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Low cost labor and untaxed fuel cause migrations of frozen fish

By Marc

Some of the world's sea creatures make incredible migrations to feed or mate.  Tuna, for example, swim back and forth across the Atlantic or Pacific.  In the globalized economy, some fish go on long migrations even after they have been frozen.

The new book "Bottomfeeder," by Taras Grescoe provides a fascinating look at the state of the world's oceans (I reviewed the book over at The Ethicurean). The book is a compelling combination of nature, history, politics, and culinary arts.  If you want to understand more about why certain fish are rated "best," "good," or "avoid" on lists like the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list, "Bottomfeeder" is a must read.

Near the end of the book, Grescoe visits a fish processing facility in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.  Some of the fish that go through the plant have been on long migrations before arriving and some fish continue their migration after processing.

The evolving farmers market

By Marc

In last Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Russ Parsons has an interesting story about a recent evolution at the Santa Monica Farmers' Market.  The Wednesday market has long been a place for chefs to meet, to pick up the best produce in Los Angeles, and to be inspired by the seasons.  Lately, though, chefs have seen produce trucked away by big companies to be shipped to far away restaurants.  Parson writes:

Though no hard figures are kept, some growers say that as much as half of what they sell at the market is bought by produce companies.

As a result, what had long been a kind of informal meeting place for many of Southern California's foodies and chefs is no longer quite so clubby. What chefs once regarded as a combination of culinary laboratory and kaffeeklatsch -- a place to find new ingredients and ideas and swap gossip, sometimes seemingly in equal proportions -- is more and more a place for big business.

"It used to be that everyone thought how great it was to be out there picking things for ourselves; it was so exciting," said Matt Molina of the white-hot Mozza restaurants, co-owned by star chefs Mario Batali and Nancy Silverton. "Then all of a sudden it began to become a business, a big-money business. Now farmers are sometimes catering to the big people, so local restaurants are sometimes getting left behind.

The chefs could get the same produce if they called in advance, but some think that a Tuesday afternoon phone call might kill a Wednesday morning idea that could lead to a magnificent new dish for the restaurant.  The chefs say that coming across a new ingredient or combination of ingredients can spark unexpected preparations.

For farmers, this evolution is a huge benefit:  having a big produce company place an advance order means a guaranteed sale, as opposed to the perpetual gamble of bringing highly perishable vegetables to a market where they might not catch anyone's attention and be turned into compost or animal feed back on the farm.

It seems counterintuitive for big produce companies to be buying at the farmers market, but I only see it a convenient place for the pick up, certainly easier than having the farmer struggle through the legendary L.A. traffic to a warehouse across the city.

Parsons writes that the farmers market is trying to mediate the conflict between the chefs and wholesalers.  I hope they can figure something out because a lot of culinary innovation has occurred at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, innovation that will slow if the chefs stay away from the market.

Marc lives in Berkeley, California.  He writes Mental Masala (an enticing blend of food, history, travel, and nature) and contributes to The Ethicurean.

Photo of eggplant from Jen Maiser's flickr collection, subject to a Creative Commons License.

Bread meets conceptual art

I live in an area with some extraordinary bread: complex naturally-leavened creations from Acme or Semifreddi's, surprisingly light 100 percent whole wheat from Vital Vittles and many other great offerings. And yet I still bake most of my own bread (even sourdough on occasion). 

The transformation of the uninteresting ingredients of flour and water into something that is alive and aromatic is a magical experience for me.  Bread baking is a physical act, an observational act, an exercise in patience, and eventually a wonderful sensory experience.

Bread presents a locality problem for Northern Californians, as not much wheat is grown in California. There are a few sources of wheat, to be sure, like Full Belly Farm in Yolo County.  And bread doesn't have to be one-hundred percent wheat -- loaves can loaded with goodies like nuts, seeds, grains and fruits.

So for the past year, I've been experimenting with what I call the "local loaf," a loaf of bread made using many ingredients available at the Berkeley Farmers Market or from local sources:  whole wheat flour from Full Belly Farm in Yolo County, pecans from Sonoma County, honey from Napa County, milk from Straus Family Creamery in Marin County and brown rice from Massa Organics in Butte County (the locations are mapped after the jump).  In the end, around sixty percent of the raw ingredients (by weight excluding water) were from local sources.   

As I worked on this project over many months, I thought about conceptual art.  In conceptual art, the concept behind the work takes precedence over the aesthetics of the piece.  Tom Marioni's Walking and Drawing a Line as Far as I Can Reach, for example, are explorations of human activity -- the actions of walking and reaching, respectively.   If I wanted to stretch some words a bit, I could almost call the project of making bread from local ingredients "conceptual baking."  That is, the concept of using local ingredients took precedence over flavor and texture (but not too much precedence -- the bread is quite tasty).

