I receive a lot of incredibly useful information from the Organic Farming Research Foundation. Now they have a new email newsletter, and the first issue looks great.
Click through to the Full Story to see a bigger image of it, and to subscribe if you like what you see.
{ 2 comments }
{ 0 comments }
Let us know if you get some 
{ 0 comments }
I’ll be heading down to San Marcos tomorrow and Friday for the annual Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association conference. Legendary head of CMAWC, ‘Ranger’ Rick Williamson and I will be visiting farms on Thursday, and then spending the next day at the trade show and in conference talks.
Rick represents Williamson County at TOFGA, and I’m becoming a member, so we’ll be involved on Friday evening in the election process for the new president and vice president of the association.
Rick said he’d drive if I take pictures, so a report better than a thousand words will come your way next week about our adventures down on the farm
{ 1 comment }
We think we’ve been earnestly increasing our crop yields using industrialized agriculture in order to feed our burgeoning human population. Daniel Quinn says it’s the other way around.
Populations grow because we produce more food. And yet the starving around the world are still starving. We’re growing the starving population also. That’s how badly human civilization has misinterpreted its survival requirements.
{ 0 comments }
Nowadays we’re used to depending on the Comedy Channel to report the news. Michael Pollan was on the Daily Show yesterday, promoting his latest book, Food Rules.
Pollan theorized back in September, in a NYT article called Big Food vs. Big Insurance, that if health insurers are forced by reform to cover the unhealthy they could turn into an enemy of agri-business (which creates unhealthy people).
He makes the point well here, pointing out that the food industry today creates patients for the health industry.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Michael Pollan | ||||
|
||||
{ 0 comments }
More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.
The Times says water provided to more than 49 million people in the last five years “has contained illegal concentrations of chemicals like arsenic or radioactive substances like uranium, as well as dangerous bacteria often found in sewage.”
{ 0 comments }
Here’s a slightly nuanced story in the Washington Post about a DC restaurant called Founding Farmers (lovely name!) that claims it’s all about “sustainable” food. Turns out they rushed into print a little too soon on that score however, considering the amount of quality control they still had to learn. Oops.
See ‘Green’ cuisine not always as ordered
I’m not going to outline the story here – it’s worth a read because it gives a pretty balanced weighing of the pros and cons of the restaurant’s operation compared with its menu claims.
But you’ll have to read my whole post of you want a definition of farmwashing…
{ 0 comments }
As schools start removing junk food and beverages, we’re finding that kids DON’T go home and binge on junk. Instead, they eat better at school and no worse at home.
This is according to a study just completed by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University. The full story is here.
{ 2 comments }
Chefs get it: the best ingredients are the freshest, and that means local. Authentic flavor also comes from absence of processing – local again. As all the old jobs disappear, probably forever, sustainable jobs in the new economy show their fresh faces. Jobs such as those created by local cuisine.
Fortune Magazine just last week featured the stories of 6 green cooks – chefs who use local ingredients, bought from local farmers or even grown themselves.
{ 0 comments }
Last Saturday I went out to visit Dyer Dairy. They’re just a few minutes east of Georgetown along Highway 29. I’ve been eating their wonderful cheeses for months, buying them from Sara (of Wild Type Ranch). I was curious about the milk, and I wanted to see their new farm store.
It was a pleasure to meet Aaron and Susan Dyer, we talked for an hour before I had to leave. They have a nice new building they’ve created with a variety of products for sale – their own Grade ‘A’ Raw whole milk, their eggs and of course their flavorful cheeses.
{ 1 comment }
Here’s a nice little introduction to permaculture. The clip closes with some URBAN permaculture – you can do it in the city. Ask your landlord if he’d like some fresh veggies 
{ 2 comments }
Earlier this summer Michael Pollan was interviewed by one of our best national journalists, Amy Goodman at Democracy Now. They touched on numerous highlights from Pollan’s latest book In Defense of Food and also about the crisis nature of food within our planetary economy and society.
Here are the clips from the broadcast. In this first clip Pollan discusses the aggressive posture of Monsanto, and at minute 6:00 mentions that if in fact we’re trying to increase the productivity of our fields, genetically modified crops are NOT the way to go.
At minute 9:00 Pollan discusses the “ingenuity” of the food industry in taking every latest criticism aimed at it and turning the critique into the next marketing campaign.
In the second clip Pollan talks approvingly of the Obama administration and new Ag Secretary Tom Vilsek, as well as Deputy Secretary Merrigan – both committed to sustainable and local food systems.
{ 2 comments }
One doctor in a small town in Canada noticed a link between lawn chemicals being used by patients and harm to their children and themselves. Because of her activism, that small town defied huge corporations and banned lawn pesticides and herbicides, taking its right to do so all the way to the Supreme Court, and winning. More small towns have followed this lead, including now the entire province of Quebec, and this is changing the world.
The movie about this event – one of the most inspiring acts of change brought about by small players – is called A Chemical Reaction, and is now on release. Take a look at this trailer, and ask yourself if your own city council could be persuaded to act so courageously.
{ 0 comments }
The power of body and mind to heal us has long been spoken of, but never before measured. Now the pharmaceutical industry of all things is finding itself faced with the need to figure out why many placebos work better than their drugs to heal people.
Placebos are inert medications, phony “sugar pills” given to some of the participants in a clinical trial to provide a control group: the effect of the real drug on the other group is then compared against the placebo. The problem is that the brain has an entire chemistry at its disposal to help heal us, and suggestion goes a long way.
Wired magazine has a definitive review of the situation in this recent article:
Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.
Here are some selected excerpts from this recommended reading.
{ 0 comments }
