Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley Tuesday signed a bill banning arsenic in poultry feed, making his state the first to have a law against the practice on the books.  

The new law, which takes effect Jan 1, prohibits the use, sale, or distribution of commercial feed containing arsenic and specifically mentions two Pfizer drugs that contain arsenic: Roxarsone, which the company voluntarily withdrew from the market last year, and Histostat, which is still on the market.

The move follows a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study released last summer that found increased levels of inorganic arsenic in the livers of chickens treated with the Roxarsone. The new data raised concerns of a “very low but completely avoidable exposure to a carcinogen,” said Michael Taylor, FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Foods, when FDA announced the company was withdrawing the drug in response to the study’s findings.

Arsenic is a known human carcinogen and has been linked to a variety of health concerns, including interfering in fetal development, but FDA said the levels found in their poultry study are low enough that consumers are not at risk eating poultry while Roxarsone is phased out of use in the United States.

It is not known how widely the drug might be stockpiled and still used today. When Pfizer announced the withdrawal, FDA said it did not have data on usage in poultry production.

Aside from food safety concerns, which have been raised for many years, there is also overwhelming evidence that feeding arsenicals to poultry has had a harmful impact on the environment.

Maryland knows the impacts first hand. According to Food and Water Watch, the state’s poultry producers spread 22,000 pounds of arsenic–which is found in the fecal waste–to farmland “which ultimately gets washed into waterways like the Chesapeake Bay.”

A recent study by researchers at the University of Maryland found that poultry fed Roxarsone produced poultry litter–the waste from production, which includes feces, feathers and bedding–that contains 2.9 to 77 times the arsenic than poultry not fed Roxarsone. Further, the team found that the arsenic in the litter broke down into inorganic, the kind known to be harmful to human health, and it accumulates in soil.

Originally published on Food Safety News

Today in Oak Brook, Illinois the world’s most well-recognized purveyor of unhealthy food will hold its annual shareholders’ meeting. Usually a forum to showcase profits made at the expense of the public’s health, food advocates and health professionals will be giving the burger giant’s dog and pony show pause.

For a second straight year, shareholders will vote on a resolution requiring McDonald’s to publicly assess its impacts on the nation’s health. The resulting report would, no doubt, be damning. After all, no fast food corporation sells more high-fat, -salt, -sugar, and -calorie junk food worldwide. No fast food corporation spends more marketing its unhealthy offerings. And perhaps no food corporation has had a greater impact on how we eat or how food is grown.

As Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser puts it: even if you don’t eat McDonald’s-style fast food “you’re eating food produced by the same system.” In other words, McDonald’s, as the nation’s leading purchaser of staples like beef, pork, and potatoes, isn’t just putting unhealthy food on plastic trays, it’s shaping the unhealthy methods by which its produced. Factory farms, the overuse of pesticides–you name it–McDonald’s is in some way behind it, including the harm to animals, our drinking water, the environment, and our health an externality.

That’s why this first-of-its-kind resolution is so groundbreaking. It would give us a sense of what a Big Mac and fries truly costs. Not only that, it would give shareholders a sense of the financial risk the corporation could ultimately face for continuing to saddle the public with its externalized costs.

As recently documented in AdAge, McDonald’s brand image is out of sync with sales, with McDonald’s consistently ranking near the bottom of its industry in quality perception. Analysts warn if this trend continues the pendulum could well swing for the corporation’s profitability.

Dr. Andrew Bremer, a pediatric endocrinologist and professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will speak to these points at the meeting. He is part of a growing network of more than 2500 health professionals  that are partnering with my organization, Corporate Accountability International, to compel industry-leader McDonald’s to change course as the corporation’s leadership changes hands. CEO Jim Skinner will be stepping down this month, with COO Don Thompson stepping in.

Corporate Accountability International and partners like Dr. Bremer see no reason to wait for the results of the resolution-sanctioned report to come in for the new CEO to reduce the corporation’s “health footprint.” For one, there is a growing body of research, including a recent Institute of Medicine study, highlighting the importance of limiting junk food marketing to children and adolescents in reducing disease rates. To this end the network has called for McDonald’s to stop marketing junk food to kids, helping compel the American Academy of Pediatrics to take an even more strident stance–an outright ban on junk food marketing to kids.

And most recently, the network called on hospital administrators to give McDonald’s franchises the boot. Cleveland Clinic led the charge–affirming it would not renew McDonald’s contract. A study in the journal Pediatrics has found that citing fast food in health care settings earns brands like McDonald’s an undeserved association with healthfulness. Needless to say, McDonald’s has long built brand loyalty by nutriwashing its image–a practice that needs to stop.

Grassroots pressure is only building. Since the initial introduction of the resolution at last year’s meeting, McDonald’s has made changes to its Happy Meals and competitors have scaled back their marketing to kids.

