Welcome, People Readers

If you've arrived at this site from People magazine, you probably have an interest in starting a food garden or learning more about how to grow your own food. You may also be wondering what's behind the name "Slow Cook."

I guess you could say I am part of a growing movement in this country that rejects industrialized food in favor of food that is produced more sustainably. That encompasses a lot. It means favoring foods that are grown locally without pesticides and chemical fertilizers and without traveling long distances at the expense of enormous amounts of fossil fuels and carbon emissions. It just so happens that the sustainable foods we prefer--grown in a planet-friendly manner and prepared with loving care--are also tastier and more nutritious. And if you grow them yourself, they're a whole lot cheaper as well.

That makes our approach the opposite of "fast food." And that makes us slow.

Food gardening can be as easy or as difficult as you want to make it. If you are just starting, I suggest you take the easy approach. Don't try to do too much at first. Don't go overboard with many different varieties of things. Stick with the fruits and vegetables your family likes to eat most and learn how to grow those. You can always add things later. Gardening is a never ending learning process, even for people who've been doing it for years. If you have children, you will be creating wonderful memories--and good eating habits--that will last a lifetime.

To get you started, I've assembled links to several other web sites that I think will be helpful. At those sites, you may very well find yet more links. In today's world, gardeners spend quite a lot of time cruising around the internet for ideas and information. We also have a wonderful and vast community of fellow gardeners and cooks to share with. (Who knows? You may end up starting your own blog to memorialize your gardening efforts.) And do feel free to cruise around this website and use the search feature.

If you don't have your own yard to garden in, don't despair. You can grow many things in pots even on an apartment balcony. Perhaps there is a community garden in your area, or maybe you would like to start one. Check with your local parks and recreation authority. With more and more people seeking to join community gardens there are often waiting lists. Some erstwhile gardeners are seeking out vacant lots. Others are enlisting the back yards of neighbors to form communal arrangements. And there is a growing movement to establish gardens in schools, where we can connect kids to nature and teach them the benefits of growing our own food.

You might begin by watching this series of short film clips on how to start a garden. Some other good internet sources include Kitchen Gardeners International, Revive the Victory Garden and Vegetable Gardener. There are also several worthwhile gardening forums at Garden Web where you can pose questions to other gardeners who are only to glad to help.

I've also asked some of my fellow food gardening bloggers to share their thoughts on starting a new garden. Take a look at what Sylvie's doing at Rappahanock Cook & Kitch Gardener, or El at Fast Grow the Weeds, Emily at Eat Close to Home, or Michele at Garden Rant.

There are also many excellent books on the market for gardeners of all levels. In fact, your local librarian may be one of your best sources on the subject. And by all means take a look around your neighborhood for the gardener who quietly grows prize-winning tomatoes. She'll gladly talk your ear off if you introduce yourself. And even if you can't get a plot at the local community garden this year, there's nothing to say you can't hang out there and ask questions.

And for all you established kitchen gardeners and urban farmers and homesteaders with blogs, write up your thoughts on starting a garden and send me an e-mail with a link. I post all the links here for the next week.

Good luck, and happy gardening!

Read more great stories about how were are taking back our food system at Fight Back Fridays.

Pardon the Interruption....

The Slow Cook is expecting to be featured in an article about vegetable gardening in People magazine scheduled to hit news stands tomorrow, April 10. We've been told to brace for a flood of visitors to this blog.

Hence, beginning tomorrow, and perhaps for several days, we will be displaying prominently a post on resources for vegetable gardening in the interest of giving novice or first-time gardeners a bit of guidance in starting their own gardens.

As soon as the flood ebbs, we will resume our usual schedule of random musings about food, gardening and the pursuit of a sane agriculture policy in these United State.

Also of note: We have redesigned the blog and are in the process of transferring it completely to a website in Wordpress. Please excuse any technical irregularities that may crop up in the interim. We hope to have everything under control by tomorrow.

In fact, theSlowCook.com is moving from its old home at http://www.theslowcook.blogspot.com/ to its sparkly new home at http://www.theslowcook.com/. Because the transformation is making its way from third-party hosting (blogspot) to a server, you may need to re-register to make comments. We appreciate your patience and are happy to entertain any feedback or suggestions you might have.

News Bites

Fresh Fruits & Vegetables on the Decline...

The Produce for Better Health Foundation reports that families as a result of poor economic conditions are buying fewer fresh fruits and vegetables. A survey of mothers finds that fruit consumption has dropped 12 percent in the last year while vegetable purchases are down 6 percent.

The drop is especially pronounced in lower income households, the foundation reports. Most mom's--87 percent--say it's important to include fresh produce in their family's diet. Still, 90 percent of American households fail to eat the recommended daily amount of fruits and vegetables.

Too Close for Comfort....

A new study shows that kids who go to school near a fast food joint are more likely to be obese.

The study followed 9th graders over a decade and found they were 5 percent more likely to be overweight if their school was located within one-tenth mile of a pizza, burger or other fast-food outlet.

“It could be that students don’t like to wander too far,” said one of the study's authors. “Maybe they don’t have a long lunch period. Maybe it’s just the effect of having temptation right in front of your eyes.”

Dandelions are Cool Again....

Congratulations to the park system in Chicago, Illinois, for ditching pesticides and urging homeowners to do likewise. Nearly 90 percent of Chicago's park lands are now chemical free.

“The Park District is keeping our Chicago parks a healthy place for everyone to enjoy,” said Tim Mitchell, Chicago Park District Superintendent and CEO.

The Chicago Park District mows turf grass to keep weeds down. Following natural lawn care basics, the Park District keeps the grass three inches high. This allows the roots to grow strong and access water deep in the ground. As a result, the taller grass naturally shades out some weeds. With the reduction in use of chemical weed killers, dandelion flowers grow back quickly, oftentimes overnight. The sight of dandelions indicates grass that is healthy and safe for all park patrons to play on.

Gardeners Glory in San Fran's Compost....

San Francisco implimented municipal curb-side pickup of food scraps and other compostables and now the city is producing tons of "black gold" for local farms, orchards and gardens.

San Francisco's garbage and recycling companies are leading the way in producing a high-quality, boutique compost tailored for Bay Area growers, experts say. In one year, 105,000 tons of food scraps and yard trimmings - 404 tons each weekday - get turned into 20,000 tons of compost for 10,000 acres.

The compost is in such demand from nearby growers of wine grapes, vegetables and nuts that it sells out at peak spreading season every year.

About 2,000 restaurants, 2,080 large apartment buildings and 50,000 single-family homes have embraced the city's environmentally friendly green bins.

Local Meat Prices Sky High....

Here's a livestock farmer who confesses what we've been saying all along: shoppers at farmers markets are paying outrageous prices for locally raised meats.

"Local farmers are unwilling or unable to scale up to reasonable production levels, so they compensate for low volume by charging exorbitantly high prices to get their cash flow up," says farmer Bob Comis, writing in the Ethicurean blog.

This reminds us of the $28-a-pound pork shoulder we once purchased at the Dupont Circle farmers market here in the District of Columbia.

"Local meat, poultry, and eggs, however, are dramatically more expensive than industrial, often two, three, or even more times so," Comis continues. "Are these dramatically higher prices legitimate, in the sense that they reflect the true cost of raising that food? I don’t think so. I believe very strongly that these prices are as artificially high as industrial food is low."

Comis says the reason for nose-bleed prices is because local farmers grow on such a small scale. They charge a fortune, but still don't make much of a profit. The solution? Local farmers need to scale up so they aren't charging "extortionate" prices.

"Local meat is more expensive than industrial and always will be, there is no doubt about that. But it’s time for a little honesty about just how much more expensive it really needs to be."

