More Deliberate Every Day

Here's Some Good Advice

Andrew Martin wrote in yesterday's New York Times about the best way to battle rising food costs:  quit wasting so much.  While food costs are up as much as 40% on some commodity items at the local grocers (bought milk lately?), Martin points out that we waste as much as 27% of the food we bring home, meaning that we can offset much of the impact of those rising prices by simply making sure we eat what we buy.  From the article:

. . . consumers toss out everything from bananas that have turned brown to last week’s Chinese leftovers. In 1997, in one of the few studies of food waste, the Department of Agriculture estimated that two years before, 96.4 billion pounds of the 356 billion pounds of edible food in the United States was never eaten. Fresh produce, milk, grain products and sweeteners made up two-thirds of the waste.

Some of the waste, of course, occurs prior to the food being purchased as the store, as in spoilage that occurs in the supermarket itself.  But nonetheless, we're throwing out a bunch of food because we don't plan well, or simply change our minds.  Doesn't seem like a luxury we can afford to have in the context of rising oil and commodity food prices, does it?

For more information on food waste and what you can do differently, visit the fine blog Wasted Food, written by Jonathan Bloom, which focuses in on this topic alone.

Bittman on the Food We Eat

Mark Bittman, food writer and author of the New York Times' The Minimalist column, speaks to an audience at a TED conference back in December:

Read This

I mean this.  I'm too aghast and dumbfounded by the avalanche of popular news about our food system to direct you to anything more exciting right now.  But the link is worth your time.

Food Crisis, Farm Bill, Yikes!

This isn't fun anymore.  I've been blogging for well over a year now about the connection between food and politics and the environment, but only recently do I see the three topics converging with such force on to the front page of every newspaper in the country.  This morning the New York Times reports "a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people."  The advent of mandated biofuels combined with rising oil prices are bleeding into food costs globally and resulting in riots in the streets of many countries.  A report on CNN yesterday noted that "riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world's attention."  All of which underscores the importance of getting to know your local producer, understanding the source of your food, and building a more sustainable community for yourself and your family.

I'm so tired of the Farm Bill I could just *!#@*!.  In an environment where commodity prices are touching all time highs, you would think our elected officials in Washington would be less concerned about appeasing corporate lobbyists and open up to the idea of reform regarding crop subsidies in the Farm Bill.  It's not like farmers aren't earning a higher income with demand outpacing supply.  But no, instead we find a virtual stalemate in our nation's capital, with both parties refusing to give in on key points of division, and the White House continuing to threaten veto if it's agenda isn't met.  Dan Morgan reported yesterday at Farm Policy that ". . . energy, environmental and agriculture policy are merging, so that the agriculture committees alone no longer control the destiny of American farmers."  Maybe the long delay in the Farm Bill plays to our advantage:  as the global food situation spirals into crisis, Big Ag interests are losing control of the debate and we may see real reform come about after all.  Response from Washington?  "Over our collective dead body!"  Despite the many small steps in the right direction included in the new version of the farm bill (as detailed aptly yesterday by Amiee Witteman at Grist), at the end of the day it fails to live up to the need for real, significant reform.  So maybe it is good to miss the next deadline (this week), allow the legislation to lapse back into a previous state, and watch the food system unravel further before the legislation receives its well-deserved facelift.  At that point we might expect a facelift that will actually change for the better.

In case you don't understand why the Farm Bill is so important. . . Watch this.

Did I mention my lasting disdain for Ethanol?  OK, maybe I mentioned it.  But here's one more.  In a piece posted at Grist Sharon Astyk meditates on the impact of biofuels on farming in America, and warns against the likely bust that will follow the boom now being experienced:

What farmers need are stable food prices (probably slightly higher than they have been) and to receive a decent portion of the price of the food we grow. And that will only happen if we start cutting out the corporate middleman and working with farmers -- giving them incentives to sell directly to consumers (who have to start eating whole grains instead of processed crap) because they know that the consumers who buy from them will not stop eating when the ethanol plants have to close down.

