La Vida Locavore - Recommended Diaries

Special Wednesday Edition of Sunday Bread- NY Rye

Something The Dog Said — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:08:28 GMT

Welcome to a Special Mid-week edition of Bread Sunday! This week's recipe is kind of a request. Last week one of the folks on the thread asked for a "good Jewish or New York style Rye". The Dog always cringes a little bit when someone asks after "good" Rye, because, frankly, it is not an easy bread to make. It is what Mrs. Dog calls "Chicken or Egg bread" because to make the real New York style bread, you have to have rye bread. You also need to make a Rye Sour in advance. Still, when you are done you have a loaf of they very best sandwich bread in the world!

Rye Sour is a starter like Sour Dough bread uses. It can be kept alive for several weeks, if fed and stirred, though you do have to take the onions out after the first 24-hours.

Rye Sour

Ingredients:

2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
4 cups rye flour, stone ground is strongly preferred (you can find it at most mega marts or Whole Foods, if you are not boycotting them)
3 ½ cups hot water
2 packages dry yeast (4 ½ teaspoons)
1 table spoon caraway seeds

Special Equipment - a length of cheese clothe to tie the onions in.

Method:

Tie the onions pieces in a bag made from the cheese clothe. Set aside

In a large bowl, combine the water and rye flour. Stir to mix. Sprinkle the yeast over the mixture and work in. Stir in the caraway seeds.

When the mixture is well mixed take the onion bag and press it down into the center of the sour. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and let over night (no longer than 24 hours!).

Remove the onions and scrape any of the sour that is clinging to the clothe back into the bowl. The sour is ready to use, or be refrigerated, well covered, until you are ready to bake your rye bread.

New York Style Rye Bread

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups of rye bread pieces
3 cups Rye Sour
1 package dry yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons caraway seeds (you can use more if you like, my wife gets overwhelmed if there is more than 2 tablespoons)
4 cups break flour
1 egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water (hint, beat the egg first, then mix in the water)

Equipment - 1 baking sheet, dusted with corn meal or covered in parchment paper.

Method:
Soak in water half a dozen crusty slices of rye bread (you can use store bought for this the first time). Squeeze dry. Set aside 1 ½ cups, the rest (yeah there is some left over) can be frozen or refrigerated for a later batch.

In a stand mixer or a large bowl drop the squeezed-dry bread pieces. Add the rye sour. With a wooden spoon or the flat paddle of the mixer mix until the bread pieces are thoroughly combined with the sour.

Stir in the dry yeast, salt and half of the caraway seeds.

Add 2 cups of white flour and mix vigorously into the sour. Add more flour, ¼ cup at a time staring with first the wooden spoon and then your hands or with the paddle if you are using a stand mixer. The dough is going to be sticky at first, but will become elastic and smooth as you work it.

If you are using a mixer switch to the dough hook and knead for 8 minutes.

If kneading by hand (gotta build up those forearms!) turn out onto a well floured work surface. Use a strong push-turn-fold motion to knead the dough. Add sprinkles of flour if moisture breaks through, but don't overload the dough with flour, it is better if it is a little slack.

Rising:
Place the dough in a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap and leave for about 30 minutes, or until it has doubled.

Shaping:
Punch down the dough and turn out onto a well floured work surface. Divide the dough into two pieces. The dough can be fashioned into round loaves by holding it in both hands and pushing the edges into the middle or long plump loaves by rolling the pieces under the palms of your hands on the work surface. Place the loaves on the backing sheet.

Second Rising:
Cover the loaves with wax paper and set aside to proof. You don't want to let the come to a full doubling, but closer to 3/4 . It should take about 20-30 minutes depending on how warm it is in your house that day. If you miss and they do double in size, don't sweat it, they will still be good, but leaving them a little under-proofed gives the crusty on the outside and tender of the inside texture which this bread is famous for.

Preheat:
Put the lower rack of your oven on the lowest setting. Place a broiler pan on this rack. Preheat the over to 450 degrees for twenty minutes (don't rush this part!) 3 minutes before baking pour 1 cup hot water in the broiler pan to produce steam. Be sure to wear oven mitts while doing this so you don't burn yourself with the steam.

Baking:
Cut the top of the loaves into a patter with a sharp knife or a razor blade. I like a tic-tac-toe patter but you can do X's or diagonal slices. Brush with the egg and water mixture. Sprinkle the rest of the caraway seeds over the top.

