Civil Eats

With the incredible generosity of cool companies like Nau, an eco-conscious clothing company based in Portland, Oregon, we are able to make the site more financially sustainable through donations. For the next few months (or until it sells out) you can snap up this fabulous breathable, wind-resistant and water-repellent eco-dress jacket, modeled by a Civil Eats fan Allison Arieff, former Editor-in-Chief of Dwell magazine, a regular New York Times opinion columnist, and food advocate.

She is featured in Nau’s “Portraits” series wearing the Chrysalis dress from their spring collection–and five percent of every sale will be donated to Civil Eats. In addition, Nau has extended to Civil Eats readers a 10 percent discount on all other clothing on their site just by using the “CIVILEATS” promotional code at the point of purchase. Read More

It usually surprises people when I say that it’s a great time to be in agriculture. While the number of farmers has declined significantly since our parents’ generation, there’s no denying that food prices are up, as are the prices for farmland. And the pressure is on to feed a world population growing from six billion to nine billion. We all need to eat, and it seems that finally we’re coming to realize how critical agriculture is. Read More

I never imagined myself cooking for kids. I spent most of my first three decades as a chef not knowing or caring what kids ate, and not really wanting to feed them. In fact, as a restaurant chef, my worst nightmare was the host coming into the kitchen on a Saturday night, saying, “Chef, there’s a screaming kid on table 19. What do I do?”

My response: “Tell them to leave. Why did they bring kids here on a Saturday night, anyway?”

What a difference a decade makes. Today all of my work surrounds feeding kids healthy food, teaching them how to eat well, and working nationally to assure that all kids have access to delicious, nutritious food in school every single day. Read More

As antidote to those who argue that the future of food is all about technologies like genetic engineering and new pesticides, I refer you to entrepreneur Ali Partovi (full disclosure: Ali and I are acquaintances) who has an Earth Day post over at Silicon Valley’s Techcrunch, one of the most influential tech-entrepreneur blogs around. Partovi, a former Microsoftie, is a cofounder of the music recommendation service iLike and was an early-stage investor in such online successess as Zappos, Dropbox, and that social network site a few folks use, Facebook. And now, as evidenced by the title of his post–”Food Is The New Frontier In Green Tech“–he’s discovered the investment possibilities of food: Read More

With strawberries lining grocery shelves from Boston to Tokyo, some say that global food supply chains are becoming ever more complex. In one sense, that’s true: speeding fresh-picked fruit across the country, or around the world, is no small trick. But in order to achieve this, it is actually necessary to simplify the way food is grown—to turn food from a source of nutrition and local pride into an industrial commodity produced by industrial-scale farms. Read More

Recently a Detroit public high school that focuses on farming and second chances for young mothers was added to a list of schools that would be closed this summer. Catherine Ferguson Academy is on that list thanks to a new law that allows Michigan governor Rick Snyder to dismiss locally elected officials and put in place new ones. (I’ll let Rachel Maddow give the details in the video, below).

You might have heard that Detroit lost 25 percent of its population in the last decade. What has resulted is a lot of abandoned land and a lot of blight. And yet, Detroit is also home to an urban agriculture Renaissance, with projects like the Greening of Detroit and D-Town Farm, among others. Catherine Ferguson Academy is just one such place that offers opportunities in growing food to those who need it most. Read More

Chemicals and additives found in the food supply and other consumer products are making headlines regularly as more and more groups  raise concern over the safety of these substances. In a statement released yesterday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) asked for reform to the Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976. The group is particularly concerned about the effects these substances have on children and babies.

Last month, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) held hearings on the safety of food dyes but failed to make a definitive ruling—the most recent study on Bisphenol-A (BPA) added to growing doubts about its safety but the FDA’s stance remains ambiguous. Meanwhile, in 2010, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that the FDA is not ensuring the safety of many chemicals.