This goes to my earlier point:  we need to make sure that farmers receive their fair share, that our food is local and sustainable, and that our food system is safe and secure.  Which all happens when we become co-producers of our food, engaging in the process, and building community with the people who raise our food.

And by the way, props to Sharon of Casaubon's Book for this exciting turn of events.  We always knew she'd go far!

Spring Garden, And How to Share Stress With Your Providers

Here we are on the 13th of April in the Midsouth, and according to the National Weather Service at Memphis,

TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO DROP INTO THE UPPER 20S AND LOWER 30S ACROSS MUCH OF THE MID-SOUTH TUESDAY MORNING WITH CLEAR SKIES AND LIGHT WIND. FREEZING TEMPERATURES MAY OCCUR FOR SEVERAL HOURS WITH A WIDESPREAD FROST.

YOU SHOULD MAKE PREPARATIONS TO  PROTECT ANY TENDER PLANTS THAT HAVE  RECENTLY BLOOMED OR BEEN PLANTED.

A FREEZE WATCH MEANS SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE POSSIBLE. THESE CONDITIONS COULD KILL CROPS AND OTHER SENSITIVE VEGETATION.

. . . which sounds remarkably like a replay of last year.  For those of you following along at home, last year this same late frost resulted in none, meaning zero, of our normal supply of Memphis area peaches, and forced producers such as Jones Orchard to truck in Alabama peaches in order to meet the demand they were unable to supply from their own crop. 

We were planning on putting out our own garden beginning this weekend, but decided to wait one more week given the threat of cold weather tonight.  That said, Mrs. Deliberately has done a fantastic job this year getting a head start on the planting, using our guest bedroom as a make-shift greenhouse. 

Last year we didn't get the same head-start and found ourselves dependent upon the Memphis Farmers Market from day one.  And we also hadn't developed as deep an appreciation for seasonal produce as we have from following the rhythm of the entire season last year.  What does that mean?  It means that when the strawberries come in, which is several weeks away now, we will be eating a "gi-normous" quantity of strawberries, whether fresh from a bowl or married with any number of recipes.  It means we'll gorge ourselves on squash when it becomes available, and that we'll celebrate the fingerling potatoes when they're being offered by every purveyor at the market.  Once the season begins, we eat what's available, and we'll eat as much of it as is necessary to make sure we are satisfied without having to rely on the supermarket.

Of course, we'll have more of our own vegetables from the backyard this year, because we're committed to increasing the amount of our food we grow ourselves.  We'll put up more of what we need next winter, whether it be in the form of freezing or  our new effort for this summer, learning how to preserve our food through canning.  And we'll be looking for creative way to put up those root vegetables so that we don't find ourselves outside of the season without a steady supply of local foods.

Back to the threat of freeze:  we can avoid it because we haven't started yet.  But those farmers growing fruit trees and reliant on annually re-curring crops like strawberries don't have that choice -- there is no crop unless it is already planted in the prior season, and that means either covering up what you have (in the case of the strawberries) or hoping for the best.  You can't put an entire crop of peaches under cover of plastic to protect them, and the economic impact can be devastating when the crop is lost.  We have something of a fig crop ourselves in the backyard, and last year the freeze took out the top layer.  Peaches are so delicate they won't survive a solid freeze at all, leaving purveyors in a bind.

So, as you listen to more coverage on the threat of a freeze, remember it's not just an issue of having to potentially scrape your windshield clean one morning this week.  Be a co-producer and think of the farmer, think of the food that arrives to your table.  When you show up for the opening of your farmers market over the next few weeks, ask your providers how their season is shaping up, whether the late freeze impacted their crops, and how they cope with unpredictable weather conditions.  Get engaged, be involved, and become part of the solution.

As for us, we'll plant next weekend.

Largest Beef Recall In History

Breaking news this afternoon:  the USDA has recalled 143 million pounds of ground beef processed by southern California's Westland/Hallmark Meat Co.  According to CNN, "Officials estimate that about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to school programs, but they believe most of the meat probably has already been eaten. There have been no reported illnesses linked to the beef at any of the schools."  Prior to this recall, the largest-ever recall of a food product was in 1999, when the USDA banned consumption of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meals.  The amount of beef in this new recall is equal to "two hamburgers for each man, woman and child in the United States."

