Earth Days, the new film that opens this weekend from acclaimed documentarian Robert Stone, is being promoted as a history of the environmental movement in the United States. But it's more of a road trip, really: the road less travelled. The road not taken. The road to hell, blazed by grassroot good intentions that got asphalted and AstroTurfed.
Eating Liberally Food For Thought
by Kerry Trueman Originally published on AlterNet; Painting by James Howard Kunstler
I grew up in Woodland Hills, Calif., a nominally pastoral, petrocentric Los Angeles suburb, so peak oil prognosticator James Howard Kunstler's dim view of our car-crazed culture really resonates with me.
Kunstler's relentless skewering of suburbia, and his penchant for apocalyptic predictions have landed him a reputation as a cranky Cassandra. But as Ben McGrath observed while strolling around Saratoga Springs with Kunstler for a recent New Yorker piece, "Far from the image of the stereotypical Chicken Little, he was more like an amiable town crier whom the citizenry regarded fondly, if a bit skeptically."
So, when a friend and I found ourselves headed to Kunstler's neck of the woods for a conference recently, we arranged to have dinner with Saratoga Springs' resident soothsayer. Contrary to his contrarian reputation, Kunstler proved to be an affable, upbeat guy.
Seed money for start-ups may be evaporating faster than California's dwindling reservoirs, but this rocky economy's proving to be fertile ground for the seed industry. Cash-strapped consumers, scared by the specter of an empty fridge, are investing in the ultimate low-tech, high-yield start-up: the kitchen garden. The National Gardening Association estimates that some 43 million Americans are gearing up to grow at least some of their own food this spring.
And no wonder. As Roger Doiron, founder of Maine-based Kitchen Gardeners International, has documented, a few dozen seed packets costing $130 can yield more than two thousand dollars worth of produce over the course of the growing season. "We have a fabulous opportunity," C.R. Lawn, the founder of another Maine mainstay, Fedco Seeds, told an audience at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture's Farming For The Future conference last month. "The challenge is on us to come through." Lawn, an endearingly shaggy character who looks a bit like a pale Papa Smurf, rocked gently from side to side as he spoke of the challenges that his company faced following the acquisition of Fedco's largest seed supplier, Seminis, by monolithic Monsanto back in 2005.
Eating Liberally Food For Thought
by Kerry Trueman (This special St. Patrick's entry cross-posted at The Green Fork)
If toasting the Emerald Isle with a pint of green beer is not your style, why not celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a green corned beef and cabbage? That's green as in photosynthesis; in other words, creating a plant-based version of a classic meat-centric dish, aka "veggie hacking."
With a bit of googling, I found a recipe from chef Brian McCarthy, author of The Vegan Family Cookbook, for seitan corned beef.
Michelle Obama made headlines last week by using those famously toned arms of hers to sling some mushroom risotto, steamed broccoli and fruit salad at Miriam's Kitchen, a D.C.non-profit that serves homemade meals to 4,000 homeless people a year made with fresh local and organic foods instead of processed or canned foods, as the New York Times reported.
Obama told the press who gathered to watch the First Lady ladle:
I want to urge people who are listening that if you have an opportunity, to come by -- not just this soup kitchen but any soup kitchen in your community. And helping is an easy thing to do. Collect some fruits and vegetables. Bring by some good healthy food. You know, we want to make sure that our guests here and across this country are eating nutritious items. Today we had fresh risotto with mushrooms. We had broccoli. We had fresh baked muffins with carrots in it.
And my understanding is that this facility is able to provide that kind of meal for about $1.50. And that's an incredible thing to remember: that we can provide this kind of healthy food for communities across this country, and we can do it by each of us lending a hand. (hat tip: Obama Foodorama)
Women farmers are leading the way in the sustainable ag revolution, as the CS Monitor noted last week. I first wrote about this movement back in 2005, and met one of its leaders when we traveled to Iowa in 2007: Denise O'Brien (pictured right, with me), founder of the Women, Food & Agriculture Network. Denise is just back from the Midwest Organic Farming Conference, where the mother of all treehuggers, Vandana Shiva, was one of the keynote speakers. We're pleased to share this dispatch from Eating Liberally's favorite farminist:
You're probably busy worrying about things like insolvency and unemployment, and rightly so; our banks are taking on water faster than we can bail them out, while the job market--and our waterways--are evaporating as quickly as that pool of color-coded conservatives the GOP's called up to counter the Obama juggernaut.
My style is more Birkenstock than Birkin bag, so Fashion Week doesn't do much for me. You knowthe Shopocalypse has arrived when designers go dumpster diving for shoulder pads in the Dynasty/Dallas dustbin. Padded assets in this Grapes of Graft depression? Dust Bowl duds, à la the Waltons, would be more fitting for the hard times ahead.
But the John Patrick Organic fashion show managed to bypass both eighties excess and seventies scarcity and find fertile ground in "Green Acres," the sixties spoof starring Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor as neophyte homesteaders. I knew this wouldn't be a run-of-the-mill runway show because (a) it featured a "young farmer bake sale," and (b) the invite came from Greenhorns director Severine Von Tscharner Fleming.
President Obama's got an awful lot on his plate. Sadly, it's all lousy leftovers from the previous administration: rotten bailouts, curdled wars, moldy policies. Is there any room for grass-fed, grassroots-led reform?
The eat-better-brigade's hoping our new Commander in Chief will be "the prize delivery guy...delivering fresh, steaming change in 30 minutes or less" as Raj Patel put it in a speech last Friday at the Farming For The Future conference in Pennsylvania. Patel bemoaned the monocrop monarchy that rules from our school cafeterias to our diners and dining rooms. He ended with the rousing declaration that we are "not consumers of democracy, we are its proprietors."
