Amicus Agraria

Go to our Abundantly Green website

2010-11-06T11:43:00.000-07:00

All of our postings are on our farm website. Click above and you will be taken there.
Keeping up a thoughtful blog takes more time than farming allows, so this becomes yet another abandoned website.

Local Food & Local Economy

2009-10-21T15:11:00.000-07:00

GUEST COLUMNIST JIM FREEMAN | Local Food's Role in Economic Recovery

My Friend Jim Freeman's column appears in today's (october 21, 2009) Kitsap Sun. Read it in the Kitsap Sun. Below is the full text.

The Kitsap Economic Development Alliance last week released a report that 3,000 fewer people are employed in Kitsap County than just a year ago last August. The unemployment rate was 5.1 percent then and now it is 7.4 percent.

That’s not good news. If the statistics are accurate, that means that about 9,000 people are looking for work in Kitsap.

What has this got to do with the local food network?

Plenty.

In 2006, the people in Kitsap County spent $470 million on retail food and beverage purchases. That number could grow significantly if you throw in wholesale and institutional purchases by the military, PSNS, Harrison Medical Center, school districts and nursing homes. It may reach as much as $1 billion.

Less than 2 percent of that went into the pockets of local farmers and value added producers. This means that every one percent shift to local producers in “market share” has the potential to add $10 million of new, wealth-creating income to our community.

Stated in overly simple terms, capturing this benefit requires small shifts in our buying behavior. Changing our behavior one percent at a time. This is what futurists like George Gilder might call a “shifting paradigm.”

Most people think of economic development in terms of job creation. That is a desired benefit, but it is not the mechanism. The engine of economic development is the creation of new wealth through innovation and application of new ideas that people work on. Even in times such as these, new jobs are being created and old jobs eliminated, through changes in how people produce the goods and services we want and need. Most economists agree that the primary engine of job growth comes from the small business sector. That’s right, businesses with under 500 employees will create the majority of new jobs now and in the future, when our local and national economy begins to create jobs rather than lose them to obsolescence.

So how do entrepreneurs and farmers create new wealth? We do it by the efficient application of savings and investment. In building a local food network it is critical to get as many people as possible involved in the market side of the question by buying local. It is just as important to get as many people combining their buy-local behavior with an invest-local behavior.

The Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance hosts presentations and discussions on shifting paradigms at its monthly meetings and special events. At our October meeting, Cynthia Mora of the Kitsap Food Co-op, Jean Schanen of the proposed Freshlocal Store in Bremerton and two teachers, Heidi Bell and David St. Clair of Naval Avenue Elementary School, drew pictures for us of how they are creating new wealth in Kitsap by enticing consumers to make small shifts in behavior.

We also inaugurated what we call our “100 From 500” campaign. It is designed to encourage 500 people to invest at least $100 in worthy local food enterprises, like the Puget Sound Meat Producers Cooperative. Most of the money raised will be used to build production capacity by acquiring a locally-built, WSDA-certified, mobile poultry processing unit, enabling local farmers to sell packaged poultry under a WSDA label directly to consumers or through local stores and restaurants. Western Washington residents consume birds numbering in the low tens of millions per year. Why shouldn’t Kitsap-based small farm producers have a chance to supply this demand from their neighbors?

Buying locally creates new wealth. Investing locally helps to keep it and grow it.

Buying and investing locally does more than return cash on investment.

Farmers taking care of the land using best practices provide environmental benefits for rural and urban landscapes alike. Water quality and wildlife habitat improve at virtually no marginal cost.

Relationships built on trust provide fertile ground for developing a unique local culture. Parents working closer to home have more time for their families and community organizations. Local people working together have all we need to make big dents in that pool of 9,000 Kitsap residents looking for work and reverse the trend.

Port Orchard resident Jim Freeman is a volunteer member of the Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance, an organization dedicated to the construction of a local food network in Kitsap County and the surrounding counties. For more information, visit www.BuyLocalFoodInKitsap.org.

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/oct/21/guest-columnist-jim-freeman-local-foods-role-in/#ixzz0Ubwgf6vP

Poulsbo Farmers Marke Ranked in the Top 20 Medium-sized Markets

2009-08-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

The Poulsbo Farmers Market placed in the top 20 for medium-sized farmers markets in the nation. Thank you for voting.

SOLD OUT A few split sides of beef available

2009-08-05T12:40:00.000-07:00

We have some beef available. Comment here and I'll contact you.

Killing Heat 2: PROTECTING YOURSELF, CHILDREN AND PETS

2009-07-29T23:41:00.000-07:00

Don’t leave anyone in your car: human or animal.
Elderly, children and pets are extremely vulnerable to heat stroke, which can result in death.
Drink plenty of liquids, especially water.
Provide clean water for both pets and wild birds and animals all the time.

If your pet becomes over heated, cool it down with cool water. Soaking a dog or cat can save its life.

Cool overheated children and quickly get them medical care. That's why we have emergency rooms.

Killing Heat 1: CROPS

2009-07-29T21:45:00.000-07:00

Today the temperature went to 107° F on the farm. The US Weather Service predicts that heat wave may continue on for two more weeks, despite earlier forecasts that temperatures would drop to the 70s and 80s.

Heat as we have had in this last week in July causes high temperature stress. This is not only for us, but also for our animals, the wild animals, and our crops. Brad waters overtime not only to give the crops water, but also to cool the soil. When the soil is over 90° F, plants begin to suffer at 90° F and 98° F plants begin to die. The leaves of more mature plants are adversely affected at 95° F, but if cooled or not left at that temperature for more than a few hours, the plants, while damaged, should survive and fruit. High temperatures on young plants results in stunted growth. This means that we have to postpone transplanting, which we do all season long, because the plants would have a slim chance of surviving. In specific terms, we have not transplanted the pumpkins because it has been too hot for three weeks.

Because we cool our plants with water, some varieties will bolt. Leafy greens are at the greatest risk of bolting. When plants bolt, they are developing the flowers that would eventually develop into seeds if we let them. Bolting is caused by stress, such as these high temperatures, because the plants are in danger of dying before reproducing themselves. While we deal with some bolting during the season, high temperatures trigger bolting in about every plant grown for its leaves, including basil, bok choy, cabbage, chard, cilantro, kale, lettuce, spinach, and many other vegetables we grow.

Plants such as beans, beets, carrots, cucumbers, kohlrabi, radishes, the squash, and many others may not produce as much as they would have otherwise.
Right now we are praying for rain and cooler summer temperatures.

Vote for your Favorite Farmers Market

2009-07-29T08:21:00.000-07:00

Farmers markets across the country are in full swing and market tables are laden with the beautiful fruits of summer. Since June 1st, thousands of people have cast their vote through the America’s Favorite Farmers Markets contest and told use about their favorite market! Have you voted for your favorite? Cast your vote today!.
Courtesy of
Gretchen Hoffman
Communications Coordinator
American Farmland Trust

Paying the price of bad behavior

2009-07-01T10:27:00.000-07:00

The toxic effects of 60 years of bad agricultural and ecological management appears to be taking its pay back. Worldwide starvation is likely to be the result.

Crops face toxic timebomb in warmer world: study
Mon Jun 29, 2009 8:45am EDT The article begins: "Staples such as cassava on which millions of people depend become more toxic and produce much smaller yields in a world with higher carbon dioxide levels and more drought, Australian scientists say.

The findings, presented on Monday at a conference in Glasgow, Scotland, underscored the need to develop climate-change-resistant cultivars to feed rapidly growing human populations, said Ros Gleadow of the Monash University in Melbourne."

Food Inc: Michael Pollan and Friends Reveal the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets reviews the the new Robert Kenner film explores the timebomb as reported by Michael Pollan: Food Inc. (this link goes to the movie's official website). The article begins: "It turns out that figuring out the most simple thing - like what's on your dinner plate, and where it came from - is actually a pretty subversive act.

That's what director Robert Kenner found out while spending six years putting together the amazing new documentary, "Food Inc.," which features prominent food writers Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation). "

The American Farmland Trust sent out a release about the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act, saying that it was a significant step forward for U.S. agriculture's role in combating climate change and for the protection of the environment. The vote broke fairly predictably on party lines with eight (8) Republicans voting against it. The Republican argument against it was one of the best against a progressive bill that they have mounted all year.

All that I can say is that I hope that this does benefit the American Farmer, local food supplies, and other farming concerns. Frankly, there is no reason to believe that this will turn out as supporters predict unless people -- you -- make sure that this is part of the budget, the stimulus package, and is honestly administered. No matter how you feel about President Obama's administration, we all know by now that the government is made up of individuals who may or may not "get it." It is up to folks like us to make sure that the promise is kept on the lower administrative level.

We have been working to get our new walk-in cooler installed. Torrential rainfalls, and hours of lovely (yet wet) misty rain have slowed the project and thus my entries on Amicus Agrarai. If you would like to post here, please leave a comment, or contact me to be a guest blogger.

Why local food is important and local food supply chain reading list

2009-06-13T05:21:00.000-07:00

Locally grown food is a very small deal in proportion to the entire food network. I have read claims that it is less than three-tenths of one percent (0.03%). Think about it: that is virtually nothing. Since we are on the producing end of this statistic, I think that it may be close to accurate.

In broad sweeps, our food network has grown out of the cattle drives from Texas to Chicago that became significant then necessary after the American Civil War. Trains brought the next big change, along with more cost-effective canning technologies in 1880s. In the late 1940s and well into the 1950s, mobile electric refrigeration for trains and trucks made shipping fresh fruits and vegetables over thousands of miles possible. This immediately harmed the canning industry, but was a huge benefit to trucking companies that became part of the grocery chains. Finally in the 1960s and 1970s came refrigerated cargo containers that could be quickly transferred from ships to trains to trucks. I have yet to see and explanation of how air transit works in this economically. This is the history of the large bones of the skeleton of our food supply chain.

The importance of local food

What happens if/when our food supply chain fails as have significant parts of our financial system, which in turn brought down the auto industry? What happens if the food chain equivalent of Merrill Lynch, AIG, or General Motors fails? First off, people starve to death. There will be food riots just as there have been in other parts of the world.

Some would like to say that our food supply chain is too large to fail, a statement that has been bandied about concerning the banks and stockbrokers. That is just wishful thinking. Perhaps these systems are too large to survive. It is likely that they became unsustainable due to their size. We can adjust to less money and credit, fewer cars, even fewer jobs, but we cannot adjust to significantly less food.

We may be fat because we eat 500 or more calories a day in excess of what we should, but those calories are not usually from the basic life-giving food; usually they are excess fat calories. However, that is immaterial when one considers that a 50% failure of our food chain system would result in too little food to produce adequate calories to keep most all of our population from starvation, and one-third to one-half from starving to death. If you think this is trivial, consider yourself and your two closest relatives or friends, and consider a life where only two of you survive, at best. This is why local food in significant amounts is important.

Not so light reading on building a local food supply chain

There are many articles on how to produce local food. Here is a list of a "small" selection. Just this list will give you an appreciation of how far we have to go. When you read some of these articles, you will learn what you can do to become part of the local food chain. This is provided by the USDA from the online source the Alternative Farming Systems Information Center National Agricultural Library, USDA, ARS

No local food supply? Part 2

2009-06-11T08:04:00.000-07:00

This post is very local-- as usual the war on agriculture continues. It can happen with a few tiny changes in the zoning regulations. Whether the anti-farming zoning regulations are unexpected consequences from well-meaning people, or an attempted land grab, Kitsap citizens need to become aware and involved with land use policies or farms will be pushed out of business. Kitsap is one area among many where farming is being challenged. The problem is both local and international, and the problem of farmland loss is so prevalent that international organizations are trying to raise awareness of the problem. If you are interested in eating locally, please pay attention to zoning regulations and changes of farmland to residential or industrial purposes.

This is fascinating reading, with lots of positive ag feel, but as with any survey, it is being used by some to try and kill agriculture in Kitsap.

CORRECTION: I had a bad link and it has been replaced by the following.

This link is to the KCAA blog: Farm Policy And Regulation. After you read this, look at the 2007 -- 2010 Action Plan November 2007 of the Kitsap County Economic Development Alliance. There is nothing "wrong" with their plan until you realize that agriculture is not in the zoning, and frequently ignored or treated as inconsequential.

Farmland under attack worldwide and locally

2009-05-26T09:14:00.001-07:00

Do you want to live where there is no local food supply?

If you are interested in eating locally, you need to pay attention to zoning regulations and changes of farmland to residential or industrial purposes. In fact, the problem of farmland loss is getting so prevalent that international organizations are trying to raise awareness of the problem. It is both local and international, and here are some links so that you can see for yourself.

Local First

Locally in Kitsap County Washington, it is hard sometimes to determine what is good and what is bad. The question always remains: "What are the gotchas?"

Rural Wooded Incentive Program sounds good on the surface, however trading development credits on a piece of prime land for some poor land allows unequal trades without consequences except to you and me. This is a common practice for farmland, too.

When developers -- the dirt dogs who want to quickly turn an easily developed piece of land to a small financial profit -- nice-sounding pieces of local regulation begin to pop up, like this one: TITLE 21: Land Use and Development Procedures Code Development Process. The first paragraph of this reads " Kitsap County is currently updating Kitsap County Code Title 21 ‘Land Use and Development Procedures’. The goal of the update is to create a more streamlined and user-friendly code." Innocuous or hostile to farmland? That is the question.

Internationally: creating "Blood Food"

As food production is curtailed in other areas of the world, for all food production is local somewhere, supply and economic pressures rise. Famine can be created in areas with farms because all the food is taken somewhere else and sold. There is lots of talk about "blood diamonds," but there is "blood food," too. We read very little about this, but it is happening right now.

Here are several links to articles on this topic (if this blog is over one month old, you may not be able to access these). They are from FT (Financial Times) the world's leading economic newspaper, which is featuring a series of articles called The global food crisis Published: April 13 2008 18:21 | Last updated: May 6 2008 16:29

Tokyo aims to halt ‘farmland grabbing’, By Michiyo Nakamoto in Tokyo and Javier Blas in London, Published: May 25 2009 19:31 | Last updated: May 25 2009 19:31

The global food crisis: Africa almost giving land away, says UN", By Javier Blas in London, Published: May 24 2009 22:05 | Last updated: May 24 2009 22:05

The global food crisis: Food security fuels land grab, says report By Javier Blas in London, Published: May 24 2009 22:05 | Last updated: May 24 2009 22:05

This reminds of Joni Michell's song "Big Yellow Taxi." Her version is awesome, but so is Amy Grant's and Counting Crow's versions. The line of this song that is my theme this issue is "They take Paradise and put up a parking lot."

