May 6, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

The Future of Food in New England

Seacoast Local invites UNH professor John Carroll to talk about increasing local food security beyond peak oil as part of the ‘Making the Connection’ sustainability series, at RiverRun Bookstore on Thursday, May 8 at 7pm.

How can we boost the local economy and re-establish our food security? Dedicating land for grazing taps into New Hampshire’s heritage and is a natural fit for the future. John E. Carroll, author of “The Wisdom of Small Farms and Local Food” and “Sustainability and Spirituality,” comes to Portsmouth on Thursday, May 8 at 7 p.m. to talk about restoring food independence, the subject of his new book “Pastures of Plenty: The Future of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Conservation in New England.”

“This is an important message for our community, especially in light of rising food prices,” says Rich Wood, a board member of Seacoast Local, home to the Seacoast Buy Local program. “Food self-sufficiency represents security and independence. And we know that money spent locally stays in the community, so re-building local food capacity will make everyone’s dollar stretch farther while enhancing our overall economic vitality.”

Carroll explains why we should be thinking about raising our self-sufficiency. “In all of the preparations we must make in order to respond to the demands of greenhouse gas reduction—80 to 90 percent reduction in carbon dioxide by 2050 or sooner—and the end of the era of cheap oil, our greatest challenge will not be transportation nor home heating, but food and the threat to our food supply,” he says.

Princeton petroleum geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of “Beyond Hubbert’s Peak: The End of Oil,” has said that agriculture is the first victim of peak oil. James Howard Kunstler, author of “The Long Emergency,” has written that “Agriculture is going to come back to the center of the American way of life in a way that we couldn’t imagine.” Matthew Simmons, Houston oil analyst and investment banker, tells us that local agriculture will be of critical importance to our future.

Carroll offers a response for our locale, New England: grass-based agriculture. The how and why for a return to grazing; for a full range of dairy and meat product (not only cows, dairy and beef, but also sheep, pigs, goats and poultry); for integration with diversified horticulture for vegetables and fruit; and for integration with forestry, is spelled out in detail in the new University of New Hampshire book, “Pastures of Plenty: The Future of Food, Agriculture and Environmental Conservation in New England.”

A sequel to his earlier work on sustainable agriculture at the local level, “The Wisdom of Small Farms and Local Food,” Carroll’s latest book takes a close look at the prospects for our own region. “Take advantage of your local circumstances,” Carroll suggests, “and reconstruct your world around them.”

Carroll will read at RiverRun Bookstore, located at 20 Congress Street in downtown Portsmouth. For more information on his research, visit http://www.unh.edu/natural-resources/fac-carroll.html. For more details on the event, call 603-431-2100 or visit www.riverrunbookstore.com. For more information on Seacoast Local, including its “Buy Local” program, visit www.seacoastlocal.org.

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May 4, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

from his April 20th article in the New York Times Magazine:

A great many things happen when you plant a vegetable garden, some of them directly related to climate change, others indirect but related nevertheless. Growing food, we forget, comprises the original solar technology: calories produced by means of photosynthesis. Years ago the cheap-energy mind discovered that more food could be produced with less effort by replacing sunlight with fossil-fuel fertilizers and pesticides, with a result that the typical calorie of food energy in your diet now requires about 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce. It’s estimated that the way we feed ourselves (or rather, allow ourselves to be fed) accounts for about a fifth of the greenhouse gas for which each of us is responsible.

Yet the sun still shines down on your yard, and photosynthesis still works so abundantly that in a thoughtfully organized vegetable garden (one planted from seed, nourished by compost from the kitchen and involving not too many drives to the garden center), you can grow the proverbial free lunch — CO2-free and dollar-free. This is the most-local food you can possibly eat (not to mention the freshest, tastiest and most nutritious), with a carbon footprint so faint that even the New Zealand lamb council dares not challenge it. And while we’re counting carbon, consider too your compost pile, which shrinks the heap of garbage your household needs trucked away even as it feeds your vegetables and sequesters carbon in your soil. What else? Well, you will probably notice that you’re getting a pretty good workout there in your garden, burning calories without having to get into the car to drive to the gym. (It is one of the absurdities of the modern division of labor that, having replaced physical labor with fossil fuel, we now have to burn even more fossil fuel to keep our unemployed bodies in shape.) Also, by engaging both body and mind, time spent in the garden is time (and energy) subtracted from electronic forms of entertainment.