Who's minding the store, though? Will Obama even attempt to emancipate eaters from the military industrial complex cabal that helped Big Ag give small farms the boot? Our government's policies have played a scandalously large role in exiling wholesome, unprocessed, uncontaminated foods to the fringes of our culture.
Our chronically overworked and underfunded FDA hasn't got the means--or the inclination--to protect consumers from the monstrous machinations of that tri-headed hydra, Big Ag/Big Food/Big Pharma. As the New York Times recently reported, the FDA routinely ignores its own rules regarding the "financial conflicts of doctors who conduct clinical trials of drugs and medical devices in human subjects," because "collecting and checking this information before the trials was not worth the effort for either the companies or the agency."
Kat: It's like deja "ew" all over again. As the salmonella-tainted peanut butter outbreak continues to spread (no pun intended), more than 125 products have been recalled, and the list grows longer everyday, including everything from dog biscuits to ice cream to energy bars. Hundreds of people have been sickened and at least six people are suspected to have died from this latest lapse in our fractured food chain.
(We're pleased as punch that Elanor Starmer, the Ethicurean's resident agriculture policy expert, found time amid all the holiday festivities to weigh in on whether Wal-Mart's been naughty or nice. Thanks, Elanor, and happy sledding!)
Kat: I used to shop at Wal-Mart, until I figured out that low prices based on lousy labor practices and shoddy made-in-China schlock are not such a bargain. But now that Wal-Mart--America's largest food retailer--has jumped on the organic bandwagon, it's making organic products available to folks who lack the access or means to shop at farmers' markets or, say, Whole Foods. Wal-Mart has also made a great show of going green, and just shelled out more than $352 million in what may be the "largest settlement ever for lawsuits over wage violations."
Obama's selection of GMO-lovin', bio-fuelish, feedlot-friendly Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture drew a resounding "Bleech!" from the blogosphere this week. Vilsack has a long history of Agribiz alliances that's giving progressive foodies a bad case of heartland heartburn.
Eating Liberally Food For Thought
by Kerry Trueman This week, a Q & A with our favorite Iowa farminist, sustainable agriculture advocate Denise O'Brien (pictured right, with me), who sets down her spade to take up our questions about all things ag, including the implications of Obama's remaining cabinet appointments:
KAT: Progressive foodies have been vigorously debating the "who should be Obama's Secretary of Agriculture?" question for several months now. There's been a movement to draft Michael Pollan, who has no interest in the job, and a letter to President-elect Obama, signed by nearly ninety luminaries in the good food movement galaxy, imploring him to buck the Big Ag/biotech brigade in favor of some more sustainably-minded candidates. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof weighed in on the subject this week with a terrific column explaining why this appointment is so critical.
This is all well and good, but we want to know what you think. Big Ag had a big fit back in 2006 when you ran for Iowa's Secretary of Ag and nearly beat your Republican opponent, a conventional commodity crop farmer. You went on to advise John Edwards about food and ag policy. What are you hoping for from this new administration?
Our economy may be collapsing, but as the holidays approach we still feel compelled to exchange gifts with friends and family. Some folks enjoy the quest for the perfect gift, but for those of us who haven't got a lot of time, money, or imagination, schlepping around town hunting down thoughtful presents for our loved ones can be an angst-ridden errand.
The pressure to please collides with our limited resources, and the ensuing wreckage litters living rooms all over America on Christmas morning with mounds of stuff we have no use for. Oh, sure, there are the happy exceptions--the book you've been dying to read, the cordless drill that you actually needed--but all too often we find ourselves sincerely saying "oh, you shouldn't have".
So what happens to the sweater you don't really like, or the cheesy fondue set you'll never use? Sometimes you give it away, but other times you let it stick around and clutter up your life, because it's a symbol of someone's affection for you.
And then you die, and somebody has to go through all the crap you accumulated over your lifetime. For me, it was my mother's things; she died unexpectedly a few years back and my father delegated the depressing task of sorting out all her clothes and bric-a-brac to me, her only daughter.
Some of my fellow Kossacks got their knickers in a twist the other day over the news that David Gregory's set to become the new host of NBC's Meet The Press. Why the outrage? Well for one thing, they can never forgive Gregory for dancing with the devil, aka "MC" Rove. Plus, as one unkind Kossack noted, "I think he looks like he's from Planet Of The Apes" (admittedly, the photos offered as evidence made a compelling case).
I've tried to put myself in the shoes of the Long Island lemmings who stomped the life out of Jdimytai "Jimbo" Damour in their rampage to ring up a bargain, but I just can't seem to fit into their frenzied footwear. Black Friday--this travesty of a tradition of dashing out the door to score a discounted tv or dvd player before you've even begun to digest your Thanksgiving dinner--is a sign of how badly we need to heed the Reverend Billy and seek salvation at the Church of Stop Shopping.
Looks like plucky Sarah Palin is expanding her fan club from evangelicals to vegangelicals. Seriously, how could any animal rights activist not love the sight of Palin blathering to the press while a worker in blood-spattered overalls blithely slaughters turkeys a few feet away?
...we have ended up in the absurd situation today that most of us, as consumers, know very little about what we eat; and, sensing a "dark side" to our food production, many of us don't even want to know.
Even our most progressive presidents can be addled by Agribiz propaganda. President-elect Obama--thanks to his corn-fed constituents, we presume--is regrettably fond of ethanol, unlike his rival, John McCain. And McCain's not the only Republican who slams the grain-for-gas scam. Arch conservative P.J. O'Rourke airs his aggravation with industrial ag in the current Weekly Standard:
