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| peach blossoms at the breakfast table |
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| the second mother hen of the year to hatch a clutch |
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| Liz, our WWOOF visitor from Maine |
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| our family |
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
Photos from the last month
Saturday, February 23, 2013
DIET THEORIES
We just watched a documentary film about a diet of veganism (plus no
added plant fats/oil) as a way to stop and potentially reverse the
adverse health effects of the standard industrialized diet. We're
definitely not vegans, and we don't mention this film because it
represents us or any of our views, but as farmers we take extra interest
in all the various diet theories and their supporting arguments, and
even diet theories that fail to offer good solutions can be helpful in
assessing the problems.
As we've discussed before, our diet theory -- if we had to give it a name we might call it "radically homegrown" -- isn't based on any kind of nutrition or health theories. In other words, we're strongly inclined to believe that eating a radically homegrown diet while completely ignoring the difficult questions of any and all nutrition theories will actually result in a healthier diet than following the advice of the world's most brilliant nutrition experts, whoever they may be. Are we saying that ignoring nutrition theories can lead to better nutrition? Short answer, yes. How could that be?
First, nutrition science is invariably a very muddy field. If any of the fringe theories (like the one in the film we just watched) were scientifically compelling it would be more than a fringe scientific theory. That's not to say those theories are necessarily wrong, only that the scientific case for any of them is fraught with questions and legitimate doubts. On the other hand mainstream dietary advice like is embodied in the USDA food pyramid seems undeniably damned by its results. In other words, mainstream dietary advice is too closely tied to our problems to reasonably consider it any kind of solution. And, in any case, even if the nutrition experts could agree on a diet theory -- which they can't -- that still leaves the rest of us needing to eat but without the expertise to sort out the advice from conflicting experts. (The arguments that we always find most convincing are the ones making the case that the case for someone else's theory is grossly overstated.) In short, as with the documentary we just watched, every diet theory seems to lose any real scientific footing as soon as it moves beyond criticizing the standard industrialized diet.
So the next question then: what reason is there to trust that a radically homegrown diet offers any better hope of nutrition? First, our current diet-related health problems are clearly the result of the industrialization of our food supply, and a radically homegrown diet is the only alternative (at least in the industrialized world today.) Secondly, although the nutrition science is very muddy, one thing that seems very clear to us is that the giant food and agriculture corporations (and the government and university systems that serve them) aren't fundamentally pursuing any kind of health (of persons, soils, waters, air, animals, communities, etc. -- which, of course, are all deeply interconnected), but rather all large corporations are structured so as to ensure a narrow focus on corporate and executive profit. Surely dependence on that corporate system, no matter how much it conforms to any superficial diet theory, is fundamentally at odds with good health. If we are to have any real nutrition choices at all, we're convinced the first step needs to be breaking loose of the corporate-industrial grip on our diets.
In that light, a question this documentary raised, as all nutrition theories do for us, is how compatible is veganism with a radically homegrown diet versus dependent on an industrialized corporate food supply. There is a limited point on which we think vegans score some points here. In recent years vegans have commonly made the case that animal products increase our dependency on the evils of the corporate-industrial system. They'll say that animals are an inefficient use of grain crops, i.e. that the grain fed to animals would go a lot further if fed directly to people. If we lay the nutritional and gastronomic problems with that idea aside, we think it has to be conceded that they have a real point: raising animals strictly on field crops grown for the purpose of feeding animals is highly questionable. (So, of course, is raising annual crops for the purpose of feeding our cars, which now consume more of our most planted field crop (corn) than all farm animals combined.) The limits we see in their argument are that (1) exchanging dependency on large quantities of grain for dependency on smaller quantities of industrialized grain doesn't really solve the problem, and (2) although modern industrialized agriculture completely fails to realize it, animals offer all sorts of potential for making food out of things that aren't food to start with. The most important example of this second point is grass, and the benefits of grass are huge. Especially in regions like ours where much of the land is quite susceptible to erosion, a permanent cover of grass is surely the most sustainable farm use of land. Pasture also drastically reduces the pressure on farmers to depend as heavily or at all on herbicides, insecticides, fossil fuel-powered tractors and combines, genetically modified seed, etc. Much more could be said about the gains to be had from farm animals and from grass, in particular, but the point here is that animals offer lots of potential (even if commonly unrealized) for reducing our dependency on the corporate-industrial food system.