Is Kent Conrad a Blockhead?

Senate Budget committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) has announced he will reject President Obama's plan to cut billions in crop subsidy payments that flow mostly to large profitable farm operations and wealthy landowners.

Instead, according to a March 24 report by Charles Abbott of Reuters news service, Conrad said he would slash several other programs, among them two conservation programs that are critical to winning the fight against global warming.

The conservation programs Conrad would like to cut help farmers reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions and also engage in practices that take carbon out of the air and store it in the soil. They help farmers protect their land and the environment from the more frequent floods, droughts, and severe weather blamed on global warming.

Unlike millionaire "farmers," however, conservation programs don't make campaign contributions.

Watch Slow Cook on Television

This must be the week when the news media wake up to spring and want to interview The Slow Cook in his garden.

We've been interviewed about chickens by WAMU radio, appeared on the Kojo Nnamdi show to talk about food gardening and yesterday we entertained a film crew from FOX News to talk about planting vegetables.

FOX is calling it "recession gardening" and it's supposed to appear today on America's News Channel sometime between 2 and 4 pm, then again at 4:30. That would be one of FOX's cable channels, and unfortunately we no longer take cable (or satellite, in our case). They said channel 32 or 37 here in the Washington area, but who knows if that's correct.

The producer and camerman spent about 45 minutes filming me talking about how easy it is to grow vegetables at home, and how much money you save on grocery bills. They shot me digging into the compost pile and planting potatoes. They even took a shot of our canned goods leftover from last year, and parted with a jar of green tomato mincemeat.

If you do happen to catch a glimpse of it, do let us know. My wife is always concerned that I'm not properly styled....

Hear Slow Cook on the Radio

The Slow Cook is scheduled to talk about urban food gardening on the Kojo Nnamdi show at 1 p.m. Wednesday, March 25 (tomorrow).

Kojo, a popular host on WAMU radio here in the District of Columbia,is located at 88.5 FM locally. You can also listen to him live on the internet here. The program is usually archived as well within an hour or two of broadcast.

News of Michelle Obama breaking ground for a new garden on the White House lawn has sparked all kinds of interest in food gardening. Here in the District the issue is community gardening and, if you cannot get a spot in a community garden, how to grow food in small spaces. Or how to join back yards with neighbors to form your own CSA. The conversation also needs to include getting local government and business involved to set aside large tracts of land for urban agriculture so that city folk have an affordable and reliable source of local food.

To my mind, the White House garden would be the perfect place to start talking about tax credits and other incentives to promote food gardening and urban agriculture around the country. And to think, the District of Columbia has had a law on the books for more than 20 years calling on the mayor to create an urban gardening program--identify vacant lots for gardening, develop food growing programs for school kids--and nothing has ever been done about it.

Whither the Food Movement?

Groundbreaking for the new White House kitchen garden has lit up the food blogosphere as well as the mainstream press. But longtime food advocates who've been toiling away on sustainable food issues for years--and won many significant victories--are worried they're going to be overrun by food celebrities who think they know better what the Obama administration needs to do.

It's still a fractured movement with no real plan. Food isn't even listed on the agenda at Obama's White House website and Agribusiness remains in incredible force. Just think: the entire organics foods industry represents only a "rounding error" in the nation's trillion dollar food economy, or just 3 percent.

In an excellent New York Times summary perspective on where food is headed now, Ferd Hoefner, policy director of the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition sums up our own feelings neatly. Commenting on the new White House garden he says, "We just want to make sure that interest in that symbolic action can be channeled into some of the more difficult policy challenges.”

Also worth a read is this paper from the Rudd Center at Yale University asking whether Big Food is the present-day equivalent of Big Tobacco, prepared to say and do anything anything to maintain its grip on U.S. consumer dollars. Here's a link to the pdf version.

Weekend Update

From our department of Universal Government Truths, this just in: High fructose corn syrup is actually "natural."

I know--you thought HFCS was a science experiment disguised to look like something edible.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration had previously told manufacturers they could not use the term "natural" to describe foods with HFCS in it because synthetic fixing agents are used in the manufacturing process. But now the FDA has found a way for companies like Archer Daniels Midland to proclaim HFCS as "natural" as, er, what? Fuel oil, maybe?

"The process sees the enzymes for making HFCS being fixed to a column by the use of a synthetic fixing agent called glutaraldehyde," according to an industry publication. "However, this agent does not come into contact with the high dextrose equivalent corn starch hydrolysate and so it is not 'considered to be included or added to the HFCS.' "

"However," says the FDA, "we would object to the use of the term 'natural' on a product containing HFCS that has a synthetic substance such as a synthetic fixing agent included in or added to it."

"We would also object to the use of the term 'natural' on a product containing HFCS if the acids used to obtain the starch hydrolysate do not fit within our policy on 'natural'."

Sounds perfectly natural to us. And you thought high fructose corn syrup just made you fat. Hah!

*****

The new government outlook on what constitutes natural fits perfectly into the industry view of a healthy menu for kids.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest recently surveyed the meal choices at the nation's fast-food outlets and found that in almost every case, the options for kids added up to too many calories. In fact, according to the CSPI, 93 percent of 1,474 possible choices at the 13 chains they looked at exceed 430 calories—an amount that is one-third of what the Institute of Medicine recommends that children aged four through eight should consume in a day.

According to the CSPI, KFC has a wide variety of side items, but there are few meal combinations that keep a reasonable ceiling on calories. One example of a high-cal combo KFC kid’s meal (the chain calls them "Laptop Meals") has popcorn chicken, baked beans, biscuit, Teddy Grahams, and fruit punch, which has 940 calories. (KFC has since dropped Baked Cheetos from its kids’ meals, and some outlets vary the number of chicken strips or sides.)

Most of the kids’meals (93 percent) at McDonald’s and Wendy’s are too high in calories, as are the possibilities at Burger King (92 percent), Dairy Queen (89 percent), Arby's (69 percent), and Denny's (60 percent—though its kids' meals don’t include drinks). (Since CSPI’s study was completed, Burger King has introduced one new children's meal with macaroni and cheese, apple "fries," and 1 percent milk, which has a reasonable 420 calories.)

And which chain came out on top? If you said Subway, you would be correct. Only a third of its "Fresh Fit for Kids" meals, which include a mini-sub, juice box, and one of several healthful side items (apple slices, raisins, or yogurt), exceed the 430-calorie threshold. Subway is the only chain that doesn’t offer soft drinks with kids’ meals.

"Parents want to feed their children healthy meals but America’s chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail," said CSPI nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan. "McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, and other chains are conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, French fries, macaroni and cheese, and soda in various combination at almost every lunch and dinner."

Besides being almost always too high in calories, 45 percent of the kids' meals at the 13 chains studied by CSPI are too high in saturated and trans fat, and 86 percent are too high in sodium. That’s alarming, according to CSPI, because a quarter of children between the ages of five and ten show early signs of heart disease, such as high LDL (the "bad" cholesterol) or elevated blood pressure.

*****

That certainly explains why kids avoid the greasy fast food in the school lunch line, right? Or did we get that backwards?

Schools officials in Fairfax County, Virginia, report that this fall for the first time lunch lines will be monitored with security cameras to try and cut down on food thievery.

The school system's food and nutrition services department estimated that $1.2 million worth of prepared food was lifted from cafeterias in the past school year.

Penny McConnell, director of food and nutrition services, said she hopes the cameras will curb theft and send a message to students that stealing from the cafeteria is no less serious than shoplifting from a store. "I would hate for them to make this a habit and take it into the community," she said. "They could get themselves into some serious situations that could impact their futures."

