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Powerdown Toolkit #6: Deconstructing Dinner
Graham Strouts, Zone 5
This is the introduction to week six of the Powerdown Toolkit 10-week community learning course created by the Cultivate Center in Dublin. It has an accompanying TV show with a 30-minute episode accompanying each week of the course, soon to be aired on Dublin Community TV.
Deconstructing Dinner: Food Miles, Trade and Food Systems
Food is energy. Nowhere is this truth seen more clearly than in the conflict for land and resources between food for the hungry in the developing world and biofuels for the energy-hungry motorist in the industrialised nations. {Murphy, P. Plan C}
Since the second world war, agriculture has become a system for turning fossil fuels into industrial foods { Pfeiffer, D. A. Eating Fossil Fuels 2006}- or, as Michael Pollan would have it, “food-like substances”. { Pollan, M. In Defence of Food 2008}
This has taken a huge toll on the fertility of soils, which have become more like sponges for absorbing fossil fuels rather than the complex organic systems, full of billions of microrganisms, that have sustained life on Earth the past 2 billion years.
The Green revolution has essentially been a way of forcing greater volumes of produce from a given area of land through use of oil for pesticides and herbicides and natural gas for the production of artificial fertilisers. It has been calculated that it takes on average 10 calories of fossil energy to produce one calorie of food.
It can be seen therefore that an energy crisis will also mean a food crisis. Such an event nearly happened in the UK in 2000 when a politically motivated truckers strike had the supermarket shelves going bare and Britain on the verge of a famine after just a few days, a result of the “just in time” policies of most of our food system.
(29 March 2009)
Farmers Face Growing Climate Change Dilemma: Scientist
David Fogarty, Reuters via PlanetArk
SINGAPORE – Farmers of the future will have to use cattle and sheep that belch less methane, crops that emit far less planet-warming nitrous oxide and become experts in reporting their greenhouse gas emissions to the government.
Agriculture is a major source of greenhouse gases and globally that share will rise as demand for food from growing human populations also increases, scientist Richard John Eckard of the University of Melbourne said on Thursday.
But farmers are facing a near-impossible challenge: feeding the world while trying to trim emissions and adapt to greater extremes of droughts and floods because of global warming, he said.
In coming years, farmers will have to monitor and report emissions as more nations move toward emissions trading.
“We want agriculture to feed the world. We want farmers to be viable and continue to increase the rate of productivity growth. At the same time, we’re telling them they are going to face a more harsh climate they need to adapt to.
“On top of that you impose a policy that you can now only emit a fraction of the emissions that you were emitting,” he told Reuters from Perth, Western Australia, during a climate change conference.
(27 March 2009)
Forging a Hot Link to the Farmer Who Grows the Food
Brad Stone and Matt Richtel, New York Times
The maker of Stone-Buhr flour, a popular brand in the western United States, is encouraging its customers to reconnect with their lost agrarian past, from the comfort of their computer screens. Its Find the Farmer Web site and special labels on the packages let buyers learn about and even contact the farmers who produced the wheat that went into their bag of flour.
The underlying idea, broadly called traceability, is in fashion in many food circles these days. Makers of bananas, chocolates and other foods are also using the Internet to create relationships between consumers and farmers, mimicking the once-close ties that were broken long ago by industrialized food manufacturing.
Traceability can be good for more than just soothing the culinary consciences of foodies. Congress is also studying the possibility of some kind of traceability measure as a way to minimize the impact of food scares like the recent peanut salmonella crisis.
The theory: if food producers know they’re being watched, they’ll be more careful. The Stone-Buhr flour company, a 100-year-old brand based in San Francisco, is giving the buy-local food movement its latest upgrade. Beginning this month, customers who buy its all-purpose whole wheat flour in some Wal-Mart, Safeway and other grocery chains can go to findthefarmer .com, enter the lot code printed on the side of the bag, and visit with the company’s farmers and even ask them questions.
(27 March 2009)
Why the White House garden matters
Fritz Haeg, Guardian
The Obamas’ new vegetable patch is a symbol of what is wrong with our lawns and how we can fix them. It doesn’t take much
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Has one vegetable garden ever generated so much excitement or debate? A few details about the new White House vegetable garden caught my attention.
It is 1,100 square feet. This is a garden sized for a family. In my experience of removing front lawns and planting Edible Estate prototype gardens across the country, the Obama garden is about the size of the average American front lawn. Most Americans should be able to imagine themselves planting something about this size in front of their house over a weekend with the help of some friends and neighbours.
Of course I would have preferred that they remove the entire South Lawn of the White House. I imagine a combination of fruit tree orchards, wild berry patches and edible flower and grass meadows. But since this new first family garden should be a model to inspire every American family, perhaps a modest 1,100 square feet is the best way to start the revolution.
There will be tomatillos and cilantro, but no beets. The Obamas love Mexican food, and Barack does not like beets. This is a garden planted for the personal tastes of the family that will be eating from it. It is not just a pretty garden, or an empty symbol, but a place for a family to grow the food that they like to eat, on the land that is around them.
… Planting beds will be fertilised with White House compost and crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay. I love local details. That’s what make gardens special, and lawns boring. So the thought of crab meal from the local bay coming to the South Lawn is a thrilling development.
The rest of us can read about that and ask what local resource we could tap into to feed our garden. Seaweed from the coast? Manure from the farm? And what about the first family compost pile? We need to see images of that, and find out where it will be located.
I would advocate for a very visible and privileged location, perhaps at the ceremonial south entrance to the White House, where Barack can show off the rich pile of decomposing banana peals and coffee grinds to visiting heads of state.
As any gardener knows, the compost pile is the engine of the garden, the place where yesterdays “waste” becomes tomorrows fertility. What better message for us today?
… The total cost is $200 They could have planted a very elaborate and expensive garden that might have been more worthy of what we would expect in front of the White House, but I am so pleased that they planted something modest and cheap. Sales of vegetable plants and seeds are soaring along with the cost of food. Americans are rediscovering the economic benefits and perhaps even the daily pleasure of being outside and growing food where they live.
(25 March 2009)
A growing interest at Statehouse
Sarah Hinckley, TimesArgus.com
Not to be outdone by the Obama family, a local group is looking to plant a garden at Vermont’s state capitol.
Made up of about a half dozen local food enthusiasts, the Association for the Planting of edible Public Landscapes for Everyone, or APPLE Corps is awaiting approval to put seeds in an area of the Statehouse grounds on May 1. Plans have been sketched out for two plots, equaling 280 square feet, to grow a variety of vegetables and herbs throughout the 2009 season.
“We think we would do justice to the goddess of Ceres,” said Caroline Abels, one of the APPLE Corps about the goddess of agriculture atop the Statehouse dome.
While momentum for supporting local food movements is growing throughout the country, the group’s plan is well timed at the Statehouse. Because of state budget restraints, fewer flowers are being planted at the Statehouse this year, according to Carl Etnier, an APPLE Corps member.
The proposed plots, located just off the lawn, in front of the rows of smaller shrubs that flank the first set of steps, have showcased flowers in the past.
“It’s very important that we maintain the grandeur of the Statehouse and symmetry is part of that,” said Etnier about the location for the garden. “Our intention is to harvest this and give it to the food shelf.”
(27 March 2009)
