Farmworkers Fired for Seeking Shelter from California Wildfire – A group of farm laborers who chose to seek shelter from the suffocating smoke of a California wildfire last week were terminated for taking a break. In a related story, locals are being warned not to inhale the smoke, since pesticides have caught fire and are generating toxic fumes.

Europe Bans Bee-Harming Pesticides – On Monday, the European Commission voted to place a two-year moratorium on most uses of neonicotinoid pesticides, which are a widely used class of chemicals suspected of contributing to a severe global decline in honeybee health. Meanwhile, says Tom Philpott, the US continues spraying as usual, raising questions about the internal logic of EPA’s vetting process.

UCS Vision for Healthy Farms: Agroecology has the Answers – the Union of Concerned Scientists is launching its vision for healthy farms, including a briefing paper explaining the changes that are needed in the way we farm, and a web feature that illustrates the components of a healthy farm and farm environment.

“Unleash the Potential of Yam” - CGIAR hosts the first-ever global conference on yams. The meeting, which will take place in Accra, Ghana later this year, will “explore the recent innovations on yam improvement, share lessons learned, identify R&D needs and develop global alliances to unleash potential of the crop.”

A Photo Gallery of Food Safety and Genetic Engineering - “Once upon a time it was assumed that the United States had the safest food supply in the world,” says National Geographic photographer Jim Richardson.  “These bookend stories, Food Safety and Genetically Engineered Foods, examined whether that is still a safe assumption. What we found was both surprising and far outside our expectations.”

Sun, Memory, and Citrus – A New York Times video short traces the legacy of lemon farming on the Amalfi coast.

Nature Celebrates 30 Years of GMOs – “Genetically modified crops generate hype and hatred,” say the editors, “A special section of Nature cuts through the drama.” The feature includes some excellent infographics on changing trends in GMO production worldwide, but its claims to cleave ‘fact’ from fiction (see A Hard Look at GM Crops) is surely a story in itself.

Replanting the Rustbelt – Until recently, the US food revolution has seemed to bypass the Rust Belt, which edges around the Great Lakes from Buffalo to Detroit. Now cities in this region — linked by a shared history of industry, a network of defunct canals and decaying railroads, and thousands of acres of farmland — are seeing the emergence of a new cadre of chefs, butchers, farmers, millers, bakers and brewers, all hoping their craft can help bring local landscapes back into balance.

Lunch with the Two Michaels – Writer Michael Pollan told the world about Big Corn and is now one of North America’s most well-known voices in food. Reporter Michael Moss delved into the meat industry, and earned a Pulitzer Prize for his harrowing account. In this short video vignette, the two Michaels meet up to explore the grocery store for a home-cooked lunch.

Fighting the Foodopoly – Buying local, organic, and fair-trade will only take us so far, says author and food activist Wenonah Hauter. Another great battle for food system reform pulls us out of the check-out line and into the legal system, where strong antitrust laws must be reestablished, and monopoly power broken. “We, the people, must reclaim our democracy,” she writes.

How Mail-Order Chickens Became a Multimillion Venture - Over the last few years, the idea of chickens as pets, occasionally edible, has exploded nationwide. Fueling that growth are rising numbers of urban and sub-urban farmers, and extensive e-commerce dedicated to everything from henhouses to baby chicks.

UK Minister Declares Support for Agroecology – This week, the UK Minister of State for Agriculture and Food, David Heath, has announced his support for the use of agroecological farming methods which are seen as the foundation of sustainable agriculture. Another report dampens the news, underscoring Heath’s vocal support for the ‘sustainable intensification’ model of farming, embracing techniques like GM crops and defending the use of pesticides, particularly neonicitinoids, in the face of claims they are harmful to biodiversity. “Mr. Heath insisted agroecology could co-exist alongside modern, larger, more intensive, technology-driven farming.”

Federal Spigot Flows as Farmers Claim Bias - An investigation by the New York Times suggests that the Obama Administration’s efforts to redress a painful legacy of bias against African American farmers has become a “runaway train” driven by racial politics, pressure from influential members of Congress, and work by law firms that stand to gain millions of dollars in fees. In the past five years, it has grown to encompass a second group of African-Americans as well as Hispanic, female and Native American farmers. In all, says the Times, more than 90,000 people have filed claims. The total cost could top $4.4 billion.