Glad I know my producer and the meat in my deep-freezer comes from reputable, humane, and reliable sources.

Finally, Validation Of My Foodie Desire

As you know, this blog has, since the beginning, been predominantly about food and its impact on the environment, on our communities, and on our health.  I have probably, due to suburban guilt and a desire to positively impact my world, spent a bit more time talking about environment, health, and community than my unrepentant gourmet tendencies.  That said, I spend a bit of time eating great food, dining out with friends, and experiencing the finer food that Memphis and the Midsouth has to offer.

Over the past year I've been in many restaurants with many people and have often noted my cohorts commenting about how the phenomenon of "small plates", what more metropolitan areas have long been referring to due to its traditional Spanish influence as Tapas, should become the norm.  However, in Memphis, most restaurants are hard-pressed to serve a true selection of small plates on the menu unless, in some cases, you find yourself indulging in the Chef's Selection, which is generally five to seven courses of small plates based on Chef's whim.  (And by the way, a wonderful way to challenge a restaurant and get a sense of it's true talents.)  Unfortunately, the Chef's Selection is often the most expensive item on the menu, and Memphians are left to visit Sekisui (of which I'm a rabid fan) in order to customize their dining experience.

So I was pleased to find, this morning, a lengthy article in the New York Times on the subject, where author Kim Severson breaks down the dying gasp of the hearty entree and discusses the history of the so-called small plate:

Influences from the global pantry have also had their effect. More exposure to meze, dim sum, sushi and tapas has changed how Americans think of the structure of a meal. As a result, chefs feel free to break out of the traditional French model of restaurant dining by offering small, intense tastes of global flavors, said Eve Felder, an associate dean at the Culinary Institute of America.

“It’s more of a reaching back into the way in which people celebrate the table,” she said.

Although it’s hard to imagine a time when the single-entree meal wasn’t the norm, the concept is only about 75 or 80 years old, and not necessarily something to be cherished, said Paul Freedman, a Yale University history professor and editor of the new book, “Food: The History of Taste” (University of California Press).

Not only does the small plate version of a menu offer more opportunity to experience flavor and emphasize the opportunity to form and celebrate community around the table, it cuts down significantly on the gut-busting impact of restaurants that serve courses too large for normal humans to consume in one sitting, despite the fact that those aforementioned customers may chose unwisely to scoff said food down in toto.

Small plate menus are also a way to manage the increasing cost of food and the pressure from diners on restaurants to source their food locally:  by decreasing the size of the offering restaurants are afforded the opportunity to absorb the increased cost of food by serving less.  The increase affords those restaurants to move away from deliveries by Sysco and toward deliveries by M4D Ranch and Neola Farms and Whitton Produce, to name only a few of many.

So listen up, Memphis restaurateurs:  Time to reconsider that Spring menu you've been pondering, think about how you can make it Slow by sourcing it locally, and also make it Small, for goodness sake.  Your customers will thank you.

Farm Bill Goes to the Senate Floor

The race is on . . . the 2007 Farm Bill (soon to be 2008 if it doesn't get passed soon) goes to the floor of the Senate for open debate this week.  This morning in the New York Times an editorial addresses a late-in-the-game attempt to change the way fast food occurs in public schools, and how effective that effort is likely to be:

So far, the farm bill is about as good for the American consumer as most of the confections in school vending machines. The White House opposes the bill because of the huge subsidies, which is to say corporate welfare, it provides to agribusiness. As we recently wrote about food stamps, something is very wrong when good initiatives must ride along on this regrettable package of special-interest subsidies.

The amendment’s broad support offers clues about its strengths and a few of its weaknesses. The American Medical Association and the Center for Science in the Public Interest are on board. Public-health watchdogs want the amendment because it would impose healthful rules on schools across the country, like limiting the drinks available in elementary schools to bottled water, juice or low-calorie milk. Foods outside the school lunch program would be required to have less fat and sugar and fewer calories.