What Our CSA means

2009-04-22T11:10:00.000-07:00

CSA is a short-hand term for Community Supported Agriculture

Getting food from the farm seems so sensible, most people are surprised to learn that the community supported agriculture (CSA), as a practice is about 24 years old. One story goes that the CSA has been an agricultural practice in Europe since the 1960s, and it was brought here from Switzerland. Another version says it came here in 1984 from Japan. The first recorded USA CSAs were the Indian Line Farm in Massachusetts and the Temple/Wilton Community Farm in New Hampshire. Both started in 1986 and still thrive.

We like to think that all of us are part of a burgeoning local agriculture movement in Kitsap County. It is a good adventure, and we hope that you will join us on it whether you join our CSA or another one.

The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) movement has become significant in the changing face of the American food industry. It may be the only way that family farms like ours survive the juggernaut of federally subsidized industrial farming, and food imported by multinational corporations from poor and unregulated countries. Supporting us supports our Kitsap economy as it supports the local food industry wherever they exist.

There are many models of CSAs. We have the single farm model, but if we want to be able to provide fresh food all year around, we may have to work with others who are in warmer climates to supply some of our food. There simply is nothing in-season during the winter around here at the 48th Latitude. We would have to put the whole garden under a building, and we are not going to do that. We are, however, using greenhouses and tunnel houses to extend the season. The is a great start. We are also perfecting (if that can that be said about farming in the elements)over-wintering techniques that work in our very wet climate.

Here's what we tell our CSA family members.

Your pledge to support our farming operation gives spiritual as well as an economic support. Together we share a connection with the Earth: healing of the Earth and ourselves. You also help us maintain bio-diversity. Industrial farmers must chose their varieties based on a long shelf life, which often means GMO seeds. Your support helps us plant and grow varieties of vegetables, some heritage types, that are chosen for the Kitsap growing season, nutrition, and, most of all, flavor.

So, in turn, your money not only buys you fresher food, you also are helping to sustain agriculture on local farmland and to preserve the environment for now and future generations. It is our intent and duty to live in harmony with nature.

Still worried: small legislative changes have large effects.

2009-04-04T10:34:00.000-07:00

I was "talking" with a friend over on Live Journal about HR 875, and basically referring him to what I wrote here, and I found that I needed to explain myself. Here is what I wrote to him.

I try not to be an idiot or a crazy about such things, but small legislative changes have large effects.

I have a gut-level sense that the agricultural chemical additive industries are quite worried. What is needed, however, is a link between some commonly used fertilizer or herbicide/pesticide and a common cancer, or some mental problem like ADHD, autism or Alzheimer's. I mention these, because the there are suspected links, but none proven.

The idea that people who are concerned about legislation are "crazies" or "idiots" becomes part of a meme, (as www.answers.com dictionary states it) a unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. It grew out of another word mimesis, which has three meanings according my source:

n.

1. The imitation or representation of aspects of the sensible world, especially human actions, in literature and art.
2. Biology. Mimicry.
3. Medicine. The appearance, often caused by hysteria, of symptoms of a disease not actually present.

[Greek mīmēsis, from mīmeisthai, to imitate, from mīmos, imitator, mime.]

However, search on "lawsuits against monsanto" and the result is horrifyinng. Here is just one link the Organic Consumers Union Millions Against Monsanto Campaign.

More on Laws again healthy foods.

2009-03-16T21:41:00.000-07:00

I expanded my last blog, and posted it on the KCAA Buy Local Food in Kitsap.
Making Organic Farming and Back Yard Gardening a Criminal Offense. Please take a moment and read this. If you don't like what you read, tell your Congress person.

The battle against CSAs, Farmers Markets, and wholesome food

2009-03-06T09:56:00.001-08:00

I hope that you will click on this story and read it. It is horrifying, but if you don't know what the enemy doing, you will be defeated.

Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands

It is an ongoing battle. This is a real threat. Tacoma tried to stop people from selling food from their homes because residences are not businesses. Totally in conflict with the right to farm. Yes we have a right to farm. I suggest that everyone write to any congress person they know to help stop what the article your friend sent is writing about... Read More. There is only ONE farmer in the Senate, Jon Tester (D) of Montana. He is an organic farmer. Read the www.whitehouse.gov website and read the Agenda/Rural link. If you like locally grown, organic or naturally grown food, you have to protest this. These companies are evil.

Snow, Seeds, and Surprises from the USDA

2009-02-26T16:33:00.000-08:00

Last night three inches of snow fell. It should be mostly gone by evening when more snow may fall. Last week the temperatures bounced between the 40s and the 60s. Some ornamental cherry trees are blooming in the neighborhood. Heavy rains are normal. Snow is not. We are in a maritime climate.

We are planting the transplants in the greenhouse that will be planted later in the tunnel houses.

We are ordering seed. There seems to have been some seed crop failures, and that wedded with higher demand means that there are going to be organic seed shortages this year.

Finally, The Rodale Institute web newsletter came with this analysis mixed with hope about the new USDA: Like Nixon to China, Vilsack reshaping USDA landscape. Rodale reports that:

We’re on the cusp of a similarly noteworthy shift in the posture of the USDA under its new secretary, Tom Vilsack of Iowa. Initially dismissed by many progressive food and farming activists as a tool of corporate agribusiness, the new leader is making waves several times a day in what is starting to feel like a tsunami of positive change.

What surprised me the most is Sec. Vilsack announcing that Kathleen Merrigan, the person who drafted Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, will be his deputy secretary. That makes her the second most powerful person in the USDA behind Sec. Vilsack himself. There is more. Sec. Vilsack has spent the month of February presenting surprises. I encourage you to click through to the Rodale Institute newsletter and read this for yourself.

Sneaky tax on food: Please write you legislator to VOTE NO ON SB5911

2009-02-11T15:27:00.000-08:00

As if farming is not hard enough, now WA State legislators are trying to sneak the B&O tax onto farmers. This really is a tax on food, which is not taxed in Washington State.

The Capital Press published this story last week, Ag legislator sends out alert about proposed B&O tax. Kudos to Rep. Mark Schoesler, R- Ritzville, ranking Republican on the Senate Agriculture and Rural Development Committee and also a member of the Ways & Means Committee.

The B&O tax taxes Washington State businesses selling within Washington State on the GROSS income not the NET income. It is probably the one tax in Washington that hurts businesses the most. However, if you sell your product outside of the state, you do not pay it on that income, and if you import product into the state, you do not pay it on that income, either. This tax has the potential to cripple or even destroy the locally grown food movement in Washington State.

To read the bill and follow it, click SB5911 progress.

I urge you to steal this letter, which I cribbed from Jackie Aitchison the Manager of the Poulsbo Farmers Market and the director of the Washington State Farmers Market Association. It does not matter which part of the state you live in, please write. If you are outside of the state, go ahead and write too. Plaster the legislature with VOTE NO ON SB5911

HERE IS the letter I sent my state legislators. I sent it to Representatives and Senators alike, since what goes through one chamber tend to go through the other.

I am farmer in Kitsap Country and I ask you to VOTE NO on SB5911.

This bill is a direct tax on food and violates the spirit of the sales tax law that does not tax food.

This bill would be a major setback. It comes at a time when we are trying to nurture and support our local farming community. Our local farming community provides us with family wage jobs, healthy locally grown food, an alternative to the big box economy, and a beautiful rural landscape that can survive in an economically viable form.

This gross income tax ignores the fact that local Washington State farmers are in, at best, a breakeven situation, and may be losing money.

This bill would subject Washington farmers who gross over $200,000 to the state B&O tax. Since the tax is based on gross, rather than net, it completely disregards costs. For most small farmers, meaning most of our farmers here in Kitsap County, this is a regressive tax that puts them at a great disadvantage.

A $200,000 gross represents no personal income for many local farmers because expenses and risks inherent to the business are extremely high.

My husband and I are struggling to grow our small farm income to a level that we are not at risk to support it. We both work outside of the farm to support ourselves. We believe that we will be able to make the farming operation profitable; however this type of regressive taxation makes that task vastly more difficult. This tax allows companies that import food to our state that raised outside of our state, and even outside of our country. Because they will not pay this tax, those companies will be able to compete more effectively against us and sell their product for less than we are able to sell it.

If you are interested in finding out more about how farming in Kitsap County and other counties in our state contributes to our community or hearing the concerns of our farmers and our farmer's markets, I would be happy to arrange something.

Thank you,
Marilyn Holt, Owner
Abundantly Green
1146 NE Madison Road
Poulsbo, WA 98370

The trigger amount looks to be large number to kick in this tax, but it's not: $200,000 Gross receipts is still not enough when it cost more to product that much food, or if you are at break even, or even if you have a marginal profit -- 1% of $200,000 is $2,000 -- can you live on that a year?

Thank you for helping,
Marilyn

Hold manufacturers responsible for their supply chain

2009-02-09T09:21:00.000-08:00

The New York Times article on the spread of salmonella-tainted peanut butter Peanut Case Shows Holes in Safety Net lists dozens of health violations that could have been obvious to anyone walking into the plant. So this begs the question “Why were the companies that bought these peanut products not visiting the plant?” Had any of the companies buying from Peanut Corporation of America, including ConAgra, sent a trained inspector or even someone from the word processing department to look at the plant, Peanut Corporation of America could have been out of business in days. All its customers needed to do was to stop buying their products until the place was cleaned up. That provides the best reason to improve standards and product quality. That is money talking at its best.

We need to demand that the companies we buy food and other products from assume some responsibility and inspect before buying, instead of demanding another agency, a Department of Food. At this point I am not for against such an idea, although I think the USDA could do the job if they had the budget for inspectors.

Inspection of parts and other ingredients is part of verifying the quality of their supply chain. Companies have become lax in this basic part of doing business. The only thing that will make them start this practice is an upwelling of customer demand for it.

Preserving farmland WA St HB 1232 - 2009-10

2009-02-06T18:10:00.000-08:00

House Bill HB 1232 - 2009-10 in the Washington State Legislature aimed at preserving farmland. The desciption for HB 1232 - 2009-10 "Defining commercial agricultural purposes to include current farming practices and activities related to the raising, harvesting, feeding, breeding, managing, selling, care, or training of a farm product." Click on the links to read the bill or read a digest of the bill.

WSDA Brand Name Material list now accepted nationally

2009-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

The Washington State Department of Agriculture's "Brand Name Material List is now accepted outside of Washington State!
On March 5, 2008, the USDA sent a memo to all USDA certifying agents regarding the verification of materials used under the National Organic Program. The National Organic Program amended its policy to allow accredited certifying agents (ACAs) to consult with other ACAs to determine the acceptability of formulated (branded) products.

The WSDA Organic Food program does a fabulous job, and should be commended for it. I do commend them here, FWIW.

New administration supports local and organic agriculture

2009-01-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

UPDATE

Sam Kass, who has been cooking for the Obama family for several years, is moving to the White to continue feeding them healthy organic food. He will be working with chef Cristeta Comerford, who is the head chef, apparently.

This is according to a NYTimes blog entry Obamas Bring Their Chicago Chef to the White House

Mr. Kass's appointment signals changes at the White House that should please chefs like Alice Waters, who have lobbied the Obamas to set an example for the rest of the country by emphasizing food that is healthy, local and sustainable. It further suggests that a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, another of Ms. Waters' dreams, could be on the horizon.

This is seen as good news for local, wholesome, organic food. The orginal post follows and gives some background on President Obama's vision for food.

In her Health.com article, Julie Upton, RD, talks about how the Obama family, and the President himself may help both the health of our country and the local and organic agriculture movement. She writes in
4 Ways Barack Obama Can Change the Way Our Country Eats that

Both President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have expressed their desire to support legislation in favor of local and organic agriculture. Obama frequently mentions his appreciation of reform-minded food writer Michael Pollan, reports the New York Times, and wife Michelle has said she tries to buy organic when she can.

She joins other writers who are supporting that healthier food can be inspired from the top down. Michael Pollan clearly puts forth a way that we can change what we do, how we eat, even how we see ourselves. Michael Pollen proposed a "Farmer in Chief" in his New York Times blog The Food Issue: Farmer in Chief, discusses how we got to where we are with our food supply.

Others are advocating a portion of the grounds of the White House be turned into an organic garden.

Back in December, (December 23, 2008) Kim Severson listed what many people want to see happen in the new year in her article Is a New Food Policy on Obama’s List?

This is not simple wishful thinking. For the first time in nearly 40 years, we have a President with a rural agenda and policy. Read it. It is not all you may hope for, but it is radically different from anything we have seen in since Nixon. Plank after planK clearly spells out the Obama Administration's policies, such as this:

Encourage Organic and Local Agriculture: Help organic farmers afford to certify their crops and reform crop insurance to not penalize organic farmers. Promote regional food systems.

Those few of us who are in the forefront of healthy eating need to support and push this agenda. While you may find parts in it that are not perfect, support of all of it is essential to making sure that we have a place from which make adjustments. As Kim Severson said as she concluded her article,

“It’s like the hat manufacturers being furious because J. F. K. didn’t wear a hat, and suddenly everyone in America stopped wearing hats,” she said. “It’s that simple.”

Afterword: If you read these articles, look at the comments. There you will read the opponents of President Obama and his policies. Please consider writing comments in support of the articles (if you truly can make them) because the negativity to such ideas seems very strong and often stated.

Warning: Maybe Local Harvest organization being spoofed

2009-01-28T12:33:00.000-08:00

A reminder that you can be anyone on the Internet. I received the following message from Local Harvest, or I think I did. Now, remember, I am not guarantying this is right. It could be a spoof, too. However, I am leaning to this being genuine. Please read the following message and then the spoof below.

Hello Marilyn,

I am sending a short email to alert our members to an online scam that we've learned is being targeted at farms. These are mainly African scammers who will send you an email from your LH "email us" form or directly to you if you publish your email on your website, claiming to be interested in buying something from you. If you were to pursue a transaction with them, they would send you a check for an amount greater than their "purchase", and ask for a refund. Their check is a forgery, so you would lose the money you sent as a "refund".

We've programmed our system to block any emails being sent from African countries from getting through, but we've detected some scam attempts being sent from other places as well. We keep adding new keywords to our spam filters to detect these, but the scammers keep changing their messages to get through our filters. It's an ongoing battle, and some of their messages will unavoidably get through, so it's best to have you, our members, be on alert about these fraud attempts.

