Civil Eats

Anthony Flaccavento is an organic farmer near Abingdon in the heart of Appalachian Virginia, and is founder of SCALE Inc. (SCALE stands for, (Sequestering Carbon Accelerating Local Economies) which works with new and emerging sustainable ag projects. He has been working on community environmental and economic development in central Appalachia for the past 25 years.  In 1995, he founded Appalachian Sustainable Development, a nonprofit dedicated to developing healthy, diverse, and ecologically sound economic opportunities in southwestern Virginia and northeastern Tennessee, which has become a regional and national leader in sustainable economic development. Read More

The drive from San Francisco to Monterey cuts directly through the heart of commercial California agriculture. The road winds past thousands of acres of coastal crops, industrial-sized sprinklers, and crews of laborers stooping to hand-cut heads of lettuce and pick strawberries. It’s the kind of monocropping known for methyl bromide, nitrate contamination, and a whole range of other environmental problems.

These farms made for a useful comparison, however, when it came time to talk about fish farming at the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s recent Sustainable Food Institute.

The panel in question was called “Greening the Blue Revolution” and it brought together experts from a variety of disciplines to discuss the ecological challenges involved in fish farming. The panelists didn’t agree on everything but one thing was clear: many of the principles that apply to farming sustainably on land should also be applied to aquaculture. Read More

According to the recently released annual survey by the Apiary Inspectors of America (AIA) and the Agricultural Research Service (ARS), more than a third of U.S. managed honeybee colonies—those set up for intensified pollination of commercial crops—failed to survive this past winter. Since 2006, the decline of the U.S.’s estimated 2.4 million beehives—commonly referred to as colony collapse disorder (CCD)—has led to the disappearance of hundreds of thousands of colonies: Hives are found empty with honey, larvae, and the queen intact, but with no bees and no trail left behind. The cause remains unknown, but appears to be a combination of factors impacting bee health and increasing their susceptibility to disease. Heavy losses associated with CCD have been found mainly with larger migratory commercial beekeepers, some of whom have lost 50-90 percent of their colonies. Read More

Have been mulling over just what to say about forageSF founder Iso Rabins ever since I attended one of his underground dinners back in February. The meal was a big hit and, as billed, featured plenty of wild foods plucked from local woods, parks, and seas to keep a trend-spotting foodista happy. Read More

Urban farming has the potential to help us take charge of the foods we eat, green our cities, build community, and increase food security for urban residents.

Everyday, there’s articles about backyard chickens, bee keeping, or urban yard sharing. Clearly urban agriculture is at the top of the trend pile. But is it just a trend, or a part of a sustainable future? Read More

BP announced last week that it will never again try to produce oil from the well where the Deepwater Horizon oil spill occurred. “The right thing to do is permanently plug this well, and that’s what we will do,” said Doug Suttles, BP chief operating officer. Apparently, the right thing doesn’t include the cessation of drilling elsewhere in the same reservoir, which they have stated they plan to continue.

Have they, and we as a nation, learned nothing from this disaster? Here are some questions to ask ourselves now. Can we be assured that an oil spill of this magnitude will never happen again? Is there a fail-proof method way of extracting oil from deep water wells? Read More

Chef Ann Cooper, also known as the “Renegade Lunch Lady,” has been working to improve public school lunches from the inside first in Berkeley, and now in Boulder, Colorado. She is the author of Lunch Lessons: Changing the Way We Feed Our Children. I asked Chef Cooper a few questions for our series, Faces & Visions of the Food Movement. Read More

On a recent Friday morning, Wheatberry Bakery in Amherst, Massachusetts, was humming with activity. Behind hand-built wooden counters set with delicate French tiles, co-owner Adrie Lester dealt a brisk business in organic scones and muffins, loaves of fragrant artisanal bread, soups, and sandwiches. In the bakery’s kitchen, her husband, Ben, kneaded a batch of dough, then paused to slip a tray of sourdough baguettes into the oven.

The Lesters opened their business in 2005 and quickly established themselves as a neighborhood fixture. But in early 2008, everything changed. Commodity crop prices went haywire, sending the cost of flour soaring. “It was catastrophic,” Ben said. The Lesters decided that basing their products on an ingredient produced thousands of miles away in the Midwest no longer made good business sense, and they began to ask what it would take to source grain from local growers. Read More

Big news, folks, big news! We’re pregnant! With a goat! It is our extreme pleasure to announce that one of our Nigerian Dwarfs, Lucy, is due sometime around the end of August. We can’t decide which prospect is more seductive, the fresh goat’s milk or the scampering hooves of teeny, tiny goat babies, who will be no bigger than a bread box at birth.