As these things go, resolutions are not expected to pass over the opposition of the Board. But bringing it to the floor before shareholders will again put the corporation on notice, compelling CEO Thompson to lend a more sympathetic ear to the concerns of health care providers and Civil Eats readers like you.

Click here to call on hospital administrators to give McDonald’s the boot.
Click here to call on McDonald’s CEO to stop marketing junk food to kids.

Corporate Accountability International (formerly Infact) is a membership organization that has, for the last 35 years, successfully advanced campaigns protecting health, the environment and human rights. Value [the] Meal is Corporate Accountability International’s campaign dedicated to reversing the global epidemic of diet-related disease by challenging the fast food industry to curb a range of abuses.

The California farming community is facing a demographic crisis. The average age of a California farmer is 58, and nearly 20 percent of them are 70 or older. As these farmers approach retirement, California needs to train new ones if we are to continue to feed our country and keep a healthy rural economy in the decades ahead. And with farm internships in California subject to strict labor laws, opportunities to get a hands-on farming education have become even fewer.

To help meet this need, the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters, CA recently launched the California Farm Academy (CFA) to train beginning farmers in specialty crop production. The six-month incubator program is designed to help aspiring agriculturists transition quickly into starting their own farms. Unlike many programs and apprenticeships that require students to participate full-time or live on a farm, the CFA meets on evenings and Saturdays to accommodate the busy schedules of people who currently work at non-farming jobs. Academy students spend time in the classroom as well as in the field, greenhouse, and packing shed.

To provide perspectives from the frontlines, the CFA has teamed up with local farms such as Ferry Plaza seller Capay Organic, which also markets produce through its Farm Fresh to You CSA and Ferry Building store. Second-generation farmer Thaddeus Barsotti (pictured below), co-owner of Capay Organic with his brother Freeman, volunteers as a teacher for the Academy, and the farm serves as a site for classes and demonstrations.

When Barsotti learned about the new incubator program, he welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the education of new growers in California. Although he trains and hires workers as part of his farm business, he realizes that his farm cannot grow forever. In his work with the Academy, Barsotti can help “grow new farmers” who will start their own businesses with economic viability and sustainability in mind.

Other experienced farmers from several farms in the area, professors from the University of California at Davis, and National Resource Conservation Service employees teach Academy students the fundamentals of sustainable farming: field preparation, crop planning, soil management, pest control, irrigation, and equipment use. In the classroom, experts from organizations such as the California Alliance for Family Farmers and California Certified Organic Farmers teach students how to handle legal and financial issues, identify and develop markets for their crops, and hire, train, and manage farmworkers.

Barsotti recognizes that it is difficult for beginning farmers to understand how a farm works if they haven’t lived on one before. “If I hadn’t grown up on a farm, I wouldn’t be in the business,” he says. He believes the program gives students “an appreciation for the amount of expertise that goes into modern farms,” and serving as a mentor has also renewed his own appreciation for his line of work. “Teaching others has reminded me of how complicated the whole thing is,” he reflects. “There are a lot of details that go into farming. Farmers are always making decisions based on a set of circumstances that are never the same.”

For their final project, students will use their new knowledge to develop business plans that they will present to a panel of farmers and lenders prior to graduation. Similar to the farm training and incubator program at Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association(ALBA), the Academy will provide support to graduates after their initial six-month program by offering them the opportunity to lease land at the Center for Land-Based Learning and at Russell Ranch, located at the University of California at Davis. They can lease 1/4- to 1/2-acre plots at half the market rate for up to three years.

CFA director Jennifer Taylor explains that the first five years is a critical time for new farmers. “The Farm Academy can take some of the luck and uncertainty out of it and provide a scaffold for beginning farmers,” she says.

Graduates of the program who are renting land will be able to ask for guidance and advice from experienced farmers at the two locations. By farming plots near each other, they can also connect with other program alumni and create a support network. Taylor notes that students have already started talking about working together and sharing equipment.

Traveling from as far as San Francisco each week, the 20 students in the Academy’s first class range from young people just entering the workforce to midlife career-changers. Students come from diverse backgrounds, motivated by a love of farming as well as an interest in raising a family on a farm, working with youth, or agritourism. Some plan to farm a small one-acre plot, while others hope for hundreds of acres.

Taylor, who previously worked at an incubator program that trained beginning dairy farmers in Wisconsin, would love to see more programs like the CFA spring up in other parts of California. She envisions hubs around the state that would connect beginning farmers with regional farms and resources for mentorship and support. The last farm bill allocated money for programs that train beginning farmers, and Taylor hopes the next farm bill will continue to fund these efforts. The CFA is funded by a grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Block Grant program, which is also dependent on authorization in the next farm bill.

The first session of the Farm Academy began in February and runs through August 2012. Session two will begin in late 2012 or early 2013. An application and information can be found at the Center for Land-Based Learning’s website.

Originally published by CUESA

Chefs are artists. Good ones draw people in with their inspired plates and atmosphere–performance art meets flavor. While deliciousness at a restaurant is first and foremost, more patrons are now also making decisions about where to eat based on the values behind the food–like social justice for the workers, healthy growing practices, and support for local economies.