Place in the hot oven. Midway through baking, turn the baking sheet around so the loaves brown evenly. Bake for 40 minutes, the loaves will have turned deep brown by then. Test for doneness by thumping the bottom of one of the loaves with your finger. If it is not hard and crusty, return the loaves to the oven for five to ten more minutes.

Cool on a wire rack.

The Dog did warn you that this bread is a bit of a pain in the ass. However if you have rye lovers in your household you will find yourself quickly using the rest of the sour and the soaked pieces to make more! Be sure to save some from each batch to start the next time!

The flour is yours.

Sorry, We Can't Cook: D.C. Schools Say 'No' to More Vegetables

euclidarms — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 09:58:14 GMT

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

In a move that could signal a serious fault line in the argument for more vegetables as a tonic for childhood obesity, drafters of "Healthy Schools" legislation pending before the D.C. Council have skuttled a push for additional produce in school meals after school officials said they cannot guarantee their kitchens can prepare vegetables that kids will actually eat and not throw in the trash.

"More vegetables" has become a mantra of advocates for healthier school food, including first Lady Michell Obama, whose White House vegetable garden created a sensation. The "Healthy Schools" bill, scheduled to come up for a hearing next week, had embraced standards proposed by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that would require larger servings of fruits, vegetables--especially green and organge vegetables and legumes--and whole grains as part of an upgraded school nutrition package designed to bring school meals in line with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

The IOM panel that made the recommendations, working at the behest of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, warned, however, that requiring more produce and whole grains would drive up the cost of school meals, and that there could be no guarantee that children would eat them. The requirement for heftier vegetable servings was dropped from the "Healthy Schools" bill after D.C. school officials asserted they did not want to spend precious resources on food that would only end up being thrown away.

"We heard from many that if schools are serving mushy, flavorless green beans that students are simply throwing away, that doubling the portion size would simply double the amount of mushy, flavorless green beans that are thrown away," said an aide to Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3), author of the bill. "Instead, many have said that we should focus our energy and money first on improving the quality of the foods being served before we consider mandating an increase in portion sizes."

Advocates of farm to school programs here and across the country contend that schools can serve meals that are more healthful and appealing by using more locally grown produce. But vegetables traditionally are a hard sell in school cafeterias. The foods most favored by children are pizza, all forms of potatoes and corn, in that order. As I found while spending a week in the kitchen of my daughter's elementary school here in the District, vegetables typically are cooked to death and rejected by kids. A 1996 nationwide survey of school food service managers by the U.S. General Accounting Office revealed that 42 percent of cooked vegetables - and 30 percent of raw vegetables and salad - ended up in the trash.

The move to eliminate additional vegetables from "Healthy Schools" legislation suggests that mandating better school meals may not work without funding improvements to school kitchens. In fact, the trend in school food service for years has been in just the opposite direction--to reduce labor costs, which represent half of food service costs, by hiring less skilled kitchen workers who do not work enough hours to qualify for benefits. Frequently, school kitchens are staffed by "warmer-uppers" whose sole skill is being able to re-heat foods that have been pre-cooked in distant factories and shipped frozen. Sensitive perishables such as vegetables suffer as a result.

"If we're going to win Michele Obama's war on obesity and if her 'Let's Move' campaign is going to be successful, then we need to ensure healthy delicious food. We need funds to pay for cooking kitchens, to train staff, and to market to kids to eat the food," said Ann Cooper, noted school food activist and director of nutrition for schools in Boulder, Colorado.

"That seems like nonsense about kids not eating the veggies...of course they won't if it looks and tastes like cardboard," said Debra Eschmeyer, director of the National Farm to School Network. "Kids will eat fresh tasty veggies if they have a chance to access them and learn about them. I didn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes hundreds of times. Kids will eat chard, broccoli, beets, etc. and love it when they have a chance to grow it and have a real learning experience."

The IOM report suggested there might be funds for school kitchen upgrades in the "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" (PDF) program instituted last year by USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan. Merrigan has said that nearly $1 billion in federal grant funds used in the past for building rural fire stations, hospitals and community centers could be allocated to food-related projects, such as building storage facilities for locally grown produce, food markets and school kitchens. But schools would need to apply for the money.

