Food

As local as it gets: The Town of Ithaca Agricultural Protection Plan

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There was some good news on the local food security front this fall. One recent critical success was the election of antifracking candidates in several Tompkins County towns, which for the moment at least has challenged the claimed right of area landowners to extract short-term profits at the expense of the long-term health and agricultural productivity of local farmland. The other development was the November 2011 approval of the Town of Ithaca Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan (AFPP) by the Ithaca Town Board and the preparation of similar plans for the Towns of Lansing and Ulysses.

Brewing better local economies with American craft beer

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And this change in American beer starts at home, or nearly so, as craft beer really is a “local beer” phenomenon. This shift in consumer preferences and support for local craft beer is perfectly representing in a nanobrewery start-up called Community Beer Works (CBW) in Buffalo, NY. The CBW founders are using Kickstarter, social media and other fund raising techniques to make their brewery “an integral part of our city and the neighborhood our brewery is located in. We are planning partnerships with local urban farmers and gardeners to create a network of hop gardens that can be used in specialty beers as well as to dispose of our grain in ecologically friendly, mutually beneficial manner. Our goal is to foster a sense of community and place, enriching our hometown through the production of damn good beer.”

De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum

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Tastes in food are obviously personal, but so are tastes in labor. Just as I’m fascinated by the implicit personal tastes that shape our supposedly objective evaluations of good food, I’m also intrigued by how we feel about certain jobs. Often our perception of what can be done or cannot is based less on objective facts than on our tastes in work….I thought a great deal about tastes of both kinds as I was reading Jennifer Reese’s _Make the Bread, Buy the Butter_ which describes the author’s exercise in making from scratch any number of things, and calculating whether the homemade versions are cheaper and/or better.

One acre feeds a person

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With the holiday season behind us, many are feeling the effects of eating a bit too much and are working on a New Year’s resolution to shed some pounds. This reminds me of a question I have been asked numerous times, i.e., “How much land does it take to feed somebody for a year?” I usually give the answer as about one acre when referring to the U.S. today. What follows is an explanation.

Shale gas – Jan 16

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-Cornell Study Links Fracking Wastewater with Mortality in Farm Animals
-U.S. Shale Bubble Inflates After Near-Record Prices for Untested Fields
-Study needed on shale gas effects on health: group
-Ministers slammed over fracking
-Fracking is ‘pretty safe’, says British Geological Survey
-Bulgarians protest, seek moratorium on shale gas

What it looks like when food grows everywhere

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Today I’d like to share a map with you…It is a map of the town of Guildford (or Guldeford as it was then) in 1793. Regular readers will know I love a good map, and I have spent a fair while poring over this one. There are a couple of things I love about it. Firstly, it is the most amazing piece of draughtsmanship. It is a thing of extraordinary beauty in a way that Googlemaps can only dream of. The way its laid out, the calligraphy, the attention to detail, are beautiful in a way very few people could recreate today. But what is so extraordinary, upon closer inspection, is how it captures what it looks like when food grows everywhere. Think of it, if you like, as Incredible Edible Guildford, circa. 1739.