The people who make Mars bars, Frito-Lay chips and Coca-Cola also back the amendment. That’s because it would not remove all junk food. It would allow diet drinks in high schools and require states like California, which currently bans them, to relent. Local districts would be allowed to impose tougher restrictions on the foods in their schools but states would not. The bill would also give industry a long time, until 2011, to adapt.

Interestingly, there's a short article in the latest issue of The Economist that asserts the time is right to do away with subsidies altogether -- their point being that given the increasing demand on commodity crops by the biofuels industry combined with the increasing demand on commodity crops by the developing world (China, to be precise) that individual farmers have never had a better chance to make a go of it without the government's help.  Those impacts, combined with a surge in local food networks, makes farming a better business to be in today than it was when the last Farm Bill was passed.

We'll be watching the progress as the week rolls by, as well as reading some of our favorite bloggers, to keep up with the blow-by-blow.

Farm Bill Roundup - The Markup Begins

The 2007 Farm Bill mark-up process arrived in the Senate today, and lucky for us, qualified bloggers were on the beat.  As a point of order, the mark-up process is the opportunity for the Senate Agriculture Committee to work through the legislation prior to it reaching the Senate floor for an open debate.  The intent is for the committee to develop a version of the legislation that will please all the key constituent groups so that the floor vote goes smoothly with little real opposition.  What happens in the mark-up, then, is basically what will likely be passed by the Senate later this month.

Our position at the More Deliberate household is that the legislation as it exists in the 2002 version, much like what is certain to be passed by the Senate and signed by the White House, doesn't even begin to address the overwhelming problems with the bill, including an egregious subsidy system that favors Big Ag over family farmers, woefully inadequate conservation funding, and a lack of focus on rural development and local food communities.

Keith Good started the day at Farm Policy bringing everyone up to speed on where we are with the discussion, posted just hours prior to the mark-up beginning.  He points to an excellent article at the New York Times which covers the omnibus legislation's path to its current Senate vote.

Dan Owens chimed in before the meeting began at Blog for Rural America noting that after such a long time waiting for this day, there's not much by way of fireworks expected:

It appears that all of the controversial issues have either been resolved or pushed off until floor consideration.

That's the non-controversial "consensus" I was writing about at the beginning, under my point of order.

By mid-morning, Dan is back and nothing has happened in the Senate.  He used the opportunity to list many of the crucial aspects of the Farm Bill that you will NOT hear our fine elected officials discussing:

You don’t hear these committee members say anything about finding new methods of agriculture so we can keep family farmers on the land (unless you count renewable fuels).
You don’t hear them say anything about how the loss of family farms continued unabated under the 2002 farm bill.
You don’t hear anything about the fact that concentration and consolidation of agriculture actually makes food security more difficult to achieve.

and on and on. . . the point being, for all the great support these Senators give to American farmers in words, the actual living and breathing of being a family farmer in this country isn't being well considered at all.

Soon after his last post, Dan is back again praising a rookie move by freshman Senator Amy Klobuchar who had the courage to stand up and actually express a contrarian opinion about the current legislation, even going so far as to suggest more conservative payment limits.  Not that it's likely to be a driving force in the final language, but we can dream.

By early afternoon, the core crop status quo gurus were taking back the stage, with Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, moniker-ed the Rice Czar by the Rural America blog, extolling the virtues of the weak changes to payment limits in the draft version of the bill and arguing that no further cuts would possibly be good for the food system in America.  Real reform of the farm bill subsidy system is simply not in the discussion today in Washington.

Later in the afternoon an amendment came to the committee that argues the minutae of how payments are capped under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.  Effectively the amendment proposed going back to the limits as included in the 2002 Farm Bill, instead of the $200K lower limit included in Senator Tom Harkin's draft bill.  Despite Harkin's admonition to leave the lower limit in the legislation, the amendment passed and once again we are watching "business as usual" endorsed openly in the Senate.