Stealing food is pervasive throughout the county, McConnell said, in high- and low-income areas alike. In an April issue of the McLean High School student newspaper, a reporter watched eight students stealing food during one lunch period. According to the story, one student shrugged after being spotted; another smiled.

*****

What's a little food pilfery when there are so many calories to go around?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released figures on food availability and with some helpful translation services from the Ethicurean we now know that between 1970 and 2004 about 500 hundred additional calories became available for the average American to consume.

The figures don't show exactly what Americans did with those extra available calories. But judging from the expanding girth of many Americans, there shouldn't be too much guesswork involved.

Among the more telling findings is the increase of about 150 calories a day in fats and oils in the American diet since the 1990s.

*****

A sure sign that U.S. farmers are hard at work is the number of "dead zones" in the country's coastal waters.

There's a huge dead zone where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico caused by fertilizers in farm runoff from the nation's heartland. Another appears like clockwork every summer in the Chesapeake Bay. Fertilizers produce algae that suck all the oxygen out of the water so that nothing else can live there.

Writing for the journal Science, researchers say the number of marine “dead zones” around the world has doubled about every 10 years since the 1960s. At the same time, the zones along many coastlines have been growing in size and intensity. About 400 coastal areas now have periodically or permanently oxygen-starved bottom waters. Combined, they constitute an area larger than the state of Oregon.

“What’s happened in the last 40, 50 years is that human activity has made the water quality conditions worse,” Robert J. Diaz, the study’s lead author and a professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science at the College of William and Mary, said in an interview. “Dead zones tend to occur in areas that are historically prime fishing grounds.”

While the size of dead zones is small relative to the total surface of the earth covered by oceans, scientists say they represent a significant portion of the ocean waters that support commercial fish and shellfish species.

In recent years, dead zones have grown in places like coastal China and the Kattegat Sea, where the Norway lobster fishery collapsed. They have also cropped up unexpectedly in pockets off the coast of South Carolina and the Pacific Northwest.

“There are large areas of the Gulf where you can’t catch any shrimp,” said Nancy Rabalais, executive director of the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. Dr. Rabalais has studied the dead zone there for more than two decades. “It’s sort of a losing battle.”

*****

Finally, it's about time someone came up with a system where you can pick your favorite local food items from the comfort of your easy chair.

The University of Maryland recently uploaded a new website that allows consumers to choose everything from fresh tomatoes to ground emu from local farmers.

Developed by the university's Environmental Finance Center, the "Food Trader" site acts like a community bulletin board, where farmer's can list the foods they are harvesting and consumers can contact them directly about where they can buy it.

The next logical step if for gardeners like us to have our own website where we can tell consumers where they can get seeds so they can come over and start planting. We could also post dates for weeding and harvesting. How much do you think we should charge?

Real Food in The Post

Are the foodies at The Washington Post reading The Slow Cook?

A little more than a month ago I wrote about my father's quadruple bypass and Nina Planck's book "Real Food" under the heading "Is Cholesterol a Myth?" The question was whether the fetishistic approach to eliminating all traces of animal fat from the diet, fanatical exercise and a prescription for Lipitor are really the path to good health.

Nina Planck lays out the case for embracing traditional foods such as whole milk, yogurt, eggs and pastured meats and rejecting the industrial diet of factory-made foods and processed fats. This week the lead story in The Washington Post's food section is titled "The Great Divide: Who Says Good Nutrition Means Animal Fats?" and it's all about the growing number of consumers following the lead of advocates such as Planck and Nancy Fallon of the Westin A. Price Foundation. Fallon, along with unorthodox nutritionist Mary Enig, authored the book "Nourishing Traditions." Both Fallon and Enig are frequently cited by Planck, who also is a follower of Westin Price.

There's also plenty in here about our local raw milk contingent. I read the piece while spooning from a dish of the yogurt I made this week from our delivery of unhomogenized whole milk and heavy cream from South Mountain creamery.

Naturally, the medical profession does not approve of Planck, Fallon or the Westin Price Foundation, calling the evidence traditionalists rely on "antiquated." Fallon, who lives here in the District of Columbia and enjoys eggs and a thick layer of butter on her bread for breakfast, gave this retort: "Would you jump off a building because the law of gravity was discovered 300 years ago? This is good science."

Weekend Update

Whole Foods recently came out with its own standards for seafood sustainability that seem to provide a handy fig leaf for the farmed Atlantic salmon industry.

Whole foods would bar use of antibiotics, growth stimulants and pesticides in salmon farming, but it merely encourages salmon farmers to reduce fish escapes and aim for a one-to-one ratio of wild fish in feed for every pound of salmon produced.

Now comes Food and Water Watch calling on Whole Foods to put some real bite in its standards: refuse fish from net pen operations and implement a strict timeline for the one-to-one feed goal.

In a letter to Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, Food and Water Watch says "we hope that Whole Foods intends to have a deadline by which all seafood wholesalers meet these new standards and that if the standards are not met, the products will no longer be offered at Whole Foods."

The latter part of course is the crux of the matter. I am trying to imagine a day when Whole Foods posts a sign at the seafood counter saying, "Sorry, no farmed Atlantic salmon today because the farmers failed to live up to our standards. You'll just have to pay $10 more a pound for the wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon."

Ironically, Whole Foods will catch the heat even though it's doing more than any grocery chain to promote sustainable seafood. We're still waiting to see what other groups such as Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute have to say about the Whole Foods standards.

*****

The international Doha negotiations in Geneva collapsed and for a very obvious reason: Developed countries such as the United States insist that poor countries remove trade barriers for subsidized First World farm products, such as U.S. corn and soybeans. While it may put money into tthe U.S. farm economy, exporting those products into poor countries has the effect of putting struggling farmers out of business.

In Mexico, imports of cheap U.S. corn following NAFTA drove Mexican farmers off their land, resulting eventually in a tortilla crisis when the price of corn went through the roof (largely because we started making fuel for automobiles out of it.).

At Doha, Third World nation's stood their ground against the World Trade Organization's mandate to remove trade barriers, insisting that "development" become a centerpiece of trade talks. Only now there are more countries that want a slice of that exporting pie.

*****

The reasons for growing food organically keep piling up. Researchers studying Colony Collapse Disorder in honeybees are finding bees with as many as two dozen different insecticides in their bodies.

It's still not clear what's killing bee colonies. But it is clear that insecticide use in agriculture is rampant and causing untold effects. The Environmental Protection Agency apparently isn't even testing these chemicals anymore, merely analyzing tests performed by industry. Certain of these pesticides are systemic, accumulating in greater concentrations in the soil and in crops from one year to the next, only to be fed upon by bees and other pollinators.

"We still don't know what's going on (with the bees) or why," said one researcher. "But bees are dying and we better figure it out...quick."

*****

Spiking food and energy costs are pushing up the price of school lunches around the country and could force school districts to scale back healthy choices in favor of cheap processed foods.

In the Boston area, for instance, the cost of a school lunch is expected to go up 25 to 50 cents this fall. In an effort to ward off big deficits, some districts will be eliminating the fresh fruit cup. There are worries that kids from poor families that aren't quite poor enough to qualify for federal assistance may not have enough to eat.

"We truly are at a point of crisis," said Katie Wilson, president-elect of the national School Nutrition Association.

*****

Cutting the fresh fruits in favor of processed foods would be just the ticket for big food corporations who, according to the Federal Trade commission, spent $1.6 billion in 2006 marketing to children under 17. Nearly $1 billion was aimed at children less than 12 years of age.

The FTC examined marketing expenditures by 44 companies. Spending on soda marketing came to $492 million, with the vast majority of that spending directed toward adolescents. Fast food restaurants reported spending close to $294 million, which was divided about evenly between children and adolescents. For cereals, companies spent about $237 million, with the vast majority of that targeted to children under age 12.