‘A Year in the Garden’ in Los Angeles - The Hiebert family decided to capture their first season in their local community garden on film — all in under five minutes. Watch the time-lapse video of LA urban agriculture, set to the music of local artists, Seis Cuerdas.

A Brief History of Our Fertilizer Fetish – As investigators and rescuers move through a destroyed fertilizer factory in West, Texas, Tom Philpott pauses to consider just what nitrogen fertilizer is, and why we use so much of it.

Reclaiming the Kitchen – Civil Eats Managing Editor Paula Crossfield chats with Michael Pollan about his new book, Cooked: a Natural History of Transformation.

Potato Chip Efficiency – This 3-minute video tells the story of the mechanization at Herr’s Chips factory, where machines have taken the place of most of the company’s workers. With such trends cutting across the processed food industry, these displaced workers won’t have an easy time finding replacement jobs — or putting healthy food on the table.  Ironically, when human labor is too expensive for the potato chip, the chip might just become more popular, as one of few foods the unemployed can afford.

Dispelling Myths about Specialty Crops – Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy students take a critical look at new legislation, introduced in the House last week, that would remove restrictions on growing fruits and vegetables from farmers who receive federal subsidies.

A Foodie Revolution Cooking in West Africa – Ghanaian bars and restaurants have got a taste for a growing attitude in the region, and treat world-class local ingredients with the seriousness they deserve.

Genetically modified to be enriched with beta-carotene, golden rice grains (left) are a deep yellow. At right, white rice grains.
Isagani Serrano/International Rice Research Institute

In a Grain of Rice, a World of Controversy over GMO Foods – A mixture of motives — helping people and promoting biotechnology — sits at the heart of the debate over Golden Rice.

Hoping to Save Bees, the EU Votes on Pesticide Bans – In a case closely watched on both sides of the Atlantic, European officials plan to vote Friday on a proposal to sharply restrict the use of pesticides that are implicated in the decline of global bee populations. However, the pro-bee legislation may soon hit a snag in the UK, according to the Guardian. Environment secretary Owen Paterson is not expected to support the proposal, despite polls showing almost three-quarters of the UK public wants a ban on neonicotinoids, the agro-chemicals linked to serious harm in bees.

India Falling Short of Drinkable Water - That people in one of the rainiest places on the planet struggle to get potable water is emblematic of the water challenges that India faces.

Food Costs Threaten Rebound in China - “Diners looking for beef hot pot on a chilly evening in Beijing pay more than their counterparts in Boston, a discrepancy that shows the challenges China faces in reviving growth as inflationary pressures return….Contributing to food production costs are the loss of farmland and farm labor to urbanization — Chinese cities are swelling as they absorb hundreds of millions of people.”

Instead of Trying to “Feed the World,” Let’s Help It Feed Itself - We know about the ecological problems that follow when farmers are asked to “feed the world.” What would happen if they just tried to feed their neighbors instead?

Who’s Minding the Movement? – Andy Fisher, co-founder and former executive director of the Community Food Security Coalition, reflects on the leadership vacuum in the food movement, even while it grows at breakneck speed.

The Curve of a Chicken McNugget – They come in four carefully designed shapes: “the bell,” “the bone,” “the ball,” and “the boot.” But why? Although McDonald’s makes a joke of the question,  it turns out that several recent studies have demonstrated a significant relationship between the shape of a food item and its taste.

Judge Blocks Bloomberg’s Ban on Sugary Drinks – “A judge struck down New York’s limits on large sugary drinks on Monday, one day before they were to take effect, in a significant blow to one of the most ambitious and divisive initiatives of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s tenure.”

Frankenstein’s Cat -  In her new book, Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts, science journalist Emily Anthes talks about how the landscape of bioengineering has expanded since Dolly the Sheep was cloned in 1996. Scientists, she says, are now working to create pigs that can grow organs for human transplant, goats that produce valuable protein-rich milk, and cockroaches that could potentially serve as drones for the military. From the surprisingly common practice of cloning prize beef cattle to the rapidly growing industry for “Pharm” animals, Anthes illustrates the animal culture at the new frontier of GMOs.