This is a bit of a tangent, but to be clear, "pastured" pork and poultry and eggs even from "organic" (whether officially or unofficially) family farmers selling directly at small farmers' markets rarely redefine the equation any more than their supermarket counterparts: simply keeping animals on pasture while feeding them complete rations of combine-harvested annual field crops (which is the case with the vast majority of large- and small-scale "pastured" and/or "organic" pork, poultry, and eggs) does nothing to silence the vegan argument we've discussed. Swine and poultry and other animals certainly have lots of potential in a radically homegrown system of agriculture, too, but so long as farmers and consumers continue to measure these possibilities against the artificial cheapness of their industrialized counterparts any market for radically homegrown pork or poultry will remain practically non-existent. In the meantime, we would concede that vegans score valid points here, too.
But truly grass-fed/grain-free beef and dairy (and goat meat, lamb, wool, leather, etc., not to mention wild game) does radically redefine the equations, not just historically but in accessible ways here and now. As practically the whole continent of Africa figured out before us, goat meat and, in our case, also goat milk may be the most sustainable products we produce, and we'd make nearly as strong a case for our beef and cow's dairy. There was an interesting and repeated contrast in the film we just watched that highlights some of these differences. Images of dairy cattle on pasture were contrasted more than once with huge, super-expensive, diesel-powered combines harvesting mono-cropped annual grains. Completely apart from all the questions of sustainability, is the corporate-industrial dependency of the implicit vegan model not starkly obvious, especially in contrast to the pastoral image of dairy cows? There are plenty of misleading pastoral images in today's food marketplaces, but here the vegan advocates (apparently unwittingly) chose images that exposed the flaws of their case. Small herds of all grass-fed livestock are rightly viewed as consistent with sustainability, small family farms, and community food sovereignty. Equivalently homegrown grain and pulse (dry bean, peas, etc.) crops are as non-existent in the industrialized world today as the radically homegrown pork and poultry we already lamented. As with pork and poultry, grains and pulses have plenty of potential in a radically homegrown system of agriculture, but that potential is largely lost to mass-produced corporate counterparts.
One more thing deserves mention on the subject of veganism and a radically homegrown diet. With the diet promoted by this film as with every other example of veganism we've encountered, simple homegrown foods are replaced with fake counterparts: milk is replaced with rice or almond "milk" -- it's worth noting, too, that we live in the most dairy rich county in North Carolina, but rice and almonds, of course, aren't grown here and are very marginally adaptable if at all -- turkey with "tofurky," eggs with "egg substitute", etc., etc. Avoiding real milk or turkey or eggs commonly has the result of forcing consumers to turn to corporate-industrial foods from far away, often in less homegrown, more processed manifestations. This is an aspect of veganism to which we definitely object, and we suspect that it's an unavoidable aspect of any diet theory that shuns any major food groups.
Obviously there's plenty of controversy to stir up with these questions, but there's also lots of room for agreement. Proponents of veganism and paleo diets and "traditional" diets and low-carb diets and the USDA food pyramid and raw foodies, etc. together with us, can all potentially agree that moving away from sugar and corn syrup, artificial flavors, preservatives, and sweeteners, white flour, pre-processed foods, confinement style animal products, and chemical-intensive field and garden crops would be an improvement. These are the most emblematic parts of the standard diet in the industrialized world in which we live. And it seems quite plausible that drastically reducing these things could indeed solve a majority of our dramatic, diet-related problems. Without paying any particular attention to any questions of diet or nutrition, pursuing a radically homegrown diet would necessarily accomplish all these things, and it's something any of us can understand unassisted (and unmanipulated) by any experts.
As we've discussed before, our diet theory -- if we had to give it a name we might call it "radically homegrown" -- isn't based on any kind of nutrition or health theories. In other words, we're strongly inclined to believe that eating a radically homegrown diet while completely ignoring the difficult questions of any and all nutrition theories will actually result in a healthier diet than following the advice of the world's most brilliant nutrition experts, whoever they may be. Are we saying that ignoring nutrition theories can lead to better nutrition? Short answer, yes. How could that be?
First, nutrition science is invariably a very muddy field. If any of the fringe theories (like the one in the film we just watched) were scientifically compelling it would be more than a fringe scientific theory. That's not to say those theories are necessarily wrong, only that the scientific case for any of them is fraught with questions and legitimate doubts. On the other hand mainstream dietary advice like is embodied in the USDA food pyramid seems undeniably damned by its results. In other words, mainstream dietary advice is too closely tied to our problems to reasonably consider it any kind of solution. And, in any case, even if the nutrition experts could agree on a diet theory -- which they can't -- that still leaves the rest of us needing to eat but without the expertise to sort out the advice from conflicting experts. (The arguments that we always find most convincing are the ones making the case that the case for someone else's theory is grossly overstated.) In short, as with the documentary we just watched, every diet theory seems to lose any real scientific footing as soon as it moves beyond criticizing the standard industrialized diet.