Last week in an interview with The New York Times, chefs Thomas Keller–who has received many awards for his creative approach to food at restaurants French Laundry and the Bouchon empire–and Andoni Luis Aduriz, of the restaurant Mugaritz in Spain, took the Damien Hirst approach to feeding people: It’s about the experience and whatever it takes to create radical and inspiring food is more important than the potential impact on the environment. “With the relatively small number of people I feed, is it really my responsibility to worry about carbon footprint?” remarked Keller.

Both chefs admitted that they buy local when they can, but didn’t want to focus on that as a practice. According to Aduriz, “to align yourself entirely with the idea of sustainability makes chefs complacent and limited.”

The good food movement would beg to differ. The proliferation of farm-to-table restaurants, farmers’ markets and small food businesses, and the increased visibility of food policy issues in the media all speak to a sea change under way.

Keller and Aduriz seem like dinosaurs when you compare them to younger chefs like René Redzepi of Noma, for example, who is proving that taking a local, values-driven approach to food can be inspiring, delicious and award-worthy. All three chefs’ restaurants are featured on the “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list, but Noma is number one.

While the list is not at the heart of discussions around food, the chefs that appear there do wield an influence far beyond the people they feed day in and day out at their restaurants. As the article in the Times points out, “While their restaurants may be accessible only to the world’s 0.1 percent, chefs at top restaurants influence the entire global food community with the way they think, write, tweet, and talk about food—not just the way they cook it.”

This is not the first time Keller has made the case for quality above values. Only now, it sounds even staler than the day-old bread at Bouchon Bakery.

Food preparation can be a creative pursuit, but at the end of the day, chefs are just feeding people. They create an experience of flavor, but the results end up in someone’s stomach. And in requiring an agricultural product for their creations, a chef is reliant on nature’s whims in a way that most artists are not. This is why the locavore movement is not a trend easily dismissed, but part of a greater paradigm shift around how we view and value resources.

While reactions to the Times story continued on Twitter, scientists, advocates, and food policy media gathered last week at the Monterey Bay Aquarium for the annual Sustainable Foods Institute, part of Cooking for Solutions. The purpose of the event, according to aquarium Executive Director Julie Packard, is to explore “how the food choices we make affect the health of our soil, water, and oceans.”

In contrast to the antiquated remarks put forth by Keller and Aduriz, James Beard Award winner and owner and chef of the restaurant Dressing Room in Westport, CT, Michel Nischan, was present to be honored as Chef of the Year. He is also known for his work as President and CEO of Wholesome Wave, an organization that seeks to increase access to healthy food. They have had huge success to date through doubling the value of SNAP–food stamps–used at farmers’ markets, resulting in $1 million more spent on produce in 2010.

While not every chef feels inspired to use their celebrity and time to start an organization to help people who would probably never set foot in their restaurant, Nischan couldn’t be more in line with the food Zeitgeist. A growing number of chefs are now taking part in the evolving conversation on how we value food.

Chef Alexandra Guarnaschelli of the restaurant Butter in New York City remarked last week on a panel focused on food waste that, “Chefs can convince people to eat things that they don’t know about or normally prize.” She was eager for people to eat sardines and other forage fish, saying, “Let’s just stop eating tuna for 300 years.”

As a presentation at Cooking for Solutions by Jonathan Foley, Director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Minnesota, demonstrated, chefs ignore the sustainability of their sources at their own peril.

“We’re running out of everything,” said Foley. “Agriculture uses up a planet’s worth of land, a planet’s worth of water and agriculture is the single biggest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. If you want to solve climate change you absolutely have to address agriculture and its emissions. It’s huge.”

Fixing this issue will require us to look beyond the next plate. Many great artists have produced world-renowned work within constraints. Similarly, chefs face a problem of resource scarcity that demands their creativity.

Photo: a recent plate at Noma restaurant in Copenhagen, by @ohgeffroy on Instagram.

To buy local fruits, vegetables, and meat, we do not have to look much further than a nearby farmers market or community supported agriculture share. But to buy wheat flour, we have traditionally spent our dollars outside of the farmers market to find the product we use during all seasons. For a large part, the underlying reason lies in the industrialization of wheat production, which started in the 1880s with the advent of the steam roller mill. This large-scale mill turned out a cheap shelf-stable flour which essentially crippled regional grain markets. But as we begin to realize the detrimental economic and nutritional effects of the transformation of wheat to a commodity crop, regional grain economies are beginning to regrow across the country. Over the past five years, the necessary infrastructure has been put into place to process and sell grains at a smaller scale and keep profits within local communities.

When we talk about grains, we are referring to starch-rich hard seeds which grow on cereal grasses. Common grains include wheat, maize, rice, barley, oats, rye, and more. The anatomy of a grain consists of three parts: endosperm (starch), bran (fiber and fatty acids), and germ (fatty acids, nutrients, and proteins).