By an hour or so ago, Dan threw in the towel for the day, expecting the excitement to begin again tomorrow morning.

Several media outlets rounded up the current state of the legislation.  For more information, visit the fine links below and look to Blog for Rural America to follow the blow-by-blow in the coming days.

Editorial at the Salt Lake Tribune

Hoosier Ag Today

NPR's Marketplace

Iowa Independent 

The Abstraction of Food Policy

I've been reading a book of essays titled Wendell Berry:  Life and Work in which a variety of authors write about Berry, whether from a personal history perspective or a literary interpretation, in an attempt to begin a biographical picture of his life.  One of the themes that I've encountered in the reading thus far is Berry's rationale for opposing government, especially as it relates to agriculture and food.  In his writing he has been relentless in trying to explain that policy made in Washington cannot be good for farmers in the hills of Kentucky precisely because that policy, by necessity, requires the parties involved to perceive the farmers as abstractions, rather than as living, breathing human beings.

This notion of abstraction is key to understanding Berry's overall political bias.  His politics is about community over policy, and there can be no community without knowing the individuals involved.  All the work of the nation, a state government, and even likely a city or county, is by nature based on formulating solutions based on generalities, which results in people becoming charactitures.  These abstractions are much easier to deal with since they don't respond, protest, or feel as a result of government action.

A great example of this principle at work was found in the most recent issue of Gastronomica:  A Journal of Food and Culture.  The summer issue is devoted entirely to the politics of food, covering issues as varied as security, quality, and availability.  I was struck by an article discussing the USDA's elimination of the word hunger from it's assessment of food security and replacing it with the phrase very low food security.  The article, "The Disappearance of Hunger in America," written by Patricia Allen, goes on to explain that this only occurs as a result of converting people into abstractions.

Indeed, an editorial in the Washington Post makes precisely this point in its criticism of editorials that had appeared earlier in the newspaper.  Herb Reed writes that, "The USDA made this change for scientific reasons based on advice from the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies.  The National Academies are made up of the top scientists in the United States. . . Who is more qualified to advise on how to write scientific reports, Post editors or top US scientists?"  The message is that you have no right to an opinion if you are not a scientist.  Since chronically hungry people are unlikely to be scientists, the implication is that they have no right to claim they are hungry or to seek political redress for hunger.

This attempt to scientize hunger takes us back to an earlier time and seems to negate whatever progress has been made in the intervening period, such as the expanded definition of food security and the USDA's cooperation with the community food security movement.  Indeed, the USDA has come full circle since it began collecting data on hunger.  When government food-assistance programs were instituted in the 1960s, hunger was medicalized and defined in clinical terms in order to facilitate measurement techniques that would "presumably provide the hard evidence from which to draw conclusions about the incidence of hunger."  This measurement approach was criticized during the 1980s as having little policy relevance, because by the time hunger is clinically detectable, the damage may be irreversible.  Additionally, it was recognized that hunger is a community and household problem, not just an individual one.

This post isn't about the critical changes the USDA made last fall to the language of it's guiding principles, but rather about Berry's notion of abstraction and its use in policy.  The USDA story is a great example of how government, meaning well, can become so disconnected from the reality of the human condition that the results of its efforts are completely meaningless in the community.  And so Berry, seeing this in agricultural policy beginning in the 1960s, raised his voice to demand that community be the first priority of responsible citizens.  Allen closes her article on the USDA and hunger pointing out that the answers to this issue, as with all issues, must begin with the individuals involved:

The disappearance of hunger may simply be an unfortunate product of the distant gaze of experts who are far removed from the situation they study.  Certainly, government statisticians can have only a partial and privileged perspective on food insecurity.  The voices and experiences of the hungry must be included in any determination of the USDA's food security programs, measurements and methods.  Otherwise, the statisticians should meet with food-insecure parents and their children to explain to them why they are not hungry.

Can you imagine such a meeting?  Berry does.  If you want to know how policy impacts Americans, he writes, go visit them.  Not in town hall meetings:  right on the sofa in the living room.  Ask them how they're doing.  They'll tell you.