I'm pasting below a sample of a scammer email. If you get something like this, please, just delete it.

Thank you.

--G

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello,
I found your Advert on this site (local harvest) and i think am interested in making business with you.I will like to know the Available stocks you have now for sales and also like to know the prices of the stocks in bulk.I am willing to buy as many as possible to enable me use it for Consumption and storage.please get back at me as soon as you get this mail.
Best Regards
Dr wilson mike

--
Guillermo Payet
L O C A L H A R V E S T
http://www.localharvest.org

White House Farmer -- supporting Carrie Anne Little

2009-01-26T11:56:00.000-08:00

There is a competition that ends January 31, 2009 for White House Farmer. I receive the following e-mail about this today, and I am delighted in supporting this wonderfully generous farmer from Pierce County (south of us) Washington, CARRIE ANNE LITTLE.

Hi,
I am writing to let you know that Pierce County, WA citizen Carrie Little of Mother Earth Farm in the Orting valley has been nominated and is currently in the lead as one of three people whose names will be submitted to the Obama team for the consideration of White House Farmer. I believe it is a wonderful and exicting idea to propose the White House turn lawns into an organic vegetable garden to feed staff and local food banks there. This supports agriculture, reduces fuel in transporting food, puts our taxdollars to use by producing something healthy and edible instead of just a great view and will encourage other Americans to live more sustainable lifestyles. I believe it is a great idea.

Carrie Little is a very knowledgeable, experienced farmer who loves what she does. Mother Earth Farm donates 100% (over 150,000 pounds) of fresh, organic produce to Pierce County foodbanks every year. I support Carrie Little and have voted for her at the website for the White House Farmer. It would be nice for all of Washington State to be represented by Carrie in D.C. through farming.

Can you please share this information with other farmers/vendors, friends and family. The deadline to vote is midnight Jan. 31st. To learn more about the idea of organic gardens at the White House and the nominee Carrie Little please visit the site listed below. Thank you for your time and interest.

White House Farmer.

Cherie Kuranko
Eatonville, WA

The Website says this about the project.

raison d’être: This site is a forum to follow up on Michael Pollan’s call for a White House Farmer. The farmer will be charged with transforming “five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant[ing] in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden” whose produce will be used by the White House Chef, and given to area food banks.

The fine print: Nominations and voting are open through January 31. The top three vote-getters will be submitted to our new President.

Please vote for Carrie Anne Little

Tunnel Houses Up

2009-01-17T13:20:00.001-08:00

The two new tunnel houses are up. (I will post pictures of them soon. I am not an expert picture poster, so please be patient.) Each is over 40 feet long, about 6 1/2 feet tall, and perhaps 12 or 15 feet wide. Brad and Allison made them from pvc pipe, greenhouse plastic, rebar, and wood planks.

Dissatisfied with the designs that are available online or handouts, Brad decided that our tunnel houses needed to be more sturdy, less aerodynamic, and really more permanent than the designs indicated. He has a hard time seeing why he wants to do this more than once every many years. He also wanted to be able to drive his primary tractor through them. While we do all hand work when the plants are up, we use tractors to prepare the soil. It all comes down to time.

Tuesday he was refitting the first one they built because they had learned so many lessons doing it that they applied to the second tunnel house. The kits are fairly expensive, while you can do the same thing with materials from your local big-box home improvement store.

Liars, Cheats, and Thieves Hurting Us Again

2008-12-28T21:12:00.000-08:00

Business runs on trust. TRUST. Period. However over the past several years the trust that the customer needs to have in the products she/he buy has been sorely tried.

It did not start with the tainted dog and cat food from China, but that brought it to the attention of the American public. Since then we have had tainted baby food from China; tainted milk and chocolate bars from China. These were cheats that the Chinese do to their own people, and from what I read, the people who do them seem to have a hard time understanding that what they did was wrong. Luckily many more millions of Chinese think this is wrong, and are trying to fight back. This, however, is by no means a Chinese problem.

Here in the US and Canada, most of the tainted problems stemmed more from system contamination rather than malicious cheating. Escherica (E.) coli 0157:H7 in spinach, then in lettuce from all over. Then there were the E. coli infected tomatoes, but wait it wasn't the tomatoes it was the peppers, but wait it was none of those things. (I have read so much on this I think there never was an E. coli 0157:H7 problem, but I simply do not know.) The regulators made a hash of their testing and product recalls, wasting millions of tons of produce in the process, in a world filled with hunger. So we loose confidence it everything, which creates a major problem.

Now we have a major manufacturer of organic fertilizer using a prohibited substance to improve their "certified organic" fertilizer. California Liquid Fertilizer illegally cheated certified organic farms and their customers by tainting their fertilizers with ammonium sulfate, one of the worst of the synthetic fertilizers rightfully prohibited from from organic gardens. You can read here the story from the Sacramento Bee, Organic farms unknowingly used a synthetic fertilizer. This is a story that dovetails with our financial crisis: where were the regulators? This tainting of the fertilizer by California Liquid Fertilizer went on for seven (7) years! OMG! But it gets worse: The article says:

According to documents obtained by The Bee through a Public Records Act request, California Department of Food and Agriculture officials were notified of the problem in June 2004 but didn't complete their investigation and order the company to remove its product from the organic market until January 2007.

This is an organic grower's nightmare. Being told that something is organic, because we have to trust our suppliers to tell us the truth because we do not have a chemistry lab with a spectrometer to test the products with the OMRI (Organic Materials Review Institute), WSDA (Washington State Department of Agriculture), which we stick to, or Oregon Tilth, or CCOF (California Certified Organic Farmers),or other organic certification.

This is not the first time (or the second or third) that organic farmers who are doing their darnedest to keep their food organic are screwed by big business. In the late 1990's, Monsanto decided to these GMO wheat that was Roundup Ready (Roundup is something you do not want to use around food, it is super poisonous), and it crossed with organic wheat. These were field tests, out in the wind and weather. What did Monsanto expect? This was a major disaster that was also a cross between a fiasco and a tragedy. You can start reading about it in this report by the Canadian Organic Consumers Association Organic Consumers Association. An Update On The GMO Controversy from November 2001. However, it was Monsanto's response to the problem that is so egregious: I read that they sued the organic farmers over using their GMO, patented seed. The organic farms were decertified and had to go back to being transitional organic farms for several years. Here is a link to the sins of Monsanto Millions Against Monsanto. Read it and be amazed, or one of those other "A" words.

We work very hard to keep our food pure. So do the farmers who used California Liquid Fertilizer. One of the agricultural companies lied to, cheated on, and thieved from was Earthbound Organics. They are probably still the biggest supplier of organic produce, and millions of people depend on their organic vegetables. In the winter, when we have no vegetables, we buy them in the store like non-farmers, and we buy from Earthbound among others. Everyone throughout the organic food/value chain was betrayed.

The purposeful tainting of a product crosses all boundaries of decency: it is illegal, immoral, and unethical. It endangers people's lives. This cavalier attitude by those companies that perpetrate these cheats is so disrespectful of all of us. As a customer I do think about these problems as I stand in the grocery store or over the sink preparing dinner. As a farmer I fear this type of thing happening to our farm. As a business woman, I want to rip these liars, cheats, and thieves limb from limb. The ancient punishment of drawing and quartering seems about right for those who do this. No bailout bonuses for those guys. Do you think I'm angry? Oh yes.

Abundantly Green now listed on LocalHarvest

2008-12-10T16:23:00.000-08:00

Local Harvest is a national website that allows people in the "lower 48" to find farmers' markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in their area.

Abundantly Green is proud to join other Puget Sound and Washington State farms on Local Harvest. You can see our listing here.

I encourage you to click through and see this wonderful site started by Guillermo Payet, "a software engineer and activist dedicated to generating positive social change through the Internet." I also suggest that you Google Guillermo Payet and read more about him.

Fun Green Site from the Cotton Industry

2008-12-10T12:28:00.000-08:00

The Mystery Fabric website by the cotton industry provides an amusing and informative set of simple games in the ever-popular multiple choice style. It is billed as a "parody" site. "Do You Know Green," is my favorite.

CULTIVATE THE SOIL: RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING AND SMALL-SCALE FARMERS AND RANCHERS IN WASHINGTON STATE

2008-12-08T10:31:00.000-08:00

Mary Embleton of Cascade Harvest and Puget Sound Fresh sent this information out today. This is a new publication.

CULTIVATE THE SOIL:
RESOURCES FOR BEGINNING AND SMALL-SCALE FARMERS AND RANCHERS IN WASHINGTON STATE
Megan McPhaden
Washington State Housing Finance Commission
Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program
Fall 2008

You don't need The Ponderosa to farm. Your backyard, the top of your garage, containers on your lanai, a bowl of greens on your kitchen counter all produce food. This downloadable PDF file provides you with good information, live links to resources that give you a wide range of information.

Mary wrote:
Produced by the Washington State Housing Finance Commission's
Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program,
this resource is now online [Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program]: www.wshfc.org/FarmRanch/resources.pdf.

If you would like to receive a copy of "Cultivate the Soil" in the mail, please contact Viet Tran at 206.287.4482 or viet.tran@wshfc.org

For questions concerning the Beginning Farmer/Rancher Loan Program, please contact
Tia Peycheff at 206.287.4416, tia.peycheff@wshfc.org or
Dan Schilling at 206.287.4415, dan.schilling@wshfc.org

Please distribute this to anyone you think may be interested!

What are the benefits of eating organic? Dr. set out to find out.

2008-12-04T18:52:00.000-08:00

For three year Dr. only at organic food. Read about what he learned in For Three Years, Every Bite Organic. Here are two short excerpts from the story.

In a fascinating experiment — on himself — Dr. Alan Greene, a pediatrician and author in Danville, Calif., decided to find out. For the last three years, Dr. Greene has eaten nothing but organic foods, whether he’s cooking at home, dining out or snacking on the road.

He chose three years as a goal because that was the amount of time it took to have a breeding animal certified organic by the Department of Agriculture. While food growers comply with organic regulations every day, Dr. Greene wondered whether a person could meet the same standards.

...research suggests that organic foods do contain more of certain nutrients — almost twice as many, in the case of organic tomatoes studied for a 2007 report in The Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

Dr. Greene said he was inspired to go all-organic after talking to a dairy farmer who noted that livestock got sick less after a switch to organic practices. He wondered if becoming 100 percent organic might improve his own health.

Three years later, he says he has more energy and wakes up earlier. As a pediatrician regularly exposed to sick children, he was accustomed to several illnesses a year. Now, he says, he is rarely ill. His urine is a brighter yellow, a sign that he is ingesting more vitamins and nutrients.

This is why we are working to raise organic food year round.

Estimating Your Total Food Market Size

2008-12-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

The U.S. Food Market Estimator from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University popped into my inbox today. It is a tool to estimate the gross consumption of food required in any state. For example, I found that in Washington State the population required the production of 18,326,421 pounds of garlic annual. Fascinating!

For small farmers, it puts our production capabilities into perspective. The market is huge, and we are small niche providers of specialty products. It can be easy to lose sight of this when we go into a huge grocery store and see as much produce a we may produce in a month or even a season on the shelves. It goes a long way to showing how there is room for us in the fresh food market.

This is a well-developed tool and the website provides supporting information, with links to the following topics:
• What is the U.S. Food Market Estimator?
• How does this tool work?
• Does this tool show actual consumption?
• What are the limitations of this tool?
• What food products are included?
• How are units of measure determined?
• Who might use this tool?
• Who developed the U.S. Food Market Estimator?

I encourage everyone to bookmark this tool and use it.

Food Prices Expected to Keep Going Up

2008-11-26T20:51:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reports that Food Prices Expected to Keep Going Up. While the price of some grains, mainly wheat, corn, and rice, have dropped, that may be caused by speculators hording grain releasing it to pay margin calls in our distressed economic. Even if the hoarding does not start again, the growing season problems caused by bad weather and climate change will continue to adversely effect the food supply. The economic laws of supply and demand will rule. The same thing is happening with petroleum prices, and there will be new price manipulations and demands.

So where does that put producers like Abundantly Green? We are trying to balance higher costs with keeping our prices down for our customers. The price per CSA share will rise on New Year's Day by about 10%. We want to keep the share sizes abundant.

Our 2009 shares for 2008 prices is good through December 31, 2008. Go to our sign up page and claim your share.

Melamine in US infant formula: it just goes on and on

2008-11-25T16:16:00.000-08:00

This is simply a heads up to those of you who need to know. Melamine was found in baby formula from China, of course. Impure food, purposefully made impure to cheat on the protein tests: that's why there would be melamine in food.

You can read all about it on FDA finds traces of melamine in US infant formula. (This is an AP story, so it will be unavailable in about one month. Oh, well, it just goes towards our collective amnesia.)

2008 Poulsbo Holiday Farmers Market

2008-11-21T08:42:00.000-08:00

We are selling three kinds of garlic and CSA shares at the 2008 Poulsbo Holiday Farmers Market tomorrow. Join us for this special seasonal Poulsbo Farmers Market event:

November 22 from 1pm – 5 pm
At the Poulsbo Kitsap Regional Library.
700 NE Lincoln Rd, Poulsbo
(360) 779-2915 www.krl.org

Don’t miss your last chance to shop all your local farmers market favorites at the 2008 Poulsbo Holiday Farmers Market.

Where to Find Microloans

2008-11-17T16:15:00.000-08:00

Finding micro loans is important for all small businesses, including those in agriculture -- small farms and ranches. Where to Find Microloans discusses this a bit and provides a good link.

My Latest EntreAlliance Blog series started today

2008-11-17T15:16:00.000-08:00

I started a short series of blogs on management and marketing that starts today on EntreAlliance. It is called Seven Take-Away Lessons From a Failed Team. You may think that this has little to do with farming, but farming is nothing but teamwork. OK, this really has to do with my business consulting business, but for me all the aspects of my life are braided together into a whole that I live and breathe. Please, enjoy.

EntreAlliance is listed in the right column under the blogs that I follow, too.

My BusinessWeek Tips from Nov 13 and 14, 2008

2008-11-15T22:11:00.000-08:00

I write tips for BusinessWeek, and here is link to Thursday's tip is at Increase Revenues While Decreasing Costs.

Here is the link to Friday's tip Avoid the Greatest Loan Risk. My tips do not appear daily. They are really rather random.

