Archive for September 2009
Experiencing northern Colorado at harvest
Over the past week I have been looking for ways to opt out of the global food economy and eat instead from the northern Colorado foodshed.
Food is often produced in this country at great expense to our soils, air, water, our farmers and our health. The true origin of our food is hidden behind idyllic imagery of family farms and open pastures, and we are happy to buy the illusion.
I was looking for more honest food—food plucked from familiar land, still clinging to the soil it was born in. I wanted short, gnarled carrots and turnips just because they were in season. I wanted tree-ripened peaches that would have been smashed to pulp if they were shipped the 1,500 miles an average food item travels in America. I also wanted the dollar I paid for my food to go to the farmer who grew it—not the eight cents that typically does.
I’m happy to report that our foodshed is both vibrant and very accessible.
The Food Co-Op, locally-owned Beavers Market and even my neighborhood Safeway all offer locally grown fruits and vegetables. For even fresher produce, outdoor farmers’ markets run through mid-October; indoor farmers’ markets begin in November. A year-round facility to bring farmers and customers together called the Community Market is also being developed.
Another option is to buy a share in a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. A share will get you a season’s worth of vegetables, fruits, mushrooms, or various other offerings delivered weekly. The CSA model is a way for the community to fund a farm’s activities while sharing in the risk of farming.
Growing a garden is an obvious alternative. There is no more trustworthy food than food you grew yourself. If you don’t have a yard or a planter box, you can rent a plot at the community gardens on Spring Creek or in Timnath.
Finding natural, grass-fed beef from the Northern Colorado foodshed is less easy. Most ranchers nearby send their cattle away to feedlots. What they do sell is sold by fractions of a whole cow, usually quantities over 100 pounds. Buying individual cuts is next to impossible.
A rancher I spoke with explained why: U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations, which are designed for industrial slaughterhouses that process 400 cattle per hour, are not suited for smaller operations. A processing plant that would cater to Northern Colorado ranchers would likely not be able to support enough volume to be worth a regulator’s time, so it would be shut down.
Ironically, regulations intended to protect public health have instead promoted a system that is breeding antibiotic-resistant food-borne illnesses like E. coli that are being found in everything from spinach to peanut butter.
Vast regulatory bureaucracies are less important when the meat you buy is raised locally and processed nearby. For the same reason, most farmers around here don’t bother to be certified organic even though they use organic practices—they would rather just tell you themselves.
Across America, the number of farmers’ markets and CSAs is growing steadily; so is the population of small farmers according to a recent USDA census.
Researchers at Columbia University are investigating the feasibility of an integrated national network of foodsheds. Preliminary analyses demonstrated that the Northeast, including New York City, can meet 100 percent of its dietary needs from its network of foodsheds. That is evidence that foodsheds are capable of replacing modern agriculture.
What is missing from modern agriculture is a sense of place. We have divorced our food from the soil and the sun, growing it instead with fossil fuels and fertilizer. In doing so, we have turned our back on the land and our cultural heritage. This is our harvest—a time once celebrated by the entire community, but now all but forgotten. Experience northern Colorado at its best, eat some of it.
Read on:
Experience the harvest with a downtown local tasting tour, sponsored by Beet Street
Putting ‘health’ back into the American health care debate
The latest news from the health care debate is a proposed tax on soft drinks to help pay for the $774 billion plan unveiled by Sen. Max Baucus as well as fight a burgeoning American waistline.
Until now, the health care debate has largely ignored the growing health crisis linked to the American diet, despite its mammoth contributions to the rising cost of health care. A recent study showed that 30 percent of the rise in health care spending in America over the past two decades is due to obesity alone.
Diabetes is another major contributor. The Center for Disease Control estimates that one in every three children born after 2000—children who consume 10 to 15 percent of their daily calories as soft drinks and other “empty calories”—will develop Type 2 diabetes. Each of those children will cost $6,600 more per year in doctor visits and medical equipment.
If Americans were as healthy as Europeans (as we were thirty years ago) we could save over $1 trillion by 2050, according to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
A tax on soft drinks, however, is a lazy approach to this problem. America desperately needs a revolution in how we produce food.
The farm bill dictates how food is produced in this country. It was originally designed during the New Deal era to protect farmers by stabilizing the price of commodity crops like corn and soybeans. Since then it has been reengineered to drive down the price of commodity crops by paying farmers directly to produce them.
Farmers have abandoned fruits and vegetables—termed “specialty crops” by the farm bill—to free more land for commodity crops. The cows and chickens that lived on the farms have been sent to feedlots and factories, where they are fed corn that is now sold for far less than the cost to grow it.
The government policy of subsidizing commodity crops has replaced an ecological model of farming with an industrial model of food production, with corn and soybeans as the raw materials of production.
High fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils from soybeans and CAFOs (Confined Animal Feeding Operations) have become the machinery of converting corn and soybeans into what we now call “food.”
Many of the products available in grocery stores are really just complex rearrangements of corn, with added color and flavorings. If you can’t pronounce the ingredients in what you’re eating, there’s a good chance it is derived from corn.
On feedlots cattle are fed corn, instead of their natural diet of grass, because it makes them grow bigger, faster and fatter. A pound of hamburger is the product of applying the bovine digestive system to eight pounds of corn, plus growth hormones and antibiotics.
Subsidized corn is the reason you can buy a double hamburger and a soft drink at McDonald’s for a dollar each. It’s also the reason fruits and vegetables seem so expensive by comparison.
In a way, farm policy in this country has been very successful. Today we spend only 10 percent of our income on food, down from 25 percent in 1929.
However, the cost to our health has been enormous. We spend over twice as much on health care as we do on food.
Health insurance companies, facing new regulations that would make it harder to deny coverage, are taking a sudden interest in farm policy. Recently, insurer UnitedHealthcare asked a team of researchers at M.I.T. and Columbia to develop an approach to curbing the rise of childhood obesity in America.
The researchers recommended “foodsheds” as the most promising solution. A foodshed is a diversified regional food economy—in contrast to our simplified national one—where food is produced and consumed all in one locality.
Fort Collins has been quietly developing its own foodshed. Next week I will explore what it means to eat from our foodshed.
Read on:
A damning special investigation of the absurdities of the farm bill by the Washington Post
The Cato Institute’s economic argument against the farm bill
The Environmental Working Group tracks who receives farm subsidies (you may be surprised)
Calling for A 50-year Farm Bill by Wes Jackson and Wendell Berry
Overview of chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes in America
