Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.
At the farmers market, you can meet the farmer who grew your carrots, talk to them about their growing practices, and feel confident that your food dollars are going directly to the farm. But the path coffee travels from farm to cup is much more mysterious. How can you feel good about the businesses you’re supporting with your coffee dollars and ensure that farmers thousands of miles away are receiving their fair share?
Urban agriculture has captured the imagination of many San Franciscans in recent years. Two dozen gardens and farms have sprouted across the city since 2008, and in 2011 the city changed its zoning code to permit urban agriculture in all neighborhoods. Interest in urban agriculture stems from its numerous benefits. City farming and gardening provides San Franciscans with vibrant greenspaces and recreation, education about fresh food and the effort it takes to produce it, cost savings and ecological benefits for the city, sites that help build community, and a potential source of modest economic development. But the city will not fully capture these benefits unless it takes advantage of the growing interest and energy behind the issue.
•Solar development absorbing Calif. farmland
•A Free, Pick-Your-Own Orchard Takes Root in Los Angeles
•New Report Shows Inextricable Link Between Food, Water and Energy
•’Progaganda Gardening’ at Incredible Edible Todmorden
•Dairy Farms Suffer in US Shale Gas Fracking Boom
Join the kids at Farm Camp! You’ll watch them care for turkeys and rabbits, listen to a harvest season story, and cook up applesauce. Campers have fun growing and preparing food and, best of all, eating the results. They raise veggies from seed to harvest and take field trips, like the Camp Pizza kids who visit a cheese maker. It all started because founder Laura Plaut wanted her son to have joyful food experiences. “We do [this] because it feels good. It makes us happy, takes care of the planet, [and] takes care of communities.”
This past weekend I made a trek out to central Wisconsin to speak at the state’s annual grazing conference, which typically draws farmers from all over the Midwest. This was the second time I’d been invited to join these folks, and I remembered it fondly from back in 2009, when the conference center was packed, the trade show was hopping with farmers talking about livestock genetics, raw milk, grazing plans, and fencing systems, and the sessions were filled with optimistic faces, eager to bring sustainable changes to their land and good food to their communities.
An imaginative and exciting scheme was launched to provide would-be smallholders with affordable land and low-impact dwellings. But then it was blocked by a local council, and has now gone to appeal. The story highlights how our planning process can frustrate so many ‘good life’ dreams.
We may be able to agree that much of our food system is broken, but how we begin to fix it is much harder to understand. Wenonah Hauter, director of Food and Water Watch, takes on this challenge in her new book, Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America.
The world produced 2,241 million tons of grain in 2012, down 75 million tons or 3 percent from the 2011 record harvest. The drop was largely because of droughts that devastated several major crops—namely corn in the United States (the world’s largest crop) and wheat in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Australia. Each of these countries also is an important exporter. Global grain consumption fell significantly for the first time since 1995, as high prices dampened use for ethanol production and livestock feed. Still, overall consumption did exceed production. With drought persisting in key producing regions, there is concern that farmers in 2013 will again be unable to produce the surpluses necessary to rebuild lowered global grain reserves.
On Dec. 10, 2012, hundreds of Detroiters lined up outside of The East Lake Baptist Church, braving the cold for the last of a series of public hearings on “the Hantz Woodlands deal.” At stake was the “largest speculative land sale in the city’s history”: 140 acres comprised of 1,500 lots of city land. Local multi-millionaire John Hantz wanted to turn this plot into a large timber farm that would be, as he promised, “Detroit’s saving grace.” But the hundreds of residents waiting outside had another idea of what saving the land could mean: They wanted the city to sell individual vacant plots at affordable prices for people to plant community gardens.
I’ve been experimenting recently with growing my own oyster mushrooms, and as you can see from the photos, I’ve met with some success. I was motivated to explore mushroom cultivation partly because I’m a vegetarian and want to produce my own high-protein alternatives to meat; but I was also interested in using so-called ‘dead space’ to grow food (either inside or down the shady side of the house). Oyster mushrooms tick both these boxes, and they are also ridiculously tasty.
What I experienced instead was the realization that E. B. White and I had so much in common. His litany of tasks and thoughts and expressions of worry or concern were exactly the same things I experience as I wend my way through “working the farm” every day. I said out loud, to nobody but the cats and dog, who gave me a concerned look, “This is exactly how my day is!”<
