Civil Eats

The latest egg recall teaches us that large-scale farms have a lot to lose—in dollars and cents—by not properly regulating the quality of their products. It also reaffirms loss in quality-control, food safety, and sustainable production for concerned consumers, environmentalists, and food activists. Both forces might agree that the food production system needs an overhaul. In order to accomplish such a feat, the measurement of that “success” will need a clear definition and a consensus from corporate conglomerates and food activists combined. Read More

A new service program promises to recruit an army of volunteers to help transform school food and, perhaps, groom a new generation of farmers.

Over the last three years, I have received thousands of emails, calls, letters, and in person requests from around the country reiterating the same query: “I love the concept of Farm to School programs, but how do I get started in my community’s school? Our budgets are tight and we just don’t have the sweat equity and the labor to pull it off.”

Normally, I answer by walking through the steps of starting a program and briefly assessing the situation in the school environment: do they have a working kitchen? Are there local farmers interested in selling to the school? Is the Food Service Director on board with incorporating fresh, local product? And so on.

But this time, I can excitedly add to my answer, “Have you heard of FoodCorps?” Read More

An over-capacity crowd packed into the Ft. Collins, Colorado, Marriott last night for a spirited town hall about the impact of corporate concentration on the livestock industry. Extra chairs had to be brought in and the room’s dividing wall removed to accommodate at least 350 people, many in cowboy hats, who are in town for today’s Department of Justice/USDA workshop on Agriculture and Antitrust Enforcement Issues in Our 21st Century Economy, this one focused on livestock.

The evening started with a panel including a cow/calf operator, a labor leader, and other ranchers. Read More

In 1999, Sarah Cantril began to pursue her vision of a community gardening program for low-income women and their families. That year, she worked with six Latina women to develop a 300-square foot garden, and, for the next four years, Cantril volunteered her time to help a half-dozen families annually obtain plots in community gardens, mentor one another on gardening practices and harvest food.

In 2004, the group organized as Huerto de la Familia (The Family Garden) and moved their main site to the Churchill Community Garden in Eugene, Oregon. From the 12 initial families with whom Cantril launched the nonprofit, the group has grown to serve 55 families in three community gardens as well as eight families who launched, in 2008, a cooperative berry farm. Read More

It’s my first week on the job at Bon Appétit Management Company, and Helene York is across the hall, yelling into the phone about tuna fish.

To be more exact, she’s making some heads roll because I found a recipe for bluefin tuna posted on one of our cafe’s Web sites. It’s not like every dish, on every Web site, at every cafe can be policed, seeing that we have over 400 cafes equipped with fiercely autonomous chefs. But clearly, Helene expects more from our chefs—a lot more. Read More

As consumers scramble to check their egg cartons and federal officials investigate two Iowa farms at the center of a half-billion egg recall, it’s becoming clear that no one was overseeing egg safety in Iowa. Read More

The growing demand for locally raised, pasture-fed meat is confronted by a lack of high-quality, humane, and regional processing plants. Even the USDA has gotten involved in identifying where outreach is most needed, by helping to build or maintain local slaughtering facilities. The agency just released an updated version of slaughterhouse maps that target local processing establishments. (The re-release can be found here [PDF].) But well before this week’s map release, organizations like Glynwood set out to understand and assess the need for mobile slaughterhouse units in the Hudson Valley region of New York. Working since 2008 to address the obstacles that have prevented the construction of adequate facilities to serve small to mid-size farmers, the organization created a modular mobile slaughterhouse—their Modular Harvest System (MHS). Civil Eats spoke with Judy LaBelle, President of Glynwood, to find out more about the first and only modular mobile slaughterhouse in the U.S. Read More

Surrounded by established organic farms like ALBA, new progressive ventures like Monkey Flower Ranch, the Elkhorn Slough National Estuarine Research Reserve, and huge swaths of protected watershed, it doesn’t surprise me that the only signs of spirituality in our Californian neighborhood of Royal Oaks are a few churches for the Spanish speaking farming community. Organic farming and Slow Foodie friends of mine typically describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Cooking, growing food, and spending time in nature are all profound experiences for them, but they’ve resigned themselves: They’re not going to push harder on the spiritual front—part of their great flight from their parents’ religions. Read More

Urban farmer Annie Novak is farmer and co-founder of the Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn, New York—a green roof turned vegetable farm built by Goode Green on top of a warehouse owned by Broadway Stages. In its second growing season, the farm has become a center of community, with a weekly market, a popular volunteer program, and farm talks on subjects like composting, artisanal food businesses, and chicken-raising. Annie also finds time to run an education program she founded called Growing Chefs and works as the Children’s Gardening Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Gardens. And she can be seen zipping around town on a bike that she built herself.

She’s garnered loads of press for her work, including this Grist interview with our own Paula Crossfield.

CE: What issues have you been focused on?

