Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
Push to Eat Local Food Is Hampered by Shortage
Katie Zezima, New York Times
EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. – Erica Zimmerman and her husband spent months pasture-raising pigs on their farm here, but when the time came to take them to slaughter, an overbooked facility canceled their appointment.
With the herd in prime condition, and the couple lacking food and space to keep them, they frantically called slaughterhouses throughout the state. After several days they found an opening, but their experience highlights a growing problem for small farmers here and across the nation: too few slaughterhouses to meet the growing demand for locally raised meat.
In what could be a major setback for America’s local-food movement, championed by so-called locavores, independent farmers around the country say they are forced to make slaughter appointments before animals are born and to drive hundreds of miles to facilities, adding to their costs and causing stress to livestock.
As a result, they are scaling back on plans to expand their farms because local processors cannot handle any more animals.
“It’s pretty clear there needs to be attention paid to this,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview.
(28 March 2010)
Tom Philpott at Grist is overjoyed that the Gray Lady has turned her glance farmwards: The NYT highlights a key food-system gap: infrastucture :
When you’ve been in the trenches writing about a problem for a while, it’s good to see it finally getting traction in media and policy circles. That’s why I was thrilled to see Sunday’s New York Times piece on how a shortage of infrastructure is hampering the growth of local and regional food production.
-BA
Dwindling Food for Thought
Eric Margolis, The Toronto Sun/Canada
As nations around the world continue to destroy entire species, woe betide the animals that become a delicacy
—
Fish don’t vote. Neither do tigers, polar bears, sharks, elephants or any other endangered animals whose plight was addressed at the UN meeting on endangered species in Doha.
Because wildlife has no political clout, nations around the world continue to destroy entire species until none are left. So much for enlightened humanity at work in the 21st century.
An admirable effort by the United States to protect the gravely overfished Pacific bluefin tuna, the supreme sushi or sashimi delicacy, was voted down by the conferees after intense lobbying from Japan.
Another laudable effort by the United States to protect polar bears by banning their hunting was also defeated -thanks in good part to Canada and Greenland.
The U.S. warns that melting sea ice caused by global warming threatens the already endangered bears.
Canadians like to think of themselves as a humane, enlightened nation and good global citizens.
But abroad, Canada is increasingly viewed as a backwards, brutish country because of its stalwart defence of slaughtering baby seals, trapping fur animals, encouraging the hunting of black and grizzly bears, and now blocking a ban on hunting polar bears.
(28 March 2010)
Also at Common Dreams.
How a Band of Youthful Entrepreneurs Are Resuscitating an Ailing Vermont Town With a New Economy Based on Local Foods
Barry Estabrook, Atlantic via Alternet
The book, “The Town That Food Saved,” shows that Hardwick’s recent history may be providing a template for a food system that could save all of us.
The words local, seasonal, and sustainable have been repeated so often and with so little thought that they have become soothing background noise, feel-good mood-music for any socially conscious eater worth his or her naturally obtained organic sea salt. So it’s refreshing to encounter a book that treats the subject intelligently.
Was it Holden Caulfield who said the measure of a good book was one that makes you want to call the author on the phone? Reading Ben Hewitt’s The Town That
Food Saved impelled me to pay a visit to the author at his home, a raggedy farmstead at the end of a rutted, muddy, unmarked lane tucked among the folds and hollows of north-central Vermont.
Tall and lanky, Hewitt is in his late thirties and grew up in rural, working-class Vermont. His formal education ended before he was able to complete high school. On the morning we met, his red knit cap was flecked with bits of hay, and he wore a faded blue shirt and olive-green work pants dabbed with either mud or manure from the dozen or so cows and sheep in the shed next to his house.
The central character in Hewitt’s book is the town of Hardwick, about eight miles from where he lives. A half-burned-out commercial building dominates the main intersection. It’s an apt metaphor for the one-blinking-light village. Between 1880 and 1920, Hardwick prospered. It was a major source of granite for the building trade. When reinforced concrete replaced rock as a construction material, the community fell into decay. Today, the town’s name is rarely seen in print without the adjective “hardscrabble.”
But Hardwick may be changing. A band of youthful, boundlessly articulate entrepreneurs are rebuilding the area’s economy on a foundation that may be more substantial than the bedrock on which its first boom was based: sustainable, local food production…
(29 March 2010)
Find out more about the book here
Restoring natural capital in degraded landscapes
Mark Chandler, BBCnews Viewpoint
Fuelling the growing demand for food, fuel and fibre, 13 million hectares are converted annually for agricultural use, mostly from forests.
Together, crops and pasture make up more than any other land use – over 40% – and are projected to grow by another 15% over the next 50-100 years.
The conversion into agricultural lands is perhaps one of the greatest single impacts on the Earth. These impacts include the greenhouse gas emissions that make up a third of global emissions since 1950, the 70% of freshwater used for irrigation, and growing loss of biodiversity, among others.
The use of the planet’s resources is no longer sustainable. A recent study by WWF, the Zoological Society of London and the Global Footprint Network revealed that humans now use in excess of 25% of the productive capacity of the biosphere and that two planet Earths will be needed to support our projected demand.
The scope and scale of agriculture and the projected growth in demand for food, biofuels and other commodities puts it on a crash course with identified pathways for environmental sustainability.
With a growing awareness of the value of the goods and services that nature provides, governments and institutions are looking for ways to both decrease per capita demand and increase the efficiency of current land use practices.
But how can agricultural landscapes produce more with less impact?
While the interests of farmers are often seen to be at odds with others in the supply chain, a dialogue is taking place about ways to build on shared interests across the global supply chain. Creating dialogue across sectors that typically do not interact in this way has led to some interesting advances.
Critical to success is our ability to define how to pay for the costs of maintaining the goods and services, and who pays. Incentives are evolving, including certification standards such as Fair Trade and the newly developing payments for ecosystem services like those for water, or the trading of carbon.
…Rather than seeing the use and development of agricultural lands as the conversion of natural systems into human-dominated ones, there are increasing opportunities for win-win solutions. Rural farming communities are among the poorest on Earth, yet they are often open to change – and have much to lose otherwise.
Adoption by consumers, governments and businesses of financial mechanisms such as certification and payment for ecosystem services is needed to ensure that the cost burden by producers of enhancing the environment is adequately compensated.
(23 March 2010)