Yet while the FDA drags its heels and hedges on the safety of these substances, Americans are exposed to untested combinations of food additives, dyes, preservatives, and chemicals on a daily basis. Indeed, for the vast majority of Americans consuming industrial foods, a veritable chemical cocktail enters their bodies every day and according to the GAO report, “FDA is not systematically ensuring the continued safety of current GRAS substances.” Read More

Today, NRDC announced the winners of its 2011 Growing Green Awards–extraordinary leaders in the field of sustainable food and agriculture who are making our food healthier for our bodies and the environment. Each year, NRDC recognizes farmers, food producers, businesses and bold thinkers who transforming the future of our food system. Read More

As the average age of farmers in the U.S. continues to raise, young farmers are beginning to sprout up across the nation. The recent documentary GROW!, directed by Christine Anthony and Owen Masterson, showcases the resurgence of young organic farmers in the state of Georgia. The film highlights 20 individuals across 12 farms who have found their way back to the land, whether working on a family-owned farm, buying their own, or, in most cases, using another farmer’s land to grow food for their community. Read More

Heidi Swanson, natural foods super star, is a cookbook author, whose writing, projects, and photographs have been featured in dozens of magazines. Her first cookbook, Super Natural Cooking, was nominated for a James Beard Award and is widely lauded as the best introduction to natural foods cooking today. Swanson’s online recipe journal, 101Cookbooks, has been the recipient of many awards, and draws a huge audience every month. Her latest mouthwatering and artful book, Super Natural Every Day, is hot off the presses and is equally inspired by whole foods and natural ingredients. I spoke with Swanson recently about the evolution of her cooking, how living in San Francisco inspires her, and where she eats when she’s not busy in her own kitchen. Read More

See no evil, hear no evil, eat no evil. This seems to be the operating principle behind a slew of recent legal initiatives aimed at sheltering animal factory agriculture operations from public view. Read More

Filmmaker Junko Kajino grew up on a farm in Japan and, although she now lives in Chicago, she’s remained interested in the organic farming community back home. In the weeks since the nuclear disaster at Fukushima Dai-ichi, Kajino has kept a close eye on the organic rice and vegetable growers in the area and she noticed certain themes in the messages appearing on blogs and social media sites. “They focused on how to reduce radiation, how to cultivate their contaminated land, and what they can grow in their polluted soil,” she recalls.

Despite the severe damage to their land and the heightened concern about ongoing radiation, Kajino says, the farmers were not complaining. Instead, she says, they’ve  started talking about what to plant. “This was the hope I saw in the last several months and I need to document that.” Read More

Food is the pulse of the millennial generation as thousands of young people are propelling the new good food movement forward by planting the seeds of a more just and sustainable food system. Across the country, students are activating for social change on campuses, while hundreds of new farmers and gardeners are digging into neighborhoods, and innovative food ventures are sprouting up. Come meet some of the best and brightest of these young food activists on Tuesday, May 3, as Kitchen Table Talks, in conjunction with UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism, hosts a lively discussion with some of the leading youth voices whose mandate is food. Read More

I was skeptical and sighing heavily when I pressed play to view Fat, Sick, & Nearly Dead. I immediately thought, “With such a negative title, this documentary will be a) depressing and b) preachy.”

I’m an optimistic person though–hence my dislike for the title–so I tried to toss out the judgmental thoughts and, as it turns out, my initial impression was pleasantly proven wrong. Read More

They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat. If the majority of Jewish holidays had a single tag line, that’s what it would be, and Passover is no different.

On Passover Jewish people around the world re-tell the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt. When the Jews fled from Pharaoh in order to escape slavery, they didn’t have time to wait for their bread to rise so they ate unleavened bread. During the holiday, which begins on April 18, many Jews take up wheat-free and yeast-free diets to commemorate the exodus. Passover represents more than half of annual Kosher food sales worldwide, according to Kedem, a New Jersey-based Kosher food manufacturer.