Don’t be Afraid of Genetic Modification, by the same author, entreats us to embrace a future of biotech food. The AquaAdvantage fish, genetically re-jiggered to produce growth hormone year round, can grow to size in half the time of a normal Chinook salmon, meaning a faster, cheaper supply of fish protein. “It’s a healthy and relatively cheap food source,” she offers, “that, as global demand for fish increases, can take some pressure off our wild fish stocks.” Currently under review by the FDA, the AquaAdvantage fish would be the first transgenic animal to enter the human food supply. Interesting how ‘fear’ is manipulated here to diminish valid concerns about GM, and the broader food system it helps propagate; the fearful, she suggests, hurt us all by “closing the door on innovations that could help us face the public health and environmental threats of the future, saving countless animals.”

Tunisia Hosts the 2013 World Social Forum - In Tunisia, March 26-30th, the World Social Forum (WSF) will take place in the city of Tunis. Activists around the world – many belonging to food and agrarian movements – look to the international meeting as an important space for building solidarity and creating an alternative to globalization. (Watch for the New York Times to ignore it.)

Best Diet Study Ever? – Last week, a front page story in the New York Times announced results from a watershed study that, for the first time, linked a specific diet to measurable health outcomes. According to researchers in the New England Journal of Medicine, participants in a clinical study who consumed a diet rich in extra-virgin olive oil and nuts (the so-called Mediterranean diet) had significantly less incidence of heart attacks, strokes, and deaths from heart disease. The signal was so strong, in fact, that the scientists stopped the trial early out of ethical concerns for the control group. This week, Tom Philpott points out why the NEJ findings won’t sit well with big food. And Mark Bittman weighs in with classic good wisdom on the sensibility of whole, unprocessed eats.

Plate tech-tonics: How smartphones can help stop food waste - “’People in the food industry know how much food they waste, and they don’t like it at all,’ says Roger Gordon, co-founder of one such new platform, Food Cowboy. Still in beta, Food Cowboy works with two large trucking companies and about 20 local charities along the East Coast’s I-95 corridor. Another platform, called Zero Percent, targets retail food waste — you know, like those huge bags of day-old bagels you’d normally have to dive into a dumpster to find.”

From the Academic Press:

Gilles-Eric Séralini, Emilie Clair, Robin Mesnage, Steeve Gress, Nicolas Defarge, Manuela Malatesta, Didier Hennequin, Joël Spiroux de Vendômois.

“Long term toxicity of a Roundup herbicide and a Roundup-tolerant genetically modified maize.”
Food and Chemical Toxicology, Volume 50, Issue 11, November 2012, Pages 4221-4231.

Futurefarmers - An eclectic group of artists, researchers, designers, and architects, Futurefarmers uses various media to deconstruct systems such as food policies, public transportation and rural farming networks. “Often through this disassembly,” they explain, “we find new narratives and potential reconfigurations that propose alternatives to the principles that once dominated these systems.”

“A Variation on Powers of Ten.” Credit: Futurefarmers

Wild Bees Good For Crops, But Crops Bad For Bees - A huge collaboration of bee researchers, from more than a dozen countries, looked at how pollination happens in dozens of different crops, including strawberries, coffee, buckwheat, cherries and watermelons. As they report in the journal Science, even when beekeepers installed plenty of hives in a field, yields usually got a boost when wild, native insects, such as bumblebees or carpenter bees, also showed up. Claire Kremen, a conservation biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who’s a co-author in the study, says one of the biggest problems for wild bees is the agricultural specialization that has produced huge fields of just one crop.  See also Farmers’ lack of bees might be solved by going wild  in the LA Times.  (Science study linked below)

The Paradox of Cuban Agriculture – UC Berkeley’s Miguel Altieri and Cuban extension scientist Fernando Funes-Monzote describe the Cuba’s extraordinary agroecological achievements and the fork in the road the island now faces. Will the food security it seeks be based on a model of intensified, monoculture agriculture, or on farmer-to-farmer led diversified systems?

A Report Card for Global Food Giants – The antipoverty group Oxfam has come up with a scorecard that evaluates the impact that the supply chains of behemoth food companies have on water consumption, labor and wages, greenhouse gas emissions and nutrition.

Quinoa: To Buy or Not to Buy…Is this the Right Question? – Food First’s Tanya Kerssen unpacks the consumption-driven politics of the Bolivian quinoa conundrum. “To address the problem we have to analyze the system itself, and the very structures that constrain consumer and producer choices.”