You begin to see that growing even a little of your own food is, as Wendell Berry pointed out 30 years ago, one of those solutions that, instead of begetting a new set of problems — the way “solutions” like ethanol or nuclear power inevitably do — actually beget other solutions, and not only of the kind that save carbon. Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support. If the experts are right, if both oil and time are running out, these are skills and habits of mind we’re all very soon going to need. We may also need the food. Could gardens provide it? Well, during World War II, victory gardens supplied as much as 40 percent of the produce Americans ate.

But there are sweeter reasons to plant that garden, to bother. At least in this one corner of your yard and life, you will have begun to heal the split between what you think and what you do, to commingle your identities as consumer and producer and citizen. Chances are, your garden will re-engage you with your neighbors, for you will have produce to give away and the need to borrow their tools. You will have reduced the power of the cheap-energy mind by personally overcoming its most debilitating weakness: its helplessness and the fact that it can’t do much of anything that doesn’t involve division or subtraction. The garden’s season-long transit from seed to ripe fruit — will you get a load of that zucchini?! — suggests that the operations of addition and multiplication still obtain, that the abundance of nature is not exhausted. The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

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April 30, 2008 by Jeff.

For those of you interested in heirloom varieties and regional food traditions, there’s an interesting article at the NY Times today and a comment board to go with it.  Slow Food has a project called the Ark of Taste. The idea is that if you create a market for an endangered variety of fruit, vegetable, animal, cheese, etc, etc, then the market will convince people to grow or produce more it, thus saving it from extinction.  This work is also done by a group called Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT).  There is a new book out on the subject by Gary Paul Nabhan.  Of course I haven’t read it yet, but you can go to the Times to read about it.  Here’s the link.

Sorry I don’t have more interesting things to add, but I was so excited that I just rushed to put this up so you all would go read the article and post to the comment board.

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April 26, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

from the Portsmouth Herald >

Farmers’ markets return for the season across the Seacoast

April 24, 2008 5:39 PM

PORTSMOUTH — The weekly farmers’ market in Portsmouth opens Saturday, May 3, bringing Seacoast residents and visitors another season of shopping just a short, gas-saving walk or bike ride from downtown. Fifteen new, independent businesses have joined Seacoast Growers’ Association in its 32nd year — a growth of 36 percent from 2007 — so the selection will be better than ever.

Every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the City Hall lot on Junkins Avenue, fresh and local produce, flowers and garden plants, meats and cheeses, breads and pastries, fine crafts and more are available. Stock up on groceries, enjoy a live musical performance, and buy a gift for your mom … all in one stop!

Opening Ceremonies will be held the second week of the market, May 10, with a special ribbon-cutting at 10 a.m. by Portsmouth Mayor Tom Ferrini, attended by City Manager John Bohenko and members of the City Council. The week’s live music will be provided by American Flyer, a collection of instruments and vocals on classic and contemporary Bluegrass, originals and covers. Other entertainment for the month is: Random Acts of Harmony, May 3; Taylor River Band, May 17; Jonathan Blakeslee, May 24; and The Reef Band, May 31.

Additional weekday markets in Dover, Durham, Exeter, Hampton and Kingston are open the first week of June through mid-October. The Dover farmers’ market, in particular, has grown and now boasts extended hours. Open weekly until 6 p.m., it has moved to the parking lot of McIntosh College’s Atlantic Culinary Academy, 181 Silver St., where a total of 15 weekly vendors will provide farm-fresh produce, fine crafts and gourmet foods.