Each year, the Kosher food industry releases new products in time for the Kosher-for-Passover food rush, and this year there’s a proliferation of gluten-free and organic items. Read More

Good News for SF Farmers

San Francisco urban agriculture advocates are rejoicing after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted last week to amend the zoning code to allow small-scale commercial farming in areas previously deemed residential. Read More

The big news out of California this past week was all about the premiere of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution, Season 2. This controversial show, which has plenty of detractors from within the food movement, is nonetheless the most successful effort to bring the food movement into larger public awareness that I’ve seen so far. But the same week a quieter food revolution was rolling along the West Coast: The launch of Nourish California. Read More

The hard-working young couple that runs Brookford Farm in Rollinsford, New Hampshire did not grow up farming. Luke and Catarina Mahoney are part of a generation of farmers raised in cities and suburbs that has returned to the land, not out of family duty, but because of their own desire to make a connection with the land. Read More

This week, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed one of the most progressive pieces of legislation for urban agriculture in the nation. The new legislation has amended the zoning code to allow agricultural activities in all parts of the city, as well as defining the parameters by which urban agriculturists can sell their products. It doesn’t address the touchier subjects of animal husbandry or marijuana cultivation, but has created opportunities for and the legitimacy of urban fruit and vegetable cultivation.

The legislation was the result of a rare combined and cooperative effort between city officials and urban agriculture practitioners and advocates. This was accomplished mainly through the work of the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance (SFUAA), an organization of which I am a member, which formed nearly a year ago to coalesce the various efforts and projects focusing on local food and agriculture into a cohesive political voice. The coalition is made up of over 300 individual and 40 organizational members, and its formation turned out to be very well timed. Read More

[editor's note: You can see Dan Imhoff speak about CAFO's tonight at NYU, read here for more details.]

Imagine a series of pits that, if combined, would cover an area 40 acres in size carved 20 feet deep. Laid out as a perfect square, each side is 1,320 feet long, enough to hold 16 football fields. Now imagine it full of millions of gallons of festering manure from over 5,000 dairy cows plunked down into rural Jo Daviess County in northern Illinois. Imagine also, that these cesspools would be excavated from a porous Karst geological formation, with the propensity to percolate directly into the groundwater, along with a cocktail of nitrates, phosphorous, hydrogen sulfide, bacteria, and other substances like antibiotic drugs. Read More

Bad federal policy and intensifying storms are washing away the rich dark soils in the Midwest that made this country an agricultural powerhouse and that remain the essential foundation of a healthy and sustainable food system in the future.

That’s the alarming finding of a new Environmental Working Group report that highlights innovative research by scientists at Iowa State University. The report is titled Losing Ground, and it shows in stark terms what industrial-scale crop production is doing to our soil and water in the Corn Belt. Read More

In her article, Not Soy Fast, Kristin Wartman argues that “…the research is mounting that soy foods are not only questionable in terms of their benefits, but in fact, may be hazardous to your health.”

Wartman describes the Cornucopia Institute’s recent report in which they describe finding residues of hexane in some soy food ingredients. The Cornucopia Institute gave few details about how much hexane they actually found and there is no evidence that the amounts typically found in soy foods are harmful to consumers. However, in the interest of worker and environmental safety, as well as trying to limit any potential harm from hexane residues, I cannot fault anyone for avoiding soy products produced with hexane. As Wartman points out, there are companies that make soy meats without using hexane, such as Tofurky and Field Roast.

But this is where Wartman and I part ways. Read More

Siena Chrisman is the Manager of Strategic Partnerships & Alliances at WhyHunger in New York City. She joined WhyHunger in 2005; in her current capacity, she works with organizations and advocates around the country to build the movement for a healthier and more just food system. She is the editor of Green Roofs: Ecological Design and Construction (Schiffer Publishing, 2004), and holds a BA from Mount Holyoke College. Originally from Amherst, MA, Siena lived in Italy prior to moving to New York, teaching English, doing odd jobs, and learning what a culture looks like when it values food. She now lives in Brooklyn, where she cooks, bakes, composts, and is anxiously awaiting warmer temperatures so she can start planting in her community garden plot.