So the next question then: what reason is there to trust that a radically homegrown diet offers any better hope of nutrition? First, our current diet-related health problems are clearly the result of the industrialization of our food supply, and a radically homegrown diet is the only alternative (at least in the industrialized world today.) Secondly, although the nutrition science is very muddy, one thing that seems very clear to us is that the giant food and agriculture corporations (and the government and university systems that serve them) aren't fundamentally pursuing any kind of health (of persons, soils, waters, air, animals, communities, etc. -- which, of course, are all deeply interconnected), but rather all large corporations are structured so as to ensure a narrow focus on corporate and executive profit. Surely dependence on that corporate system, no matter how much it conforms to any superficial diet theory, is fundamentally at odds with good health. If we are to have any real nutrition choices at all, we're convinced the first step needs to be breaking loose of the corporate-industrial grip on our diets.
In that light, a question this documentary raised, as all nutrition theories do for us, is how compatible is veganism with a radically homegrown diet versus dependent on an industrialized corporate food supply. There is a limited point on which we think vegans score some points here. In recent years vegans have commonly made the case that animal products increase our dependency on the evils of the corporate-industrial system. They'll say that animals are an inefficient use of grain crops, i.e. that the grain fed to animals would go a lot further if fed directly to people. If we lay the nutritional and gastronomic problems with that idea aside, we think it has to be conceded that they have a real point: raising animals strictly on field crops grown for the purpose of feeding animals is highly questionable. (So, of course, is raising annual crops for the purpose of feeding our cars, which now consume more of our most planted field crop (corn) than all farm animals combined.) The limits we see in their argument are that (1) exchanging dependency on large quantities of grain for dependency on smaller quantities of industrialized grain doesn't really solve the problem, and (2) although modern industrialized agriculture completely fails to realize it, animals offer all sorts of potential for making food out of things that aren't food to start with. The most important example of this second point is grass, and the benefits of grass are huge. Especially in regions like ours where much of the land is quite susceptible to erosion, a permanent cover of grass is surely the most sustainable farm use of land. Pasture also drastically reduces the pressure on farmers to depend as heavily or at all on herbicides, insecticides, fossil fuel-powered tractors and combines, genetically modified seed, etc. Much more could be said about the gains to be had from farm animals and from grass, in particular, but the point here is that animals offer lots of potential (even if commonly unrealized) for reducing our dependency on the corporate-industrial food system.
This is a bit of a tangent, but to be clear, "pastured" pork and poultry and eggs even from "organic" (whether officially or unofficially) family farmers selling directly at small farmers' markets rarely redefine the equation any more than their supermarket counterparts: simply keeping animals on pasture while feeding them complete rations of combine-harvested annual field crops (which is the case with the vast majority of large- and small-scale "pastured" and/or "organic" pork, poultry, and eggs) does nothing to silence the vegan argument we've discussed. Swine and poultry and other animals certainly have lots of potential in a radically homegrown system of agriculture, too, but so long as farmers and consumers continue to measure these possibilities against the artificial cheapness of their industrialized counterparts any market for radically homegrown pork or poultry will remain practically non-existent. In the meantime, we would concede that vegans score valid points here, too.
But truly grass-fed/grain-free beef and dairy (and goat meat, lamb, wool, leather, etc., not to mention wild game) does radically redefine the equations, not just historically but in accessible ways here and now. As practically the whole continent of Africa figured out before us, goat meat and, in our case, also goat milk may be the most sustainable products we produce, and we'd make nearly as strong a case for our beef and cow's dairy. There was an interesting and repeated contrast in the film we just watched that highlights some of these differences. Images of dairy cattle on pasture were contrasted more than once with huge, super-expensive, diesel-powered combines harvesting mono-cropped annual grains. Completely apart from all the questions of sustainability, is the corporate-industrial dependency of the implicit vegan model not starkly obvious, especially in contrast to the pastoral image of dairy cows? There are plenty of misleading pastoral images in today's food marketplaces, but here the vegan advocates (apparently unwittingly) chose images that exposed the flaws of their case. Small herds of all grass-fed livestock are rightly viewed as consistent with sustainability, small family farms, and community food sovereignty. Equivalently homegrown grain and pulse (dry bean, peas, etc.) crops are as non-existent in the industrialized world today as the radically homegrown pork and poultry we already lamented. As with pork and poultry, grains and pulses have plenty of potential in a radically homegrown system of agriculture, but that potential is largely lost to mass-produced corporate counterparts.
One more thing deserves mention on the subject of veganism and a radically homegrown diet. With the diet promoted by this film as with every other example of veganism we've encountered, simple homegrown foods are replaced with fake counterparts: milk is replaced with rice or almond "milk" -- it's worth noting, too, that we live in the most dairy rich county in North Carolina, but rice and almonds, of course, aren't grown here and are very marginally adaptable if at all -- turkey with "tofurky," eggs with "egg substitute", etc., etc. Avoiding real milk or turkey or eggs commonly has the result of forcing consumers to turn to corporate-industrial foods from far away, often in less homegrown, more processed manifestations. This is an aspect of veganism to which we definitely object, and we suspect that it's an unavoidable aspect of any diet theory that shuns any major food groups.
