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Food and Farm Bill Notes

By Marc

Two important Food and Farm Bill items related to local eating in this week's blogs and news:

First, at Chews Wise, Samuel Fromartz (author of Organic, Inc., a critical look at the growth of organic agriculture) explains how the Food and Farm Bill can help organic farming (or, in the case of crop insurance, stop penalizing organic farmers), and gives suggestions on how you can help.  One way is by signing the Environmental Working Group's petition to Congress asking for more support for organic farming.  EWG has been near the forefront of the organic food movement for years and their farm subsidy database is shining lots of light on who really receives farm subsidies.  They want to submit the petition on July 15.

Second, Michele Kayal, writing for the Associated Press (via The Intelligencer & Wheeling News-Record), summarized how the Food and Farm Bill could help strengthen local food networks.  A summary of her article after the jump.

Farmers' Market Largess

by Jen Maiser

The lovely blogger who posts at "The Public, the Private and Everything in Between" has a post describing her attempts to eat locally this summer.  I enjoyed her cogent insights about several aspects of eating locally. 

An excerpt:

It felt good, finally, to do something I’d been meaning to do for such a long time, and know for at least one day out of my wasteful grownup life I helped the environment (buying local obviously means signicantly less gas was wasted delivering your food, plus the produce isn’t packaged or dumped into plastic bags) while at the same time buying healthy, beautiful food for S. and me.

Read her post here.

Honey, Honey

One of my favorite local ingredients to cook with is honey. It has great versatility for everything from salad dressing to ice cream, vegetable dishes to just plain on bread. Unlike most sweeteners, honey contains antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and amino acids. Honey is known to have antimicrobial properties and some people believe that consumption of local honey can help with allergies.

Along with its good properties, honey can also contain dormant botulism bacteria endospores, which can be hazardous if fed to an infant. The endospores can become active in an infant’s immature intestinal tract and lead to illness. For this reason, honey should not be fed to infants.

It's Food and Farm Bill Time

By Marc

Almost a year ago I posted Legislating Local Foods, an introduction to the Food and Farm Bill (also called the "Farm Bill," a highly flawed nickname). The Food and Farm Bill can have a positive impact on local eating in many ways---through programs that encourage purchases of local foods by schools, support for fruit and vegetable growers, funds to publicize Farmers Markets, to name a few.

Congress is writing the 2007 Food and Farm Bill during the summer, with a goal of a final vote before October. Subcommittees of the House Agriculture Committee are almost finished with their respective parts of the bill. After subcommittees finish their work, the full Agriculture Committee will combine them into the complete package, make amendments and deletions, and send it to the full House for debate, amendment and a vote.  No one is quite sure what will happen when it reaches "the floor."  Will House Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) allow amendments from non-members of the Ag Committee?  Or will she call for a vote immediately?  Dan Owens, at the Blog for Rural America has some thoughts on that question.

The Senate is a few weeks away from their committee sessions on the Food and Farm bill.
 

Deborah Madison on Culinate: Local and Organic

by Jen Maiser

Culinate has published a compelling article by Deborah Madison in which she outlines her choice of local and organic when possible.  I think that you'll find most of the authors on this board agree that, when possible it's best to choose local and organic.  And I personally, don't love to see the two pitted against each other as it's some sort of an either/or contest.  All of this is nicely summarized in Ms. Madison's piece.  I hope you'll check it out.

An excerpt:

I am not a fan of the insipid-tasting organic produce that fills the aisles of supermarkets. The real question is not so much organics versus local as much as it is Big Organics from far away versus the local organic food from your farmers’ market or CSA. That’s the real choice, and I’ll choose my local organic offerings every time. Why? They taste better, they’re fresher, they didn’t travel 1,500 miles (or more), and the plant varieties are more interesting.

A Local Confession

by Expat Chef

I have to confess, I bought non-local peaches. I even bought them at the farmers market from a grower who usually sells peaches he grows. We lost 95 percent of the peach crop this year. He’s struggling. He and a few others carpool to Texas to buy fruit to sell here in order to stay in business.

So, a quandary exists. We have to have fruit in a balanced diet for our child. Do I buy fruit from the store where larger shipments probably use less fuel per fruit? Or, do I buy the same non-local fruit from my local farmers to keep them in business until next year’s harvest? Where’s the “local rulebook?” Has a flag been thrown?

I don’t know. But the farmer sure looked grateful when I bought the peaches and told him I would keep checking for his blueberries that are late this year.

my personal penny-wise thoughts

by Jen Maiser

Can a single woman in San Francisco eat local foods on a budget of $68 a week?

Yes and no.  Yes, if she's willing to eat every meal at home and forgo a social life that revolves around eating out.

During my Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge week, I spent $153.10.  That included a couple of splurge meals -- most notably $42 at Hog Island Oyster Company one night.  Given my target budget, to say that I was way over is an understatement.

While I was committed to the idea of the challenge and kept scrupulous notes during the week on the amount I spent, when a close friend who I hadn't seen for months was in town for about an hour one night, I had a bit of a dilemma: do I opt not to see her?  Go somewhere less expensive that kept me in my budget but threw ethical eating out the window?  Or go to a restaurant that, if pricey, made me feel good about where my money was going, and was a nice place to take an out-of-towner to boot?

When life gives you milk . . . .

by Sara Zoe

We are having a too much milk problem. A new organic grass-fed Jersey cow dairy opened up nearby, selling raw milk from the farm. In New Hampshire, raw milk can only be sold directly from the farm, giving the farmers a more limited avenue to success. And I very much want them to succeed. So we joined with some other friends, and we take turns making a weekly trip to the farm (about 30 minutes drive, although only about 15 miles as the crow flies) buying milk for the group.

The milk is delicious. But I just don’t go through half a gallon of milk every week in my two-person family, and that is the minimum quantity sold.