I love BusinessWeek.com. The online magazine if full of great articles, business information, and, well, tips. I am one of many tipsters, so check it out every day.

Capital Press letter to the editor

2008-11-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

I couple of weeks before the election, during the endorsement frenzy, Capital Press endorsed John McCain. For many reasons I did not support his candidacy. For many more reasons I supported Barack Obama. Yea!

I believe that the past seven years have been extremely hard on family farms. The twelve years previously under Republican administration was even harder on us. The eight years of Clinton were not as hard, but far from good. The assent of the industrial farm, which like much of American industry has been shown the doorway to China, is really the legacy of Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. He devised the industrialized farming scheme that dominates today's agriculture. I have come to believe that this is one of the most harmful policies we have in the USA. There are many reasons for this, but it not good on many levels, including homeland security, that the USA has become a net importer of food, much of it being imported from China.

My husband had read the Capital Press endorsement to me in the morning, and later that day I read an article from the McClatchy newspapers website that discussed how John McCain ridiculed small, family farmers. I wrote a letter to the editor, which now appears on their website. As far as I know, it was not printed in the paper.

Why I Fill Out Those Farm Surveys

2008-11-04T12:01:00.000-08:00

I completed the Kitsap Community Agriculture Survey as soon as I received it last week. I completed two other surveys, including the big national agricultural survey sent out every few years.

Why would I do this? It exposes my farm to scrutiny ("you shouldn't let them know you exist"), it takes time ("I'm busy farming, I don't have time for this c***"), and it makes me think about what we are doing ("I don't even want to think about this"). I do this because I want the people who allocate money, designate zoning, and set public policy to recognize our farm and our customers. If they don't know we are here, we will most certainly be run over by progress.

I cannot count the number of times that I have been told that there are no farms in Kitsap County. In the summer of 2000 (what a way to start a new century and a new millennium), we (my husband Cliff and I) had to really take over from my father. I called everyone who claimed they had something to do with farming about what my options were and where we could get some help. I swung between being disappointed to being outraged by the responses.

One state group promised to send me information on hiring farm workers: that never came. The job of the county extension agent was in flux at that point (things have gotten better), after a bizarre conversation ("6 acres is not a farm." "I said 60 – six zero – acres." "There aren't any farms that size in Kitsap." "We have owned and farmed this property since 1892. Mr. Peterson in Silverdale has more land and farms.") that fellow never got back to me (I think he was losing his job at that moment, to cut him some – what – slack?).

The people who did help were the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) who knew we existed, and sent me to some websites (come on State Legislators give these hard working people some money), and answered some questions. They knew we were here. They my father was declining in health and farming, and they cared that we kept on farming. My parents and before them my grandparents had filled out the state farm census every time it was out. I had one buried in my father's unopened mail (several feet of it), and they sent us another copy and then interviewed us on the phone. It really was not much, but it gave us a little boost.

Since our first bad experience with the WSU Extension for Kitsap County, we now have Arno Bergstrom as our Extension Agent. His classes on farming are popular and helpful. This year they produced a beautiful and interactive Kitsap County Farm Map.

A few years later we discovered the Kitsap Conservation District. What wonderful people. They have been here in Kitsap County since 1949. They don't have much money, but they are doing a great deal to help landowners take care of their property, preserve the integrity of steams, and help animal owners control the mud problems that are inevitable every winter. These may seem like trivial issues, but maintaining a clean and healthy planet, county, or farm is like washing you dishes or sweeping your floor: either you can live in a nice home or in a pit; it's your choice.

The Kitsap Conservation District and members of the Kitsap 20/20 Agriculture Task Force sponsored the Kitsap Community Agriculture Survey. If you are a farmer, and I don't care if your grow vegetables on top of your garage in town and sell or give them to your neighbors, or if you have 20,000 acres of forest land, or something in between, fill it out. Federal, State, and County budgets depend on it.

I ask you this, if you are hesitating to fill out the survey: where would you prefer your taxes to be spent, on farms, ranches, and local food, or more those things that destroy local farms, forests, and land?

The Challenges and Opportunities of Being Green

2008-10-31T23:20:00.000-07:00

This is a crosspost from my EntreAlliance.com blog
Posted Thursday, 2008-October-23

Being Green poses a huge challenge to most of us. It means changing what we do at a very basic level: how we think about ourselves.

In the 1970's "customers" were renamed "consumers," and we were told that we live in a "consumer society." That small change in our verbalization of the definition of ourselves changed how we acted.

The Consumer Mindset

It also changed how we think about the economics of what we do: We buy things. Bumper stickers reflect the trends of ours thoughts, and the quintessential 1990s bumper sticker read, "He who dies with the most toys wins."

In our consumer society, we really do "shop 'til we drop." We buy carloads of cheaply and poorly made goods so that we can buy more. For example, we buy dozens of toys for the children, grandchildren, and pets in our lives in fear that we will somehow slight them or betray our love of them if we buy one or two really high-quality gifts. We not only live-with we revel in planned obsolescence: "This will wear-out soon and I can get a new one." City dwellers rent storage lockers to hold the things we no longer use but cannot yet throw out. Most of our purchases enter our garbage stream to be preserved in our over-full sanitary landfills. A few side outlets such as yard sales, FreeCycle, eBay, and Craig's List postpone the landfill graveyard.

We are conditioned, perhaps addicted, to buying and consuming. In today's world, you cannot get further away from being Green.

Consumerism versus Production

The "shop 'til you drop" mindset has a name. In the United States, the consumer-oriented economic model that has dominated for three decades is called "consumerism". Consumerism emphasizes what is consumed by the population over what is produced by the population. The irony of this is that many large companies, and definitely the financial markets, have forgotten that workers, including their own workers, are their customers. They do that often, so this is not surprise.

Consumerism so overshadows production-based economic models as a basis for making policy decisions, especially in the past seven years, that production-based economic models have been rendered ineffectual. Even the much ballyhooed economic (mostly tax) model, "supply-side economics," introduced politically and in tax law in the early 1980s and reintroduced in 2001, failed. In this tax model, taxes on corporations and the nation's wealthiest are lowered to stimulate increased investment in production. Unfortunately for the United States, investors put this money in China, India, and other countries, weakening US production and worsening the national economy.

An Unintended Result

Manufacturing, clean and dirty, moved to those countries where those untaxed dollars flowed. The products of that manufacturing are shipped back to us to buy and dispose. The remaining manufacturing base in the United States complains that they cannot compete with foreign goods, which is true. In its October 1, 2008 nation report on manufacturing, September 2008 Manufacturing ISM Report On Business® PMI at 43.5% shows yet another step a disturbing trend of lower US domestic manufacturing resulting in more worker layoffs and fewer jobs created. This is the type of information that sinks the financial markets.

In our current economy, this is not a new phenomena as this article from 2002 U.S. Manufacturing's Decline Is Business as Usual for Bush Administration by William R. Hawkins demonstrates.

This result, forecast by many, while not intended was inevitable because the United States has been moving (at a tortoise pace) to being green for over four decades. Those who owned the dirty industries and old manufacturing plants that spewed pollutants saw no other way to continue than moving to countries without effective pollution laws. Our aging production plants needing to be replaced were replaced, just not here. This industry mindset is from a failure of vision not from a failure of technology or consumerism.

The Green Opportunity

Being Green presents a huge opportunity for manufacturers, workers, and consumers. With most of the dirtiest of our manufacturing offshore, we can begin again.

In production terms, some parts of the country, notably in the "Rust Belt" have extremely high unemployment rates, which means workers are available. In consumer terms, this means that there are a lot of people not buying all they want to buy, and many consumers prefer to buy green.

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1832, French, businessman and economist) observed that there can be no demand without supply. Essentially, Say's Law states that more money chasing the same amount of goods causes inflation, where more money chasing more goods creates economic growth, not just at the level of consumption, but at the level of production. (This is the root of Supply-side economics.)

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946, British, economist), inverted Say's Law, stating that demand creates its own supply.

As a business owner, the reality that both of these statements are true hits me in the face. The fact that we sell CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) shares taps into a desire for fresh food (a very green idea) and availability inspires people to buy our CSA shares.

The economic and financial meltdown we are experiencing now is the best economic climate for the change to being Green. Green products produced locally in new green manufacturing plants will aid local economies while changing how people perceive of themselves.

An Old Economic Model for a New Economy

The Green Manufacturing (perhaps the whole Green Society) should lift an idea from Henry Ford. The story goes that on Jan. 5, 1914, during a recession much like ours today, Henry Ford etched his name in history by publicly creating consumers out of his workers. This economic view came to be called "Fordism."

David Leonhardt retells this story in his New York Times article of April 5, 2006

The Economics of Henry Ford May Be Passé

"Mr. Ford announced that he was doubling the pay of thousands of his employees, to at least $5 a day. With his company selling Model T's as fast as it could make them, his workers deserved to share in the profits, he said.
His rivals were horrified. The Wall Street Journal accused him of injecting "Biblical or spiritual principles into a field where they do not belong."

Green Economics

To be transformational, Green Practices, Green Products, and Green Consumers must meld into Green Economics. The same force that changed us into "consumers" can make us "Green." Every part of society has to be touched to create a Green Society. Creating green jobs that produce green products that green consumers buy is key to both the green movement, and the economic health of our communities. We cannot compete with the new dirty factories in China, India, and elsewhere. It is no longer economically possible or desirable.

Being Green is much more than buying Green. Instead of being Green Consumers, we should be simply a Green Society that both produces and consumes green products. It is an economic system that favors those who can see beyond where we are today. It favors those who act on their own, and become first, second, and third movers.

Green products can include energy, something that I am becoming quite passionate about (I am making notes on that blog right now), clothing, homes, office buildings, transportation - including private vehicles, and computers. Manufacture, distribution, sales, and purchase of all these things, anything you can imagine should be part of our Green Society. We have been change leaders often in the past 250 years, and there is no reason that we will veer from this path. Just as we lead the information technology revolution, we will lead the Green Revolution. It's just how we are built. We will compete with great success in the new arena of Being Green.

Marilyn Holt
Abundantly Green
EntreAlliance.com
Holt Capital

Cascade Harvest & Puget Sound Fresh Need Help

2008-10-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

It's time to step up and give.

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The meltdown in financial markets and the increasingly weak economy have hit us hard here at Cascade Harvest Coalition. As of today, we will lose 75% of our operating budget (approximately $230,000) for 2009. This is largely local government grants that won’t be funded because of operating shortfalls.
We need your help!
For ten years, Cascade Harvest Coalition has been fiercely dedicated to building a sustainable food system in our region. Each year, we have reached millions of consumers with messages on the critical importance of local farms and food to our economy, our communities and our environment. We have given them the tools they need to directly connect with local farmers – through the Puget Sound Fresh Farm Guide, CSA directory, searchable database, and by directly supporting Farmers Markets and restaurants, local retail grocers and others who source locally.
We have made it our mission to more directly connect farmers with local food buyers, helping support sustainable farming operations and increasing their bottom line.
We have provided thousands of hours of one-on-one assistance to current and beginning farmers as they try to access land, start new farm businesses, and develop new markets. We have helped maintain over 500 acres in active agricultural production and provided many hundreds of farmers with the resources, tools and information they need to be successful.
And our efforts to support new processing infrastructure in the Puget Sound region are starting to bear fruit. Working with our collaborative partners, we’ve identified existing processing capacity and are helping farmers get new products to market as well as examining the potential for other processing facilities. We are adding considerably to the fundamental base of information about production, processing and infrastructure in our region that will serve us for years to come.
Importantly, we have also provided significant financial support to other organizations promoting sustainable food and farming systems by helping fund workshops, conferences and other community events as well as acting as fiscal sponsor for organizations just starting to build capacity.
And, we provide a crucial conduit for information – through this and our other email lists – to make sure that those interested in issues affecting local food and farms are informed. This list – started nearly 10 years ago – has grown from reaching a handful of individuals and organizations – to reaching an estimated 2,000 directly and through information sharing. Almost daily – organizations ask to post information to this list because they know you care about the issues. And yet, the majority of people on this list are not members of Cascade Harvest Coalition.
We urge you to become a member or make a contribution, individually and through your business or organization to support our efforts at this critical time. Your support is crucial in helping us maintain the momentum we’ve built and the successes we’ve achieved.
Thank you for your support!
Mary Embleton, Director

Enemy of Agriculture vs Friend of Agriculture

2008-10-23T22:56:00.000-07:00

Agriculture: McCain would wield veto pen for farm subsidies is a scathing article describing the contempt that McCain has demonstrated toward American agriculture. I have been aware of his opposition to farm aid and the farm bill, but this article actually shocked me. In particular, this part of the article sent a cold chill through me.

The agricultural-policy differences were apparent in 2006 when McCain sought to remove a $74 million grant program designed to help states promote sales of fruits and vegetables. In Senate debate, he likened the farm promotions to previous federal grants that funded artwork on airplanes.

"Maybe that (money) will be used to paint vegetables on airplanes. Or maybe a pretty flower. Or maybe a nice acorn," McCain suggested. "How about some dried apricots or prunes? That would be sure to increase consumption."

McCain's sarcasm was characteristic. So was the legislative result. His amendment failed by a 61-37 vote, with Obama joining a number of McCain's fellow Republicans in defeating it.

by Michael Doyle, McClatchy news papers reported on Thursday, September 18, 2008.

This is just one more reason...

Here is link to this blog as it appeared in the Capital Press letters to the editor McCain 'mocks' U.S. agriculture.

A Locavore Manifesto by Michael Pollan

2008-10-13T11:51:00.000-07:00

I found this in my e-mail this morning from Jim Freeman on the KCAA blog Buy Local Food In Kitsap October 12th, 2008.

Jerry Darnell, local Kitsap farmer and advocate sent me a link to an article by Michael Pollan. It was published in the New York Times and is 9 pages long but it is all worth your time to read.

Knowing Jerry, knowing Pollan's work, I figured that this was worth reading. It is. It is one article out of Michael Pollan's New York Times blog. It is extremely interesting reading.

Jim discusses the issue, and adds another question “Why do we need to wait for an regime change or policy adjustments?” This discussion if meaning full, especially after reading Pollan's blog. You can go there from here by clicking on the link below.

The Food Issue
Farmer in Chief
By MICHAEL POLLAN
Published: October 12, 2008
What the next president can and should do to remake the way we grow and eat our food.