Obviously there's plenty of controversy to stir up with these questions, but there's also lots of room for agreement. Proponents of veganism and paleo diets and "traditional" diets and low-carb diets and the USDA food pyramid and raw foodies, etc. together with us, can all potentially agree that moving away from sugar and corn syrup, artificial flavors, preservatives, and sweeteners, white flour, pre-processed foods, confinement style animal products, and chemical-intensive field and garden crops would be an improvement. These are the most emblematic parts of the standard diet in the industrialized world in which we live. And it seems quite plausible that drastically reducing these things could indeed solve a majority of our dramatic, diet-related problems. Without paying any particular attention to any questions of diet or nutrition, pursuing a radically homegrown diet would necessarily accomplish all these things, and it's something any of us can understand unassisted (and unmanipulated) by any experts.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Fall WWOOFer
Thursday, October 25, 2012
Boiled Peanuts
You might think you don't like boiled peanuts. But maybe you've
never had boiled peanuts made with fresh dug Virginia type peanuts. When
boiled peanuts are made with dry peanuts, they can take 24 hours or need
to be pressured cooked and are often said to be slimy. Fresh dug
peanuts, like we have now, though, just need an hour in a pot of boiling
salt water. Then they are delicious. We've found them quite addictive.
Give this seasonal treat a try.
WHAT'S FOR SUPPER - ROASTED VEGGIES
From many of the WWOOFERs who come to our farm, I seem to glean some
new idea for cooking. Justin, our current visitor, likes greens, so
I've even started cooking and enjoying mustard and turnip greens, which
I'd previously shied away from. Shelley, earlier this summer, liked
grits, so with that encouragement, we started enjoying our own grits
much more often and now still do. It is Chelsea I have to thank for the
idea of roasting vegetables, though. Sure, I'd roasted some potatoes
before, but only occasionally. Chelsea said her normal meal back home
was an assortment of roasted vegetables. So I gave it a try. I cut up
whatever I had into bite size pieces onto a cookie sheet, tossed it with
a generous amount of butter and salt, and turned the oven to a toasty
400. An hour later, with a few tosses in between, the plain vegetables
had been transformed into slightly carmelized gems of yum. So now,
whenever I set a platter full of roasted vegetables on the table, we
joke we're eating Chelsea food tonight. We laugh and then dig right in.
Cooking vegetables this way, you can get even picky eaters to eat most
anything. For example, last night's roast tray included radishes,
daikon radishes, and turnips, with a good portion of onions. No
complaints were heard here, just spoonfuls of seconds. Potatoes and
sweet potatoes are always great. Peeled chunked eggplant is delicious.
Don't forget the garlic as whole cloves or pressed to toss with the
butter onto the vegetables. Herbs and/or spices are a bonus. I'm
still experimenting.
Try this as a main/side dish, but purposely make too much. Then the next meal, you'll have the start to another great meal. Reheat the vegetables as part of a pasta sauce, use them on a pizza, or tuck them into an omelet.
Try this as a main/side dish, but purposely make too much. Then the next meal, you'll have the start to another great meal. Reheat the vegetables as part of a pasta sauce, use them on a pizza, or tuck them into an omelet.
Saturday, September 29, 2012
The GMO Labeling Debate
The debate over whether genetically modified food should have to be
labelled as such has heated up recently with Proposition 37 coming up
for a vote in California. Proposition 37 would require that all food
sold in California as grocery (as opposed to restaurant food) be
labelled as GMO if it either is a GMO crop or contains GMO crop
ingredients. If Prop 37 passes and survives the court challenges that
would follow, then it will likely be the model that federal and other
state GMO labelling laws would try to follow.
It may sound like the kind of idea that farmers like us would be all for, but even though we're altogether opposed to GMO's, we think it's pretty ambiguous whether a law like Prop 37 would even be a good thing. The thing that we find most troublesome about Prop 37 is that it effectively defines the fight against GMO's in terms that disregard most of the GMO crop acreage in the country. There are currently only 8 GMO crops being grown commercially, although they include a few of the most widely grown crops. Corn is the most planted crop in the US, and its leading use is for fuel ethanol. Its second leading use is animal feed. Soybeans are similar. Cotton falls even further outside the Prop 37 definitions (although cottonseed oil is used as a food ingredient.) Alfalfa is strictly an animal feed, so it falls entirely outside the Prop 37 definitions. The other four crops are relatively minor: sugar beets (granulated sugar, etc.), rapeseed (canola), summer squash (zucchini/yellow squash), and papaya. So our biggest concern is that Prop 37 gives GMO's a free ride for their most significant uses (particularly in terms of acreage): animal feed and non-food uses. Meanwhile we wonder what good the law might achieve. People that care about the GMO take-over of our farms can easily find out what ingredients (i.e. the 8 crops we just listed) are GMO. If they haven't even done that are they going to change their shopping habits when its on the label? And if folks really cared about where their food came from or what went into growing it, then they probably aren't buying fossil fuel- and chemical-intensive, corporate-industrial food from supermarkets, whether it's GMO yet or not. In other words, if they're already growing their own and buying from local farms that they know and trust, then the law can't help them any further.