UN Offers Banquet of Blemished Food - To highlight how perfectly edible food is being rejected by European supermarkets, the UN treated 500 European government ministers and officials to a meal of blemished African fruit and vegetables.

Why Fighting Food Deserts Demands More Than a Minimum Wage Hike – In his State of the Union Address last month, President Obama called for a much- needed increase to the federal minimum wage. But in the food retail sector, raising that wage might not make much of a difference to those employees who are most vulnerable, says Sally Smyth, a student at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy student. In this pithy piece, she lays out what policies could make a change.

Pandora’s Lunchbox – A new book by Melanie Warner reveals how processed food took over the American meal.

What Kind of Fish is This? -  Many Europeans are fretting these days over horse meat, and whether it might have adulterated their shepherd’s pie. Over here, it’s all about the red snapper.

Farming to the Next Generation – According to the trade publication Agri-Pulse, only 14% of beginning farmers are under 35, while those 65 and older make up 32% of farm principle operators. The primary way to start a farm these days is through inheritance.

Harsh Lives of the Forgotten Rural Poor – “Urban poverty is well documented,” says Tobias Jones of the Guardian Observer, “but those suffering in the countryside are almost invisible. Rare for writing out of the UK.

How Ethanol Policies Are Decimating US Grasslands – Since the passage of the Energy Independence and Security Act in 2007, some 1.3 million acres of grasslands in the Western Corn Belt have been plowed under to grow more corn — a rate unseen since the 1920s and 1930s according to a new PNAS study just released this week. According to the Environmental Working Group’s AgMag blog, the new work bolsters the findings of a 2012 EWG report – Plowed Under – that tracked land conversion in all 50 states.

Who Would You Nominate for the World Food Prize? – Co-founders of the Food Think Tank list their nominees, including Charles Benbrook (former chief scientist at the Organic Center), Sarah Scherr (of EcoAgriculture Partners), Lester Brown (of the Earth Policy Institute), and Roland Bunch (an expert in agroecological farming). A polyculture mix, to be sure, but some good folks amongst them!

From the Academic Press:

Wild Pollinators Enhance Fruit Set of Crops Regardless of Honey Bee Abundance. Science. Published online February 28, 2013.

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The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food – Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter Michael Moss goes inside the boardrooms of Big Food. It’s a fascinating look at how America got hooked — and heavy — on substances resembling real food.

Happy Birthday, GMO’s!! – This month marks the 40th anniversary of transgenic organisms. UC Berkeley Professor Ignacio Chapela takes a look at their legacy in this  Op-Ed in the Mexican paper, La Jornada. Original is in Spanish, but here is a Google Translated version.

New Report on Farmers Markets and Low-Income Communities – In 2009, The Project for Public places, in partnership with Columbia University, launched a study to look at what kinds of food markets attract low-income shoppers, what are the obstacles that prevent low income families from shopping at farmers markets, and how youth-oriented market programming affects healthy eating habits among kids and teens. The results of their study, alongside specific recommendations, were published this week.

Recovering Wasted Food in the UK (video) – Supermarkets around the world insist on having the very best products on their shelves – so much so that they’re willing to throw away perfectly edible food, because it doesn’t fit their size and cosmetic standards. Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee reports from Kent in the UK on how campaigners are trying to save that waste.

Front to Backyard Urban Farms & Gardens -  A crack team of landscapers wants to help city folk plant their own gardens and start urban farms. As they explain on their website, Front to Backyard “will install raised beds, container gardens, herb gardens, and vegetable and kitchen gardens in your front or backyard, or anywhere you have available land.” After a free site visit and consultation, prices range from roughly $1,000 for a full kitchen garden to $125 for a worm composting setup. Beekeeping and Chicken raising….coming soon!

The Gaza Kitchen – A new cookbook captures lost history of the Palestinian peoples through food.

Pictures Don’t Lie: Corn And Soybeans Are Conquering U.S. Grasslands -  This week, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows actual pictures — derived from satellite data — of a transforming Midwest landscape. The images show that farmers in the Dakotas, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska converted 1.3 million acres of grassland into soybean and corn production between 2006 and 2011.