Jim's question is very pertinent, because of the war and the financial crisis that has beset this nation, we must ask ourselves if we dare wait for centralized change to decentralize our food supply. I realize that Pollan is actually calling for leadership and asking that the President be a change agent by example, for the most part, but it is up to us to make it so.

Good Food: the movie

2008-09-24T10:22:00.000-07:00

I received this message from Mary Embleton who was passing it along from Melissa Young of Moving Images .

Dear friends, please forward to interested folks.

For those who missed the Seattle Film Festival premier of GOOD FOOD:

Seattle -
October 4, 7 pm Local Sightings Festival at NW Film Forum - 1515-12th Avenue [more on fest below]
October 16, 7 pm South Park Neighborhood Center, 820l - 10th Ave. South
October 22, 7 pm Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska Street
November 21, 7 pm Wallingford Friday Night at the Meaningful Movies, Keystone church, 5019 Keystone Place N.

Western Washington -
October 12, 6:45 pm Oddfellows Hall in Eastsound, Orcas Island
October 18 & 19, 5 pm Lynwood Theatre, Bainbridge Island
October - date TBA Vashon Island
November 8, 8 pm Bellingham, WA - Washington Tilth Producers Conference

Eastern Washington -
September 25, 11:30 am Spokane Falls Community College
September 25, 7 pm Magic Lantern Theater - Spokane, Washington
October 2-5 date/time TBA Ellensburg Film Festival - Ellensburg, Washington

Elsewhere -
October 17-19 -dateTBA Black Bear Film Festival, Milford Pennsylvania
October 25, 11 a.m. UN Association Film Festival - Palo Alto, California

We hope you can join us. Check out - www.goodfoodthemovie.org to remain current on screenings, to view a 5 minute preview of the film, to read reviews, and to learn more about sustainable agriculture in the Northwest.

Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young
Moving Images

11th Annual Local Sightings Film Festival , October 3-8

Northwest Film Forum’s premiere showcase of Northwest filmmaking is back, bigger than ever. The festival, which happens at NWFF’s theaters in Seattle, features great prizes, filmmaker parties, archival Northwest films and an impressive national film industry jury looking for strong Northwest work.

The annual festival includes both feature film presentations as well as short film programs and special events with live film performances, installation art, audience participation and parties. This year’s festival takes place in the cinemas of Northwest Film Forum from October 3–8. Included in this year’s festival will be the usual assortment of fiction, documentary and experimental films as well as a featured presentation of a historical Seattle film, a staged reading of this year’s Washington State Screenplay Competition winning script, and an opening party that will ignite Seattle’s film scene Friday night and keep it bleary eyed Saturday morning.

Schedule features the documentary GOOD FOOD – playing Saturday October 4 at 7pm!

More information and complete program at www.localsightings.org

Tainted Milk: Why Sustainable Agricultural Practices are Needed

2008-09-17T08:26:00.000-07:00

Sustainable agricultural practices feed the soil with the nutrients it needs to grow healthy crops to feed you. Dying, chemically fed soil produces grains, vegetables, and other plants that are low in protein. Processing practices can also lower the nutrient value. Foods are tested for protein levels under certain situations. Food grown in poor soil simply lacking nutrients, and food processing managers who want to pass the tests without providing the nutrients have found a cheap cheat in Melamine, a chemical that shows higher levels of protein than really exists.

Melamine, a plastic that is poisonous to humans and animals (tainted dog and cat food in 2007), was found in the milk given to babies in Chinese hospitals in Beijing. The result, so far, is 6,200 sickened and 3 dead.

An article published on Huntington Post reports the following.

More than 6,200 babies have been sickened by tainted milk formula and dozens of infants are suffering from acute kidney failure, China's health minister said Wednesday as the death toll rose to three children.

The article went on to discuss the situation,closing the article with this:

Suppliers to the dairy companies are believed to have added the banned chemical, normally used in plastics, to watered-down milk to make it appear higher in protein. Inspectors will now start testing for melamine in all dairy products, Li said.

The chemical additive was at the center of a major pet food scandal in the United States in 2007. An estimated 1,500 dogs and cats died after ingesting a pet food ingredient manufactured in China that was laced with melamine.

This sad story is going to be repeated again and again all over the world as our food chain is centralized, processing leeches out the nutrients, and the soil our food is grown in is weakened and killed by herbicides and pesticides.

By buying organically grown and naturally grown food, you are telling farmers that you value this type of food. The message that "conventional" farmers are being bombarded with is if they farm without these additives (poisons) they will fail. The simple act of buying organic food shows conventional farmers that this is a lie, and they can make a living farming the healthy way.

My prayers and best wishes for full recoveries go out to the sick children and their parents. I send my condolences to the parents and families of the children who died.

More on Drugs in our Water

2008-09-15T11:36:00.000-07:00

The follow-up to earlier reports on how contaminated our country's/world's water is was published. If you follow this link AP IMPACT: Tons of drugs dumped into wastewater by JEFF DONN, MARTHA MENDOZA and JUSTIN PRITCHARD, September 14, 2008. USA Today put the headline on this article "Health facilities flush estimated 250M pounds of drugs a year."

AP does not permalink their articles, so if you want to keep this, you will need to save it yourself.

Bush’s New Budget Revisions Negate New Farm Bill Provisions

2008-09-12T11:04:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Farm Bill stuck in the craw of the Bush Administration, and was not vetoed because the House and Senate had enough votes to override a veto. So the administration is crippling the bill by not funding it the Budget that they sent to the House. If you are concerned with this omission, please contact your Congressman and tell them to provide funding for these programs in the 2009 Budget.

Please read this article to understand what this means for small farmers, locally grown food, and healthy food for school children. Washington State Representative Rick Larsen worked hard on this bill to include cane crops (berries). This will hit us in several small ways, such as the loss of EQIP program funding that will aversely impact our farm and most small farmers. The Bush Administration's budget really only helps industrial agricultural concerns.

The following article is being reprinted in whole, with permission, of The Fruit Growers News.

Bush’s New Budget Revisions Negate New Farm Bill Provisions
By Dick Lehnert

Some provisions of the new Farm Bill that specialty crops producers had found so appealing will not be funded if proposed adjustments to the federal budget, recommended Aug. 1 by the Bush administration, are approved by Congress.

Cuts would be made to the new National Clean Plant Network, the organic research and Extension program, specialty crops block grants, section 32 funds for fresh fruit and vegetable purchases for school lunch programs, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the plant pest and disease management and disaster prevention program and several other USDA programs for which new or increased spending was authorized by the new Farm Bill.

Proposed budget cuts tallied up to $594 million for USDA. Increases of $172 million were recommended for the Farm Services Agency, $117 million for a new computer system and $55 million for staffing.

In net total, USDA would take a cut of $422 million, and the savings would be used to fund other, non-agricultural federal government programs.

The adjustments were proposed Aug. 1 in a letter and documents addressed by President George W. Bush to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and in a transmittal letter from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Jim Nussle.

There was no reaction from the farm community except for a press release Aug. 6 from the American Farmland Trust, which drew attention to the proposed cuts. Some $403 million of the cuts affect conservation-related programs. John Stierna, AFT’s authority on conservation issues, plowed through the documents OMB sent to Congress and detailed the cuts.

Bush had sent his proposed FY 2009 budget to Congress in February, before the new Farm Bill passed early this summer. The Farm Bill authorized new or increased funding in a number of areas, especially for programs favored by specialty crop producers and organic farmers. Bush then proposed amendments to his earlier budget, in which he proposed not funding many of the new provisions of the Farm Bill.

AFT is concerned that if these cuts are adopted, it will set a precedent for future years — taking away some of the funding for conservation and other purposes that was provided in the Farm Bill, Stierna said.

Here are details on some of the proposed cuts:

– Previous legislation had authorized funding for EQIP – which cost-shares pollution prevention and other conservation measures implemented by farmers – at $1.05 billion. The new Farm Bill increased mandatory funding to $1.33 billion for FY 2009. The president proposes cutting this $287 million increase.

– Section 32 funds to the Domestic Food Assistance Program, which provides money to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables and whole grains in the National School Lunch Program and the School Breakfast Program, would not be increased. The new Farm Bill had authorized an increase of $100 million, to $1.17 billion for FY 2009. Bush proposed permanently eliminating this increase.

– Specialty Crop Block Grants that support producers of fruits, vegetables and nuts by providing research, technical assistance, food safety and educational programs – a new Farm Bill program to be funded by $34 million – would have FY 2009 funding of $15 million under the Bush proposal.

– The provision in the new Farm Bill to increase funding for the Organic Research and Extension Initiative to $18 million a year would be cut by $8 million under Bush’s proposal. This remains an increase; the funding level under the previous Farm Bill was $3 million.

– The Farmland Protection program, which provides matching funds for state and local programs that purchase development rights to preserve farms, was increased from $97 million for FY 2009 to $121 million by the new Farm Bill. Bush proposes cutting it back to the previous level.

– A new Chesapeake Bay Watershed Program that was established to add funding for conservation measures on agricultural lands to reduce nutrient and sediment in that watershed would not be funded. The new Farm Bill added $23 million for FY 2009; the Bush proposal would eliminate that.

– The Agricultural Management Assistance Program, which provides conservation assistance to states where participation in the Federal Crop Insurance Program typically has been low (largely states in the northeast), would have an added $5 million for FY 2009 under the new Farm Bill, from its previous $10 million. Bush proposed eliminating all $15 million.

– A Farm Bill feature to add $12 million to the Value-Added Agriculture Market Development Program would not be funded in FY 2009 under Bush’s proposal, leaving it at $3 million.

– A new Farm Bill provision to add $12 million for “plant pest and disease management and disaster prevention,” all new money, would be canceled for FY 2009.

– The Farm Bill provided $50 million for the new Voluntary Public Access and Habitat Incentives program for FY 2009. Bush’s proposal would cancel all funding for the program.

– Another Bush proposal would permanently cancel $5 million of FY 2009 funding for the National Clean Plant Network.

Full details of the president’s proposed budget revisions can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/amendments/amendment_8_1_08.pdf.

The new fiscal year starts Oct. 1, by which time Congress must pass appropriation bills (typically 13) or an omnibus bill (a combination), or approve a continuing resolution.

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Corn is ripe

2008-09-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

It's a month late, and it's all ripening at the same time. We had some last night and it was heavenly. If you are in Kitsap, go to the Poulsbo Farmers Market and buy some. We sold out last Saturday by 10:30 a.m.

"Meat from Wheat"

2008-08-08T16:14:00.001-07:00

I found this video on the Seattle Times. Enjoy!
Meat from Wheat

More on Sunscreen

2008-08-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

Since sunscreen is important to your long-term health, I am sharing a formula for how much sunscreen to use. A couple of years ago, I published this in my Abundantly Green newsletter that we give each week to our CSA members and Poulsbo Farmers Market customers and browsers.

I posted July 6, 2008 on the topic, and received a rather interesting comment that the person's doctor recommended being in the sun without sunscreen: "Just got a lecture from my gynecologist about the need for me to spend 20 minutes a day in the sun without any sun protection -- she says she's dealing with clients with vitamin D deficiencies." The comment is longer, and you should read it for yourself. I am doing this, but my vitamin D has not been questioned or tested lately or ever.

Back to slathering oneself with sunscreen: I don't know much about this, but others claim to, and so with that caveat, here it is:

Most people do not apply enough sunscreen to their skin. If you put on sunscreen as you would a moisturizer, you are not protected. To reach the SPF factor advertised on the label you need to apply it thickly, says WebMD.

But what does “thickly” mean? Paul and Gail Gourley in their book (which is now out of print, so ask at your library) Protect Your Life in the Sun spell it out:

Body area --- Lotion application in teaspoons
face and neck --- child 1/2 --- adult 1
one arm and hand --- child 1/2 --- adult 1
back and shoulders --- child 1 --- adult 2
stomach and chest --- child 1 --- adult 2
one leg and foot --- child 3/4 --- adult 2

I sunburn easily. I found that every year I needed to apply more sunscreen to avoid burning. Using the amounts suggested by the Gourleys, I found I could get enough on my skin that I don't burn.

Even when I am wearing sandals with long pants I put sunscreen on my feet. I have burned the top of my feet several times. Also, when driving, I slather a lot of sunscreen on my arms, hands, and face because they get a concentrated amount of sun, often, through the windows. Even tinted windows, I have learned, so not provide sun protection.

My other post on July 6, 2008, also lists companies that sell sun protection clothes online.

Reading alert

2008-08-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

Harvest will reveal impacts of Midwest floods in Delta Farm Press, Aug 5, 2008 10:37 AM, By Elton Robinson, Farm Press Editorial Staff provides a good discussion and links to more information on the effect of weather on this year's crops.

Kitsap Community & Agricultural Alliance (KCAA)

2008-07-30T10:44:00.000-07:00

We, Abundantly Green and you, our CSA family members, and Poulsbo Farmers Market customers, and readers of Amicus Agraria are active in the local food movement just by what we do. Several years ago, I became active in moving a community-based agriculture promotion group forward. That group became the Kitsap Community & Agricultural Alliance (KCAA). The KCAA depends on people like you, community members, to join and work with it to promote and support local agriculture of all types in the Kitsap Peninsula.

The group is headed by our dear friend Nikki Johanson of Pheasant Fields Farm. She is joined by many people. There is a monthly meeting the first Tuesday of the month, 7:00 pm at the Norm Dicks Government Center in Bremerton.

The KCAA was a primary sponsor of Joe Salatin coming to Kitsap county in June where he spoke to a sold-out audience at Olympic College on June 4. Mr. Salatin was profiled as one of the most influential independent organic farmers in the country in the book The Omnivores Dilemma.
Jim Freeman, a KCAA member volunteer, created an amazing blog for the KCAA called Buy Local Food in Kitsap, The Blog changes several times a week, featuring a farm, market, or source for local food.

The KCAA Blog features many topics that you might not realize were important to local food in Kitsap. One topic I recommend is “How to Support Local Farmers.” You might think, “I buy locally, I belong to a CSA,” and while essential, it is just one of many things that needs to happen to keep farms like ours farming. The blog is a good way to meet and befriend others who share your love of local, wholesome, farm fresh food, like ours. The blog, Buy Local Food in Kitsap, links to others, including our web page and Amicus Agraria. You can also go to it through the Abundantly Green website. You are invited to join in and comment and blog at both.