(Dover: Wednesdays starting June 4, 2:30-6 p.m., McIntosh College’s Atlantic Culinary Academy parking lot, 181 Silver St.; Durham: Mondays starting June 2, 2:30-5:30 p.m., Durham traffic circle, Pettee Brook parking lot; Exeter: Thursdays starting June 5, 2:30-6 p.m., Swasey Parkway; Hampton: Tuesdays starting June 3, 3:00-6 p.m., Route 1, across from the post office; Kingston: Tuesdays starting June 3, 2:30-5:30 p.m., Main Street.)

The average American eats food that’s traveled 1,500 miles from field to plate. Who wants to be average? Shop local, enjoy the flavor, meet your neighbors, and reduce your carbon footprint. For details and directions, visit www.seacoastgrowers.org.

Seacoast Growers’ Association is a state-registered nonprofit organization representing 57 local small businesses. SGA works closely with Slow Food Seacoast, Seacoast Eat Local, and Seacoast Local, all of whom can be found every Saturday at the market booth. A hotline listing in-season produce and weekly special events can be reached 24 hours a day at 658-0280. For details and directions, visit www.seacoastgrowers.org.

Portsmouth Herald article >

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April 20, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

Eating your own home grown food is not only the most local of the local, it helps save money and gives gardeners great access to great food. It can also be a powerful political statement.

From Out of the Yard and Onto the Fork : (but make sure you go read the whole piece from the New York Times, not too long)

Mr. Doiron’s latest cause is challenging the presidential candidates to plant a garden on the White House lawn. He has posted his proposal, “Eat the View,” on www.ondayone.org, a Web site where people record their visions for the next president.

“This would not be a quaint little garden for the White House chef,” he said. “I have something fairly ambitious in mind, that would make a powerful political statement — a garden large enough to cover most of what the White House needs, with an overflow to a local food pantry.”

Mr. Doiron is actually suggesting a return to a tradition as old as the founding fathers. John Adams planted a vegetable garden at the White House to feed his family, “because back then, presidents had to fund their own household,” said Rose Hayden-Smith, a historian and garden educator based at the University of California in Davis.

During World War I, to save fuel and labor, President Woodrow Wilson had sheep grazing on the White House lawn. His wife, Edith, planted vegetables to inspire the Liberty Garden campaign, in which thousands of students, called “Soldiers of the Soil,” grew their own food in their schools and communities, she said. As the Allied powers began to win, the name Liberty Garden was changed to Victory Garden.

Just after Pearl Harbor, Ms. Hayden-Smith said, another Victory Garden campaign was started. Eleanor Roosevelt grew peas and carrots on the White House lawn, and by the end of the war, Ms. Hayden-Smith said, “Americans were producing 40 percent of the country’s produce” in their gardens.

Read Out of the Yard and Onto the Fork >

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April 10, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

If you missed it’s brief appearance at the Ioka, here’s a chance to catch King Corn on TV - April 15th on PBS. The story of corn is overwhelmingly relevant to how our food system works today -

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April 7, 2008 by Jeff.

In the April 7, 2008 Concord Monitor there is a staff editorial on some of the benefits of eating locally. What caught my eye was this blurb at the end:

“Maine’s legislature is considering a bill to protect farmers from lawsuits by big seed companies seeking damages from growers whose crops are found to contain patented genes. It’s a tactic similar to the lawsuits filed by record companies over illegally downloaded music from the internet. Those genes from a hybrid plant don’t have to be downloaded illegally, however. They could have been in pollen blown by the wind or carried by insects, but that doesn’t matter. If the gene is found in the farmer’s crop, the seed company considers it a patent violation. The Maine law is an attempt to protect farmers whose crops are inadvertently contaminated with patented genes.

This season, gardeners can help protect thousands of un-patented, open-pollinated heirloom species grown by past generations. Some may not resist disease or drought as well. Others won’t tolerate the herbicides agribusiness uses instead of a hoe, or be of uniform shape or color. But almost all of them will taste better than their mass-produced relatives, and they tend to wear nametags that are apt for our times, such as the tomato varieties “Mortgage Lifter” and “Bloody Butcher.”

Good luck, and may your garden grow.”

For those of you familiar with the story of Percy Schmeiser, you know that farmers deserve protection fron pernicious agri-business giants. It was equally welcome to see the Concord Monitor encouraging gardeners and farmers to plant unpatented heirlooms that may not have the standardized look that many have come to expect.

Here’s the link to the editorial:

http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080407/OPINION/804070315

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April 4, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

an excerpt from the New York Times:

Since the 1980s, pesticide use has increased fivefold in Latin America as countries have expanded their production of nontraditional crops to fuel the demand for fresh produce during winter in North America and Europe. Rice farmers in the region use monocrotophos, methamidophos and carbofuran, all agricultural chemicals that are rated Class I toxins by the World Health Organization, are highly toxic to birds, and are either restricted or banned in the United States. In countries like Guatemala, Honduras and Ecuador, researchers have found that farmers spray their crops heavily and repeatedly with a chemical cocktail of dangerous pesticides.

In the mid-1990s, American biologists used satellite tracking to follow Swainson’s hawks to their wintering grounds in Argentina, where thousands of them were found dead from monocrotophos poisoning. Migratory songbirds like bobolinks, barn swallows and Eastern kingbirds are suffering mysterious population declines, and pesticides may well be to blame. A single application of a highly toxic pesticide to a field can kill seven to 25 songbirds per acre. About half the birds that researchers capture after such spraying are found to suffer from severely depressed neurological function.

Migratory birds, modern-day canaries in the coal mine, reveal an environmental problem hidden to consumers. Testing by the United States Food and Drug Administration shows that fruits and vegetables imported from Latin America are three times as likely to violate Environmental Protection Agency standards for pesticide residues as the same foods grown in the United States. Some but not all pesticide residues can be removed by washing or peeling produce, but tests by the Centers for Disease Control show that most Americans carry traces of pesticides in their blood.

What this means to me is that when I do buy the odd imported item, it is even more important to make sure it’s organic - not just for my health, or the health of the migratory birds, but also for the long and short term health of the people who have to live in that area. North American consumerism shouldn’t leave people in far away places cleaning up messes that we wouldn’t allow in our own backyards.

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March 23, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

 From the New York Times comes a story on people who are turning their landscapes edible by planting fruit trees >

“Nothing is more local than the backyard, after all, and home orcharding, as the practice is sometimes called, guarantees freshness and cuts the energy costs for transportation to nil.”

One of the best pieces of advice is to plan your backyard orchard so that your harvest is spread out over time, instead of having a too large bumper crop of any one thing, so that you can have a continual supply of your own fruit throughout the summer and fall.

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March 3, 2008 by Sara Zoe.

In addition to CSA sign-up season, it is also garden planning time!  There’s increased interest in planting gardens, VictoryGarden style, to increase food self-reliance, and, as this article points out, to save a little money:

“Want to cut your food bill? Pull out your shovel and plant a garden”

(Associated Press) - Americans finding soaring food prices hard to stomach are battling back by growing their own food. Home vegetable gardens appear to be booming as a result of the twin movements to eat local and pinch pennies. Although the 2008 planting season is still largely in the planning stages, it appears vegetable seed sales will be up significantly from year-ago figures, said Barb Melera, president of D. Landreth Seed Co., in New Freedom, Pa. “I just came back from the Southeastern Flower Show in Atlanta and we sold three to four times the amount of seed packets we did the previous year,” Melera said.

Roger Doiron, a gardener and fresh food advocate from Scarborough, Maine, said he turned $85 worth of seeds into more than six months of vegetables for his family of five. “I see home gardens as a way of broadening and democratizing the local foods revolution which until now has been more of an upper-class phenomenon,” Doiron said by e-mail. “Home gardening allows people to have their fresh, organic salad greens and pay for them, too.”

Full article here: http://www.eagletribune.com/pulife/local_story_055073601.html

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