After the jump, I present my recipe for this bread and a map showing the source of the local ingredients.

The World Trade Organization, U.S. farm subsidies and local food

By Marc

Here's something unexpected:  the World Trade Organization (WTO) -- one of the most powerful forces for globalization and international homogenization -- might actually help the local foods movement in the United States. 

A little while ago I wrote about how planting restrictions in certain farm subsidy programs.  These restrictions impede the creation of a local food system by requiring farmers to permanently withdraw from the program if they grow fruits and vegetables on the program land.  Clearly, no one should receive corn, soy or cotton subsidy payments for land that is used to grow fruits and vegetables, but I think it makes no sense to permanently penalize farmers for trying to grow crops that people who live nearby might want to purchase.

It turns out that the WTO might have a problem with those planting restrictions. It is another example of the messiness that exists at the intersection of international relations and domestic politics.

A recent FarmPolicy.com newsletter explained the WTO's concerns and the implications for U.S. farm policy in great detail.  In less detail, the WTO agreements strive to eliminate all trade-distorting subsidy programs (subsidies that give certain producers an advantage over others), thus allowing something resembling "free trade."  In WTO documents, farm subsidies are classified into three "boxes" according to their trade distorting effects  "Blue box" payments are the most trade distorting and are essentially forbidden by the trade agreements; "amber box" payments are marginally distorted and are subject to a limit;  "green box" payments do not distort trade and therefore have no limits. 

Local food in Kansas

By Marc

Via the Ethicurean digest, an article in the Parsons Sun about how farm subsidies are affecting rural life in Kansas ends with snapshot of the local food situation:

Paul Johnson, Lawrence, an organic farmer and lobbyist with the Kansas Catholic Conference, said subsidies do little for either rural populations or small farms.

He notes that Kansas consumers spend about $525 million a year on fruits and vegetables, yet only about $15 million worth of those crops is grown here.

It would take only 150,000 acres to grow enough fruits and vegetables to satisfy consumer demand in Kansas, according to studies done by Kansas State University in the Kansas River valley.

Johnson, a market gardener in the summer, recognizes that not all of the state would be suitable for fruits or vegetables. But he said Kansas is so focused on big agriculture that it misses the larger picture.

"I guess it's sexier or more handy to get into a $250,000 combine and ride the prairie," he said.

How does 150,000 acres compare with the amount of farmland in Kansas?  It's basically nothing:  Kansas has 10.3 million acres planted in wheat (according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service).

Marc lives in Berkeley, California.  He writes Mental Masala (an enticing blend of food, history, travel, and nature) and contributes to Ethicurean.

Image credit: Photo of the wheat harvest in the Palouse (Washington, Oregon, Idaho) from the USDA ARS Image Gallery.

Preserving a peck of pears with panache

By Marc

I was fortunate to receive a gift of twelve pounds of a pears from Cookie Crumb and Cranky a few weeks ago (which was just a small fraction of their trees' amazing output this year, as noted here).  Unlike some backyard fruit trees (like my plum trees), the fruit was actually delicious on its own, and I suppose I could have eaten a few each day until they were gone.  But with the farmers market full of summer fruit, it would be foolish to binge on pears for a week.  So, of course, I turned much of the gift into preserves.

[The beautiful photo to the right was taken by Jen Maiser, not me]

San Francisco restaurants go local

By Marc

In this week's Tablehopper newsletter, I learned about a new effort to recognize local foods in San Francisco:  the restaurants that serve it, the groceries that sell it, the farms that grow it, and the artisans that use it in their creations.  Called Eat Local San Francisco, the group's first big event is an "Eat Local Week" from September 23 to 29.  During this week, member restaurants will create daily specials that rely on the locally-grown ingredients.  As of today, nine restaurants are participating.  A slow start, to be sure, but the 23rd is still ten days away, so others may join in before Eat Local Week begins. 

The founders of Eat Local SF include such commercial interests as the San Francisco Council of District Merchants, San Francisco Small Business Commission and Open Table (an on-line reservation system), so it seems that eating local has become a marketing hook.  That's fine with me, as supporting locally-owned business is one of the main reasons to eat local. 

I hope the Eat Local SF efforts encourage restaurants and stores to use more local ingredients and to tell consumers how they use them.  Some SF restaurants have been doing this for a while.  The Slanted Door, for example, lists farm names on their menu.  The current on-line dinner menu, for example, mentions Prather Ranch beef, Allstar Organics summer squash, Star Route Farm baby spinach, Dirty Girl Farm haricots verts, and Catalan Farm sweet corn, among others.  That's useful if you have heard of the farms, but not useful if you haven't.  It would be far more informative if restaurants made maps showing where their suppliers are based, like the Highwayman pub in Lancashire, UK. 