Landowners or Laborers? -  Watch the video from “State of Rights and Resources 2012-2013: a panel on the rural development choices facing leaders of developing countries.” Posted February 5, 2013.

Saving Seeds, Saving Farmers - The team from Perennial Plate has just returned from 6 weeks of filming in India. In these videos, they sit down with Vandana Shiva to talk about farmer suicides, GMOs, and why preserving agrobiodiversity is so pivotal.

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The Complications of Quinoa - In a nod to the traditional knowledge of Andean farmers, the UN declares 2013 the International Year of Quinoa. Under the care of campesinos in a complex agroecosystem, quinoa has evolved into the protein-rich, low-gluten, vitamin-fortified seed that nutritionists now tout as the near-perfect food. But as health-minded folk and crunchy types across the US and Europe clamor for more quinoa, heightened demand is raising all sorts of trouble for the Bolivian people, underscoring the sticky contradictions of a globalized food system.

Tom Philpott provides a great rundown here, explaining how a variety of “do-gooder US importers” in the 1990s helped keep traditional quinoa farming alive, by re-establishing its production for export markets. But the effects of that gambit have been double-edged: higher global quinoa prices now mean that fewer Bolivian consumers can afford to purchase it. Even quinoa farmers, now marginally wealthier due to export sales, aren’t eating much of their crop, as it’s become “a product that’s too valuable to eat.” Instead, Bolivians are increasingly buying and eating cheaper foods like packaged pastas, white rice, and white bread — exactly the stuff that Northern consumers toss from their cupboards to replace with the Andean wonder-grain.

Some say local farming of quinoa on a worldwide scale is the solution: It could winch prices down to the level where it’s affordable for Andean consumers, and still profitable for Andean farmers. As we’ve noted before, in the Pacific Northwest and the Colorado Rockies, a few farmers are already piloting this approach. Of course, amped-up regional production could also create a global quinoa glut, setting the stage for massive price collapse. If that were to occur, Philpott worries, “Andean farmers’ investments in land and processing infrastructure would be wiped out.”

To buy, or not to buy, quinoa then? That is the question…

No simpler is what kind of coffee you might sip after your hearty quinoa dinner, as Brie Mazurek of the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture writes in Coffee and Sustainability: A Complex Cup.

If you are on a budget, D.C.-based MicroGreens illustrates how anyone can enjoy a healthy meal based on a total budget of $3.50 per meal per family of four. An innovative program that works with schools and non-profit organizations, MicroGreens is educating children and low-income families about how to make healthy choices based on a government-supplemented food budget. (Check out their sweet video channel).

Probing the Impact of Warming on the World’s Food Supply - One of the few potential advantages attributed to soaring carbon dioxide levels has been enhanced crop growth. But in an interview with Yale Environment 360, botanist Stephen Long talks about his research showing why rising temperatures and an increase in agricultural pests may offset any future productivity gains.

City Slicker Farms Breaks New Ground -  A project of City Slicker Farms, the West Oakland Park and Urban Farm officially opened on January 31. The 1.4-acre site, once a vacant industrial lot at 28th and Peralta streets, will include lawn space for running and playing, a vegetable growing area, a community garden, a fruit orchard, a chicken coop, a beehive, and a dog run.

Introducing “Ensia” - Nope, it’s not a magic weight-loss pill, nor a new sugar substitute. Ensia is a new multimedia platform just launched by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota. Designed to cut “across disciplines, ideologies, sectors and continents” and “showcase solutions to Earth’s biggest environmental challenges, director Jonathan Foley says it’s “out change the world.”

One for the Bookshelf:
Rebuilding the Food-Shed by Philip Ackerman-Leist - Marion Nestle writes “Rebuilding the Foodshed introduces readers to local food systems in all their complexities.  In moving from industrial to regional food systems, communities must consider an enormous range of factors, from geographic to socioeconomic.  Difficult as doing this may be, this book makes it clear that the results are well worth the effort in their benefits to farmers and farm workers, as well as to eaters. This book is on the reading list for my food advocacy class at NYU this summer.”

Some Book Reviews, from the Academic Press:

What is Land For? The Food, Fuel, and Climate Change Debate, by Doug Boucher

The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era: Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry, by Michael Levien

Food Sovereignty: Reconnecting Food, Nature, and Community, by Guntra Aistara