Why are we propping up corn production, again?

A recent study by Princeton researchers found that rats fed chow laced with HFCS ( high-fructose corn syrup) gained more weight than rats fed equal calories of table sugar. All processed sweeteners add empty calories to food; but calorie for calorie, HFCS appears to be even worse than white sugar. Although the two sweeteners have roughly the same fructose/glucose ratio, we mammals seem to metabolize the HFCS differently than we do cane sugar.

The rise of HFCS as a cheap sweetener has helped push up overall sweetener consumption to unseen levels. In short, a gusher of sweetener from cornfields to food factories has resulted in billions of additional, and nutritionally void, calories in the American diet.

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Farmers are reaping rewards from wind energy.

Farmers and ranchers in the United States are discovering that they own not only land, but also the wind rights that accompany it. A farmer in Iowa who leases a quarter acre of cropland to the local utility as a site for a wind turbine can typically earn $2,000 a year in royalties from the electricity produced. In a good year, that same plot can produce $100 worth of corn.

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Silicon Valley investors place bets on sustainable ag

Welcome to Agriculture 2.0.

That was the name of the conference and represents a growing effort to scale up sustainable agriculture from a hodge-podge of hippies and back-to-the-land types into a viable big business by bringing together venture capitalists and startups doing everything from rooftop farming to high-tech soil mapping to identifying the best areas for growing crops.

The big idea is that venture capitalists can help disrupt industrial agriculture much as they have the computer, entertainment and energy industries by investing in sustainable ag and using information technology to connect producers and consumers.

"We want to create an opportunity for a market, not a movement," said Roxanne Christensen of SPIN Farming, which promotes the creation of urban microfarms.

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Westlands Water District Funds Water Treatment Pilot Project Utilizing New Sky Energy's Salt/CO2 Conversion Process

03.18.2010 – BOULDER, CO. Westlands Water District and Ag-Water New Sky, LLC, (AGNS) announced today they will develop an integrated drainage water treatment facility in California's Central Valley. The project combines conventional desalination technology with award winning salt conversion technology developed by New Sky Energy of Boulder, Colorado. The project will design and build a demonstration water treatment facility that converts high salinity drainage water into fresh water for irrigation and financially valuable CO2-negative products derived from the waste salts.

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Clean Water through Healthy Farms

In 1997, the city government of New York realized that because of changing agricultural practices it would need to act to preserve the quality of the city's drinking water. It could have installed new water filtration plants, but that would have cost $4 Billion to $6 Billion up front, together with annual running costs of $250 million. Instead, the government pays landowners to preserve the rural nature of the Catskill and Delaware river basins form which New York gets most of its water. It is spending $250 million on buying land to prevent development, and paying farmers $100 million a year to minimize water pollution. Several other American cities, following New York's footsteps, have calculated that every dollar invested in environmental protection would save anywhere from $7.50 to $200 on the cost of filtration and water treatment facilities.

from Food Fight

Why New Zealanders don't like subsidies.

1. Resentment among farmers, some of whom will inevitably feel that subsidies are applied unfairly.
2. Resentment among non farmers, who pay for the system once in the form of taxes and a second time in the form of higher food prices.
3. The encouragement of overproduction, which then drives down the prices and requires more subsidization of farmers income.
4. The related encouragement to farm marginal lands, with resulting environmental degradation.
5. The fact that most subsidy money passes quickly from farmers to farm suppliers, processors, and other related sectors, again negating the intended affect of supporting farmers.
6. Additional market distortions, such as the inflation of land values based on production incentives or cheap loans.
7. Various bureaucratic insanities, such as paying farmers to install conservation measures like hedgerows and wetlands- after having paid to rip them out a generation ago. While those farmers who have maintained such landscapes and wildlife features all along get nothing.