Needless to say, very little was spent trying to convince kids to eat fresh fruits and vegetables.

Marketing media included television and major movies such as "Superman Returns" and "Pirates of the Caribbean." Companies created limited-edition snacks, cereals, waffles and candy based on the movies. They offered prizes on the Internet to buyers of those products that ranged from video games to trips to Disney World to a $1 million reward for the capture of villain Lex Luthor.

The internet, where ad rates are relatively cheap, is coming to play a much larger role in marketing processed food to kids. According to the FTC, more than two-thirds of the 44 companies reporting online, youth-directed activities.

*****

The Mediterranean diet, with lots of fresh fruits and vegetables and olive oil as the lipid of choice was supposed to be just the thing to keep you lean and fit. But now people who live in the Mediterranean don't eat it any more. They've switched to meat and sweets.

Greeks now have the highest body mass index of any country in the European Union. More than half of all Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese are listed as overweight. Average calorie intake in the last 40 years has increased 20 percent.

What's to blame? People have more money to spend, researchers find. Some countries that started out much poorer, such as Cypress and Malta, have increased the number of calories in their diets by 30 percent. And Spain has become an absolute fat guzzler. The average Spaniard now gets 40 percent of his calories from fat.

*****

If you're looking for food here in the District of Columbia, you might try this handy, interactive web site. A coalition of groups supporting local foods and food assistance programs sponsor the site. Called "DC Food Finder," it will direct you to maps showing locations for farmers markets, food banks, soup kitchens and lists of local CSAs. Shouldn't every city have one of these?

Try it. You'll like it.

Bon appetit....

Food Prices: Is There Really Anything to Debate?

Got an e-mail from a PR type today wanting me to post something about a debate over on the Economist magazine's website, the proposition being: "There is an upside for humanity in the rise of food prices."

To which my initial response would have to be, YOU'RE BLEEPING KIDDING, RIGHT?

Only a group of over-fed economists with too much time on their hands could actually consider this a question worthy of debate. We can't take them seriously, otherwise we'd have to charge them with crimes against humanity. But this is precisely the kind of question that the Economist--which views an ever- expanding economy as a kind of white man's birthright--can actually discuss with a straight face.

I suppose you could say that rising food prices are a good thing, just as you could say the end of subsistence farming is a good thing, or that the end of family farms is a good thing, or that the commoditization of basic food stuffs is a good thing, or that putting the world's supply of food into a handful of huge international corporations is a good thing, or that fouling the air and water with artificial fertilizers and feedlot runoff is a good thing, or that denying farmers the right to save seeds is a good thing, or that replacing natural foods with industrially processed foods is a good thing, or that turning food crops into motor fuel is a good thing, or that allowing agribusiness to dictate government policy is a good thing, or that bankrupting Third World nations and turning them into food importers instead of self-sufficient food growers is a good thing.

All this and more has come to pass under the guise of freeing world trade, growing the international economy and improving the global standard of living. Increasingly it becomes clear that the only people who really stand to benefit are the ones who think the question is worthy of debate.

So I guess that would be a, No.

Photo: Woman making mud pies in Haiti in response to skyrocketing food prices.

Weekend Update

With hundreds of people nationwide made ill and millions of dollars worth of tomato crop ruined, you may be wondering how it happens that our federal government is unable to trace the source of a salmonella outbreak.

In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration still isn't sure where the disease originated. After initially implicating tomatoes, it has now cleared tomatoes--we think--and says the culprit more likely is jalapenos, perhaps originating somewhere in Mexico.

Turns out we might have had a produce tracking system in place years ago but the corporate food interests succeeded--with some help from the Bush White House--in getting the idea shelved.

The Associated Press reports that industry groups complained that a bioterrorism proposal that would have required detailed tracking of food was opposed by food industry groups as too burdensome. Business groups met at least 10 times with the White House between March 2003 and March 2004, as the FDA regulations were under debate. Food industry lobbyists successfully blunted proposals using arguments familiar in other regulatory debates: The government's plans would saddle business with unnecessary and costly regulations.

"The FDA's strong proposed bioterrorism rules were significantly watered down before they became final," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Washington-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. The private advocacy group obtained the White House meeting records under the Freedom of Information Act and provided them to the AP.

Participants in the meetings included companies and trade groups up and down the food chain, including Altria Group Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc., when Altria was Kraft's parent; The Kroger Co.; Safeway Inc.; ConAgra Foods Inc.; The Procter & Gamble Co.; the American Forest and Paper Association; the Polystyrene Packaging Council; the Glass Packaging Institute; the Cocoa Merchants' Association of America; the World Shipping Council; and the Food Marketing Institute.

"If the FDA had been given the resources and authority years ago that it requested to solve these kinds of problems, I think we would have solved this already," said William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner.

Now lawmakers from Florida are proposing that tax payers compensate tomato growers for their losses.

*****
Monsanto, the giant chemical and seed company that also makes bovine growth hormone, is at it again. Now it has succeeded in getting Ohio to ban labels on milk containers that would tell consumers when the growth hormone might be present in the milk they buy.

The Organic Trade Organization recently filed suit against Ohio's director of agriculture to reverse a regulation that prohibits labeling stating when milk is free of the bovine growth hormone. Monsanto finds itself on the losing side of a consumer trend rejecting milk from cows treated with the hormone. The company has failed to persuade federal regulators to ban labels that indicate when milk is free of the hormone. Monsanto is now lobbying state officials with mixed results.

A similar labeling prohibition enacted by the agriculture director in Pennsylvania, for instance, was overturned earlier this year by the state's governor after an outpouring of protests from consumers and dairy farmers. But now Kansas, where Monsanto initially was turned back, is taking another look and Utah is considering a law similar to Ohio's, reports Sam Fromartz at the Chews Wise blog.

And then there was a study we recently noted in which researchers found that injecting cows with growth hormone could eliminate a significant portion of greenhouse gases by making dairies more efficient. But Scientific American disputes the findings, pointing out that the researchers involved are on the Monsanto payroll.

The study was conducted with a scientist, Roger Cady, who is also the growth hormone technical project manager for Monsanto. In addition, the lead scientist on the study, nutritional biochemist Dale Bauman of Cornell University, has been a paid consultant for Monsanto since the 1980s, though he declined to disclose how much the company has paid him over the years. He insists that Monsanto did not influence his decision to spend as much as $10,000 in university funds for this study.

Scientific American says the more important issue is dairy cow feed, typically a mix of corn and soy meal where growth hormone is used. The FDA already has disallowed any claims that cows injected with growth hormone can produce more milk from the same amount of feed. Researchers in Australia, meanwhile, have found that greenhouse emissions are reduced 50 percent when cows graze on grass.

*****

Wherever you look, government agents are in the pocket of Big Ag.

In Minnesota, for instance, legislators last year approved legislation that would provide grants to farmers who want to improve the efficiency of their operations. It was thought that the funds--called Livestock Investment Grants--would be directed toward small and even sustainably-minded farmers. But now that the state's agriculture department has got hold of it, it's become clear that the funds are going to benefit big confinement operations that have pollution problems.

The grant criteria developed by state agriculture officials favors operations with more animals. Advocates for rural development say that's just the opposite of what's needed: more farmers working the land in a sustainable fashion.

"The bottom line is, according to the (agriculture department's) profile, operations which expand dramatically are more likely to receive help through the Livestock Investment Grants program," writes Brian DeVore on the Minnesota Environmental Partnership blog."These proposals will likely be the largest grant requests, thus quickly draining the program’s budget. This makes second class citizens of family farmers using innovative, low cost, low-input systems."