So that forces the question on us: what then should those of us opposed to GMO's do? Here's something we wrote in answer to that question for another purpose:
Insofar as we're opposed to GM crops, we think we should all be trying hard to get away from the whole commodity crop system. Relying on the commodity crops that haven't been genetically modified yet is perhaps better than nothing, but it's a hopeless strategy for the long-term (even the "medium-term.") If we want to continue having non-GMO options, we think we need to take responsibility for starting to develop those markets and sources and growing methods/know-how, etc. now.
What's most important to us are the issues of what -- if we understand the term correctly -- people are calling food sovereignty. If farming communities in North Carolina can't control what they grow and how they grow it (and therefore also what they eat), then I think all the other kinds of problems (GMO's, chemical dependency, fossil fuel dependency, exploiting laborers, loss of farmland and soil erosion, etc.) are bound to follow, so we believe any real solution needs to start with wrestling control back from the global powers to which we've given control of our food supply.
Those of us that would voice opposition to GMO's have developed a pretty good alternative model through farmers markets, CSA's, home gardens, etc. when it comes to in-season garden crops, but we think field crops are our neglected step-children. There are something like 382 million acres of crops grown in the US. Only 3.3 million of those acres are vegetables or 4.6 if you include Irish potatoes. We're always disappointed when customers come to us and suggest that they're going to fight the GMO tide by buying vegetables from us. If we're really going to make a difference in how the land in our communities is farmed -- and we think that's one very important way to look at things -- the other 99% (besides vegetables) is what really counts. (Our numbers, by the way, came from more than one source, none of which we kept track of, but we're assuming they're nonetheless accurate enough to make the point we're making here.) Field corn, soybeans, and wheat apparently make up 198 of the 382 acres of cropland in the US. Hay (59.9 mil) is right up there. (Land for hay is apparently counted with cropland, but grazing land isn't.) Cotton is about 4 times as significant as all vegetables combined in terms of acreage. Grain sorghum has a little over twice the acreage of all vegetables combined. So the point we're trying to make is that we think the local-organic food movement should be giving a lot more attention to field crops.
So to talk about answers, we see two kinds of solutions. One, obviously, is for the local-organic movement to take more responsibility for growing the field crops it consumes, for human consumption but especially for animal consumption (and then also non-food uses like with cotton.) We'll come back to that. The second kind of solution we see is finding ways to raise animals without depending (or depending so much) on field crops (on corn and wheat and soybeans and North Dakota peas and alfalfa pellets, etc.) for feeding our animals. It seems to us the easiest answer on that front and one which is available enough already to customers that want to seek it out is grass-fed beef.
On the other hand, if we wanted to go out and buy it, we wouldn't know of any North Carolina milk or cheese we could buy from comparably grass-fed cattle (or goats.) And so far as we know including organic (certified or otherwise) grain feeds wouldn't open up any more options. There may be an exception or two that we don't know about, but the rule seems to be that the small dairies making cheese are feeding conventional grain to their animals and the large, certified organic dairies producing liquid milk are depending substantially on organic grain (much of which, in addition to the hay, we'd guess isn't at all local) and then sending their milk out of state. So when it comes to local-organic (certified or otherwise) dairy, we feel like there's a lot of catching up to do just to get to where we're at with grass-fed beef. Replacing grain with grass does seem to us like the most realistic path to dairy food sovereignty in the face of GMO's, perhaps made more feasible by lower producing genetics, longer dry periods, more seasonal milking, and/or multiple species grazing. Whatever the technical solutions, we don't mean to suggest, though, that the problem is fundamentally technical. The fundamental reason for the absence of local, grass-fed dairy in North Carolina markets, we believe, is simply that farmers and consumers don't care enough to want to take on the inevitable expense and trouble.