AN: Food access. What ancient agricultural skills have we lost? Everything I do ties back to the soil and land itself. Where does good soil come from and what’s happened to it? Read More

I go to a really cool school. We have two beehives and a 7,000 square foot greenhouse, which used to be an old greenhouse, but is now recycled and updated for our use. I love walking in when the seedlings are growing because it smells alive—I can’t really describe the smell as anything other than a mix of dirt, beans and tomatoes. Read More

Unfortunately I can report from recent personal experience that in some facilities hospital food remains truly awful. If you’ve been in a hospital this will likely not be news to you. A couple of in-patient visits over the past few months have given me an up-close view of what gets served to the sick during a hospital stay, which averages around three days for most folks dealing with an acute health problem. Read More

Farming without soil has taken root in fish tanks and window frames. But above 10th Street in Manhattan’s West Village, John Mooney is hydroponically farming produce on the roof of his soon-to-be restaurant, Bell, Book & Candle. He is the first chef in the U.S. to grow all of his produce on a rooftop farm.

Eighty diners a night sample whatever is in season—greens, garbanzo beans, summer squash, lettuces, tomatoes, broccoli rabe—for 10 months out of the year. On the roof, hydroponic towers circulate water to plants through a closed circuit. At its base, each tower has a nutrient-rich reservoir which pumps water upward. As water trickles down from a center passage, plant roots receive their nourishment. The towers use 12 minutes of energy an hour, running on three-minute cycles.

Mooney’s produce is free of typical soil disease and pest infestation. Since he has produced it all himself, it’s also incredibly affordable. Start-up costs can be steep for hydroponic systems, but with their promise of efficiency and high-yield, “roof-to-table” hydroponics may provide New Yorker’s with another way to maximize their valuable, cramped real estate.

Check out Nightline’s report on the chef and his garden.

On August 13th, Judge Jeffrey White, federal district judge for the Northern District of California, issued a ruling granting the request of plaintiffs Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and the Sierra Club to rescind the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) approval of genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” sugar beets. Read More

The pending Senate food safety bill inched forward yesterday as key lawmakers released a bipartisan, compromise agreement, a step which should make it easier to bring the bill to the floor for a vote after recess. Read More

It’s high time to revitalize and re-energize American food: Making better-quality, healthier, and less processed food available is an urgent priority. To make more real food readily accessible to Americans, we need to support the continued growth of farms practicing sustainable agriculture, we need to demand the production of better food by our country’s large food manufacturers, and—above all—we must support the regrowth of regional food systems with strong connections to our community and culture. Supporting this regrowth means bringing back foodways and food craftsmanship skills that disappeared decades ago and relearning the ancient arts of preparing, processing, and conserving our food. Read More

Whether you are a home gardener preserving tradition, an ecologist maintaining bio diversity, an activist protesting industrial ag, or a foodie in search of distinctive flavor, there are plenty of reasons to save, support, and savor “heirloom” varietals. 
Controversy surrounds the meaning of the word “heirloom” itself; some contend that it refers to a cultivar that has been propagated for a certain length of time, while others cite a requirement that the varietals must have been passed down through generations within a family.

Like the fruit itself, any blemishes on the surface of these “heirloom” varietals pale in comparison to the unquestionable benefits that we can easily agree on: these edible treasures bear a connection to our shared history, preserve genetic diversity, and reveal incomparable flavor. Sadly, relentless development and economic and industrial ag pressure have greatly reduced the old stone fruit orchards of the Santa Clara Valley and the Gravenstein apple orchards of Sonoma County. With that has come a dramatic loss for countless families, communities, and the varietals themselves.

Join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco on Tuesday, August 31, where we will meet a some of the stalwart growers, producers, and nursery folk who dedicate themselves, against the odds, to preserving what remains. We will also be tasting the unique fruit of their labors, including apples, peaches, plums and the “poor man’s banana.” Read More

Urban farming is on the tip of everyone’s tongues these days. But what about peri-urban farming, or growing food at the urban edge? For Sibella Kraus, director of the nonprofit organization Sustainable Agriculture Education (SAGE) and founder of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, this approach is a promising piece of the food system puzzle. Read More

As droughts threaten the wheat harvest in Russia, resulting in a ban on exports there this year that is driving up prices abroad, something entirely different now threatens one of the world’s most extensive collection of fruits and berries at the Pavlovsk Experimental Station, a seed bank 19 miles southeast of St. Petersburg: development.

Perhaps one of the oldest in the world, the seed bank was started 84 years ago by Nikolai Vavilov, who died of starvation in one of Joseph Stalin’s labor camps in 1943. His seed bank was famously guarded by 12 scientists who eventually starved to death during the 900-day Siege of Leningrad, despite the fact that they were surrounded by edible seeds. Now, a court will decide on Wednesday if the “priceless” collection of 4,000 varieties from all over the world–which includes 1,000 types of strawberries, and 100 varieties each of raspberries, gooseberries and cherries–will be handed over to the Russian Housing Development Foundation to be cleared for housing. Read More

One of the primary concerns with transgenic (aka genetically modified) crops is the risk of genetic contamination, i.e. the transfer of engineered genes to wild versions of the same plant. The corporations involved in genetic engineering, such as Monsanto and Bayer CropScience, have time and again assured regulators and the public that this risk is minimal. Still, the government mandates “buffer zones” around such crops’ plantings and the corporations who sell the seeds have created their own protocols to ensure this kind of thing never happens.