*****

In case you needed any, here's more evidence why soft drinks need to be eliminated from public schools. Researchers in Texas have found that high-fructose corn syrup, the preferred sweetener in sodas and other processed foods, quickly becomes fat after being ingested.

Apparently, high fructose corn syrup manages to bypass the usual controls that the liver applies to other sweeteners, such as glucose. “It’s basically sneaking into the rock concert through the fence,” said Elizabeth Parks, associate professor of clinical nutrition at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "The bottom line of this study is that fructose very quickly gets made into fat in the body.”

For the study, six people were given three different drinks. In one test, the breakfast drink was 100 percent glucose. In the second test, they drank half glucose and half fructose; and in the third, they drank 25 percent glucose and 75 percent fructose. The drinks were given at random, and neither the study subjects nor the evaluators were aware who was drinking what. The subjects ate a regular lunch about four hours later.

The researchers found that lipogenesis, the process by which sugars are turned into body fat, increased significantly when the study subjects drank the drinks with fructose. When fructose was given at breakfast, the body was more likely to store the fats eaten at lunch.

*****

If one Los Angeles city council member has her way, it's not just the soft drinks but all kinds of fast food that would be banned in a 32-square-mile area of the city.

Council Member Jan Perry is spearheading legislation that would ban new fast-food restaurants like McDonald's and KFC from opening in an area that already is home to some 400 fast-food restaurants suspected of contributing to a 30 percent obesity rate among adults who live there. The national obesity rate for adults is 25.6 percent.

"It's a good idea," particularly for children, local resident Rafael Escobar, 69, told the Wall Street Journal as he bit into a McDonald's sausage breakfast.

Local lawmakers compared the proposed ban on fast food joints to similar restrictions on liquor sales. But the restaurant industry isn't buying it. "We have a fundamental problem with government stepping in and treating restaurants as if they are engaged in activity that is at the root of the obesity epidemic," says Jot Condie, president of the California Restaurant Association.

But the trend seems to be swinging toward healthier restaurant eating. In New York City, a law kicked in earlier this year requiring fast-food restaurants to post calorie counts on the main menu right above the counter. San Francisco plans to implement a similar regulation later this year. In both cities, the restaurant industry is suing to try to block the calorie-disclosure rules.

Bon appetit....

Weekend Update

Whole Foods has issued new "quality guidelines" for farmed seafood and the retailer seems determined to keep farmed Atlantic salmon on the menu no matter what anyone else says.

Seafood sustainability organizations such as Monterey Bay Aquarium and Blue Ocean Institute urge consumers to avoid farmed Atlantic salmon (the only kind commercially available) for several reasons, including the pollution caused by salmon farming operations, the potential for farmed salmon to escape into the wild and the tons of other seafood salmon need to be fed because they are carnivorous.

Whole Foods addresses each point--sort of . First, Whole Foods says it will not accept farmed fish treated with growth hormones or antibiotics. Parasiticides must be phased out within five years. The retailer will not purchase genetically modified or cloned fish. Whole Foods says its goal is to "reduce pressure on wild fish" and will move toward a goal of "no greater than" one fish in as feed for every fish produced.

Producers sourcing to Whole Foods must "work to minimize" pollution as well as to "minimize" the transfer of parasites into the wild. And salmon farmers selling to Whole Foods must demonstrate an "exceptional effort in preventing escapes...."

Basically, Whole Foods says it will give preference to salmon farms that are making an effort to address the issues raised by sustainability organizations. It's not insisting that all of these problems be solved. In other words the new guidelines, while drawn in excruciating detail, still have a hole big enough to sail a boatload of farmed salmon through.

(Note: Tens of thousands of farmed salmon recently escaped from their pens into and inlet in British Columbia. A Canadian study, meanwhile, has found that salmon farms are severely depleting wild salmon stocks.)

Give Whole Foods some credit for making an effort where so many retailers are doing nothing. It will be interesting to see what Monterey Bay Aquarium, Blue Ocean Institute, Greenpeace and the others have to say. Will they?

*****

While the skyrocketing price of corn and soybeans is helping to create a worldwide food crisis, it's also driving U.S. catfish farms out of business.

Farming catfish was once a major industry in states such as Mississippi. But catfish farmers now are literally draining their ponds and closing shop.

“It’s a dead business,” said John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s. Last year Dillard & Company raised 11 million fish. Next year it will raise none. People can eat imported fish, Dillard told the New York Times--just as they use imported oil.

Corn and soybeans, used as feed for catfish, have tripled in price in the last three years--corn largely because of our federal government's policy of turning grain into ethanol to fuel automobiles. Soy is the number one source of oils used in processed foods.

Along with all the catfish farms go the jobs in area processing plants and restaurants that rely on local catfish. In 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, catfish farming was a $462 million industry, far exceeding any other American farm-raised fish. The industry employed more than 10,000 people at its peak, almost all in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas.

No more. "The industry is going to implode," said one executive.

*****

Meanwhile, there will be plenty of corn and soybean bi-product flowing down the Mississippi and into the Gulf of Mexico this year. Scientists report that the "dead zone" in the Gulf, caused by fertilizer runoff from the nation's heartland, could be the biggest on record.

Fertilizers cause algae blooms that rob the water of oxygen, making it uninhabitable for fish and other life forms. The area in question is expected to be about the size of New Jersey, or nearly 9,000 square miles.

Runoff of nitrogen and phosphorous is expected to be especially severe this year because of unprecedented spring flooding in the Midwest and because more cropland is under cultivation to raise more corn for--you guessed it--ethanol to fuel automobiles.

*****

More and more people are seeking milk produced without bovine growth hormones. In fact, the issue of injecting cows with hormones to produce more milk, and whether dairymen can indicate on milk bottles that they do not use growth hormones, has become a hot topic around the country.

Monsanto, which produces the hormones, would just as soon prohibit dairies from even mentioning growth hormones. Now comes a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences saying it would be so much better for the environment if all dairy cows were given growth hormones. Injecting one million cows, researchers concluded, would produce so much extra milk it would be like taking 400,000 automobiles off the road.

The reasoning is that large scale cow milk production requires the use of huge amounts of land, water and feed resources. Making cows more efficient milk producers would mean we wouldn't need so many of them, reducing the dairy industry's carbon footprint. Of course, that doesn't really speak to the quality of the milk. Cows on growth hormones are usually kept indoors eating corn and soybeans...

Hey, wait a minute. Isn't that the same stuff that's driving catfish farms out of business and creating a worldwide food crisis as well as a huge dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico?

We're confused....

*****

Officials at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have declared that it's safe again to eat tomatoes. But they still haven't figured out what caused a nationwide salmonella outbreak.

These are the same people who were having such a hard time getting a grip on tainted foods entering the country. Remember the toxic pet food from China? But despite its reputation as the agency that can't shoot straight, the guys at the top thought they deserved a bonus.

Federal law makers were fuming when they learned that 28 senior FDA executives took in a combined $1 million in bonuses last year, pushing their pay above that of members of Congress, federal judges - and even some cabinet secretaries.

Some $48,000 in a cash award and retention bonus went to an associate commissioner whose plan to overhaul FDA field labs was rejected by Congress as poorly thought-out.

Another $41,000 went to the director of the office of criminal investigations, pushing his total income to enforce one statute to $208,000 - more than the director of the FBI makes.

But topping it all was the bonus that went to the person who was hired to reform the bonus system: $58,000.

"What we are talking about here is the need to have highly experienced, highly capable technical experts that, without which, the country would suffer," said FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach.

Oh, that make us feel so much better.

Bon appetit....

Weekend Update

The Bushites are fond of shifting blame for the current world food crises away from their project to turn corn into ethanol and toward other phonemena, such as the increasingly Western diet demands of China and India. Charles Grassley, the cranky Republican senator from Iowa, also loves to thumb his nose at biofuel critics, saying corn ethanol plays only a small role in the unfolding hunger disaster.