Removing subsidies, on the other hand, forces farmers and farm related industries to become more efficient, to diversify, to follow and anticipate the market. It gives farmers more independence, and gains them more respect. it leaves more government money to pay for other types of social services, like education and health care.

form Laura Sayre's "Farming without subsidies? Lessons from New Zealand," The New Farm, 2003

Urge the Department of Agriculture to act now to save bees

Honey bees are crucial to producing about one-third of all the food we eat. The Department of Agriculture must act quickly to fulfill crucial research to determine the cause of colony collapse disorder, which is devastating hives across the country. Urge the Department of Agriculture to act now to save bees.

Take Action

Roots of Change

Developing Sustainable Foodsheds to Improve

Food Access and Nutrition.

We are a network of grass roots & grass tops united and guided by common vision of a sustainable system where:

• People of all income levels have access to healthy food.
• Agriculture and processing systems do not degrade the health of ecosystems, livestock, and humans who produce or eat the food.
• More wealth is produced from the system and that wealth is shared in a way that ensures that all of those working within it, from field hand to financier, feel both well respected and fairly compensated and thus remain committed to their careers in the system.
• A diversity of operational scales and ownership are maintained to ensure economic resilience.

Despite the recent growing public interest, we feel that food and agriculture are still dangerously undervalued and under appreciated. That is why we love Michele Obama's and Maria Shriver's gardens, and what they do to raise the important issues related to nutrition, education, and food production. We are greatly encouraged and energized by the food and agriculture priorities of the President, Secretaries Vilsack and Kawamura, and the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom.

learn more at the ROC website

Seasonal Ingredient Map

link to map

School Lunches in France - WOW!

The variety on the menus is astonishing: no single meal is repeated over the 32 school days in the period, and every meal includes an hors d'oeuvre, salad, main course, cheese plate and dessert. There is more: the final column in the brochure carries the title "Suggestions for the evening." That, too, changes daily. If your child has eaten turkey, ratatouille and a raspberry-filled crepe for lunch, the city of Paris suggests pasta, green beans and a fruit salad for dinner.

I cannot tell you what my child learns, paints or builds on any given school day. But I do know that on Feb. 4, he ate hake in Basque sauce, mashed pumpkin, cracked rice, Edam cheese and organic fruits for lunch. That meant stuffed marrows and apples for dinner. The city of Paris said so.

Nursery-School Gourmets

Why a salad costs more than a big mac.

Guidelines for providing native bee habitat

Details on how current con servation practices can be used to benefit pollinators, particularly crop-pollinating native bees providing natural or seasonal habitat to:

1) increase the abundance of pollen and nectar while ensuring that plants are in flower

from early in the spring ( willow) through late fall (goldenrod);

2) add or protect potential nest sites

3) provide a refuge from pesticides.

Whenever possible, conservationists should use native plants since native pollinators and other wildlife are adapted to them for food and shelter, including diverse flowering plants that provide sequential bloom throughout the growing season. Some practices allow for creation or protection of nest sites, such as snags or stable untilled ground for solitary bees, or small cavities (usually created by rodents) for bumble bees. Any practice that increases areas of natural habitat that are not sprayed with pesticides or implements buffers to reduce pesticide drift will minimize harm to native pollinators.

(See the Xerces Society publication Farming for Bees: Guidelines for Providing Native Bee Habitat on Farms for more information.)

Using Farm Bill Programs for Pollinator Conservation Biology

Bees and other pollinators are essential for production of many crops, and are critical components of natural ecosystems, since they feed other wildlife directly and indirectly by pollinating the flowers that produce fruits and seeds. Pollinators are also wildlife, so many existing Farm Bill conservation practices that are currently used to improve wildlife habitat can be applied to insect and vertebrate pollinators. These detailed suggestions for field personnel and NRCS State offices to move quickly to increase pollinator populations for healthier and more profitable agro-ecosystems. Of particular interest is a comprehensive review of all NRCS conservation practices that can be adapted to conserving pollinators through habitat creation, modification, and improvement.