From a food sovereignty perspective it appears to us that things only get worse when we consider pork, poultry, or eggs. At least pasture plays a significant part in the macro-nutrition equation of a lot of small-scale/unconventional (and even some conventional) dairy animals. There are plenty of producers that pasture poultry or pork for reasons of animal welfare, etc., but little if any of the pastured pork or poultry movement seems to be doing anything to redefine the macro feed equations. What we mean by that is that these producers are depending every bit as much, both in degree and quantity, on the same sorts of dry feed mixes as confinement producers. It would be theoretically possible for farmers or communities to grow their own grains and oilseeds (and possibly even press oil and generate oilseed meal) and peas/beans to produce substitutes for the standard feed mixes, but we think that would more than likely demand a scale of production incompatible with the amount of pork/poultry the farmer could find any way to sell, especially when most customers don't ever take any concern for where the feed comes from (so long as they see the happy image of an animal in a natural-looking setting, if they're even educated enough to realize that chickens and hogs are being fed any purchased feeds at all.) So the best hope we see would have to lend itself to a smaller scale of production, i.e. entry-level for a very marginal enterprise. We think that would most likely need to be some kind of low-input, low-production, extensive acreage system. We'd see relying heavily on extensive forage, possibly planted forages, but more likely forest floor kind of stuff (grubs, mast...) and maybe some crop gleaning. We think just a simple grain feed (like straight corn) that a farmer could conceivably grow himself could then suffice to fill the gaps and make the whole system come together. The chief challenge would be that a "pastured pork" producer could sell his pork or poultry so much cheaper -- we'd guess on the order of 1/2 to 1/3 the price -- if he just took advantage of the economies of scale that come with the large grain production systems. (Those economies of scale have, of course, nothing to do with ecological economy.) The main point here, though, is that accepting those dollar savings of the large-scale systems leaves us without any footing to resist the GMO tide.
No matter how much the kind of strategies we've been discussing can reduce our consumption of GMO field crops, we're still surely going to depend on field crops at least for supplementing our animals, and we're also going to want to consume field crops directly (i.e. human consumption), so there's still the hugely significant, terribly neglected question of actually growing local-organic (certified or not) field crops. Suggestions that we can "close the local food loop by feeding locally milled, organic grain" -- and such comments seem commonplace, as do the even weaker assertions that simply feeding any kind of feed to local farm animals offers a real alternative agriculture -- say to us that we as the local-organic movement haven't even looked at the huge hole in our "local food loop," let alone begun the huge task of closing it. ("Locally milled"? That's nice, but is that as deep as our local agriculture goes before we happily abandon responsibility to the global economy? Can't we, if we're really any kind of local food movement, at least aspire to have some community control of the actual agriculture, of soils and photosynthesis?)
There are, of course, some genuine alternative efforts being made in North Carolina toward local-organic grain, at least for human consumption. We're too far away to know much about the rice grown in Chatham County last year, but we read about it, and that's remarkable. We know there are slightly larger things happening with local-organic corn and wheat and soybeans (and not just a byproduct of global-organic.) There seems to be potential with malting barley, if efforts haven't begun in North Carolina already. We think the fight against GMO's demands that we particularly embrace efforts to grow heirloom varieties of these crops. And we think it demands that consumers learn how to use more of the crops that can be and are being grown locally with whatever the local processing limitations are.
One upside of the small scale we would say is necessitated by local-organic field crops is that large backyard growers should have it within their means to do a lot of what would otherwise have to be left to larger farms. A 50 foot square garden space could produce a bushel or two of wheat (60-120 pounds) for a family and be harvested, threshed, and winnowed by hand, ready to grind, in an afternoon. It's an encouraging sign that a second edition of Gene Logsdon's book, Small-Scale Grain Raising, just came out. We think it's quite conceivable, for example, to keep a few laying hens on a large backyard scale with just hand-harvested field corn, as much forage as possible, plus kitchen byproducts and whatever else can be locally scavenged for feed.
It may sound like the kind of idea that farmers like us would be all for, but even though we're altogether opposed to GMO's, we think it's pretty ambiguous whether a law like Prop 37 would even be a good thing. The thing that we find most troublesome about Prop 37 is that it effectively defines the fight against GMO's in terms that disregard most of the GMO crop acreage in the country. There are currently only 8 GMO crops being grown commercially, although they include a few of the most widely grown crops. Corn is the most planted crop in the US, and its leading use is for fuel ethanol. Its second leading use is animal feed. Soybeans are similar. Cotton falls even further outside the Prop 37 definitions (although cottonseed oil is used as a food ingredient.) Alfalfa is strictly an animal feed, so it falls entirely outside the Prop 37 definitions. The other four crops are relatively minor: sugar beets (granulated sugar, etc.), rapeseed (canola), summer squash (zucchini/yellow squash), and papaya. So our biggest concern is that Prop 37 gives GMO's a free ride for their most significant uses (particularly in terms of acreage): animal feed and non-food uses. Meanwhile we wonder what good the law might achieve. People that care about the GMO take-over of our farms can easily find out what ingredients (i.e. the 8 crops we just listed) are GMO. If they haven't even done that are they going to change their shopping habits when its on the label? And if folks really cared about where their food came from or what went into growing it, then they probably aren't buying fossil fuel- and chemical-intensive, corporate-industrial food from supermarkets, whether it's GMO yet or not. In other words, if they're already growing their own and buying from local farms that they know and trust, then the law can't help them any further.