You do not have to be a resident of the Kitsap Peninsula to support and join the KCAA. The membership information follows:
• Individual Membership at $20 for a 1 year membership
• Family Membership (one contact) for $35 for a 1 year membership
• send a check to Kitsap Community & Agricultural Alliance, P. O. Box 11, Keyport, WA 98345
• Or fill out the form from the website
• phone number is 360-779-6523
• email is kcaa4u@yahoo.com

Compromising the Elixer of Life

2008-07-28T11:00:00.000-07:00

Water is really the life-giving elixir. Water is not only what you drink, it is what the plants and animals drink. Freshwater systems occupy only 0.8 percent of Earth's surface.

The Worldwatch Institute reports that our renewable water supply amounts to approx 0.3 percent of the world's total freshwater, which is less that is presently being used. Sandra Postel, a Senior Fellow of The Worldwatch Institute, and expert in global water problems, states that "Most irrigation-based civilizations fail." Wow, that is a stark and scary statement. Her compelling facts back up her statement, leaving me with a sense of urgency about figuring out how can we avoid this path of failure. How can we?

The Why Files water map and linked articles provide detailed information from The World Health Organization -- WHO. "Of a population of roughly 6.1 billion, more than 1 billion lack access to potable water. The World Health Organization says that at any time, up to half of humanity has one of the six main diseases -- diarrhea, schistosomiasis, or trachoma, or infestation with ascaris, guinea worm, or hookworm -- associated with poor drinking water and inadequate sanitation."

Since most of us eat more plants than animals, and plants do not effectively process or filter the water the take up (up-take), the quality of the water that they are water with is very important. However, what about polluted water? What about our "water footprint?"

Discover Magazine has been doing a series of articles on water. Better Planet: Everything You Know About Water Conservation Is Wrong Forget short showers. Worry about the 6,340 gallons of "virtual water" in your leather bag. by Thomas M. Kostigen, published online May 28, 2008. I will leave you with two very shocking statements as teasers to encourage you to pop over there and read the whole article.

"...if each of us avoided wasting just one cupful of coffee a day, we could save enough water over the course of a year to provide two gallons to every one of the more than 1.1 billion people who don’t have access to freshwater at all.

That is a stark statistic, when as many as 5 million people die unnecessarily each year because of lack of water and water-related illnesses; one-third are under age 5."

Farther along in the article he writes: "Right now we lose 30 to 50 percent of the food we grow—and all the virtual water in it—by the time it is ready for consumption, says Daniel Zimmer, executive director of the World Water Council (WWC) in Marseille, France."

Discover Magazine has earned worldwide respect among the learned community they report on, and provides a wealth of information.

The Dallas-Fort Worth Star Telegram online news has a section devoted to clean water issues called Plant DFW: Drinking Water from a series of articles that they did in May 2008. The issues they address are underground chemical plumes affecting their water system (what do we have here on the Kitsap Peninsula?), Airline water, and more. They provide plenty of links, too. Discover Magazine is linked there as is National Geographic's The Green Guide.

The Associated Press (AP) investigated our water supplies in twenty-four major cities at the end of last year. They found what many of us have known for a while: the drugs that we take pass through our digestive systems and into the sewage stream. The extent of this pollution of our water was profiled in article written by Jeff Donn, Martha Mendoza and Justin Pritchard, published by the AP, March 10, 2008. Sex Hormones, Mood Stabilizers Found In Drinking Water Of 41 M Americans

Here is a taste of a this long and thoughtful piece.

“People take pills. Their bodies absorb some of the medication, but the rest of it passes through and is flushed down the toilet. The waste water is treated before it is discharged into reservoirs, rivers or lakes. Then, some of the water is cleansed again at drinking water treatment plants and piped to consumers. But most treatments do not remove all drug residue.

Sewage treatment plants are not set up to handle these chemicals, so now our birth control pills, antibiotics, pain relievers are in our drinking water. I first became aware of this problem when I read an article several years ago about the feminising of fish, amphibians, and mollusks species that can change gender. This is a serious problem for our food supply.

This is a really important issue for farming. How can our food supply be pure if our water is polluted? The title of the story is a link to the AP site. I have quoted few paragraphs so that you can see why this investigation is important.

A vast array of pharmaceuticals -- including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones -- have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.

To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose.
Also, utilities insist their water is safe.

But the presence of so many prescription drugs _ and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen _ in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.

I encourage you to read the entire story. I have not found a follow up to this story. If you know of additional or follow up information, please share the links to it.

If, like me, you don't know about these drugs, and their effects on the human being, read this chapter from a text book for psychiatrists. Mood Stableizers are discussed in this online book from the Australia New Zealand Association of Psychiatrists in Training.

This is described as: Chapter 18: Mood stabilizers Saturday, 27 August 2005, Last modified: April 28, 2006, This chapter is not exciting. It provides more detail than medical students need. There is little controversy attached to mood stabilizers.

Why is this important and the blue planet: the water planet? What are we to do when freshwater systems occupy only 0.8 percent of Earth's surface and less that 3% of all the earth's water is potable, fresh water: that means able to be used by people, plants or animals. Without water, there is no life.

Demand for local food at an all time high

2008-07-25T10:32:00.000-07:00

What a modern headline: “Demand for local food at an all time high.” A person born in 1908 probably would not be able to understand it, yet today the issue of locally grown versus imported food may be essential to our continued well-being. The locally grown food issue is, ironically, worldwide.

For all the industrialized nations the food chain has become a complex system based on global corporations that separate producers and consumers are through a chain of processors, value-added manufacturers, shippers and haulers, and retailers. This food chain is so convoluted it is almost impossible to understand. For example, If you shop at Costco and many other grocery stores, you are familiar with the Earthbound Farm Organic Foods, which is a subsidiary brand of Natural Selection Foods, which is a subsidiary of Tanimura and Antle.

The Certified Organic Associations of BC (Canada) has a chart of the global corporations that own some of the organic (but not local) brands you can find on your grocery store shelves. Who Owns What in the Organic food industry, by Phil Howard, an assistant professor at Michigan State University's Department of Community, Agriculture, Recreation and Resource Studies is surprising. If after reading the chart, you feel like you are in a modern version of Abbott and Costello’s “Who's on First,” you are not alone.

The global organic food industry is threatened by the movement to buy from local farmers, who actually provide less than 2% of all food consumed in the United States, and probably the industrialized world, as well, although I have no statistics on this. The globalization of food, which took away the issue of seasonality, so you could have tomatoes, cherries, broccoli, and more year-round, proved to be a highly disruptive situation to both food distribution and agriculture. Food distributors who did not provide out of season food found themselves out of business. Farmers planted one or two crops to meet the huge demand that nationwide and worldwide distribution created.

The local food movement may be as disruptive in reverse. If you enter the phrase “demand for locally grown food” into Yahoo Search, you will get 9,870,000 articles returned.

LOCAL FOOD DISTRIBUTION

Local Kitsap Peninsula food is actually difficult to find. All of the local CSA (community supported agriculture) farms were sold out weeks in advance. Local farmers markets report an increase in customers of double or more over last year. Even our miserable weather and resulting slow season does not deter CSA members and farmers market customers.

However, not everyone can join a CSA or go to a farmers market. To help people who want to enjoy locally grown food, Bainbridge Islander Carlee Ashen started Farm Courier to bring local produce to Bainbridge Island doorsteps. She is at the forefront of local food distribution. Farm Courier enjoys an unique place in the local food distribution system, but Ashen’s success is going to inspire others to copy her business model and join her in providing fresh, locally grown food on the Kitsap Peninsula.Farm Courier and Carlee Ashen were recently featured in this Bainbridge Island Review article Cyber market links Bainbridge growers to residents hungry for local food.

Crossposted with http://www.buylocalfoodinkitsap.org/

Consuming Temperature

2008-07-24T01:23:00.000-07:00

It is July 24, 2008. Yesterday the high temperature was 65°, not the normal temperature of 76 °; that is 11° cooler than usual. The low temperature, 53°, three degrees cooler than the normal low of 56 °. The weather forecast predicts highs in the 60’s for a couple of days then getting hotter, into the 70’s. The nighttime lows will stay in the mid-50’s. In the wee hours of the morning, such as 3 a.m., you can see your breath. This is July - that's just wrong.

This is awful weather for food plants. Two major factors regulate plant growth: sunlight and soil temperature. While air temperature is important, soil temperature is the determining factor.

To provide a wider variety of vegetables throughout our 20 week CSA season, we plant sequentially. That means that we really have three gardens that should provide four gardens of food (the first garden is replanted). Plants germinate and grow all summer long. This year, we are transplanting more than ever before to ensure that our plants have a good start. We are direct seeding, too, but not as much as is economical. Here is why we are spending more time, which equals money, on transplanting.

Let us consider the Broccoli plant. The soil temperature for germination must reach 70°, but not exceed 80° to 90°. Seeds take 3 to 8 days to germinate, and reach maturity in about 70 days.

Next, let us consider the Cucumber. The soil temperature. for Germination must be between 70° and 90°F. It takes 7 to 14 days to germinate, and they mature in 70 to 85 days.

Finally, let us consider lettuce. For this year, it is the best. The soil temperature for germination has a wide range, from a low of 40° for some varieties, extending up into the 50s for many other varieties. The top high temperature ranges to 80°. For many varieties, when the air temperatures suddenly increase, for example go from the mid-60s into the high 70s, they bolt, that is rapidly produce seeds. Depending upon variety, it takes 40 to 65 days to mature. This means, however, that when temperatures exceed 80°, lettuce dies.

Sounds quite predictable, but not this year. Soil temperatures are in the 60s. That means that our little broccoli and cucumber seeds had to be planted in the green house, hardened (a process of acclimating the plants to the cooler temperatures outdoors), and transplanted. We even transplanted hundreds of heads of lettuces. There is no guarantee that the transplants will survive.

This spring the air temperatures did not rise above highs of 45°, which means that the soil temperatures were several colder. Not even lettuce would germinate.

The temperature for germination really tells the temperature range in which the plant will survive. The Cucumber survives between 70° and 90°F. A more mature plant can survive and grow in temperatures ten degrees cooler or warmer, but the progress towards maturity will be adversely affected at either end of the range.

When you hear of cold temperatures in the Pacific Northwest, or extraordinarily hot temperatures in other areas like New York, that means that the crops are stressed and may under produce or simply die.

For this reason, climate change directly affects our food crops. We are told by those who visit many farms in the whole Puget Sound Area, that our crops are doing marvelously, considering the weather. We have more of everything. It is taller, more mature, and more abundant. This is due to our diligent Co-farmer, Brad, and his workers, Lesley, Allison, and Kathy. Still, our crops are slow: perhaps six to eight weeks behind. Pray for a long season.

Calories -- Oh Sob

2008-07-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

The convenience of fast food is marvelous. You can drive up to a window, hand over money and someone will hand you food. Wow. That’s actually really cool. Except that the food they hand you is not necessarily good for you. It contains higher than normal amounts of salt and fat, highly processed bread, and lots of calories. If you work in a sedentary job, your body does not burn the calories. Plus there is the bio-ethics and safety issues of eating feed-lot beef and industrial chicken, and other centralized processing-plant foods.

When you cook at home and prepare easy low-calorie dishes, you will find that they range from about no calories to 200 calories. For every pat of butter you top you food with, you add about 100 calories. Even so, the food you prepare yourself probably has half as many or fewer calories than the favorite fast food meals. If you do not believe me, go to one of them and read the contents and calorie count. McDs puts the nutrition and calories on every box they hand out.

Consider the BK Chicken Whooper: it has 750 calories, and it is not even that filling. A McD’s 10 piece Chicken Selects Premium Breast Strips is 1270 calories, the Big Breakfast is 730 calories, and the Deluxe Breakfast is 1220 calories according to the Washington-post.com Fast Food Calorie Chart. My McD’s favorite is the Double Cheese Burger (comes without that third layer of bun). The box it comes in says that it contains 730 calories and 40 grams of fat. My, oh my! Now add in fries (large portion has 520 calories), soda pop (classic Coke large has 310 calories), and milk shakes (Chocolate shake 12 oz has 440 calories and the 32 oz has 1160 calories) on top of that. Lunch at McD’s could be easily contain 1500 to 2000 calories or more. This is an important figure for me and my health, which I will get back to in the last paragraph.

The Energy Allowance or how much you should eat.The energy allowance describes in general terms how we calculate the amount of energy we need each day to make our bodies go (walking, breathing, etc.). Vincent Iannelli, M.D., on www.About.com provides this energy allowance information for children and young adults. Children need a lot more calories than adults do because they are growing. Many adults continue to grow rotund because we eat like we are fifteen years old. (We can all sing the chorus of 'unfair, unfair, unfair.') Equally annoying for women is the general fact that boys burn more calories than girls, even when they do the same activities.

For boys: from 2000 calories for a 7-10 year old, 2500 calories for an 11-14 year old, and 3000 calories for a 15-18 year old.

For girls: 2000 calories for a 7-10 year old, and 2200 calories for an 11-18 year old. These are only estimates and some children need more (fast metabolism) or less (slow metabolism) of an energy allowance for daily activities.

Also on About.Com, is Wendy Bumgardner, a guide on walking. She provides a very helpful page on diet portions. I used her calorie calculator to estimate how much I should eat.

You can do your own calculations at Calories Per Day Calculator. When you are at this page, you can easily link to Wendy Bumgardner’s other posts.

According to her calculator, if I want to maintain my current weight I should eat 1932 calories a day. If I want to weigh what I am told I should weigh, I should limit my calorie intake to 1577 calories a day. Remember those calorie counts for one fast food meal. If I eat one full meal with a "goodie", I have eaten (or over eaten) for two days! I will have to change my order to the Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken that has 200 calories and 6 grams of fat. I do eat mostly at home, and that's another story. Did I mention I am a good cook?

Summer has come and so the need of sun protection

2008-07-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

The first day of summer was pleasant but more like April than June 20th. We had a few more cold, wet days, then the sun came out. We had several days that reached highs into the '90s. It was hard on everyone. The animals were shedding their winter coats and so were the people. Skin that had been covered since last September was exposed to the wonderful rays of sunshine. Sunburns flourished. I forgot my feet, and got a sunburn around my sandal straps.

Sun protection is needed. It is not just a weakened atmosphere which lets through more harmful rays that causes this need. We are living longer, and this gives us a new set of concerns for health as we age. Modern science and technology is providing some nifty alternatives to protect ourselves that we have not had before.