Marc lives in Berkeley, California.  He writes Mental Masala (an enticing blend of food, history, travel, and nature) and contributes to Ethicurean.

Federal rules stymie local food efforts in Iowa

By Marc

"About 32,000 acres could supply Iowans with five servings a day of fruits and vegetables for three months out of the year, according to Iowa State University economists. Iowa farmers will harvest nearly 14 million acres of corn in 2007."  That's the sidebar message in a Des Moines Register article brought to my attention by the invaluable FarmPolicy.com newsletter.

Iowa farmer Gary Boysen grows sweet corn, peppers, tomatoes, cantaloupes and other produce on 65 acres near Harlan.  He sells his produce at nearby supermarkets and Wal-Mart.  And he would like to be growing more fruit and vegetables for Iowans.  However, a big obstacle is standing in his way:  federal agricultural rules.

If farmers want to plant fruit and vegetable crops on land enrolled in USDA subsidy programs, they must permanently give up the possibility of receiving benefits. Not just for the period when they are growing non-program crops.  Permanently. 

Local plum jam

(Editor note:  This September, the Eat Local Challenge blog will be hosting an international, month-long eat local challenge in association with the Locavores.  This particular challenge will have a special focus of preserving, canning, and putting food up for the winter.  Stay tuned to this site in the next few days for more information. Meanwhile, this first post from Marc discusses making plum jam at home.)

By Marc

The grounds around my apartment have two plum trees that become heavy with fruit in the mid-summer.  The first few years I lived here, I didn't do anything with them except perhaps eat a few, only to rediscover that they are almost all pit and skin.  But last year my upstairs neighbor taught me how to make plum jam, so this summer I was sure to spend part of each weekend on a ladder harvesting as many plums as I could, even creating a strange contraption called "the depluminator" to pick fruit growing on high boughs beyond my reach.

Jam or jelly can be a fantastic way to preserve the bounty of local summer fruit.  A significant non-local component, however, is often required in the form of large quantities of sugar.  Much of the sugar sold here comes from the tropics, often produced by ill-treated workers on ill-treated lands.  Sugar beets are another source of white sugar, with California produces only about 6 percent of the U.S. crop (most comes from Minnesota and North Dakota). (An episode of the Deconstructing Dinner radio program goes into great detail about sugar, stevia and honey). 

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.

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.
 

Reducing Kitchen Waste by Eating Chard Stems

By Marc

Chard -- red, white, or yellow -- is one of my favorite leafy greens.  The flavor is mild, it is available all year at the Farmers' Markets in the Bay Area, and it is a perfect side dish for a wide variety of main courses.  I typically cook it with a bit of garlic, but it also works in a tortilla casserole, or a filling for pastry (the one in the May/June 1998 Saveur magazine is especially delicious). 

But I never eat the stems, and this waste of vegetable matter always bothered me.  So I recently started a project to sell myself on eating the chard stems, otherwise known as "stem sell research."   

Pickling in Winter

By Marc

Where citrus grows, winter can be a time to preserve the bounty by making pickles and preserves.  In each of the last few years, I have spent a day or two making Indian lemon pickles:  pieces of lemon (peel and all) bathed in a spicy, salty, oily sauce.   

So far I have made two different pickles using the lemons from my backyard tree.  These pickles are not completely local because the salt, spices and oil are produced in some location that is outside my 100-mile circle. To estimate their local percentage, I weighed each ingredient and found that about 75% of the weight was local (lemons) with the remaining 25% being non-local (salt, oil and spices) . 

Drink Locally - West Coast Sake

By Marc

Saké -- an alcoholic drink that originated in Japan -- has had a rather bad reputation in North America for many decades.  In recent years, however, the drink has become much more popular because of a new appreciation of Japanese food and the availability of higher quality imported saké.  Consumers are starting to realize how delicious a carefully crafted saké can be, or how it can serve as the base of tasty cocktails.   

Although most of the world's saké is produced in Japan (home to almost 2,000 breweries), the western U.S. has breweries in Sacramento, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Forest Grove (Oregon).  The rice for the breweries is grown in the Sacramento Valley, an agricultural region to the north of Sacramento.  And thus, the phrase "local saké" is a relative one:  for most of North America, "local saké" means that it came across the continent instead of across the planet.  But since Japanese saké probably enters North America on the West Coast, Japanese saké will be transported roughly the same number of miles within the U.S. as a California or Oregon saké.  The avoided leg of the journey will be the dirtiest one:  a month in a huge container ship with an dirty, old engine that burns one of the most polluting fuels around ("bunker fuel," a thick substance with hundreds of times more sulfur than diesel fuel used in trucks), concentrating its pollution on a just a few (generally low income) communities around the port.

