What What Are Are They They Thinking Thinking??

This has been in the works for some time now, but I'm still having trouble wrapping my mind around the fact that this day has finally come. The FDA has seriously upped the level on their Frankenfood tolerance meter, concluding that "milk and meat from some cloned farm animals are safe to eat." (Some in this case=every animal except sheep). Details here and here (same story, different takes) and the full report can be found here. Tell the FDA what you think of their decision here. They are taking comments from the public for the next 90 days.
It's also a bit off-putting to learn that cloned animals are already in America's grocery stores. Money quote:

Donald P. Coover, a veterinarian and rancher in Galesburg, Kan., said products from clones and their offspring have already entered the food supply despite the voluntary moratorium. He said he had sold thousands of straws of semen from cloned bulls to other farmers to use in artificial insemination. “I think it would be incredibly naïve to suggest that all these animals that have been produced are standing around someplace waiting for a green light from the F.D.A.” he said.

This Issue of COLORS Magazine: Back to Earth (#69)

The magazine COLORS has dedicated this quarterly's issue #69 to "Back to Earth" and this issue is co-published with the SlowFood organization. gorgeous photographs and essays about the noble profession of food production!

the essays are (and seems like you can access them all through their website):
-OceanSong Farm in Sonoma,
-Reindeer farms in Sweden,
-"your wallet decides what kind of salmon the world will eat",
-seed exchange in India: "the government is considering...making informal seed exchanges by small farmers illegal."
-sardine fishermen in Japan,
-mezcal farmers in Oaxaca,
-"track your goat cheese by satellite",
-rainforests,
-oil cooperatives in Morocco,
-"I don't understand what you mean when you ask what my favorite food is. i eat the food that is here." (kenya)
-Brooklyn farmers markets,
-manna producers in Italy, only 50 left still know the trade,
-cow urine instead of chemical fertilizers in India,
-plum producers in Palermo: "nobody wants to work anymore. All people want is to sit behind a desk. They smoke and go to the toilet 6 million times a day."
-cheese making in Ireland,
-harvesting grasshoppers (chapulin) in Mexico,
-yak cheese producers in Tibet,
-"What is Slow Food."

(extra bonus: all essays are bilingual in Spanish)
may I say again, wonderful photographs, tear out to put on the walls of the new places you are living and working!

Economist said: "neither organic nor locally grown food help the environment"

December 16, 2006
What’s Online
The Economist on ‘Fair Trade’
By DAN MITCHELL

BUY organic, destroy the rainforest,” The Economist said last week, eliciting howls of protest from food-activist bloggers (economist.com).

The magazine’s look at “ethical food” questioned whether “voting with your trolley” (Yanks call it a shopping cart) can help save the world by encouraging organic products, fair-trade-labeled goods and locally grown produce. The sweeping conclusion was that it cannot.

“Fair trade” is anything but, The Economist concluded. Fair trade products often carry a premium above market prices, part of which is returned to impoverished farmers. The problem here, the magazine said, is that artificially high prices work against the very problem such schemes are meant to solve: overproduction. Coffee prices have tanked in recent years because there’s too much of it being produced. Higher prices encourage more production.

The Economist seems to be on more slippery ground when it concludes that neither organic nor locally grown food helps the environment.

Organic farming uses “several times as much land as is currently cultivated,” which is a net loss for the environment, the article states. If the world’s farms all switched to organic production, there “wouldn’t be much room left for the rainforest.”

“Nonsense,” wrote Parke Wilde, a food economist at Tufts University who writes the blog U.S. Food Policy. Mr. Wilde was less than convinced by the scant evidence the magazine offered for its conclusion that organic farming destroys rain forests (usfoodpolicy.blogspot.com).

“This is a recycled version of the argument the agro-business-funded Hudson Institute has been making for years,” wrote Samuel Fromartz in the comments section of Gristmill, a blog about the environment (gristmill.grist.org).

Mr. Fromartz, author of “Organic Inc.,” wrote that more-reliable studies show that organic farming is not as land-intensive as critics suggest, and that the article did not address several of the problems with conventional farming that organics are meant to help solve, like soil depletion.

The Economist says it is up to politicians to solve the problems wrought by conventional farming — by removing trade barriers and enacting carbon taxes, for example. But it does applaud the ethical food movement because it “sends a signal” that “governments are not doing enough to preserve the environment, reform world trade or encourage development.”

A Flurry of Activity

Greetings to all!
It's been quite a while since my last post about the job opening with Eliot Coleman (still available btw). I was planning to share with you news of the world such as how the massive drought I witnessed in Australia is effecting farmers and food prices, or how a new strain of GMO rice won USDA approval after contaminating our food supply, or how New York City banned trans fats and now other cities are following suit, or how Walmart got busted labeling "all-natural" foods "organic," but... THE REALLY BIG NEWS is that the blog has moved to web 2.0!
While it may appear unchanged to the casual observer, our blog is now AJAX-backed, allowing dynamic serving and a pile of other features. No more waiting for little spinning wheels while posts publish--it's all instantaneous, no more need to create separate accounts with Blogger--a Gmail account will do, much easier for Mike and future blogmasters to administrate and tweak.
What this means to you, the next time you log in to Blogger to post, you will be asked to update your account, using your Gmail address as your login, subsequently your new login page will be beta.blogger.com though this should change back to blogger.com soon. Need a Gmail address? Email me, and I will send you and invite.
ps. Congrats to CASFS on that GoodTimes article! Worth the read.

Oh yea... Good Times

Just wanted to give massive congratulations to the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems for a wonderful cover article in last weeks Good Times Weekly. Above is the link and I highly recommend reading and sharing this article with as many folks as you know because not only is it eloquently written, but it is an amazing piece of positive PR for CASFS as we turn into our 40th year.

Blessings and enjoy the rain

Mike