Spring is the time of year when livestock are usually giving birth rather than getting preggers, but Nigerian Dwarfs have the uncanny ability to breed year round making them stellar continuous milk producers, as one goat can be freshened while another is drying up. For those non-farmers out there, “freshening” is the polite way of saying lactating and goats, like all mammals, must give birth in order to lactate. Read More

Commercially grown strawberries and tomatoes in California could start getting an unhealthy dose of the highly toxic fumigant methyl iodide, a known carcinogen, neurotoxin, and thyroid disruptor. Among scientists’ greatest concerns is the pesticide’s ability to cause spontaneous abortion late in pregnancy. So you might be surprised to hear that the California Department of Pesticide Regulation (DPR) recently issued a proposed decision to approve methyl iodide for use just months after a state-commissioned study warned that any agricultural use “would result in exposures to a large number of the public and thus would have a significant adverse impact on the public health” adding that, “adequate control of human exposure would be difficult, if not impossible.” Read More

While children zip around the Northeastern rural property, adults mingle and serve up heaping portions of macaroni and cheese and colorful salads. The kids revel in a long lineup of activities: greeting animal guests (alpacas and a boa constrictor, recently), kite-making, improv games, and seed planting. More than anything, the scene resembles a small-town fair. But it is simply another night at the Montague Farm Café. The free dinner is hosted by the Buddhist Montague Farm Zen House in Montague, Massachusetts, as part of the group’s efforts to promote sustainable food and health. Read More

Last week, the Department of Justice announced the panel for the second public workshop on regulation and competition issues in agriculture, which will take place this Friday, May 21 in Normal, Alabama. The workshop will focus on production contracts, concentration and buyer power in the poultry industry, in which four of the top producers — Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Perdue, and Sanderson Farms — controlled 58.5% of the poultry market as of January 2007. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division Christine Varney will be at Friday’s workshop, which is important because it gives producers, consumers and advocates a chance to speak on record about how the practices of these companies affect them. Read More

When the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) met in Chicago May 3rd-6th they were, no doubt, elated to hear that the U.S. State Department would be aggressively confronting critics of agricultural biotechnology.

Jose Fernandez, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs noted that the State Department was ready to take on the naysayers. In addition to confronting the critics, Fernandez stated they would be building alliances (presumably with the biotech industry and foreign governments), anticipating roadblocks to acceptance and highlighting the science. Read More

You’ve got to hand it to the food industry. They certainly know how to get the attention of the White House just when they need it most. As announced this week by Michelle Obama herself, the nation’s leading food companies have made yet another pledge, this one in the form of an agreement signed with the Partnership for a Healthier America, an off-shoot of the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign. Read More

Sixteen of the top U.S. food and beverage manufacturers announced yesterday they will work toward removing 1.5 trillion calories from the American diet annually by 2015, with a total of 1 trillion to be cut by 2012.

The pledge to cut major calories from food products is an agreement between the Partnership for a Healthier America, an independent, nonpartisan organization, and The Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation, a coalition of 80 of the nation’s largest retailers, non-profits and food and beverage companies. 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.

Molly Rockamann (pictured: Karen, Molly, Vicki, Danielle) will forever be remembered as the apprentice at UC Santa Cruz’s Farm and Garden Program that made “Farm Grease, The Musical,” happen. This 28 year-old farmer grew up playing in the racks of her grandmother’s costume shop and with a family that made variety shows a priority at nearly all functions. So it’s not surprising that Molly continues to weave art, dance, and music into her farm in Ferguson, Missouri. Read More

Join Kitchen Table Talks and CUESA for a conversation about the contributions of women farmers, producers, advocates, and activists. Temra Costa will speak about the women she interviewed for her new book, Farmer Jane, and a panel of women who work in the food system including Sarajane Snyder from Green Gulch Farm and Il Cane Rosso’s Chef Lauren Kiino, will delve into ideas of women’s work, the joy of being in the dirt, and the ways women juggle home, family, community, and other endeavors as they plant, till, sell, and promote their wares.

We’ll gather Wednesday night, June 9, in the Port Commission Hearing Room at the Ferry Building, 2nd Floor at 6:30 pm. The event is free though donations are always appreciated. Please RSVP here to reserve your seat.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of CivilEats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. A $10 suggested donation is requested at the door, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Farmers’ market-sourced food and refreshments will be provided, courtesy of Bi-Rite Market.

An ex-Washington Post reporter, who now blogs about school food, recently spent a week embedded in the central kitchen of the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in Northern California.

Ed Bruske’s mission: To find out how one school community manages to cook food from scratch for its students. Read More

Monsanto has donated $4 million in seeds to Haiti, sending 60 tons of conventional hybrid corn and vegetable seed, followed by 70 more tons of corn seed last week with an additional 345 tons of corn seed to come during the next year. Yet the number one recommendation of a recent report by Catholic Relief Services on post-earthquake Haiti is to focus on local seed fairs and not to introduce new or “improved” varieties at this time.

Some tough questions need to be asked and answered before we’ll know whether or not Monsanto’s donation will help or hurt long-term efforts to rebuild food sufficiency and sovereignty in Haiti. Here are five of them: Read More

Can you show the Mom-in-Chief how motivated we are to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act?

Back in April I attended the White House Childhood Obesity Summit on behalf of the National Farm to School Network as reported here. The purpose of the summit was to gather input from experts to create a roadmap leading to children reaching adulthood at a healthy weight.