When processed, industrially grains are stripped of their bran and germ, leaving only the endosperm. The resulting processed grain lacks fatty acids, which prevents rancidity and allows for long-term storage–but it also lacks the core nutritional value of fiber, proteins, and other vitamins/nutrients. Whole grains contain the same proportions of the bran, germ, and endosperm as the grain pre-processing; whether cracked, split, or ground, the grains maintain their nutritional value. The health benefits of a diet rich in whole grains has been documented to decrease blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.

Sparked by these alarming public health implications combined with a hike in the price of grains on the global commodity market in 2008, regional grain economies have been developing. Some involved parties include farmers, millers, distributors, and bakers. Groundbreaking efforts to build these networks across the country include: Community Grains in the San Francisco Bay Area, Somerset Economic Development Corp. in central Maine, North Carolina Organic Bread Flour Project in Asheville, NC, and Northeast Organic Wheat in upstate New York. Many of these efforts focus on regional grain varietals, community education, regional economic growth, and job creation.

Join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks at Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland as we discuss the local grain economy in California from the economic, infrastructural, and public health perspectives.

Date: Sunday, June 17th
Time: 1:30 to 3:00 PM
Location: Oliveto Restaurant (5665 College Avenue, Oakland, CA)
Price: $10 at Brown Paper Tickets
Note: A limited amount of sliding scale tickets may be available at the door, dependent upon capacity.

Bob Klein has been a broadcast television producer, executive producer, national program consultant, and developer/syndicator. He’s currently co-owner of Oliveto Restaurant and founder of Community Grains.

Craig Pondsford is founder of Artisan Bakery, winner of the Specialty Breads category of France’s 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (an international, invitational, artisan baking competition held in Parish every three to four years). He recently opened Pondsford’s Place Bakery & Innovation Center in San Rafael, CA.

Doug Mosel, founder of the Mendocino Grain Project, grows a variety of grains and lentils in the Ukiah Valley. Whole grains and stone-milled flour are distributed locally through a CSA-style grain-share. Doug is a member of the Mendocino Organic Network and host of a monthly radio show, the “Agriculture and Ecology Hour.”

Lately I’ve been realizing that I married well. Not in the typical, societal ladder, Downton Abbey kind of way. Far from that. More like in a homesteader’s kind of way. Forget investment accounts and family crests, when it comes to spring water, pickles and chicken coops, we are set! And most recently, we hit the jackpot. My husband just landed a job at our local feed store, which in itself doesn’t sound like the most lucrative position, but this isn’t your basic feed store.

Mountain Feed and Farm, owned by Jorah Roussopoulos and his wife, Andi Rubalcaba, opened eight years ago and has since become a talk-of-the-town destination around these parts. “We really just want to be a homesteader’s convenience store,” says Jorah, of the unique inventory he has come to offer. But instead of cheap malt liquor and junk food, this “convenience store” offers books and kits on how to brew your own beer and heirloom seed potatoes to grow your own. “Planting seeds to canning jams, our goal is to be able to take people full cycle from production to preservation,” says Jorah. That means you can walk in and easily find the standards that most feed stores provide: pet products, livestock feed, seed propagation supplies, soil amendments, and anything for the home garden. But wandering in deeper will uncover the homesteader’s playground it really is, stocked full of inspiring project starters, hard-to-find resources, and just the right touch of crafty farm aesthetic to invoke admiration in the whole package.

As they grow and shift (and they are growing at a crazy pace, partly due to knowing good business and partly due to our economic times and the public’s increased DIY inclination) there is an obvious need to make sure that all staff are well versed in every department. They now staff 12-15 full time employees and each department has a “specialist” who is truly expert at helping the customer find what they are looking for and can offer tips and advice on any given project. This level of genuine skill, personality and service is one of the main things that Jorah is concerned with offering. That, and a diverse assortment of items put together with intention to make his business known as the “Sustainable Living Country Store.”

This is where my personal benefits start to become clear. A new series of staff workshops, focusing on anything from canning to pickling to bread baking to beekeeping, are on tap almost every week. And as a spouse, who likes food and happens to write about it a lot, I get a free ticket in.

The most recent class was at our house, and was all about cheese. Our tome was the user friendly, concise and informative book called “Home Cheesemaking“ by Ricki Carrol. It offers practical guidance, clear-cut recipes and a lot of background on the science involved in making cheese from bacteria to rennet to temperature requirements.  It’s a great resource for anyone who wants a comprehensive view of the processes, even if they decide to chuck it over their shoulder and opt instead for making their own coagulator from fig tree bark or scraping stomach lining from a sheep’s intestine to make traditional rennet.  The book tells you about these things too, at least, so you can decide for yourself.

