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Vegetable Gardens Are Booming in a Fallow Economy
Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times
… Vegetable gardening has been on the rise across the country, according to Bruce Butterfield, research director at the National Gardening Association, driven by rising food prices and a growing contingent of health-conscious consumers. Garden-store retailers have reported increased sales over the past two years, he said, and many community gardens have waiting lists.
“Our sales have skyrocketed,” said George Ball, chief executive of Burpee, one of the largest vegetable-seed retailers. The jump, he said, began around the time Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, when anxiety about money started to rise.
In urban areas, the words “locally grown” conjure images of affluent shoppers in pricey farmers’ markets. But in rural America, consumers are opting for locally grown food — from their own gardens and neighboring farmers — largely because it is cheaper.
Rebecca Frazier, a teacher here, said she had cut her food bill in half by growing her own and preserving and by buying in bulk from local farmers. She recently paid $10 for 40 pounds of sweet potatoes, a fraction of the store price.
(8 September 2011)
The Food Movement: Its Power and Possibilities
Frances Moore Lappé, The Nation
For years I’ve been asked, “Since you wrote Diet for a Small Planet in 1971, have things gotten better or worse?” Hoping I don’t sound glib, my response is always the same: “Both.”
As food growers, sellers and eaters, we’re moving in two directions at once.
The number of hungry people has soared to nearly 1 billion, despite strong global harvests. And for even more people, sustenance has become a health hazard—with the US diet implicated in four out of our top ten deadly diseases. Power over soil, seeds and food sales is ever more tightly held, and farmland in the global South is being snatched away from indigenous people by speculators set to profit on climbing food prices. Just four companies control at least three-quarters of international grain trade; and in the United States, by 2000, just ten corporations—with boards totaling only 138 people—had come to account for half of US food and beverage sales. Conditions for American farmworkers remain so horrific that seven Florida growers have been convicted of slavery involving more than 1,000 workers. Life expectancy of US farmworkers is forty-nine years.
There is, however, another current, which is democratizing power and aligning farming with nature’s genius. Many call it simply “the global food movement.” In the United States it’s building on the courage of truth tellers from Upton Sinclair to Rachel Carson, and worldwide it has been gaining energy and breadth for at least four decades.
Some Americans see the food movement as “nice” but peripheral—a middle-class preoccupation with farmers’ markets, community gardens and healthy school lunches. But no, I’ll argue here. It is at heart revolutionary, with some of the world’s poorest people in the lead, from Florida farmworkers to Indian villagers. It has the potential to transform not just the way we eat but the way we understand our world, including ourselves. And that vast power is just beginning to erupt.
(16 September 2011)
Also at Common Dreams.
Editor’s Note from The Nation: Frances Moore LappĂ©’s essay below kicks off The Nation’s forum on the food movement. Raj Patel, Vandana Shiva, Eric Schlosser, and Michael Pollan have contributed replies.
-BA
Peak Phosphate
Leia Toovey, Potash Investing News
The aftermath of the Hubbert Peak Theory has sparked concerns over peak phosphorus. When applied to phosphorus, the Hubbert’s peak theory of has created quite a stir, spawning a great deal of animated discussion and scientific analysis into the implications of peak phosphate.
While potash (potassium) seems to garner more interest from the investment community, agronomists claim that neither potash or nitrogen fertilizers are threatened with an impending supply shortage, whereas phosphorus is. Phosphorus, a non-renewable resource obtained from mining and processing phosphate rocks, is essential due to its use as a fertilizer. It is one of the three macro-nutrients that crops require in large quantities in order to grow.
As the world’s population grows and populations in the emerging economies start eating more protein- rich diets, the depletion rate of phosphate reserves will accelerate.
… Many experts do not agree with the “peak phosphate” theory. Counter arguments center on pointing out loopholes in the models used to estimate the timeline for peak phosphate. The major shortcomings of these models are the fact that they have either not been able to precisely establish when reserves will be exhausted, or they fail to account for potential changes in demand. The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) recently carried out a study that reassessed the phosphate rock reserves and resources of phosphate-producing countries. This study, released late last year, concluded that global phosphate rock resources suitable for phosphate-based fertilizers were far more extensive than previously estimated. According to the study, at current extraction rates, these resources would be available for several centuries. Then, earlier this year, the United States Geological Survey dramatically increased its reserve estimate for Morocco and Western Sahara from 5.7 billion metric tonnes to 50 billion metric tonnes.
So far, research into peak phosphate has centered on a possible peak in phosphorus supply, however, a potential peak in phosphorus demand should also be investigated. Since phosphorus accumulates in agricultural soils, phosphorus requirements do not increase linearly with agricultural production.
(14 September 2011)
As far as I know, no one argues that at some point phosphate production will not peak. As with peak oil, the disagreements are about WHEN peak phosphate will occur and what the IMPLICATIONS are. -BA
It’s Not Just About Food
Eric Schlosser, The Nation
Forty years after the publication of Diet for a Small Planet, thousands of farmers’ markets are thriving across the United States, countless young and well-educated people want to become farmers, community gardens are being planted in inner cities, Walmart is championing local foods, the White House boasts an organic garden—and the poorest workers in the United States are earning about $1.50 less for every hour they work. That decline of almost 20 percent in the federal minimum wage since 1971, adjusted for inflation, suggests the limits of the food movement—and the necessity for it to have the sort of broad view that Frances Moore Lappé has always embraced. Any movement that focuses too narrowly on food is bound to fail when 46 million Americans live below the poverty line. Without a fundamental commitment to social justice, the estimated 1–2 percent of Americans who eat organic food will be indistinguishable from the 1–2 percent who control almost all of this country’s wealth and power.
The corporate monopolies and monopsonies, the contempt for labor unions, the capture of federal agencies, the corruption of elected officials, the lies routinely told to consumers, the disregard for the environment and for public health—none of these things are unique to the food industry. You will find them in the oil, chemical, media and financial industries, among many others. They have become commonplace in the US economy. They are signs of a much larger problem, of a society where a handful of corporations choose the lawmakers, dictate the laws, control production and distribution, widen the gulf between rich and poor.
(3 October 2011)