So it must have come as quite a shock when a British newspaper this week published a confidential World Bank report estimating that biofuels in fact have jacked up the cost of food by a whopping 75 percent.

The report is certain to add to pressure on governments in Washington and Europe, which have turned to biofuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil. The U.S. government is holding to a position that converting plants into fuels is responsible only for 3 percent of the rise in global food prices.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said that the use of corn for ethanol by the United States had consumed more than 75 percent of global corn production over the past three years. Zoellick has called on the United States and Europe to ease subsidies and tariffs on biofuels derived from corn and oilseeds.

The World Bank report was written back in April and apparently was being supressed so as not to put the development bank at odds with the White House. Rising food prices have pushed at least 100 million people below the poverty line, according to the World Bank, and have sparked riots in countries around the globe.

*****

Question: How many ways can the U.S. Department Agriculture distort our food system to benefit big corporations?

Small farmers were already in an uproar over the USDA proposal to tag and monitor all farm animals through something called the National Animal Identification System. Few other government proposals have stirred as much ire in the farm community as this one. It would impose incredible burdens on farmers, as it would require them to attach tracking information to every animal they own, register each animal with the government, and file a report any time one of them goes missing, falls ill or dies.

Imagine the impact on a farm where Mom and Pop, while away at the day jobs they keep so they can afford to farm, allow a few cows, pigs, goats and chickens to romp on pasture. It would give a clear advantage to huge industrial livestock operations, or CAFOS, where all the animals are locked up with nowhere to go.

A little known provision in the House Agriculture Appropriations bill now before Congress tilts even more toward Big Ag and the NAIS scheme. This provision would force school lunch programs to purchase their meats only from livestock producers that are participating in the National Animal Identification System.

One thing we've noticed in the food news lately is the number of school systems trying to direct more of their food purchases to local sources. Those efforts would certainly be compormised if the USDA manages to put its dream of universal animal ID ahead of locally grown food.

We will be watching this one closely....

*****

While our own federal government is erecting roadblocks to local products, the world's largest retailer says it is on a mission to stock its food aisles with local produce.

We all love to hate Wal-Mart. But the retailing giant that has done so much to put small businesses out of business and gut the downtown areas of America's cities and towns is starting to play smart with food in ways that could benefit local agriculture.

During the last two years, partnerships between local farms and Wal-Mart have jumped 50 percent, and the company anticipates it will source about $400 million in local produce this year, making it the country's largest buyer of produce that is grown and sold within a state's borders.

At one time, Wal-Mart loved the idea of a warehouse on wheels, its fleet of trucks moving tons of stuff all over the country on a round-the-clock basis. A move to local produce makes more sense when fuel costs are going through the roof.

For instance, instead of buying peaches from just two suppliers nationwide, Wal-Mart can buy peaches from growers in 18 different states and save 100,000 gallons of dieself fuel. Wal-Mart says it plans to get aggressive, enouraging states to start growing a greater variety of crops to fill those produce department bins.

*****

The spike in global food prices has put a billion people at risk of going hungry. Some people wonder, Why can't those people grow their own food?

The answer is, many of them used to. But thanks to the policies of big development banks such as the World Bank and the Bank for International Development--supported, by the way, by our own tax dollars--millions of small farmers have been driven off their subsistence plots and forced to scratch for imported food.

The international system of debts encouraged by "developed" nations such as the U.S. and the European Union have turned previously self-sufficient Third World countries, especially in Africa, into food importing nations. In fact, many of the most needy African countries once were net food exporters. But lending schemes devised in the name of free world trade and international development convinced governments to turn the best land increasingly over to export crops, forcing local farmers onto poor soil to grow the food they need to feed themselves and their countrymen.

While forcing people into poverty and hunger, the arrangement has worked out nicely for big corporations that sell food back to those African countries that can no longer feed themselves. But don't take my word for it. Read all about it here.

*****

Having built a big container garden at my daughter's charter school here in the District of Columbia, I know a little bit about how a garden in the inner-city can benefit small children.

Here's an uplifting story about how 40 volunteers got together to create a school garden that is changing small lives in big ways in San Diego, California.

Weekend Update

I make no secret about my love for composting. If I couldn't grow another tomato, I would happily spend my time tossing grass clippings and old leaves and food scraps together to make new soil. With vegetables I merely feed myself. With compost, I feed Planet Earth. Composting is one thing I can do to keep the earth turning in the right direction.

Nations that neglect the health of their soil do so at their peril. North Africa used to be the breadbasket of the Mediterranean. Now it is desert. Today, humans have fooled themselves into thinking we can douse the soil with synthetic fertilizers and deadly poisons and reap an ever-expanding harvest. The latest global food crises proves otherwise. We are killing our soil at the same time we pat ourselves on the back over the purchase of organic milk with pictures of happy cows on the carton.

The idea of regenerating our soil is in direct opposition to the exploitative nature of industrial agriculture. Feeding the soil with compost takes the long view of fertility. Raising crops with noxious insecticides and fertilizers made from fossil fuels takes the short route to profits. Anyone who believes in organics, who believes in food that sustains rather than exploits this blue planet we call home, must embrace compost.

For further reading on the subject, I recommend a recent article in Grist by farmer/writer Tom Philpott. Tom neatly and succinctly makes the case for being an agitator where nurturing the soil is concerned. It's a rallying cry we should all hear: Even as local and organic foods gain in popularity--even as we witness a bumper crops of new farmers markets--these represent but a tiny fraction of the nation's food economy. In fact, industrial agriculture is expanding, tightening its grip on our food supply and on the political machinery.

Time for everyone to get involved....

*****

Here's another universal law for you: wrong thinking, like a bad gas, continues to expand if unopposed.

In the wake of record flooding and crop damage in the Midwest, many are beginning to conclude that a major contributor to the floods was the work of humans, converting all that Iowa landscape into croplands, highways, shopping malls. Prairie grass may be boring, but at least it absorbs water. Turns out tilling the soil from one end of the horizon to the other is just an invitation to disaster.

But here comes Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, urging the U.S. Department of Agriculture to free up tens of thousands of farmers from contracts in which they agreed to hold land in conservation rather than plowing it. At stake are millions of acres that now are home to grasses and wildlife but would be plowed to grow corn and soybeans.

Grassley, a leading force in agricultural matters on Capitol Hill, is one of those who believes that turning corn into ethanol has had little to do with the spike in global food prices. While Grassley is calling for conservation land to be plowed, others are suggesting the government ease its requirements for turning corn into fuel.

About 25 percent of the nation's corn crop is now converted into ethanol, helping to double the price of corn. The government’s latest projection, released Friday, is that food prices this year will rise as much as 5.5 percent. Some products, including cereals and eggs, are expected to rise about 10 percent.

*****

There's a growing call to reduce meat consumption on environmental grounds. Too many calories are being burned to make that hamburger you're grilling this weekend. Escalating meat comsumption in China and India is driving up the price of grain worldwide, contributing to the current food crises.

As important as the question of how much meat, however, is the question of what kind of meat. Without doubt, raising livestock in huge, industrial confinement operations is a bad idea. Ruminants such as cattle were not designed to eat corn, soybeans and ground up chicken feathers. Industrial meat is a source of pollution, excessive amounts of bad fat and poor nutrition.

But maybe while we are considering eating less meat we could also switch to grass-fed meat. Farm animals are an important part of the process of creating a healthy soil and farm economy. Meat, eggs and dairy from pastured animals also provides more in the way of lean protein, vitamins, minerals and beneficial fats, such as Omega-3.

