and agriculture have cried foul. This is a mistake. It is the reason why two weeks ago Roots of Change launched an online petition to the House leadership that could stop such a move. We are encouraged by the announcement last week by Colin Peterson, Chairman of the House Ag Committee, that he will protect those Farm Bill programs with backing from many House members. But the fight is not over. Read More

All across the nation people are converting their front and backyards, vacant lots, and other spaces into thriving and productive food gardens. To help encourage new gardeners along this verdant path, The 350 Garden Challenge will bring thousands together over a a single weekend, May 15-16, to transform 350+ Sonoma County landscapes into bountiful gardens. The goal is to save water, link local food production and carbon savings, grow food and habitat, promote greywater, and encourage lawn to food transformations. The project is inspired in part by the 350.org international campaign to find and implement solutions to climate change. Read More

Asked whether organic is marketing hype, the audience in attendance at the Intelligence Squared April 13^th debate in New York City, voted against the claim, 69% to 21% in favor of it. The remaining 10% were undecided by the end of the evening. Read More

When President Obama established a “Presidential task force on childhood obesity” in February, Grist’s Tom Laskawy wondered whether our nation’s first federal food policy council had quietly sprung into being. In a food policy council, the key stakeholders of a region’s food system come together to assess the current food situation and envision ways it might be improved. Food policy councils are a growing phenomenon at the state and municipal level, but such a thing had never existed before at the national level. Does it now?

Well, last week I had the honor of attending the new task force’s White House Childhood Obesity Summit,  and it certainly had the flavors of a food policy council: an array of food-policy players across agencies gathered to discuss a key symptom of a food system gone off the rails: childhood obesity. Read More

It has often been said that the reason television is called a medium is because it is neither rare nor well done.  For forty years, PBS has been defying that axiom, consistently providing some of the best television on television.  They also have the only serious nightly news show left.

Possibly the best thing they offer is POV, the easiest way to see serious documentaries by strong filmmakers unless you are a obsessive film junkie with scads of time on your hands and you live in New York or LA.  Even for a show as impressive as POV though, their plans for April 21^st are unique.

In conjunction with the showing of Robert Kenner’s Oscar-nominated film Food, Inc. (trailer) that day, POV is helping to organize potlucks in people’s homes all across the country.  The idea is to get groups to share a healthy, sustainably-sourced meal, watch the film, and discuss – thus helping to spread the gospel of real food. Read More

Syndicated eco-columnist and Master Gardener Annie Spiegelman (AKA “The Dirt Diva”) offers practical tips on organic gardening, composting and planting along with guidance and gripes on marriage, motherhood and “having it all.” A cynically optimistic horticulturist, Spiegelman offers positive reinforcement and moral support as a gardener who’s made all the mistakes, and has lived to tell how to make peace with snails, fungi, bacteria (and your boyfriend). Civil Eats caught up with the Dirt Diva to dish about her new book, Talking Dirt: The Dirt Diva’s Down-to-Earth Guide to Organic Gardening. Read More

At last, some thorough reporting on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the mainstream media. Reuters reporter Carey Gillam takes a look at the weaknesses in the US regulatory framework for GMOs, and the resulting blockade against independent research, and thus gives context to the current consumer backlash to GMOs worldwide. Read More

This is part five of a six-part series on seed starting. Part one can be read here. Part two is here. Part three is here. Part four is here.

With the beautiful, warm weather we’ve been having, many gardens are ready for their first direct sown seeds: those seeds that do perfectly well when planted directly in garden soil. Read More

After hiding indoors all winter, nothing beats the brisk chill of the early spring in my rooftop garden. Cleaning up the dead branches left from the year before, turning the compost, the sweet smell of worm poop in the air as I work amendments into the cool soil. But most exiting are the first green fronds that have begun to emerge — perennials and even volunteers — and the protected annuals springing forth from the previous fall planting. Read More

After months of uncertainty, the Senate is expected to bring pending food safety legislation to the floor within the next week. Read More