Leftovers: The Day's Stray Links
- Neat Packaging: In the UK, Clearspring's organic pasta boxes use die-cut windows (above) to at once suggest and reveal the product within. [The Dieline]
- Not a Good Thing: Not even Martha can dodge the late blight. She's lost 70 percent of her tomatoes. [Martha Blog]
- "Brown Fat": Study shows it may be good for you—unlike white fat, it converts stored energy into heat. [Boston Globe]
- 10 Ways to Barter for Food: Use Craiglist, work at a farm booth, etc. [Chow]
- Omnivore's Delusion: A case against "agri-intellectuals." [The American via AS]
- Cheap Eatin': These might be totes obvo, but just in case, here are six tips on cooking on a budget. [Tribune]
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2 Comments:
The 'Omnivore's Delusion' was a very good article that highlights a number of points. I disagree with a number of those points but agree with others too. The dualistic organic/industrial farms of Pollan's work do leave out a lot of farms that fall in the middle. That aside, Pollan spends many pages talking about how the ideals of organic farming and the 'organic' certification are not the same. These are the farmers I grew up with - not organic, but doing what makes sense to produce more and feed their family by feeding mine.
Our livestock should be treated with compassion, pesticides and fertilizer aren't the devil (much like HFCS isn't the worst evil) but should be used sparingly. The ocean dead zones are a problem. Agriculture's dependence on fossil fuels will come back and bite us. Hopefully the price will increase slow enough that farmers can adapt to new sources of pesticide and fertilizer, otherwise lots of people are going to die since the land can't support them all. Of course everything Pollan says has been thought by farmers past; everything old is new again. He's a writer - his ideas come from farmers he interviewed.
Producing more crop per acre only helps if the nutritional content also doubles. Nutrition is one place we have proven how little we know. Plants need more than NPK (its ok, small farms don't throw away manure), people need more than vitamins and calories. Pollan's point isn't that farmers are bad, its that most of us have grown far from what we eat and don't understand the implications of what we eat. This unfortunately has turned peoples anger toward farmers when it should get them thinking. As always our vote is strongest with our dollars. If industrial meat offends you stop eating meat if you don't know its origin. Lastly, don't complain about farmers with your mouth full.
christopher at 8:04PM on 08/11/09
It doesn't appear to me that Hurst is well-informed about organic farming, or has chosen intentionally to distort it. "With the subtraction of every “unnatural” additive, molds, fungus, and bugs increase." This would be true only if one farmed by subtracting things, instead of actively adding organic matter to the soil to increase its health, for example.
When I was a kid the corn farmers in the state were supplied with signs by their fertilizer (seed?) companies, so that they could avoid fertilizing the outer rows of their farms and then put signs up suggesting this depleted, unfed soil and the resulting puny corn was "organic." This is apparently Hurst's approach.
And just to be nit-picky, the last I knew molds were a fungus.
lemonfair at 7:21AM on 08/12/09