Well, surprise! It’s happened. Big time. Read More

The continuum of problems associated with our petroleum-based economy hit a horrific apex this summer when millions of barrels of oil from an exploded deepwater well gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. For many, the catastrophe has spurred a serious look at their own reliance on fossil fuels.

But for San Franciscan Gene Thompson, a dawning consciousness about the destructive nature and unsustainability of American consumption habits started in the wake of an even bigger paradigm-shifting disaster: September 11th. Several years of brooding over cause and effect and each individual’s role in the chain of events leading up to the attack resulted in a life-changing resolution that few Americans, let alone urbanites, make: taking responsibility for growing their own food. Read More

In a surprise move yesterday before heading out for five weeks of recess, the Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act with unanimous consent, which means all 100 senators agreed to pass the bill without an individual vote. The bill allots an additional $4.5 billion dollars over ten years to fund federal child nutrition programs including school lunch.

First Lady Michelle Obama supported the bill as part of her Let’s Move campaign to fight childhood obesity, writing in an op-ed in The Washington Post last week,”This groundbreaking legislation will bring fundamental change to schools and improve the food options available to our children.”

Though providing less than the requested $10 billion suggested by Let’s Move, this marks the first major step towards the most significant increase in funding on the child nutrition programs in 30 years. In a statement yesterday, the First Lady said, “While childhood obesity cannot be solved overnight, with everyone working together, there’s no question that it can be solved. And today’s vote moves us one step closer to reaching that goal.” Read More

One thing that fascinates me about political theorist Murray Bookchin’s writing is how prescient it is. His essay, “Ecology and Revolutionary Thought,” was written in 1965, six years before Earth Day, and almost a half-century before now. Yet its content is as relevant as ever, if not more so, given society’s increasing interest in all things “green.” Bookchin even references future ramifications of climate change, long before many had even considered it. Read More

Just around the corner and down the street from where I live on a stretch that includes liquor stores and the dodgy characters who frequent such places, you’ll find Spiral Gardens, a slightly disheveled verdant oasis on a fenced in corner of a formerly empty city lot.

It’s a welcome addition to the neighborhood. For the past six years in this location, the community food security project has developed a four-pronged approach to reaching low-income residents, particularly people of color, on the southwest side of Berkeley. The nonprofit is home to a nursery chock full of edible starts and trees, culinary and medicinal herbs, and California native plants for folks who want to grow their own food. Nursery sales help fund other programs the group offers. Read More

In my neck of the woods of California, namely the Santa Cruz Mountains, there are a few things that put us on the map.  As with any locale, there are the natural landmarks, the historical facts of significance, and the cultural legacies that bring a sense of pride to the place residents call home.  And more often than not, regional foods bring acclaim to an area, especially when famous restaurants incorporate them into their menus. For us, one of those places is Manresa. Read More

Paul Greenberg would have had one less chapter to write in Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food had fellow author Mark Kurlansky’s 2000 best-seller Cod caused a swift change in the way cod are harvested today. Although Kurlansky provided crucial information about the deleterious effects of industrial fishing, we left the responsibility of change to others. Greenberg is now attempting to revive the “bad human behavior of former times” to consciousness. His Pollan-esque investigation into our food chain—by way of salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna—is as much an exposé on the fishing industry as it is a comment on “Modern” man’s desire to rule a larger food chain than was intended for him.

Read More

“Failing that, I realize that a writer’s business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed—and trying to save him—again and again; forever.”

This isn’t about how to be a writer but about how to be a cook, and then once you are, how to be chef. That final line in a story by John Irving, though, runs through every good lesson in knowing what one’s job is. It is usually something much stranger than you had expected and more like what John Irving realized his was when he realized he was a writer, which was to set terrible fires every day and every day to put them out. Read More

In honor of National Farmers Market Week August 1-7, 2010, I’m encouraging readers to tackle an unfamiliar or daunting vegetable, and to join together in a bit of soul-baring about our vegetable barriers while we renew our commitment to farmers’ market shopping.

I apply the triple bottom line theory here:  Farmers’ market vegetable purchases are low carbon, they are healthy, unless you deep fry them or roll them in mayonnaise, and purchases from farmers’ markets deliver direct economic benefits to small owner-operated local farms that we hope populate your favorite market.

But vegetables do have an under side. Read More

This week is National Farmers Market Week. Time for fresh corn, tomatoes and berries at your local farmers market, which now are as American as baseball and apple pie. In the past fifteen years, the number of markets has almost quadrupled to nearly 6,000. Americans annually spend $1.3 billion at farmers markets, according to Farmers Market Coalition estimates.

Business associations adore farmers markets because they revitalize depressed downtowns, bringing shoppers into otherwise ignored areas. Communities love them because they turn a parking lot or empty city street into a colorful and festive weekly commons where friends and neighbors can meet and linger. Farmers frequent them because they can capture 100 percent of the retail value of their products, helping revive a flagging small farm economy.

Yet, there is one group that has been excluded from the benefits of farmers markets: food stamp recipients. Read More