Humans have always been eating meat (just ask the woolly mammoth). We don't need to give it up entirely to to have a healthy planet.

*****

At the same time food inspectors are having trouble keeping up with the safety issues posed by all the imported foods streaming across our borders, our U.S. Department of Agriculture is agitating for poultry imports from China despite health issues found in Chinese processing facilities.

A cozy relationship with China can only benefit corporate food interests and Big Agriculture. One goofy proposal called for chickens to be raised in the U.S., then shipped to China to be processed into various food products, then shipped back for U.S. consumers to eat. In return, China might consider allowing imports of U.S. beef. (Weren't the Koreans recently rioting in the streets over U.S. beef imports? Oh, never mind....)

*****

There are food disasters everywhere you turn, it seems. The latest is the collapse of the blue crab in the Chesapeake Bay. The demise of the crab was foretold at least two decades ago. Over-harvesting and pollution have resulted in the lowest crab catches on record and this year promises to continue the trend.

Enter U.S. senators from Maryland and Virginia, proposing the federal government officially declare the crabs a disaster and provide $20 million in emergency assistance to watermen and food processors. The states have both ordered sharp cuts in the harvesting of female crabs because of the decline.

Meanwhile, pollutants continue to pour into the Chesapeake from area farms supported by federal subsidies. Go figure....

*****

Scientists have linked high fructose corn syrup, one of the by-products of our huge, government-subsidized corn complex, with this country's high rates of obesity and diabetes. But that hasn't stopped the food industry, which relies on subsidized corn products for just about everything in the supermarket, from continuing to defend HFCS as a legitimate sweetener.

In fact, the Corn Refiners Association recently took out a full-page, full-color ad in the New York Times equating high fructose corn syrup with honey and table sugar. They've also put up a website where you can take a quiz on how HFCS stacks up against other sweeteners.

Funny, I didn't find any references to those studies that link corn sweeteners with obesity and diabetes....

Meanwhile, the soft drink industry is touting new research indicating that kids aren't getting fat so much because of vending machines at school, but because of the junk they eat and drink at home. (But we can control what's in the vending machines in schools, right?)

And just in case that doesn't turn you into a cheerleader for school vending machines, the American Beverage Association has sponsored a new analysis showing there is no relationship between drinking sodas and body mass index.

Sure, I'm convinced.

Bon appetit....

Weekend Update

It will be years before some parts of the Midwest recover from record floods and already the damage is pushing up the price of corn and soybeans, deepening the world's food crises.

Now comes news that the flooding in significant part can be blamed on man's imprint on the land. Plowing prairies into croplands, diverting streams and waterways, developing wetlands, farming too close to rivers--all this human alteration of the landscape has turned places like Iowa into washboards where heavy rains turn into floods instead of percolating into the soil.

"I sense that the flooding is not the result of a 500-year event," said Jerry DeWitt, director of the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. "We're farming closer to creeks, farming closer to rivers. Without adequate buffer strips, the water moves rapidly from the field directly to the surface water."

With the federal government encouraging farmers to grow even more corn to make ethanol, lands previously reserved for conservation are being plowed under as well.

Between 2007 and 2008, farmers took 106,000 acres of Iowa land out of the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to keep farmland uncultivated, according to Lyle Asell, a special assistant for agriculture and environment with the state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR). That land, if left untouched, probably would have been covered with perennial grasses with deep roots that help absorb water.

Besides having a huge mess to clean up and tens of thousands of people homeless, Iowans now are worried about what may have gotten into their drinking water.

A huge swath of territory from the Dakotas down to Ohio was losing fertilizer applied to the soil at a rate of 4 percent each day. Heavy snowfalls and an early snowmelt also was contributing huge amounts of amonia from the region's giant hog feedlots. Some 70 cities draw their drinking water from the Mississippi River. At the mouth of the river, researchers even before the flooding began were finding nitrate levels spilling into the Gulf of Mexico 37 percent higher than last year--and that was the highest since records began in 1970.

Fertilizer runoff creates a "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico about the size of New Jersey. This year promises to be bigger than ever.

*****

It may be too long ago for most farmers to remember, but growing crops used to be more environmentally friendly. One of the methods farmers used to increase fertility and save the soil was crop rotation. That went out the window with artificial fertilizers and chemical pesticides (and look at the results).

Now, with growing demand for organic produce, researchers are taking a second look at natural methods of growing grains, including crop rotation. Tests are underway at the Agricultural Research Center in Beltsville, MD, just a few miles ouside the nation's capital.

With concerns about agricultural runoff, the rise in food prices and projections of global food shortages, the work is considered more important than ever. "More and more, people are looking for the best way to grow grain crops organically," said researcher Michel Cavigelli.

Cavigelli recently published findings showing the longer the rotational cycle for corn, the more corn produced. Rotating corn, soybeans and wheat over four or more years - and adding hay to the cycle in late summer - increased corn yields by up to 30 percent, compared with a standard two-year cycle, he said.

Any chance of this getting back to farmers in Iowa?

*****

If it's not corn, it's tomatoes. Federal officials are still trying to figure out where the salmonell-infected tomatoes that have made hundreds of people sick came from. At the center of the search is the hapless federal food safety watchdog, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The salmonella outbreak in tomatoes comes just months after the FDA released a "food protection plan" that was, in the words of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt, "a strategy of prevention, intervention and response to build safety into every step of the food supply chain."

But now the Government Accountability Office reports that since announcing its plan, the FDA really hasn't done very much. Says the GAO:

"Since FDA’s Food Protection Plan was first released in November 2007, FDA has added few details on the resources and strategies required to implement the plan. FDA plans to spend about $90 million over fiscal years 2008 and 2009 to implement several key actions, such as identifying food vulnerabilities and risk. From the information GAO has obtained on the Food Protection Plan, however, it is unclear what FDA’s overall resource need is for implementing the plan, which could be significant. For example, based on FDA estimates, if FDA were to inspect each of the approximately 65,500 domestic food firms regulated by FDA once, the total cost would be approximately $524 million."

There's plenty of blame to go around, however. The Bush administration as well as Congress have long known that the agency responsible for the safety of the nation's food supply is in tatters. One begins to wonder how many poison outbreaks and meat recalls it will take before our federal government will do anything about it.

*****

Oh, and the taint of human activity has a mighty long reach. Scientists are now discovering man-made pollutants in deep-sea squid and octopi.

In a study to be published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, researchers report finding a variety of chemical contaminants in nine species of cephalopods, a class of organisms that includes octopods, squids, cuttlefishes and nautiluses.

"It was surprising to find measurable and sometimes high amounts of toxic pollutants in such a deep and remote environment," said one of the study's authors, Michael Vecchione of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admistation's Fisheries' National Systematics Laboratory. Among the chemicals detected were tributyltin (TBT), polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), brominated diphenyl ethers (BDEs), and dichlorodiphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT).

The really bad news for sea creatures is that these toxins are known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs) because they don't degrade but remain in the environment for a very long time.

Cephalopods are important to the diet of cetaceans, a class of marine mammals which includes whales, dolphins and porpoises. Recent studies have reported the accumulation of POPs in the blubber and tissues of whales and other predatory marine mammals as well as in some deep-sea fish. Other investigators had speculated that the pollutants in marine mammals had resulted from feeding on contaminated squids.

Fried calamari, anyone?

*****

Meanwhile, more and more of Alaska's prized chinook salmon--aka King salmon--are being infected with something commonly called "Ich" that turns the fish mealy and stinky and is being attributed to global warming.

As much as 30 percent of the salmon catch is being tossed aside as inedible because of the infection.