On Tuesday, the White House Childhood Obesity Report [PDF] was released. One particular challenge of the taskforce was to create benchmarks of success, leading to the focused goal of returning to a childhood obesity rate of 5% by 2030. Read More

When Jamie Oliver set out to change the eating habits of people in Huntington, West Virginia, he cut up a whole raw chicken in front of a group of school children. He started by removing the breasts, legs, and wings and separating them from the leftover carcass. Then he asked the children which pile contained the best parts of the chicken, and they pointed to the good pile. Then he put the other pile, the skin and carcass, in a blender and pulverized it. When he told the kids those were the parts used to make chicken nuggets, they all said, “Ewww!” But when he formed the blended bone and cartilage into patties, fried them, and asked who would like one, a bunch of hands shot up. Read More

Growing local organic food may be the best path toward economic recovery. It may also be key to building stronger and healthier communities.

“Our [struggling] economy is making a compelling case that we shift toward more local food,” said Ken Meter of the Crossroads Resource Center in Minneapolis. “The current system fails on all counts and it’s very efficient at taking wealth out of our communities.” Read More

We get asked frequently at Farm Aid what a family farmer really is, how to spot a factory farm, or if someone can be both a family farmer and run a factory farm. We also receive questions from farmers themselves who want to know if we consider them a family farm or a factory farm. You name it — we’re asked it.

At Farm Aid, we consider these questions seriously. After all, our mission is to keep family farmers on their land. So, what do we mean when we say family farmer? How do we identify a factory farm? Is there any real definition to these terms? Read More

I made a decision in early April that has improved my quality of life immensely: I broadcasted hundreds of lettuce seeds throughout two, 2 ft. x 6 ft. raised beds on my rooftop. Read More

Remember when Fox pundit Michelle Malkin accused Rachael Ray of being a terrorist sympathizer because she wore a Middle Eastern-ish scarf in a Dunkin’ Donuts ad? I’m not sure what was more absurd about that episode: Malkin’s unhinged hysteria, or Dunkin’ Donuts’ profile in cowardice (they yanked the ad.)

But Malkin got one thing right: Rachael Ray is far more radical than I even dared hope. She took Capitol Hill by storm yesterday, armed with some very sharp talking points, and fired them directly at the lawmakers who actually have the power to improve the lousy school lunches we’re dis-serving our kids: Read More

New York is about to become the home to a very big, very high farm. It’s called Brooklyn Grange, and it’s a one-acre rooftop soil farm that our Brooklyn-based team is installing next month on a six story factory building on Northern Boulevard in Long Island City, Queens. Read More

At any given point over the last several years, David Retsky of County Line Harvest has hosted between one and three interns on his farm. Interns have staffed booths at farmers markets, supported his core crew of farm laborers, and they’ve had the opportunity to learn about the inner workings of the business. In return, he’s provided them with room and board and $300 per week.

“It’s a resume builder and they get to find out if they really like agriculture,” says Retsky. “It’s been a win-win.” A win-win, that is, until he had a visit from a California Division of Labor Standards Enforcement (DLSE) official. The DLSE audited County Line and fined Retsky $18,000 for payroll violations. Now he turns down all of the two to three requests he gets a week from young people hoping to come to the farm.

A number of small-scale farms have been fined for similar offenses, and there’s a growing consensus among farmers that interns — who, by nature, are compensated in nontraditional ways, with some combination of education, food, housing, and payment — aren’t worth the risk.

Read More

Zucchini-molasses quinoa cake, beet salad with pumpkin seeds, freshly roasted chicken with spinach—such a menu seems to fit a health food café more than a free dinner for the needy. But the team at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Seattle, Washington, headed by Doug Macmillan, makes healthy and sustainable food the hallmark of its monthly Jubilee Dinner. Read More

My no-nonsense New England mother instilled in me the belief that Mother’s Day was about manufactured rather than genuine sentiment. She also shunned formality when it came to flowers, preferring bouquets plucked from our garden to anything a florist could dish up. But now that she’s gone, the holiday has assumed for me an unbidden emotional significance. I always want to observe it, but I’m never sure how. This last weekend, quite by accident, I found my answer: I happened to spend Friday morning on an organic farm. Read More

James Johnson-Piett is responsible for the overall management of operations and strategic vision for Urbane Development, a community and economic development firm based in Philadelphia. He specializes in neighborhood scale development and the revitalization of urban commercial and retail amenities. His work focuses on strengthening neighborhood commercial and retail enterprises by providing services and expertise that infuses principles of social entrepreneurship, sustainability, and technical acumen into the core of his client’s operations. He serves as Treasurer on the Board of Directors of the Community Food Security Coalition, is a co-convener of the Healthy Corner Stores Network, and a member of the Philadelphia Development Partnership’s Young Entrepreneur’s Advisory Board. James is an alumnus of Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Political Science and Environmental Studies. I sat down with James to ask him a few questions last week for our new series, Faces & Visions of the Food Movement. Read More