Our long butcher-block counter was quickly crowded with half gallon canning jars of fresh goat milk, each one labeled with the date of milking and the name of the goat who contributed the bounty. Michael Zlotkin is the goat farmer who generously donated the milk to the cause, who also happens to be on staff at Mountain Feed. His little farm is in the beginning stages, but he has already figured out how to raise and butcher a cow, tend to a herd of goats, and acquire a live-in apprentice to start the crops.

A couple of pregnant ladies, a few tradesman, a skilled chef and marathon runner, two little kids, an Aikido disciple, a filmmaker and a bunch of excited homesteaders crammed into our little kitchen. Milk steamed, curds formed, cultures flew as we stretched and stirred and cut our way through much of those jars. The end result was two types of mozzarella (one more successful than the other spongy mass), a kefir and a feta, one brined, one not. All goat and all contributing to a sense of education, accomplishment, and ultimately, community. What’s more is that the consistency of these seminars serves as infective motivation to keep the ball rolling. My husband is now on a weekly cheesemaking mission. He’s been turning the compost way more regularly, initiating a large-scale red wine vinegar project and tending to our garden with renewed vigor. The trend of proactive capability and knowledge gathering spreads, from staff member to staff member, and I think that is really the true gem. Those ripples are spreading from one great business in our little mountain town out into our community and beyond.

Portions of this article were adapted from an original piece in the Spring 2012 issue of Edible Monterey Bay.

In February 2008, Zoë Bradbury left her job at Ecotrust, where she was a regular contributor to Edible Portland, to start farming on Oregon’s southern coast. Right after leaving, she wrote, “I pulled up to my new greenhouse on Floras Creek with a riot of saw-toothed artichoke divisions in the back of the truck, teased them apart into one-gallon transplant pots, and officially began my first season farming for myself, next door to my mom and sister.”

Can you tell me a bit about the book–how you got involved, who the writers are, and why you think it’s a good read?

The idea for the book hatched about three years ago when [co-editor] Severine von Tscharner Fleming and I were at a food and farming conference together. We got Storey Publishing interested in the idea and spent the next couple of winters–during our “off” seasons–putting the book together. The essayists are from all corners of the country, and all of them are beginning farmers, meaning they’ve been running their own operations for fewer than 10 years.

When you’re just starting out farming, the heartaches and breakthroughs are so acute. It’s a rocky road for most of us. We’re short on cash, short on sleep, short on time, and long on optimism and pure buckle-down grit. A lot of the essays in this book shed light on that–some funny, some exuberant, some sad. It’s a great medley of stories for that reason, all woven together by a singular passion for growing good food.

What gives you the most hope for the coming generation of young farmers?

The fact that public awareness has shifted so much in the past ten years. I remember a time when I would strike up a conversation with a stranger on an airplane, and when they asked me what I did, and I replied that I was a farmer, they looked puzzled/unimpressed/dismissive. Now when I have that same conversation, people’s eyes light up and they say, “REALLY!!!?? That’s awesome! My sister is part of a CSA farm…” or something to that effect. More and more folks are learning about alternatives to industrial food, supporting local family farms, eating more seasonally, trying kale.

Still, there’s a lot working against beginning farmers; access to capital and land are the foremost. Money and credit are hard to come by, and buying affordable land is maybe even harder. It’s why you see so many creative arrangements–non-conventional leases, incubator farms, etc.

A few years ago, you used to write your own dispatches for Edible Portland as you began farming, Diary of a Young Farmer. How has your perspective changed in the years since, and what has remained constant?

I’m in my fifth season of running my own farm now, and things have definitely stabilized—thank God! Financially, the farm is on solid footing, and the big push to build and buy all the infrastructure we needed—barns, irrigation systems, equipment—is largely behind us for now. I’m able to focus more on fine-tuning and improving my growing practices and my marketing strategies. It’s still a roller coaster–unpredictable weather, crop failures–but the ride feels less bumpy now, I think in large part because our community of loyal customers and CSA members provide such a foundation of financial and moral support. With them behind us, things feel less catastrophic than they did in the first year or two of scratching out this little farm and getting established.

I wonder about the phrase in the title “New Farmers’ Movement.” What about new farmers today has created a movement? What is the movement and what are its goals?

I imagine every single one of the essayists in this book would have a slightly different answer to this question. Personally, I think it feels like a movement because it’s not just the farmers themselves talking about these issues, spreading the message, and doing the work. It’s a larger community of eaters, advocates, policy-makers, and everyday newspaper-reading citizens who are connecting to it. People want clean, green, fair food. They want family farms, not factory farms. And the farmers in this book want to create just that kind of world.

What are you most excited about that’s growing in your fields right now?

Other than my one-year-old, who is doing a lot of her growing in our fields right now, I’m pretty excited about the new rhubarb planting. It’s been doubling in size everyday, which feels like a little nod from the plant world that things are A-OK out there.

Originally published by Ecotrust

Last week, the National Academy of Sciences hosted a summit to discuss “superweeds,” or the widespread problem of herbicide-resistant weeds currently afflicting millions of farm acres across the United States.