"Ich" stands for a microscopic parasite called Ichthyophonus hoferi. Ich (pronounced "ick") is a well-known disease, harmless to humans, that was blamed for devastating losses in the herring fishery in Scandinavia. A similar parasite can infect aquarium fish.

The emergence of disease in Alaska's most prized salmon has come as a shock to fishermen and fisheries managers. Alaskan wild salmon has been an uncommon success story among over-exploited fisheries, with healthy runs and robust catches that fetch ever higher prices at fish markets and high-end restaurants in Los Angeles, New York, Tokyo and London.

But then infected salmon started showing up in the state's spawning grounds, their flesh and organs mottled with telltale spots. The disease is being linked to rising temperatures in the spawning waters, such as the Yukon River.

As temperatures rise, "Ich" moves in. It's the kind of redistribution of disease that can be expected with climate change, said Richard M. Kocan, a fish disease expert at the University of Washington.

"Everything is getting warmer, and that's how climate change is going to redistribute all kinds of disease," Kocan said. "Parasites have their optimum conditions -- upper and lower limits. We'll notice where they show up but not necessarily where they disappear."

Some experts fear that salmon in the Pacific Northwest will go extinct unless something is done to cool the warming spawning waters.

*****

And that brings us to jellyfish. If you're a swimmer, you want to avoid these transluscent blobs because of their stinging tentacles. Here around the Chesapeake Bay, certain seasons seem to bring hordes of the slimy creatures, making swimming impossible.

Now scientists see a dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world as being driven by overfishing and climate change, a sure sign of ecosystems out of whack.

"Jellyfish are an excellent bellwether for the environment," explains Jacqueline Goy, of the Oceanographic Institute of Paris. "The more jellyfish, the stronger the signal that something has changed."

In the Mediterranean, exploding numbers or jellyfish have devastated native marine species and threaten seaside tourism. Two centuries worth of data shows that jellyfish populations naturally swell every 12 years, remain stable four or six years, and then subside. This year, however, will be the eighth consecutive year that medusae, as they are also known, will be present in massive numbers.

Overfishing of other species creates room for jellyfish to prosper. Scientists were not surprised to find a huge surge in the number of jellyfish off the coast of Namibia in the Atlantic, one of the most intensely fished oceans in the world.

Warmer ocean temperatures prolong reproduction cycles. Put it all together and you get oceans full of jellyfish.

Bon appetit....

Weekend Update

The world's food system is taking on a surreal quality as the hinges fall off. On the one hand, hedge funds and investor syndicates eager to turn hunger into gold are buying up everything from fertilizer factories to farmland in Africa. Then, just as the experts warn that the fragile supply-and-demand equation will not survive any untoward weather events, torrential rains and flooding threatens to wipe out the Midwestern corn and soybean crops.

The world's nations convened a food summit in Rome to address runaway food prices. It went nowhere. While a billion people face starvation, no one wants to be the first to sacrifice his country's crop subsidies, and the U.S. refuses to acknowledge that turning corn into fuel for automobiles is a dumb idea.

A bleak tableau started to look like a Mel Brooks farce as the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration sat before Congress and refused to say what it might take to devise a system that could put disease-free tomatoes on America's dinner tables. Tomatoes tainted with salmonella forced groceries and restaurants everywhere to pull them from the food chain, but the federal government it turns out has no way to trace where they came from.

Lawmakers simply cannot wrap their heads around the idea that the industrial food system they've been promoting lo these many years has run off the rails.

*****

You may be asking, Are there any rays of sunshine in this gloomy picture?

Well, subsistence farmers in some countries are beginning to get the idea that there may be some opportunities to be had in the worsening food crisis. You remember them. These are the farmers who've been pushed to the brink by international monetary policies that favor big farms that use chemical fertilizers and pesticides to grow commodity crops. Farming to feed yourself has been a losing proposition.

In Rwanda, for instance, some entrepreneurs are heading back to the land to take advantage of spiking corn prices.

Rising prices mean farmers have incentives to plant more after decades of productivity declining under the weight of poverty, foreign competition and a marketplace flooded with subsidized food.

"This might be one of the best opportunities that poor subsistence-level farmers will ever have to claw their way out of poverty," said Josh Ruxin, founder of Access Project Rwanda, an anti-poverty advocacy group. "For the first time in years, they might be able to make some money."

Helping small farmers is a bargain. Just $70 worth of basic assistance, such as better seeds and fertilizer, would enable the average African farmer to grow an additional ton of corn. Delivering the same amount of corn as emergency aid would cost $700.

Still, international donors, the World Bank and most African governments for decades have largely ignored the needs of farmers, despite the fact that agriculture is the continent's largest economic sector and biggest employer.

*****

In the U.S., spiking food prices and $4-a-gallon gas may have a silver lining as well: more gardens. Seed companies report sales spiking as much as 40 percent as some Americans discover the joys of growing their own food.

“One organic cucumber is $3 and I can produce it for pennies,” said a woman living on the Army base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky.

She's dug up her back yard and installed 15 tomato plants, five rows of corn, potatoes, cucumbers, squash, okra, peas, watermelon, green beans. An old barn on the property has been converted to a chicken coop, its residents arriving next month; the goats will be arriving next year.

“I spent $100 on it and I know I will save at least $75 a month on food,” she said.

And think how much better dinner will taste....

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A primary reason for soaring food prices world-wide is the increasing taste for meat in prospering India and China. It takes a lot of grain to feed all that livestock. And the United Nations reminds us that there are other costs as well. Farm animals are responsible for an estimated 18 percent of the world's greenhouse emissions, more than all of the cars and trucks on the planet.

It can be pretty stinky, too. In one town in Minnesota, residents have been driven out of their homes by the stench emanating from a local dairy's manure pond.

“It’s been absolutely miserable,” said one resident outside Grand Forks. “It takes your breath away it’s so noxious. It’s not a manure smell. It’s not a farm smell. It’s a hydrogen sulfide-ammonia gas smell...I feel like I have no control over my life. It’s unfair that we are the ones who have to leave. It needs to be shut down.”

Some residents were considering a class action law suit against the dairy, while local officials were planning to file a nuisance charge.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering a regulation change that would exempt factory farms from reporting toxic air pollution from animal waste.

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While industrial fishing fleets drive the bluefin tuna to extinction, European officials thought it might be a good idea to close this year's fishing season early.

European governments have largely looked the other way while profiteers ransack the bluefin population. Last year, European fleets exceeded the stated quota by 25 percent.

This year's early closure does little to stanch the concerns of environmental groups.

"Overfishing and massive illegal catches threaten the survival of bluefin tuna. Fishing should be banned indefinitely at least during June, the key spawning month for Mediterranean bluefin tuna," Aaron McLoughlin, head of WWF's European Marine Program, said in a statement.

While the bluefin are getting a bit of a reprieve, some shark populations in the Mediterranean have completely collapsed. According to a new study, the numbers of five different shark species have declining by more than 96 percent over the past two centuries.

"This loss of top predators could hold serious implications for the entire marine ecosystem, greatly affecting food webs throughout this region,” said the lead author of the study, Francesco Ferretti, a doctoral student in marine biology at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

In November, the International Union for Conservation of Nature warned that more than 40 percent of shark and ray species in the Mediterranean were threatened with extinction because of intense fishing pressure.

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There's plenty of other news from the food world to jangle your nerves. But if you're still having trouble getting a buzz on, try Engobi.

Engobi is some kind of grain-based snack chip that's been infused with 70 percent more caffeine than Red Bull. Apparently, just eating junk isn't enough. It also has to make you want to climb the walls.

We're not about to actually consume Engobi. But clicking through its website entertained us for about 30 seconds. Be sure to wander over to "What's Inside Engobi" and click on the various little piles of ingredients. This is what passes as nutritional information for the wired generation.