Skin Protection
After the seemingly endless winter, sunny days are irresistible. Slathering sun protection on our skins seems unnecessary, but we need it. However, an organization called Environmental Working Group (EWH) reports that their study of nearly 1,000 brand-name sunscreen products found that most do not protect skin from damage, and contain harmful chemicals. Some of the worst offenders are leading brands like Coppertone, Banana Boat, and Neutrogena. I have a tube or bottle of a product from everyone of these companies.

They have a list of the ten best, and I did not recognize the brands, but check them out for yourself online at the Environmental Working Group website.

They did recommend common brands:
1. Blue Lizard (anything without oxybenzone)
2. California Baby (anything with SPF 30+)
3. CVS (with zinc oxide)
4. Jason Natural Cosmetics (Sunbrellas Mineral Based Sunblock)
5. Kiss My Face ("Paraben Free" series)
6. Neutrogena (Sensitive Skin Sunblock )
7. Olay (Defense Daily UV Moisturizer (with zinc))
8. SkinCeuticals (Physical UV Defense)
9. Solar Sense (Clear Zinc for Face)
10. Walgreens (Zinc Oxide for Face, Nose, & Ears).

This study, because it names brand names, is controversial, but they put their information out there for you to scrutinize at EWG. As far as I can tell, they do not have a horse in this race, making them a neutral party.

Sun Protection Clothes

You can buy clothes that protect you from the sun, but they are mostly in online stores. I find this alternative very attractive. Friends of mine are so senative to the sun or allergic to sunscreen that they either stay indoors or break our in sun rash. I have a hat that is a bit funky looking, but it works great with its wide brim that keep the sun off both my face and my neck. Below are links to six online stores that sell these clothes.

• Solar Grubbies
• Sun Precaution
• Coolibar
• Solar Eclipse
• Solar Tex
• SPF Store

"Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting."

2008-06-19T09:55:00.000-07:00

What is water worth? One major American investor, T. Boone Pickens betting $100 million that water is the new oil. You can read Business Week's Cover Story for June 12, 2008,
There Will Be Water. (It is not on permalink, so it may disappear after a few weeks.)

Currently, water is desperately needed in the sub-Saharan areas, India, and China. I have been saying for some time that water is the new oil, and that some wars today are being fought over water, such as the war centered in sub-Saharan Darfur.

Pickens is staying at home, and this interesting article talks about trying to sell water in the USA. We are not there yet, but as people loose their water rights, and water is wasted by being used as a waste/sewage disposal system, or dumped back into salt water, water could become as precious as Pickens thinks it will.

There's a saying in Texas: "Whiskey's for drinking. Water's for fighting." Pickens decided to fight. In 1999 he created a company called Mesa Water and began to accumulate water rights so he could strike a deal with another city altogether. The hell with Amarillo. Pickens was confident he could sell his water: The population of Texas was expected to jump 40% by 2020, mostly in urban areas one dry season away from drought.

Ironically, it may be the flooding that boosts Pickens' investment, since the flooding is polluting the water with the damaged oil tanks, refineries, waste treatment plants, and so on. Flood and drought may radically change the cost of water and food.

Water Rights Ruling Favorable to Farmers

2008-06-13T10:11:00.000-07:00

This is just a quick note about something that is highly controversial: water rights. You can read the article in our local paper King County Judge Strikes Down Key Parts of Water Law.

The biggest problem with government taking water rights from farmers is that the farmers can't get the water back for their crops. It has happened over and over. In the past many years, I have spoken to many elected officials who seem to believe that food magically appears on the grocery store shelves. In 1979, a study of US cities (the citation is long lost) including Seattle, had, at most, three (3) days of food. That was before Just In Time (JIT) ordering and storage. After the Katrina debacle in New Orleans, I read that cities have about 20 to 36 hours of food stored. Both storage numbers assume that the food stored including food on the grocery store shelves would feed the population, eating normally, for that many hours.

The truth is, few public officials ever buy or prepare their own food. My cynical self says that local officials are as reliable as their last bribe, and what they say is tuned to whom they are speaking. You Tube has proven many times.

Water rights for farmers, read YOUR local farmers, is part of YOUR food security.

On that cheery note, it is 52F and should go up to 63F (sorry, I cannot find a way to insert a degree sign).

The three basics for human life

2008-06-11T15:06:00.000-07:00

The three basics for human life are food, water, and shelter. Why, in the 21st Century, have these gotten so out of balance in so many parts of the world will be the continuing question until food is available to all.

Africa used to be the food basket of the western world. It is where most all of the grains and produce crops for the Roman Empire were grown. As the polar ice caps melted, the Mediterranean Sea rose, the Sahara Desert grew, and Europe warmed the bread basket for Europe moved north into what is now Germany, France, Spain, and Southern regions of Eastern Europe. However, as the article below says, Africa could feed itself, expect when food distribution networks were disrupted by war, for example, the Biafra famine was man-made.

Here is a link to a rather wonky but highly informative article on the food crisis in Africa Destroying African Agriculture by Walden Bello in the June 3, 2008 issue of Foreign Policy In Focus.

This article is important not because it discusses famine in Africa, but because it describes how our areas of the world could become dominated by famine.

Sad news for peregrine lovers

2008-06-07T12:52:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Times reported today that none of the peregrine (falcon) babies survived this year. The peregrines have been nesting atop the WA MU tower since 1994. They have successfully raised many babies. Just the headline
Falcon babies atop Seattle's WAMU tower all dead brought me great sorrow. Ángel González, Seattle Times business reporter, has been following the peregrines. I have stood in that building and watched the peregrine baby cam in past years.

The death of these baby birds is not the only tragedy because the bird population has been declining for a very long time at an alarming rate. I did a quick search on Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring, and I was sadly bemused by the hatred of her and this book that still bubbles up 46 years later. The idea that we have as many birds as we had in 1962, when Silent Spring first appeared is wrong. It is not just DDT, the chemical that Carson pinpointed in bird deaths then, but a lot of factors, including not enough water put out for birds. In my philosophy, the Earth should be a garden of wonder, but it has turned into a garden of terror for many, including the birds.

What is important about these deaths is that the death of birds and the overall decline of the world's bird population continues. Whether it is grinding along or accelerating makes no difference. I quickly looked for an article to share with you about this problem, and I found very few entries. The best continues to be a six year old article from National Geographic, published November 5, 2002, Quarter of U.S. Birds in Decline, Says Audubon by John Pickrell. There is a wealth of information on the National Audubon Society website. It is worth going there.

A quarter of all bird species in the United States have declined in population since the 1970s, according to a report issued by the National Audubon Society.

Of more than 800 native U.S. bird species, 201 are included on the group's Watchlist 2000, and 214 are on Watchlist 2007.

I do not have time to search further, today, for more information, but my sorrow for the peregrines is increased by my sorrow at the seeming lack of easily accessible information that is recent, concerning this.

The Watchlist 2007 is found here. Just because a bird is not on the Watchlist does not mean that it is thriving for no species of bird is really thriving. In the Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses what happens when anything, good or bad, crosses a threshold and becomes epidemic. Has the greater population of birds yet crossed the tipping point into extinction?

What you can do. If you have a yard, put out water for the birds, especially if you are in a dry area or an area bordering salt water. Birds need lots of fresh water to survive. If you are in a desert or drought area, add all types of bird food.

Why this is important to farming. Birds are a natural pest control system. While many complain that birds eat grain and human food, it is bird food, too. My father always told me that the most important tithe that anyone could give was 10% back to the wild animals and birds. We have become so greedy that we will destroy everything and ourselves through our unkind farming practices.

How is your air?

2008-05-31T22:00:00.001-07:00

The American Lung Association (ALA) has a website devoted to air quality called State of the Air. Go there to find out how clean or dirty is the air you breathe. In Washington State, Kitsap County is not included, however the county in which I spend a huge amount of time, King County, got a "C" in its air quality. Not surprising. Take a few minutes and go to State of the Air and find out what you are breathing.

Can cheap food cause starvation?

2008-05-30T10:10:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post blogger Terra Lawson-Remer wrote this interesting analysis putting forth the idea that "cheap food" from the US stifles food production in poor countries. Here is a link to that post.

The U.S. Farm Bill & the Global Food Crisis

Lawson-Remer's analysis includes this statement:

At the same time, U.S. food "aid" is more a vehicle to dump excess U.S. production than a benefit for hungry populations. Congress requires that food aid be purchased from U.S. growers and shipped overseas. This hurts developing country farmers by undercutting them in their local markets, further reducing domestic production.

Local food is the best.

Bush Administration Against Farmers

2008-05-28T10:32:00.000-07:00

Everything is upside down in politics. The Republicans were once the friend of farmers large and small, then only large, now not at all. The Bush Administration vehemently opposes the farm bill (the 24 missing pages really was not at issue even though they tried to make a big deal out of it).

Administration fights farm bill to bitter end was a front page article in Delta Farm Press May 27, 2008 10:54 AM, By Forrest Laws, Farm Press Editorial Staff. The article begins:

You can’t say the Bush administration didn’t go down swinging in its efforts to thwart the will of Congress and 1,000-plus farm organizations on the 2008 farm bill conference report.

I never supposed that it would be this way, but I find that as a farmer I have much in common with industrial soy and corn growers, so I read their journals, too.

The farm bill is a mishmash, but it helps put food on the table of Americans and our trading partners. I attended a seminar last fall given by WSU and the American Farmland Trust about the farm bill, then I heard Congressman Rick Larsen speak to it at the Focus on Farming gathering in December put on by Snohomish County. Farmers in Washington State get very little out of it; less than 1% as I understand it. Very little helps a lot, and I hope that Larsen was able to keep cane (berry) growers in it. Money and programs authorized by the farm bill really helped us pay for something that we would not have been able to afford, a manure containment and composting structure. Not much money in the grand scheme of things, but a lot to us.

The disarray from not having a farm bill in place and authorized would likely cause havoc and increase the food problems.

Weather report
It has been sunny and warm at about 67F for the past five days. Right now it is overcast and 57F. I hope the soil is warm enough that the plants keep growing. Our CSA starts next Tuesday. Wish us luck.

Weather, the Jet Stream, and trees

2008-05-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

The weather is back to overcast rainy days. At least the temperature is over 60 degrees F. We had our two or three days of summer last week. Temperatures jumped 25 degrees F overnight. At least the plants were happy.

We had to move the start of our 20 week CSA back two full weeks (did this three weeks ago) because of the cold weather. There was frost on the ground May 3. This is unusual in Kitsap County because we have a maritime climate, that while about 10 degrees F cooler than Seattle, is fairly warm. By mid-April we should have had consistent temperatures in the high 60's during the day, and in the mid-40's at night. From March on we should have been in the high 50's to low 60's in the day and low-40's at night.

This all may be due to the Jet Stream moving northward and weakening. MSNBC had an article on this April 21, 2008 Jet stream moving north, weather shifts likely. There have been several articles on this topic. If you have more information on this, please leave the links in the comment section.

I have no idea if global climate change is a natural phenomena or man-made, but it is probably due to a combination of the two.

People wanting to change the man-made problems are trying a number of remedies. In Pellston, Michigan, scientists have begun what will be a decades long test concerning tree varieties and the atmosphere. Scientists starve aspen trees in global warming experiment. This one is both curious and compelling. Trying to offset man-made change may be the fastest answer.

We sold out of our CSA shares two weeks before we originally intended to start. The demand for local food is increasing.

More on the cause of the increasing worldwide food shortage

2008-05-13T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Financial Times -- FT.COM -- put together an amazing audio/video/interactive set of reports about Why are food prices rising? This set of articles and videos was probably assembled in Nov. 2007, however they are promoting it today. I cannot put it on permalink so I do not know how long it will be available.

I generally recommend FT.COM, which is the inheritor of The London Financial Times, now known as the Financial Times (the pink paper). Since the Wall Street Journal has been slipping into the Dumpster, it is the best source of financial information for the USA and Europe, and does quite well worldwide, although they are US, GB, and EU centric.

I would like to say that there is little or nothing in the food price increase that helps the farmer: the increases that you pay and then some go to the source of the increases, especially oil producers because they affect every point in the food chain. While taxing agencies contribute to some price increases, much at-risk farm land is likely in tax relief programs such as "Open Space" programs.

Water, Food, Money

2008-05-08T09:11:00.001-07:00

In our society, money is as important as water and food. Here is an interesting analysis about inflation Kevin Phillips: Washington's Great "No Inflation" Hoax. Phillips' comments add another point of view on the national concern about money. If you have some insights, please share them with us.

"Deadly Greed" Makes the Food Crisis Worse

2008-04-23T22:35:00.000-07:00

The German magazine Der Spiegel is available in English at Spiegel Online International. A wonderful magazine, it offers a very different world view of from that we commonly see in US papers. The Thursday, April 24, 2008 issue appeared Wednesday evening, my time, and while not what I was looking for as after dinner reading (I feel guilty and overfed), I am glad I found its five thoughtful, in-depth, and provocative articles on food, hunger, and greed. In addition, there are three articles from last week, several more from that past six months on food shortage topics and the environment. All the articles lead to more through a seemingly endless cascade of links to other related articles. For example, there is an interesting article on BMW's opposition to ecological laws being proposed in Germany. When you click on the links that in the titles below, you will move to Spiegel and all of these articles.

Beat Balzli and Frank Hornig expose the seamy side of hunger, the food futures speculators who bid the price of food in warehouses up to the point that the hungry cannot afford it. They have two articles discussing this activity.

DEADLY GREED: The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis

DEADLY GREED: The Role of Speculators in the Global Food Crisis: Part 2: 'Passive and –Profit Oriented'

Philip Bethge explores the claims of those who see genetically modified food as the saviour of the poor, and the difficult reality of the situation in the following two articles. In the second article, the weakness of genetic modification driven, and perhaps profit driven farming is revealed.

“Using the tools of genetic engineering to increase crop yields is so complicated that most genetic researchers have not even tried it yet."

Does this mean that designer plants are incapable of satisfying expectations altogether? Some companies are now touting conventional cultivation methods again.”

Too complicated or too dangerous to grow, is that what they mean? Yes, actually. In cases such as this, complicated and dangerous means that the test plant has a likelihood of adversely affecting other plants or crops in the wind affected area around the test site. Those effects could be mutation of all plants, mutation of a "weed" so that it encroaches on other plants and crops, something else. These mutations could cause otherwise healthy plants to cease to grow or produce food. South Africa stopped tests of the Super Sorghum.