So that forces the question on us: what then should those of us opposed to GMO's do? Here's something we wrote in answer to that question for another purpose:
Insofar as we're opposed to GM crops, we think we should all be trying hard to get away from the whole commodity crop system. Relying on the commodity crops that haven't been genetically modified yet is perhaps better than nothing, but it's a hopeless strategy for the long-term (even the "medium-term.") If we want to continue having non-GMO options, we think we need to take responsibility for starting to develop those markets and sources and growing methods/know-how, etc. now.
What's most important to us are the issues of what -- if we understand the term correctly -- people are calling food sovereignty. If farming communities in North Carolina can't control what they grow and how they grow it (and therefore also what they eat), then I think all the other kinds of problems (GMO's, chemical dependency, fossil fuel dependency, exploiting laborers, loss of farmland and soil erosion, etc.) are bound to follow, so we believe any real solution needs to start with wrestling control back from the global powers to which we've given control of our food supply.
Those of us that would voice opposition to GMO's have developed a pretty good alternative model through farmers markets, CSA's, home gardens, etc. when it comes to in-season garden crops, but we think field crops are our neglected step-children. There are something like 382 million acres of crops grown in the US. Only 3.3 million of those acres are vegetables or 4.6 if you include Irish potatoes. We're always disappointed when customers come to us and suggest that they're going to fight the GMO tide by buying vegetables from us. If we're really going to make a difference in how the land in our communities is farmed -- and we think that's one very important way to look at things -- the other 99% (besides vegetables) is what really counts. (Our numbers, by the way, came from more than one source, none of which we kept track of, but we're assuming they're nonetheless accurate enough to make the point we're making here.) Field corn, soybeans, and wheat apparently make up 198 of the 382 acres of cropland in the US. Hay (59.9 mil) is right up there. (Land for hay is apparently counted with cropland, but grazing land isn't.) Cotton is about 4 times as significant as all vegetables combined in terms of acreage. Grain sorghum has a little over twice the acreage of all vegetables combined. So the point we're trying to make is that we think the local-organic food movement should be giving a lot more attention to field crops.
So to talk about answers, we see two kinds of solutions. One, obviously, is for the local-organic movement to take more responsibility for growing the field crops it consumes, for human consumption but especially for animal consumption (and then also non-food uses like with cotton.) We'll come back to that. The second kind of solution we see is finding ways to raise animals without depending (or depending so much) on field crops (on corn and wheat and soybeans and North Dakota peas and alfalfa pellets, etc.) for feeding our animals. It seems to us the easiest answer on that front and one which is available enough already to customers that want to seek it out is grass-fed beef.
On the other hand, if we wanted to go out and buy it, we wouldn't know of any North Carolina milk or cheese we could buy from comparably grass-fed cattle (or goats.) And so far as we know including organic (certified or otherwise) grain feeds wouldn't open up any more options. There may be an exception or two that we don't know about, but the rule seems to be that the small dairies making cheese are feeding conventional grain to their animals and the large, certified organic dairies producing liquid milk are depending substantially on organic grain (much of which, in addition to the hay, we'd guess isn't at all local) and then sending their milk out of state. So when it comes to local-organic (certified or otherwise) dairy, we feel like there's a lot of catching up to do just to get to where we're at with grass-fed beef. Replacing grain with grass does seem to us like the most realistic path to dairy food sovereignty in the face of GMO's, perhaps made more feasible by lower producing genetics, longer dry periods, more seasonal milking, and/or multiple species grazing. Whatever the technical solutions, we don't mean to suggest, though, that the problem is fundamentally technical. The fundamental reason for the absence of local, grass-fed dairy in North Carolina markets, we believe, is simply that farmers and consumers don't care enough to want to take on the inevitable expense and trouble.
