And why we pay too little for well travelled food

Speaking of eating locally, I've neglected to keep you apprised of the latest developments of our heroes to the North, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon, who are living on a hundred-mile diet.

In part four, Alisa and J.B. write about the hidden costs of food, China's agro ambitions, and Vancouver's bright spots.

In part five, our dynamic duo heads oustide of their comfort zone to northern British Columbia, where they discover that following the hundred-mile diet isn't as hard as they thought it would be.

You Deserve a Break to Hay

City slickers go on farm vacations to get respite from modern life Overstimulated urban dwellers are taking farm vacations to get back in touch with country life — a phenomenon that may help preserve America’s rural landscape. “Agri-tourism” generates considerable, much-needed revenue for Liberty Hill Farm in Vermont; it’s one of just a few thousand […]

Louella Hill, local-food ambassador, answers questions

Louella Hill. What work do you do? What’s your job title? I am the director of a program called Farm Fresh Rhode Island. For my work with Brown University Dining Services, I call myself the “Local Food Ambassador.” What does your organization do? At Farm Fresh Rhode Island, we connect local eaters with local food […]

Arsenic and Old Rice

Arsenic levels in U.S. rice could pose health risk U.S.-grown rice contains an average of 1.4 to 5 times the amount of arsenic found in rice from Europe, India, or Bangladesh. According to a study published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, people consuming American rice at a “subsistence level” — about one pound […]

Heifer Madness

Thanks to booming dairy biz, cows out-pollute cars in California valley In California’s San Joaquin Valley, air-quality regulators are squaring off against the area’s lucrative dairy industry over cow gas: Each dairy cow in the valley emits nearly 20 pounds of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) a year, according to official estimates. (Sadly, more of the […]

Universities considering adding organic-farming to curriculum.

Recently in Daily Grist we reported how locally grown foods are catching on at college dining halls.

Now wouldn't it be nice if the students knew the in's and out's of how that food was produced? Well, they may get their chance, as several universities are offering (or are considering offering) organic-farming majors.

But as KATU 2 in Portland, Ore., reports:

... starting up such a major can carry an implicit critique of traditional programs, said Matt Liebman, director of the graduate program in sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames.

"It implies that everyone else is non-sustainable, and they find that fairly threatening," Liebman said. "It can imply a critique of traditional agriculture, and its effects on the environment, or farm size."

Kinda like saying that slapping on non-GMO labels implies that there is something wrong with genetically modified foods.

Now, the question is, will organic-farming majors think that they are morally superior?

You Put Yer Superweed in There

Herbicide-resistant superweed discovered in field of GM canola Opponents of genetically engineered crops have long warned that genetic modifications could “leak” into other plant species via interbreeding, possibly creating a new breed of hard-to-kill superweeds that would lead farmers to use more and more herbicides. Multinational biotech corporations have long said, ha ha, that’s crazy. […]

Sustainable, yes. Possible, not so sure.

So you want to make sure your eating habits are not contributing to global warming, but aren't ready to go veg. You like the idea of eating only organic food, but worry about the long trek much of it makes to get from producer to grocer. So you're thinking about consuming only locally produced fare. But is it possible? Well, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon are giving it a go and sharing their experience with our friends to the north, The Tyee.

In part one, we get the background:

For the average American meal (and we assume the average Canadian meal is similar), World Watch reports that the ingredients typically travel between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres, a 25 percent increase from 1980 alone. This average meal uses up to 17 times more petroleum products, and increases carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount, compared to an entirely local meal.

Let's translate that into the ecological footprint model devised by Dr. William Rees of UBC which measures how many planets'-worth of resources would be needed if everyone did the same. If you had an average North American lifestyle in every other way, from driving habits to the size of your house, by switching to a local diet you would save almost an entire planet's worth of resources (though you'd still be gobbling up seven earths).

In a warmed world, even food won’t be as good for you

Humanity is on the threshold of a century of extraordinary bounty, courtesy of global climate change. That’s the opinion of Robert Balling, former scientific adviser to the Greening Earth Society, a lobbying arm of the power industry founded by the Western Fuels Association. In a world where atmospheric carbon dioxide levels soar from the burning […]

Turning corn into plastic

Apparently, we've figured out how to turn corn into plastic.

Following some similar lines to the discussion raging in the Bad Idea post, this brings up some interesting issues surrounding the future of agriculture in the U.S. As the article mentions, the Energy Department wants to convert 25 percent of chemical manufacturing to an agricultural base by 2030. So if a lot of our farmland begins producing crops for manufacturing (and biofuels) instead of consumable food, what will that do to the produce market? What will it mean for soil and water quality, biodiversity, and community health, since these crops would almost certainly not be produced organically, or have pesticide and herbicide standards anywhere near those required for consumable food?

I would like to say that I see a lot of benefit to making plastic out of corn rather than petroleum products. Especially in light of all the recent noise about health hazards associated with using plastic bottles, it seems like it could remedy a lot of public health concerns while reducing the demand for petroleum.

As long as we're not screwing up the environment in other ways in the process ...

Update [2005-7-14 9:34:41 by Corey McKrill]:

Rose Miller's article, One Word: Corn, over on Utne Web Watch, has lots of details regarding various efforts utilize corn and other agricultural products to produce plastic, including Motorola's plan to make a biodegradeable cell-phone case that will grow a flower when planted in the ground (just one example of how to mitigate the effects of millions of used cell-phones). She also links to this post (thanks Rose)!