Superweeds—the “weeds that man can no longer kill!”—have been in the news for several years. All across the Midwest and Southeast farmers have been photographed and filmed standing in fields surrounded by the giant plants. They bemoan the cost of pesticides and point to industrial rows of crops that don’t have a chance when up against feisty weeds that grow up to three inches a day.

Superweeds have been especially likely to appear alongside genetically engineered (GE) crops, which are engineered to withstand large amounts of pesticide and herbicide use. And these weeds show no sign of going away any time soon.

That’s why scientists and researchers from land-grant universities, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and representatives from several industry and trade groups met at last week’s summit to strategize about the problem.

A few speakers boasted about the efficiency of modern-day farming and the fact that today’s agriculture requires fewer farmers on more acres. But missing from their analysis was the long list of consequences: from degradation of the environment, to health risks from increased chemical use and, ironically, superweeds themselves.

Those who did address the weeds tended not to see them as a result of that impressive modern agriculture. Take Michael Owen, an agronomist from Iowa State University, for instance. In his talk, he contended that superweeds are neither an herbicide problem nor a GE crop problem, per se, but a behavioral problem. This analysis puts the blame on farmers for overusing herbicides. Yet the resistance situation first arose when biotechnology companies pushed herbicides like glyphosate (or Roundup) on farmers as the silver bullet to weed management without educating them on the ramifications of their ubiquitous use. And the practice of using just one herbicide year after year would not have occurred if it weren’t for the aggressive promotion of the Roundup Ready line of GE crops (engineered to tolerate Roundup).

There was some talk of non-chemical solutions by Michael Walsh from the University of Western Australia, who spoke about that country’s serious problem with a weed that has developed resistance to several herbicides. Australian researchers designed a few different weed seed control methods that destroy the seed reserves, eliminating upwards of 95 percent of the seed before it is able to germinate. But it was made very clear by the U.S. farmers attending the summit that going back to traditional methods, like cultivation, would be tough. There was little mention of organic weed management techniques such as crop rotation or the use of cover crops.

But exhausting chemical tool after chemical tool in an arms race against herbicide resistant weeds is not only not sustainable, it’s not working. And despite the fact that chemical solutions are the cause of cross-resistance and multiple resistance in weeds, the need for more chemical solutions was still at the forefront of the discussion.

Strikingly missing from the conversation that day was any talk of the next round of GE crops now in the pipeline, like Dow’s 2,4-D corn and Monsanto’s dicamba soybean, which have both been designed to be resistant to more than one herbicide at once. A full 13 out of 20 crops in the queue awaiting USDA’s approval have what are called “stacked herbicide resistance traits.”

These crops, once approved, will likely result in the use of many more gallons of herbicides and the evolution of even more powerful superweeds that will be resistant to many different herbicides—making them harder and harder to manage. Formulating new varieties of crops to withstand applications of harsher chemicals may be business as usual for these scientists and the companies they work for, but it’s an approach that ignores the underlying issue.

The final speaker at the summit was Iowa State University President Steven Leath, who said he believed that using a “land-grant approach” involving public-private partnerships will help solve this complex problem. This approach is not surprising coming from Leath; Iowa State is known for its relationships with corporations (especially Monsanto), and its agronomy department received around half of its funding from private-sector donors from 2006 to 2010. Iowa State’s campus is even home to a Monsanto Student Services Wing in the main agriculture building.

The superweed problem is one that should be attacked with preventative strategies based in weed biology and independent, interdisciplinary creativity. But partnering with biotechnology companies will likely only result in biotech solutions.

We have the opportunity to see superweeds as a wake-up call and a strong argument for pulling agriculture off the chemical treadmill to which it is bound. But to do that, public research—free of private sector influence—must be funded in order to give farmers better alternatives and to shift the focus away from the current chemical arms race against weeds.

Originally published on Grist

In a three-part series, the Edible Schoolyard Project interviews the directors of sustainable agriculture and environmental stewardship programs at Center for Land-Based Learning.

The first interview with Nina Suzuki, Program Director of Student and Landowner Education and Watershed Stewardship (SLEWS), addresses the value of working with high school students and the long-term goals of Center for Land-based Learning. SLEWS engages California high school students in habitat restoration projects with a focus on classroom learning, leadership development, and hands-on environmental impact.

An introduction from Nina Suzuki

I was introduced to the Center for Land-Based Learning (CLBL) while I was studying Landscape Architecture and Landscape Restoration at UC Davis. For one of my classes, I was teamed up with CLBL and Audubon California to develop a farm conservation plan for their headquarters at the Farm on Putah Creek. Through that project I got to know the organization and staff. I stayed in touch and was really excited when they had an opening for the Sacramento Valley SLEWS Coordinator position. In this position, I would be able to plan and participate in habitat restoration (with lots of partners) while facilitating student engagement and learning in the process.

Edible Schoolyard Project: How did this program come about? Did it emerge from a need or a desire within the community?