From a food sovereignty perspective it appears to us that things only get worse when we consider pork, poultry, or eggs. At least pasture plays a significant part in the macro-nutrition equation of a lot of small-scale/unconventional (and even some conventional) dairy animals. There are plenty of producers that pasture poultry or pork for reasons of animal welfare, etc., but little if any of the pastured pork or poultry movement seems to be doing anything to redefine the macro feed equations. What we mean by that is that these producers are depending every bit as much, both in degree and quantity, on the same sorts of dry feed mixes as confinement producers. It would be theoretically possible for farmers or communities to grow their own grains and oilseeds (and possibly even press oil and generate oilseed meal) and peas/beans to produce substitutes for the standard feed mixes, but we think that would more than likely demand a scale of production incompatible with the amount of pork/poultry the farmer could find any way to sell, especially when most customers don't ever take any concern for where the feed comes from (so long as they see the happy image of an animal in a natural-looking setting, if they're even educated enough to realize that chickens and hogs are being fed any purchased feeds at all.) So the best hope we see would have to lend itself to a smaller scale of production, i.e. entry-level for a very marginal enterprise. We think that would most likely need to be some kind of low-input, low-production, extensive acreage system. We'd see relying heavily on extensive forage, possibly planted forages, but more likely forest floor kind of stuff (grubs, mast...) and maybe some crop gleaning. We think just a simple grain feed (like straight corn) that a farmer could conceivably grow himself could then suffice to fill the gaps and make the whole system come together. The chief challenge would be that a "pastured pork" producer could sell his pork or poultry so much cheaper -- we'd guess on the order of 1/2 to 1/3 the price -- if he just took advantage of the economies of scale that come with the large grain production systems. (Those economies of scale have, of course, nothing to do with ecological economy.) The main point here, though, is that accepting those dollar savings of the large-scale systems leaves us without any footing to resist the GMO tide.
No matter how much the kind of strategies we've been discussing can reduce our consumption of GMO field crops, we're still surely going to depend on field crops at least for supplementing our animals, and we're also going to want to consume field crops directly (i.e. human consumption), so there's still the hugely significant, terribly neglected question of actually growing local-organic (certified or not) field crops. Suggestions that we can "close the local food loop by feeding locally milled, organic grain" -- and such comments seem commonplace, as do the even weaker assertions that simply feeding any kind of feed to local farm animals offers a real alternative agriculture -- say to us that we as the local-organic movement haven't even looked at the huge hole in our "local food loop," let alone begun the huge task of closing it. ("Locally milled"? That's nice, but is that as deep as our local agriculture goes before we happily abandon responsibility to the global economy? Can't we, if we're really any kind of local food movement, at least aspire to have some community control of the actual agriculture, of soils and photosynthesis?)
There are, of course, some genuine alternative efforts being made in North Carolina toward local-organic grain, at least for human consumption. We're too far away to know much about the rice grown in Chatham County last year, but we read about it, and that's remarkable. We know there are slightly larger things happening with local-organic corn and wheat and soybeans (and not just a byproduct of global-organic.) There seems to be potential with malting barley, if efforts haven't begun in North Carolina already. We think the fight against GMO's demands that we particularly embrace efforts to grow heirloom varieties of these crops. And we think it demands that consumers learn how to use more of the crops that can be and are being grown locally with whatever the local processing limitations are.
One upside of the small scale we would say is necessitated by local-organic field crops is that large backyard growers should have it within their means to do a lot of what would otherwise have to be left to larger farms. A 50 foot square garden space could produce a bushel or two of wheat (60-120 pounds) for a family and be harvested, threshed, and winnowed by hand, ready to grind, in an afternoon. It's an encouraging sign that a second edition of Gene Logsdon's book, Small-Scale Grain Raising, just came out. We think it's quite conceivable, for example, to keep a few laying hens on a large backyard scale with just hand-harvested field corn, as much forage as possible, plus kitchen byproducts and whatever else can be locally scavenged for feed.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
2012 Tomato Taste Test Results
In the large tomato taste test the #1 rankings went to Aker's West Virginia, Mr. Stripey, Amish paste, and San Marzano redorta. Those last two are our two paste types, but it's not the first time they've bested the slicing types for straight, fresh flavor. Second and third place rankings this year also went to German Johnson, Illini star (our earliest red tomato), and Cherokee purple. All five samplers ranked the Aker's West Virginia in the top three this year. Amish paste was ranked in the top three by four samplers and was just barely edged out with the fifth.
In the small tomato taste test the #1 rankings went to our orange cherry, our pink cherry, and a small red salad/plum tomato bred from our pink cherry (which took three of the five #1 rankings.) Second and third place rankings also went to the black cherry, and Thai pink (which won the most #1 votes in our overall test last year).
The tomatoes are definitely slowing down a bunch now, but you might still find another chance to try our taste test winners this year, and we certainly plan to grow all the winners again next year. We'd especially encourage you to try some of the different colors and odd shapes (like the San Marzano redorta, which we grow more of than any other variety because its nearly solid flesh which makes it our favorite for salsa and sauce and canning and about any cooked use, as well as a fresh eating tomato as the blind taste tests show) and odd sizes (like the two-bite-sized Thai pink and sweet red plum.)
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