On Growing Vegetables as Ornamentals

By Marc

Although I have been growing herbs for years, the early Eat Local Challenge excitement of the Spring inspired me to plant numerous vegetables in my backyard and on my patio.  One of my purchases was a scarlet runner bean plant.   Its small size---a height of 4 inches and just a few leaves---and my inexperience with vegetable gardening led me to I put it into a container with a volume of roughly 4 gallons.  In the next few weeks, the plant tried to tell me I had made a mistake:  it grew at a shocking rate, with the runner vine seemingly climbing a foot per day.  But I didn't listen. 

Putting Local Eating into Federal Legislation

By Marc

The current food system, with its ubiquitous corn products, feedlots, and multi-thousand mile transportation networks, did not "just happen" through the wonders of the free market.  It has been shaped by government agriculture, transportation and trade programs, like the interstate highway system, crop subsidies, water projects, federally-funded export programs, health regulations, and so forth.  And since policy was important in creating the current system, policy can influence its evolution to something more sustainable.   

Congress and the Executive Branch are always tinkering with agricultural programs, as recently documented by the Washington Post in an ongoing series.  For example, if a House member needs to bring home some pork to help his bid for the Senate, some customs duties can be diverted to provide checks for ranchers in his district.  Or if a powerful Senator wants to help out the catfish industry in his state, a letter to the Agriculture Secretary can secure a rule change.

My Eat Local Month

By Marc

During the month of May, I challenged myself to cook only ingredients from within a 100-mile circle around Berkeley, California.  It was a learning---and sometimes yearning---experience for me to limit my ingredients so much (in one of the most agriculturally diverse areas in the nation, to be sure).  This post is my attempt at a summary of my experience.

I had many conflicting thoughts during the challenge (for example:  the sugar snap peas are so delicious; there's nothing to snack on;  sugar glazed local pecans are amazing; some tofu would be ideal in this stir fry, but it's way too far outsider the circle;  these local eggs make remarkable frittatas), so as I try to sum up my month of Eating Local, I keep thinking of the beginning of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities.  You know how it goes: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,..." and so on. It seems ripe for adaptation into a description of my month of cooking and eating local, but I won't subject you to that potential literary disaster (feel free to give it a try in the comments...here is the full text of the novel).

An Hourglass of Pollution: The Uneven Burdens of Trade

By Marc

One of the goals of the Eat Local Challenge is to raise questions about what we eat. Who produced the food?  What methods did they use?  Where does it come from?  How did it get here?  And what sorts of envirionmental impacts are incurred along the way?  Answering these last two questions requires a closer look at the international goods distribution system, something that is so diffuse outside of the major port regions that it usually fades into the background. 

The international goods distribution system is a complex multi-modal network (roads, shipping lines, airports, railroads).  Most goods arrive in the U.S. on huge ships loaded with containers that can be mounted directly onto rail cars or truck beds for transport to warehouses or repacking centers.   The highest density of activity is around the major ports, and the impacts are concentrated on whoever lives and works nearby.  A good way to visualize this is as an hourglass.  Container ships bring goods from all over the world.  They converge on a narrow region (the port), where the goods are transferred to trucks and trains. The trucks and trains travel away from the port on a tightly-packed network of freeways and railroad tracks, and then spread out across the nation.   

Eating Local in Schools - Recent Articles

By Marc

Within the last few days, I have run across several articles about programs that provide local foods for school lunches or programs to teach children about gardening.  Programs like these could do wonders in many ways:  they provide healthy meals at an important time in a person's development, they teach children where their food comes from, and perhaps could even raise the status of farming as an occupation among today's youth.

Here is a summary of the articles, with locales ranging from Southern California to Iowa to Ghana, Africa.

Drink Locally - Reading U.S. Wine Labels

By Marc

In the United States, wine is produced in nearly every state, providing a chance for almost everyone to "drink locally." But how can you tell whether the grapes were grown nearby or on the other side of the state?   Answer:  By reading the label (and sometimes consulting a map or reference book).  U.S. wine labeling laws (administered by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the various States) contain strict rules about the use of geographic information on wine labels.

The Wine Institute, a public policy advocacy association of California wineries, has a guide to the Federal and State requirements for geographic labeling.  For a winemaker to put the name of a state, county, viticultural area or vineyard on their wine label, a certain percentage of the grapes must have been grown in the specified area. 

Eating locally helps me understand a far-away cuisine

By Marc

When I got into the Eat Local Challenge, I expected that it would introduce me to new ingredients and to new ways to use old ones.  It therefore came as a surprise to me when my local focus led me to a deeper understanding of the cooking of Japan, a country that is half a world away.   

I have visited Japan many times, and although being a vegetarian tourist in Japan is difficult (if not impossible), I have a great fondness for the food.  But I almost never cook Japanese at home.  It might be that I have relied too much on cookbooks and become trapped by ingredient lists and recipes.  Or, more likely, that I had not yet met my muses.