“The South African authorities have already prohibited a first greenhouse trial with Wambugu's super sorghum, arguing that it would be too dangerous for the environment.”

SUPER SORGHUM FOR THE POOR: Can Genetic Crops Stop the Food Crisis?

SUPER SORGHUM FOR THE POOR: Can Genetic Crops Stop the Food Crisis? Part 2: Can Designer Plants even Work?

Kenya, a country that until a few weeks ago had been politically stable and peaceful, has been going though a horrible time of civil unrest, almost civil war, over a contested election. Food prices, health care, and most other aspects of a stable life have become scarce. Horand Knaup profiles one family in Nairobi in the article:

OATMEAL AND WATER: Nairobi Living, in a Season of Expensive Food

The food crisis is not only one of shortages, it is one of price,. How it is affecting Egypt is reported by Ulrike Putz in Cairo and Mahalla, Egypt. In this food crisis it is not always a shortage:

“If you want to learn how global food shortages are affecting the poor, a good place to go is the street market in Cairo's impoverished Boulek al-Dakur district in the early afternoon.

Market stands might be piled high with cucumbers and tomatoes, flat bread stacked high on trays which bakers have pushed out of bakeries to cool -- but that is precisely the problem. While traders used to sell their perishable goods by midday, now they cannot get rid of them.”

CRISIS IN EGYPT: The Daily Struggle for Food

Could the experience in Egypt happen here? Of course it could. My parents talked about the food lines of hungry people in Seattle and Chicago during the 1930's. In any American urban, suburban, and perhaps rural areas there is less than three days of food stored. How food gets from the farm to the store to your kitchen or restaurant is quite complex. Any rift in the process could cause a food crisis.
The problem could be political, as it is in Keyna, economic as in Egypt, or it could be a natural disaster like an earth quake. One lesson of New Orleans is that we are vulnerable.

The conflict between food and fuel was discussed in January, 2008, in this article.

OUR HUNGRY PLANET: The Choice between Food and Fuel

Two articles on biofuels and how they are hurting the world’s food supply are also linked.

'A TOTAL DISASTER': Critique Mounts against Biofuels

The second of these articles focuses on German politics, rather a relief to read about someone else’s problems except that their problems are our problems, too.

GERMANY VERSUS THE EU: Merkel Caught between Industry and the Climate

Each of these articles has many more links to interesting and worthwhile articles.

If I may add my opinion, reading Spiegel is such a change from reading most American newspapers and articles. The quality of the thought is far greater than what I read in the US papers. If you like shallow, poorly thought out articles do not bother to read any of these, because all of these articles, while fairly short, have great quality.

Farm workers should be eligible H-1B visa program

2008-04-21T01:38:00.000-07:00

Farm workers should be as eligible as Microsoft's programmers for the H-1B visa program, a foreign guest worker program for skilled workers.

The whole immigrant worker issue directly affects food and food prices. Mexican and all other farm laborers are spoken about with distain. From everything I know about it, FARMING IS NOT AN UNSKILLED JOB. Farmers and farm workers are very skilled and they do not get the respect they deserve. An example of how desperate the situation is, last year fruit in Washington State rotted on and under the trees because there were no pickers. I have spoken with other farmers who say they will be put out of business by the lack of skilled farm labor.

These people from Mexico are not wanted because their labor is cheap (perhaps working against myself, it should not be cheap), but because they are skilled farmers. They know a weed from a cultivated plant. They can pick for eight or more hours a day, and know how to pick tons of fruit and vegetables. Physically, I could not do that when I was young. Most Americans cannot do that today. If there are scads of unemployed American farmers displaced by these foreign workers, I have not read one story about them. No one has contacted me.

To reiterate: Farming is skilled labor. Farming is not something that you can walk out into a field and know how to do. It takes years of experience.

Your food costs will continue to rise sharply because of the actions of a few reactionaries who think that their lot in life will be better if they keep immigrants out.

Below I have linked us to a great article in today's Seattle Times about the increasing cost of food. I am sure that the news that food costs more comes as no surprise to you. The crop failures have just begun to be reported for his year. The snow, hail, sleet, and generally cold temperatures we have been having this weekend may indicated problems here, too. On another alarming note, gas was $114 a barrel on April 18, and I read today that I should be OK with this because oil company profits have never been higher. Say Wa?

Cold weather or not, we are going to be more and more dependent on local food. This story is well worth reading.

Why you're paying more at the grocery store

Locally Grown Food Will Keep Food On Your Table

2008-04-17T08:42:00.000-07:00

Links to relevant articles are at the bottom of these observations.

Climate change is not same world wide: in some areas it is warming; in other areas it is cooling. In the Pacific Northwest, where we have our farm in Kitsap County's maritime climate of Puget Sound and Hood Canal, the weather is colder. For the third consecutive year, April is about ten degrees cooler than the norm. At night, it is very cold, down into the mid-30’s and up to the low-40’s. The soil cools off, and even the seeds of the early crops rot in the ground. This means that early crops come in later, and that we have to use season extenders such a row cover, hoop houses, and greenhouses to make sure we have vegetables for our CSA customers.

In other parts of the world, like in one of Australia’s grain baskets in its Southeast, high temperatures and no rain have caused the total failure of the rice crop.

Most of the grains and vegetables we humans rely on grow in a very narrow window of temperature: 60 degrees Fahrenheit to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. They will survive a few days of high temperatures up to about 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with water, but not for more than a few days.

Hunger has always been a problem; however it usually has been caused or exacerbated by very human political circumstances: war, transportation breakdown, and greed.

For those of us in the United States and Canada, the preservation of local farms is a buffer to these failures. We need to take ourselves out of the world food market, so that we can continue to put food on the table.

In addition, sustainable farming techniques – tending the soil as nature intended, as it was tended for millennium – will help increase production and preserve fertility of the land.

Local food is not a fad. It will be a necessity, and unless farms are preserved, they will be gone. It takes years to put farmland back into production. Even backyard gardens help preserve knowledge, a skill-base, and arable land.
Below are links to articles about these problems.

A Drought in Australia, a Global Shortage of Rice
Food Boom Brings Unpalatable Truths
Michael Pollan NYT blog: Food From a Farm Near You
Switch to Organic Crops Could Help Poor

Climate Change, Global Warming, and Mary Rosenblum's Water Rites

2008-03-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

Less than 3% of the world’s water is potable, and a large percentage of that is in the polar ice caps and glaciers that are melting into the oceans to become unusable salt water. Desalination plants have proven to be inadequate and costly, so maintaining the fresh water we have is increasingly important.

In the past few years, it has become clear that water is the “new oil” in terms of ownership, availability, price, and a reason for war. In Darfur,the war there is a geo-political disaster that is being fought for water, oil, tribal dominance and religion. In Darfur, drilling a well is a political act than can get you murdered. Other parts of the world, such as China, India, most of Northern Africa, and a few areas of the US, do not have enough fresh, potable water to meet the needs of every person who lives there.

In her novel, Water Rites, Mary Rosenblum explores what a world dominated by water shortages will be like in the Pacific Northwest. We just added Water Rites to our Bookshelf because it brings home the problems of global warming in an excellent novel. You can buy it there from Powell’s Books.

This is a book that you can and should read with your family, including children. Water Rites should be on every reading group’s booklist.

I’ve know Mary Rosenblum for about 20 years. Her knowledge of life and our world is wide and deep. Whenever we get together, she educates me in the most delight conversations on global warming, sustainable farming, child rearing, and sheep herding. She understands in the way that only a person with ties to family, the land, and the Earth can that global climate change is accelerating. Mary started thinking and writing about global warming in 1992. In Water Rites, Mary explores what life will like when too little fresh water is the norm.

In 1994, Mary published her first novel, The Drylands, and received the Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel. That book is again available with three short stories set in the same world and sharing some the same characters as Water Rites.

Mary set her stories south of Portland, Oregon, near the area where she lives and farms, and about 200 miles south of our farm. Her characters are men and women like us, who are caught in a global disaster, enduring the hardships while helping other people to survive, too.

The first three stories, Water Bringer, Celilo, and The Bee Man, depict the lives of people living on the land that is dying from the drought. These people, seen as hicks by the ignorant, are shaped in amazing ways by their circumstances. I really cannot say much more, because the unfolding of these stories is so moving that I do not want to harm them with spoilers.

The fourth story is the award winning novel, The Drylands. We follow Major Carter Voltaire, of the US Army Corp of Engineers, trying to allocate water and build a pipeline to drought stricken agricultural areas. The story is vivid and the characters richly drawn. The characters we meet in the first three stories inhabit Voltaire’s world. It is his responsibility to get fresh water to the drought-stricken farm lands, while Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and other coastal cities drown in sea water.

In the foreword, Mary writes that in 1994 the scary global warming predictions were forty years out, but now, fourteen years later, they are becoming a fact of our lives. As Mary concludes in her foreword, “Think of that next time you vote, or purchase a car. Pay Attention, okay? It won’t be a nice world to live in.” (Water Rites, p. 11)

You can visit Mary’s website at www.maryrosenblum.com. There you will find a list of her other novels and short stories. There is also a picture of Mary with the wonderful dogs that she breeds and trains.

Inert Is Not Inert Anymore

2008-03-09T14:21:00.000-07:00

Inert
adj.

1. Unable to move or act.
2. Sluggish in action or motion; lethargic. See synonyms at inactive.
3. Chemistry. Not readily reactive with other elements; forming few or no chemical compounds.
4. Having no pharmacologic or therapeutic action.

[Latin iners, inert- : in-, not; see in–1 + ars, skill.]

Seems like a straightforward definition, but if you care about being poisoned, maybe you should care about this:

Ingredients can be listed as "inert" if they do not have an action pertinent to stated action of the product. This means that an herbicide that kills plants can have in its "inert" ingredients pesticides that kill pests, or you, or your kids and pets. Or inversely, a pesticide to kill a specific pest (like we're not all linked!) could wipe out all the food crops, or flowers, or your yard.

OK, maybe that sounds harsh or paranoid, but if you rid your yard of one noxious weed, you could set off a chain reaction if you use some products. When I first heard about the Inert ingredients, I thought it was one of those "urban myths." I searched for information on it and found many articles. Here is a link to an article Aerial Spraying for the Brown Apple Moth to Resume" that discusses this issue. The article is in Beyond Pesticides Daily New Blog (October 24, 2007). Here is a quote from the article about one inert list:

However, the inert chemicals in CheckMate LBAM-F have now come under scrutiny by local residents. These inerts ingredients causing concern are: butylated hydroxytoluene, tricaprylyl methyl ammonium chloride, polyvinyl alcohol, and sodium phosphate. These inerts are listed by the US EPA as List 3 - Inerts of unknown toxicity, and List 4B - Other ingredients for which EPA has sufficient information to reasonably conclude that the current use pattern in pesticide products will not adversely affect public health or the environment, respectively.

Suzanne Dowling, a concerned resident, said, “There are health hazards associated with each and every one of the four inert ingredients of the product to be dumped on us.”

There are additional links in this article.

For the regulators of certified organic products the inert list is of prime concern. One of the men who works for WSDA Organic Program told me that they spend a huge amount of their time testing the inert ingredients of products being put forth as "organic".

If you read my last post about Pesticides in children, you can extrapolate the implications of non-inert Inert ingredients.

Spring is coming, and state and local pest controllers will be out aerial spraying gypsy or codling moths honestly not knowing about the "inert" list. They truly believe it to be a real inert ingredient such a silica.

Question of the day:
How do we move to knowing what is really in things?

2008-03-08T16:49:00.000-08:00

As more and more people suffer from neurological problems, allergies, diseases, and syndromes, it is time to look at the environment in which we live. The following article appeared at the end of January 2008. As with all newspaper articles, it was a one-edition wonder. I am quoting some of it here with appropriate links, and links to the original study, at the bottom of this, to educate us all.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, January 30, 2008
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html

Harmful pesticides found in everyday food products
Mercer Island children tested in yearlong study

By ANDREW SCHNEIDER
P-I SENIOR CORRESPONDENT

Government promises to rid the nation's food supply of brain-damaging pesticides aren't doing the job, according to the results of a yearlong study that carefully monitored the diets of a group of local children.

The peer-reviewed study found that the urine and saliva of children eating a variety of conventional foods from area groceries contained biological markers of organophosphates, the family of pesticides spawned by the creation of nerve gas agents in World War II.

When the same children ate organic fruits, vegetables and juices, signs of pesticides were not found.

"The transformation is extremely rapid," said Chensheng Lu, the principal author of the study published online in the current issue [15 January 2008] of Environmental Health Perspectives.

"Once you switch from conventional food to organic, the pesticides (malathion and chlorpyrifos) that we can measure in the urine disappears. The level returns immediately when you go back to the conventional diets," said Lu, a professor at Emory University's School of Public Health and a leading authority on pesticides and children.

Within eight to 36 hours of the children switching to organic food, the pesticides were no longer detected in the testing.

The subjects for his testing were 21 children, ages 3 to 11, from two elementary schools and a Montessori preschool on Mercer Island.

With good scientific caution, Chensheng Lu, went on to discuss the limitations of current research, noting, however, that:

"In animal and a few human studies, we know chlorpyrifos inhibits an enzyme that transmits a signal in the brain so the body can function properly. Unfortunately, that's all we know."

The article continues, discussing Chlorpyrifos:

Dangerous science

Chlorpyrifos, made by Dow Chemical Co., is one of the most widely used organophosphate insecticides in the United States and, many believe, the world.

For years, millions of pounds of the chemical insecticide were used in schools, homes, day care centers and public housing, and studies show that children were often exposed to enormously high doses. Just as the EPA was ready to ban the product, which analysts said would have damaged Dow's overseas sales, the company "voluntarily" removed it from the home market. Yet, with few exceptions, the agricultural uses continued.

The EPA's Web site is a study in contradictions when it comes to chlorpyrifos.

To be fair to the EPA, the website actually reflects attitudes towards these chemicals over time. It is, however confusing, because you need to read the dates of the various documents. If you search on the word chlorpyrifos, nearly a half million articles or references will be identified. This chemical has been in use since, at least 1988, and likely earlier.

To read more about this, go to the article at http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/349263_pesticide30.html

P-I senior correspondent Andrew Schneider can be reached at 206-448-8218 or andrewschneider@seattlepi.com.

The study was published in Environmental Health Perspectives www.ehponline.org The study was published in the 15 January 2008 issue. You can download a PDF copy of the study from EHP at http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/10912/abstract.html