NS: The SLEWS program emerged from our existing experience, a need, and a partnership. Our first program, FARMS Leadership, gave us experience working with teachers to plan year-long, field trip based programs for high school youth. The need came from landowners, mainly farmers and ranchers, who were interested in reintroducing native habitat on their property but didn’t have the expertise or manpower to plan or install such a project. And the partnership was with Audubon California, whose Landowner Stewardship Program was working with these landowners to plan and implement habitat projects, but wanted to include an educational component.

ESYP: Who is your target community and how large is it?

NS: We target high school students, primarily sophomores, for the SLEWS Program. About 700 students participate in the SLEWS program each year from our four SLEWS regions: Sacramento Valley, San Joaquin Valley, Napa, and Sonoma. SLEWS also recruits and trains about 70 natural resource professionals and college students as mentors each year. The program offers them the opportunity to share their knowledge with high school students and gain experience in environmental education and habitat restoration. They help SLEWS maintain a 5:1 adult-to-student ratio to ensure high quality experiences and restoration work, lead the same team of students for all their field days, and connect high school youth to related internships, majors, and careers.

ESYP: Why does SLEWS work with high school age children? What is the value of engaging high school students in habitat restoration?

NS: There are very few experiential programs for high school students. Additionally, high school students are at the time in their lives when they are thinking about college majors and careers. The SLEWS program connects high school students with graduate students and natural resource professionals, and teaches skills that a wildlife biologist or habitat restoration planner or water quality engineer would use every day. We hope to inspire these students to explore natural resource and agriculture careers and infuse those career fields with highly motivated, ethnically diverse young people. Another value of the SLEWS program is that the concepts we explore in SLEWS are in line with the California state science standards for high school biology. SLEWS is a way to teach those concepts in a real world, local setting that students connect with and understand.

ESYP: How is the program structured?

NS: Students participate in SLEWS for the length of their school year. SLEWS coordinators meet with the teacher and project team to develop the plan for the year including restoration tasks and learning activities that connect to classroom curriculum. The coordinator provides an in-class watershed presentation to prepare students for their field experience. Students make three to five, all day field trips to their adopted restoration project. The trips are spread out throughout the year, allowing for a variety of activities (since many are seasonal) and for students to develop a connection to their site. Most of the student training happens on-site by our staff, restoration partners, and mentors – although we also take advantage of the opportunity to teach in the classroom to prepare students before coming out into the field. Each field day includes team building, training, restoration work, science learning, and reflection elements.

ESYP: What are the most popular activities and projects?

NS: The most popular activity is planting trees and shrubs. There is a great sense of accomplishment and camaraderie when you get together with a group of friends and plant 300 trees in two hours. Students tell us, “The best part is looking back and being able to see what you’ve done, that you’ve made a difference.”

ESYP: How do you pick your restoration sites?

NS: We use a rubric of criteria when we’re looking at a new site. The primary considerations are: proximity to the school and coordinator, potential for long term success, scale of the project, accessibility, ecological significance, diversity of tasks, and involvement of the landowner and restoration planner.

ESYP: How is the program funded?

NS: SLEWS is funded primarily through our restoration partners and landowners who contract with Center for Land-Based Learning to include SLEWS students in the implementation of their restoration projects. We are also supported by grants from state agencies, local businesses, and foundations.

ESYP: Are there improvements that you wish to make to the programming?

NS: We are always revising and developing new elements of the program with feedback from our participants and partners. From surveys and other student and teacher feedback, we learned that students got really excited about wildlife. So we now include more wildlife lessons that connect to the restoration work students are doing. We are building up our kit of demonstration materials like example mammal tracks, skulls, and skins. Right now we are borrowing museum specimens, but eventually we’d like to have our own set of materials.

We’re also always trying to find new ways of connecting these learning experiences back to students’ communities, and encouraging them to take action back at home to improve their local environment. We recently received a small grant from Cornell’s Celebrate Urban Birds program to support Grant High School’s student garden in North Sacramento, provide native plants for birds in an urban setting, and have students gather data on urban birds as part of a citizen science program of Cornell. These students were planting native habitat on a ranch in the foothills of the Coast Range for their SLEWS project, and then they got to go back to their school and plant native plants to support birds right in their backyard. We would like to be able to do more of these “Community Action Projects” with our SLEWS classes, but it takes a significant amount of planning and time from the teachers and our staff to make a meaningful project happen.

ESYP: How do you measure success?

NS: We evaluate success with students in the SLEWS program by tracking participation, engagement at field days, responses to written prompts at field days, and the pre- and post-program survey. The Center for Land-Based Learning has worked extensively with faculty at the UC Davis School of Education to develop effective evaluation methods for our programs. The pre- and post-surveys were developed in collaboration with the UC Davis School of Education to assess changes in student knowledge, attitudes, and actions over the course of the school year. The survey also captures student activities in their own communities, interest in post-secondary education and/or careers in environmental science, and resource conservation – as well as interest in similar programs in the future.