What issues have you been focused on?

In my work at WhyHunger, I’m fortunate to focus at both macro and micro levels, working with national level organizations and local grassroots groups around the country. Read More

When it comes to improving conditions for farmworkers, a lack of good data is a huge obstacle. Anna Reynoso, the Mexico program director at the United Farm Workers UFW), says she’s never had a comprehensive source of answers to questions like what protections farmworkers have under the law, what type of challenges they face, or even how many of them are living in the US. “Finding this info has been a very piecemeal process as far as having to go to one agency or organization for one report at a time,” she says.

That’s why the newly released Inventory of Farmworker Issues and Protections in the United States is a big step forward for farmworker advocacy. The report, a joint effort by the Bon Appétit Management Company (BAMCO) Foundation and the UFW (with additional support from Oxfam America), compiles crucial data on the six states (California, Florida, Oregon, Washington, North Carolina, and Texas) with the largest farmworker populations. Read More

The DIY craze has shacked up with the local food movement to produce some inspiring examples of entrepreneurialism: Mason jar magic made by suburban fruit salvagers powered by pedals; workshops on wild-crafting, axe-making, rooftop bees and city-living chickens; lecture series that focus on the how-to rather than just why, when and where; and more.

But we can’t just take pictures of these ingenious innovators for the glossies and call our work finished. We have so much creativity (and cabbage) fermenting at the intersection of craft, food, and agriculture–now we need to connect the dots. Read More

As a rancher and environmental lawyer, when I write or speak about America’s food system, usually it’s related to impacts on natural resources–air, water, and soils. But these last few years I’ve also become increasingly interested in how what we eat, and the way we eat, affects our health. With diet related problems like obesity and type II diabetes reaching dangerous levels, public officials finally seem poised to take action on what has grown into a crisis. At the same time, thousands of diverse individuals all over the country–from moms to school administrators to farmers–are taking food matters into their own hands. The reality is that truly changing the way America eats and produces its food will require both public and private action. Read More

Last week’s California Climate and Agriculture Summit, hosted by the California Climate and Agriculture Network (CalCAN), made three things clear: California agriculture has a lot to lose if climate change is not addressed; agriculture can be part of the solution; there is a science gap and a practice gap, and more resources are needed to close them both.

The Summit took place at UC Davis on March 31 and the 200 participants included a diverse range of farmers and ranchers, researchers, non-profit staff, government agency representatives, and agricultural business people. Read More

The editors of Scientific American recently encouraged U.S. hog farmers to “follow Denmark and stop giving farm animals low-dose antibiotics.” Sixteen years ago, in order to reduce the threat of increased development of antibiotic resistant bacteria in their food system and the environment, Denmark phased in an antibiotic growth promotant ban in food animal production. Guess what? According to Denmark’s Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries the ban is working and the industry has continued to thrive. The government agency found that Danish livestock and poultry farmers used 37 percent less antibiotics in 2009 than in 1994, leading to overall reductions of antimicrobial resistance countrywide. Read More

Will the next Farm Bill, scheduled for passage in 2012, put public policy in service of a food system that works for farmers, eaters, and the environment?

Well, optimism over federal food-policy reform never runs very high in sustainable-ag circles. The agrichemical lobby is flush with cash and friends in Congress and the White House. But the current budget fight is making a bleak situation look downright disastrous. It’s looking like the looming budget deal will slash funding for the few programs that currently counteract the Big Ag policy agenda. Read More

In the past 20 years, obesity rates rose dramatically in the U.S. In many states nearly a third of adults are now obese. Where exactly are Americans getting the calories to grow their girths? How many more calories are being consumed than in previous decades? Read More