Using Farm Bill Programs for Pollinator Conservation is now available

Other useful documents for NRCS pollinator conservation activities that may also appeal to the general public are at http://plants.usda.gov/pollinators/NRCSdocuments.html.

Super-Sexed Insects

A new method for sustainable pest control using “super-sexed” sterilized male insects to copulate with female in the wild is being developed by agricultural researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The scientists are hoping to provide a new way of eliminating pests without the use of chemicals.

Professor Boaz Yuval at the Hebrew University's Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment, is working on upgrading an old approach: the sterile insect technique. The premise is to raise millions of individuals of a pest species, separate the sexes, sterilize the males and release them into the field. It is expected that the sterile males will copulate with wild females, who will then be unable to lay fertile eggs, thus reducing the pest populations.

Food Subsidies

Did you know that just one company, Monsanto, controls more than 90% of the soybeans grown in the United States? And that they also control more than 80% of U.S. corn?

This extreme concentration of power is not unique to corn and soy. And it’s a big problem — not just for family farmers struggling to compete. Standing between you and the family farmer are a handful of corporations who control our entire food system from seed to plate.

Corporate concentration has many forms — factory farms, the dairy crisis, genetically engineered food — anything that puts the control of our food into the hands of a few companies and forces farmers out of business and off the land.

Speak out now! Tell the government that you trust family farmers with your food!

A healthyfood system is necessary to meet the urgent challenges of our time.

Behind us stands a half-century of industrial food production, underwritten by cheap fossil fuels, abundant land and water resources, and a drive to maximize the global harvest of cheap calories. Ahead lie rising energy and food costs, a changing climate, declining water supplies, a growing population, and the paradox of widespread hunger and obesity.

These realities call for a radically different approach to food and agriculture. Our food system must be reorganized on a foundation of health: for our communities, people, animals, and the natural world. The quality of food, and not just its quantity, ought to guide our agriculture. The ways we grow, distribute, and prepare food should celebrate our various cultures and our shared humanity, providing not only sustenance, but justice, beauty and pleasure.

Governments have a duty to protect people from malnutrition, unsafe food, and exploitation, and to protect the land and water on which we depend from degradation. Individuals, producers, and organizations have a duty to create regional systems that can provide healthy food for their communities. We all have a duty to respect and honor the laborers of the land without whom we could not survive. The time has come to accelerate the transformation of our food and agriculture and make its benefits available to all.

We believe that the following twelve principles should frame food and agriculture policy, to ensure that it will contribute to the health and wealth of the nation and the world. A healthy food and agriculture policy:

1. Forms the foundation of secure and prosperous societies, healthy communities, and healthy people.
2. Provides access to affordable, nutritious food to everyone.
3. Prevents the exploitation of farmers, workers, and natural resources; the domination of genomes and markets; and the cruel treatment of animals, by any nation, corporation or individual.
4. Upholds the dignity, safety, and quality of life for all who work to feed us.
5. Commits resources to teach children the skills and knowledge essential to food production, preparation, nutrition, and enjoyment.
6. Protects the finite resources of productive soils, fresh water, and biological diversity.
7. Strives to remove fossil fuel from every link in the food chain and replace it with renewable resources and energy.
8. Originates from a biological rather than an industrial framework.
9. Fosters diversity in all its relevant forms: diversity of domestic and wild species; diversity of foods, flavors and traditions; diversity of ownership.

Requires a national dialog concerning technologies used in production, and allows regions to adopt their own respective guidelines on such matters.

Enforces transparency so that citizens know how their food is produced, where it comes from, and what it contains.

Promotes economic structures and supports programs to nurture the development of just and sustainable regional farm and food networks.

Our pursuit of healthy food and agriculture unites us as people and as communities, across geographic boundaries, and social and economic lines. We pledge our votes, our purchases, our creativity, and our energies to this urgent cause.

sign the Food Decleration at Roots of Change.org