Food Waste, Eco-Farm Coverage, Peak Oil Legitimized

Waste not, want not.  Some time ago, I added Jonathan Bloom's Wasted Food to my periodic blog reading list.  Jonathan does an excellent job chasing down the causes of food waste in our society and introducing interesting new ways to reduce the waste we create.  While it's important to work toward sustainable, organic, local and ethical food sources, it's equally important that we are good stewards of what we have.  Yesterday he spoke to the folks behind Egg In A Box, who are urging us to do something more productive with that left-over, Chinese take-out rice.

Eco-Farm Blogfest Continues.  Tom Philpott and Bonnie Powell continue to blog from the Eco-Farm conference in California.  Yesterday at Gristmill Tom shared information about a session led by a beekeeper on the ugly truth behind colony collapse disorder.  Bonnie introduced us to some of the attendees of this year's conference at The Ethicurean.  And Tom wraps it up with another post at Gristmill including final impressions that encourage and challenge at the same time.

How to distinguish a crack-pot theory from scientific likelihood?  When the companies with the most vested economic interest start agreeing with the dire prophets of doom.  As reported yesterday at Gristmill, in an article at the Times of London Shell's CEO predicted that global demand for oil will outstrip supply by 2015 (yes, that's like 7 years away) and actually used the phrase "peak oil" in a sentence.  A chilling look at an internal memo.

Keep the USDA honest.  Or at least watch them like a hawk.  Walter Jeffries at Sugar Mountain Farm asks all of us to carefully consider the proposed phrase "naturally raised" as well as the definition the USDA is planning to use for that moniker.  Suffice it to say, Jeffries isn't supportive of the effort as it is scripted today, indicating that "The label is fundimentally missleading [sic] because it implies pasture, outdoors and free ranging yet allows for confinement feeding operations a.k.a. factory farms and CAFO's. The USDA's proposed "Naturally Raised" claims standard makes no mention of allowing access to the natural world. By the USDA's standard you could raise animals in boxes they can't turn around in, without fresh air and still call it "Naturally Raised" - that's fundamentally wrong and deceptive labeling."  Which is only one among many other problems.

Here's an idea:  Farm AND relax.  Ragan Sutterfield writes at Plenty Magazine about a different vision for the future of small farmers - not just hard work but also more idle time in which to be creative and enjoy life.  Sutterfield notes that "if you spend time with farmers you will find that many take leisures that many office workers don't—long lunches, time chatting at the local breakfast spot, slow manual labor that frees the mind in a way computer work could not."  Sign me up.

Something else bad for us?  Kat discusses a recent article from the British Medical Journal The Lancet that links pesticide use on crops to type 2 diabetes.  Her thoughts on the study at Eating Liberally points out that this shouldn't be news to those paying attention -- Rachel Carson brought up the same point in the 1970's environmental classic Silent Spring -- and that the study adds more credence to the need to be eating organic everyday.

One of our goals for this year is to preserve (i.e. can or freeze) more of the fresh local produce from our garden and the farmers market.  Susan Brackney shares that passion at an article in Plenty Magazine.

Here we go:  springtime is just around the corner and soil preparation is on our mind.  A Learning Farmer helps us out with the science.

Ruhlman responds to Mark Bittman's piece about beef consumption in Sunday's New York Times (referenced in the last post here. . . )

Finally, for those of you living, like we are, in a part of the country where the farmers markets are closed for the winter, take heart.  It was with a mixture of spiritual epiphany and longing that we looked through the photos from The Slow Cook highlighting the markets in Washington D.C. this week.  Spring can't come soon enough for me!

photo courtesy of identity chris is and is shared under a creative commons license.