The Future of Food documentary features Mexico as a guardian of traditional corn varieties, but it looks like (thanks to ethanol) GMO corn is on its way

Government and food in Europe

Heirloom seed company in trouble thanks to backwards laws

For those of you who don't know Kokopelli, they're a French-based seedsaver organisation who maintain 2500 varieties of rare and endangered vegetables and run several charitable initiatives in developing countries. Their work is vital and indefatiguable. Unfortunately it's also illegal, due to the preposterously backward seed laws in Europe, and this has now resulted in them being clobbered with a €35,000 fine. The gist of it is that Kokopelli were hounded through the courts by a commercial seed company, Baumaux (shame and damnation on them) because their catalogue of thousands of unique heirloom vegetables gave them an "unfair trading advantage". I won't subject you to the language that came spouting out of me when I read that but it's a truly insidious example of what happens when big business gets waaaaaay too much control of our garden seeds and our food chain. And it sounds a danger signal for the future of biodiversity in Europe.

I'm not really a libertarian, but I think this is a good example of how you have to be careful about giving the government too much control over food.

Do California greens really count as vegetarian?

CSI: Critter Salad

Mechanical harvesting= mangled mouse-thing in your salad.

Reminds me of this great article, Tainted Greens, which is about the atrocity that is industrial California agriculture. In the name of food safety, the presence of wildlife is being actively discouraged. Yes, that means tearing up habitat. It's true that some wildlife harbor E. coli O157, but they didn't get it magically. The real source has and always will be concentrated animal-feeding operations.

Money quote: "We don't like to see animals in a field of lettuce. We don't think people like the idea"- Jim Lugg, senior food safety scientist with Fresh Express.

Support a farm that integrates with the natural landscape instead of paving it over with monoculture. Last week I spent time at Anathoth Community Farm in Wisconsin. The fields where produce was grown were surrounded by a beautiful healthy north-woods forest. I was impressed.

Small farms are not the source of produce-related outbreaks, perfectly illustrated by the fact that when the produce industry instituted strict self-regulation in 2007, there were no more outbreaks. Hmmm.

Here in Central Illinois, early spinach is already available. You do have to wash it yourself, but that's a small price to pay.

Like a man, the farm is headed
for the woods. the wild
is already veined in it
everywhere, its thriving.
To love these things one did not
intend to is to be a friend
to the beginning and the end.
- Wendell Berry, Work Song

Reading List: Mad Sheep by Linda Faillace

Mad Sheep: The True Story Behind the USDA's War on a Family Farm by Linda Faillace

The USDA is charged with both regulating and promoting US agriculture. Obviously, these goals conflict and the end result is that the USDA often functions as a powerful guardian of industrial agricultural interests.

If they made an X-files about agriculture, it would resemble Mad Sheep. Scary government agents in sunglasses torment this family and seize their sheep without giving them much chance to defend themselves. It seems that this action was less about a disease than about protecting the interests of the cattle industry. Even if these sheep did harbor a disease, the USDA's actions are like shooting a mouse with a machine gun.

Subsidies V. Local Food

My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

Farmer finds out that growing vegetables on government-subsidized farms has a high price. I guess the government would rather have you chug high-fructose corn syrup than eat a juicy tomato. Not having subsidies is an obvious solution, but even politically palatable solutions like farm flex, which would allow farmers to grow produce without being penalized, have gone nowhere. I'm glad to see this in the NYT. Rural lobbies obviously have the biggest voice in the Farm Bill debates, but this illustrates perfectly why urban arugula-munching consumers should care too.

Bad Ag = Fewer Tasty Fish

Thanks at least partially to fertilizer runoff and idiotic dams, salmon stocks are down dramatically. Farmer's can't steal most of their inputs, but often they are allowed to dump their outputs without paying any sort of cost.

Your Fun Corporate Welfare News

The government is unfortunately charged with both protecting agriculture and regulating it, two missions that often conflict. Lately I've been researching the new proposed Leafy Greens legislation, a response to all the food poisoning outbreaks tied to leafy greens. I'm not really a fan of e. coli, but the Western Growers Association guidelines that will probably be the foundation for any new regulations are awfully focused on blaming wildlife.

Yes, Bambi and friends do carry E. coli O157:H7, but it's very unlikely it originated in their populations. From what I've read, 1% of wildlife carry strains of e.coli that are pathogenic to humans, but the prevalence in cattle ranges from 2.6% to 55%(!!). In wildlife, E.coli is most common in deer that live near...cattle ranches. Futhermore, cattle are more likely to shed the disease in feces, spreading it into the environment. Studies have shown that it's much worse in cattle fed corn (I.E. feedlot cattle), rather then grass, which is what ruminants evolved to eat.

But no, we wouldn't want to have to blame CAFOs. Instead, the regulations encourage tearing up vegetation that harbors wildlife, including vegetated buffers, which are known to filter out pathogens quite effectively. My prediction? Sterile fields aren't going to prevent outbreaks. In fact, sterile soil makes it easier for pathogenic bacteria to move in. If these proposed guidelines become mandatory they will hurt small producers, who are not the source of these outbreaks. I'm more than a little bothered that the industry that is to blame is the one writing the rules.

Personally, no more bagged greens from giant California industrial farms for me. I'm just glad that local growers (who oppose these guidelines and benefited greatly from the public's skepticism of bagged greens after the 2006 outbreak) are going to be selling spinach again soon as the weather gets warmer.

Also fun Spraying a questionable pesticide all over the San Franciso urban area . Why? To protect California agriculture from an invasive moth (thanks globalism!). It's probable that this pesticide, like most pesticides, is low-risk, but that doesn't mean no-risk. In an urban area "rare" side effects are going to manifest themselves because there are so many people in the spray area. Maybe this spraying is a reasonable response to the threat, but the state's response to concerns has been insensitive at best.

Finally, more Yellowstone buffalo sent to slaughter for OMG not obeying park boundaries. I guess bison can't read maps? Maybe they should build flashing signs? Why kill them for leaving? The very rare chance that they might spread a cattle disease called brucellosis, a disease that originated in domesticated livestock. Thankfully the state helps out their friends, the wealthy ranchers, with a program to kill the trespassing buffalo off. Opponents include animal rights activists and Native Americans, who oppose the slaughter for religious reasons.