After each field day we evaluate the restoration and education accomplishments of the day as well as student engagement with input from the project partners and teachers. This includes student quotes that demonstrate student learning and attitudes toward the environment. Key indicators include: developing a connection to the land, seeing their potential to affect positive change and understanding the need for and effects of restoration. We record this information in our Coordinator Field Day Assessment, a tool CLBL used in a three-year research study with UC Davis to evaluate effective experiential programming.

ESYP: What do you find is the greatest value of land-based learning?

NS: It amplifies student learning, brings concepts to life, makes learning real and meaningful. It connects students to something bigger than themselves and opens them to a new world of careers and interests. Most of the students in our programs are from urban schools, and most of them have never set foot in a creek or put their hands in soil. I think the beauty of our programs is that they work on so many levels of engagement. They start at the very basic level of getting people outside and exploring the wonders of nature. They progress to teaching science, inspiring students to take positive action back in their own communities, and they launch them on paths of higher learning. These experiences are relevant to all students even if they don’t want a career in wildlife biology or resource conservation – we are all invested in clean water, air, and healthy food.

Originally published on the Edible Schoolyard Project

HBO has a history of tackling serious American health-care crises. In recent years, the cable network has taken on addiction and Alzheimer’s to much critical acclaim. And now the network has turned its attention to another huge health problem: Obesity and its enormous economic, emotional, social, and health cost on individuals, families, communities, and the country at large.

As Americans have gained weight in recent years, rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and other obesity-related health problems have also skyrocketed. Rates of Type 2 diabetes (once known as “adult-onset diabetes”) are soaring among kids. And this is a generation of people that may well die at a younger age than their parents, largely because of medical concerns associated with excess weight.

These facts have become commonplace to those of us who have been paying attention. Still, The Weight of the Nation: Confronting America’s Obesity Epidemic serves as a clarion call to the country to take action — and fast — to combat this pernicious, complex problem that has myriad root causes.Despite the familiar territory, this viewer gives the filmmakers points for framing the issue in a fresh, visually compelling way through astute story selection. The first episode recounts The Bogalusa Heart Study in Louisiana — a landmark investigation which found that cardiovascular disease can begin in childhood. And in the final installment we meet a Nashville mayor trying to help his city get healthy and a Latino community in Santa Ana, Calif., whose members spend years advocating for a play space for their children.

At the current rate of increase, obesity-related health-care costs are projected to exceed $300 billion by 2018.

Bigger than individuals

Some critics (including those who have yet to watch the series) worry that The Weight of the Nation only fans fear, stereotypes fat folk, and doesn’t go after the real villain in the war against weight: the food and beverage industry. But from this critic’s perspective, the program doesn’t lay shame and blame at the feet of the overweight and obese people it features. On the contrary, it presents their struggles in a sympathetic and non-judgmental light, revealing how hard the body fights weight loss despite good intentions, and how current social, economic, and government systems sabotage Americans’ attempts to stay healthy.

Yes, there is the question of personal responsibility, and the films address physical inactivity and poor diet as key contributors to this problem. But there’s also healthy discussion of factors outside an individual’s control — including genetic makeup and evolutionary biology (we’re programmed for scarcity in a time of abundance), workplace changes, fast food marketing strategies, federal farm subsidies, changes in American food culture, and the ready availability of low-cost, high-calorie food.

The series also points a finger at the global corporations that are responsible for peddling the unhealthy, highly processed foods at the crux of the problem. It’s hard to imagine commercial television, hugely dependent on advertising by the makers of such food, taking on this topic in the first place.

To produce The Weight of the Nation, HBO teamed up with some major government agencies battling this spreading epidemic — the Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health — as well as the child-focused philanthropy Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and health-care giant Kaiser Permanente.

The series doesn’t sugarcoat matters, but makes it clear that obesity-related health problems will become an unprecedented crisis with dire consequences if left unchecked. They’re also incredibly expensive: At the current rate of increase, obesity-related health-care costs are projected to exceed $300 billion by 2018.

In conjunction with the series, HBO also launched a massive social media campaign to spread the word about what can be done about these health problems, and reached out to more than 40,000 community-based organizations across the country.

Take that, obesity epidemic. And yet, as John Hoffman, executive producer of the series, noted in a discussion after a recent screening in Oakland: One of the first steps that might put a serious dent in this problem would be addressing government subsidies for commodity crops, which have made ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup cheap, accessible, and ubiquitous. He suggested changing the date of the Iowa caucus — a step that would give this farm state considerably less political power. (Such creative thinking didn’t make it into the series. But it’s food for thought — as is the hormonal defect hypothesis, detailed in a Newsweek story last week, which argues that refined sugars and grains are the major players in a problem that no amount of dieting and exercise could correct.)

Chicken nuggets are served for school lunch in the Weight of the Nation.

For kids’ sake