In a separate development yesterday, legislation making its way through the U.S. Senate would provide an additional 6 cents per school meal--something less than $500 million more annually--but that money would be contingent on federally-subsidized meal programs adopting the IOM standards. The School Nutrition Association, representing food service directors across the country, has asked for a minimum increase of 35 cents per meal. But others, such as Cooper, say anything less than $1 a day for each child in the program falls short of what is actually needed.

Still, the retooled "Healthy Schools" legislation sets forth substantial increases in local financial support for school meals, some of which could be used to purchase more vegetables and other healthful ingredients. The bill would provide an additional 10 cents for each breakfast served in D.C. public schools and 10 cents for each lunch, plus a bonus of 5 cents for lunches that include local produce. In addition, the District would fund 50 cents for students who qualify for reduced-price breakfast and lunch, meaning those students would not have to pay for their meals at all.

The bill also provides for construction of a local "super kitchen" where city schools could store and process local produce. The kitchen could also house a greenhouse, bakery or other features and provide a culinary training center.

Significantly, the "Healthy Schools" bill still does not identify funding to pay for the improvements it outlines, but Cheh has vowed to find it.

New Study: Kids Who Eat School Food Are Fatter

euclidarms — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 09:55:44 GMT

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

A new study from the University of Michigan finds that kids who eat the food served in schools are more likely to be overweight or obese than peers who bring lunch from home, and also are more likely to suffer from high levels of "bad" cholesterol.
The study, which examined the eating habits of some 1,300 Michigan sixth-graders over a three-year period, found that children who get their food at school eat more fat, drink more sugary sodas, and consume far fewer fruits and vegetables. The findings, presented last week at the American College of Cardiology annual scientific session, are said to be the first to assess the impact of school food on children's eating behaviors and overall health.

Specifically, 38.8 percent of students who routinely eat school lunch were found to be overweight or obese, compared to 24.4 percent of kids who brought their own food from home. The children consuming school food were twice as likely to drink sodas, and a measly 16.3 percent reported eating fruits and vegetables on a regular basis, compared to 91.2 percent of the kids who got homemade food.

"This study confirms the current and escalating national concern with children's health, and underscores the need to educate children about how to make healthy eating and lifestyle choices early on," said Elizabeth Jackson, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Health System, in a release put out by the university. "Although this study doesn't provide specific information on nutrient content of school lunches, it suggests there is a real opportunity to promote healthy behaviors and eating habits within the school environment. This is where kids spend a majority of their time."

It would be dangerous to read too much into a study that is based solely on student questionnaires and suggests correlations, not cause and effect, between self-reported eating habits and specific health issues. For instance, it could be that children who tend to be overweight or obese must eat the food served at school because they get it free courtesy of the federally-subsidized school lunch program. The researchers acknowledge that there could be a correlation "between socioeconomic status and heart health in children of low-income families who take advantage of free school meal programs."

The findings, based on what students reported about their eating habits during the entire day, not just at school, certainly suggest a strong link between what kids learn about food at home and the kinds of food they choose at school. But even parents who pack "healthful" lunches can never be sure what their children are actually eating, the researchers report, since most children in public schools are exposed to "competitive" foods -- those sold outside the regular lunch line -- that encompass all kinds of junk food, as well as the stuff sold in vending machines.

Amy Kalafa, producer of the food documentary Two Angry Moms, filmed herself having her eyes opened to her daughter's true eating habits when she checked the computer records in the school cafeteria. "All our efforts at home were being undermined by the school," Kalafa said yesterday. "When I casually asked for a readout, just to demonstrate how the system worked, I was genuinely shocked to learn that my daughter was regularly buying chips, fries, Rice Cispy treats and Pop Tarts. And it's not just about obesity. Diabetes and sugar sensitivity runs in my family."

My own 10-year-old daughter has noticeably put on some girth since switching last fall from home-made meals to the ones served in school here in the District of Columbia. Her pediatrician wasn't at all surprised. Her kids gained 10 pounds, she said, when they started eating school meals. When my daughter heard that, she decided to switch back to taking her own food.

What's more, only 7 percent of school food operations fully comply with the nutrtional standards laid down by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the federal meals program. During the week I spent recently in the kitchen at my daughter's school, it was clear that schools trying to feed kids on a budget rely heavily on industrially-processed convenience foods laced with additives and sugar. Fresh vegetables are a rarity.

A study of how schools use government donations of surplus farm commodities, conducted by the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (PFD) two years ago, found that California schools ordered far more meat and dairy products and rarely touched the offerings of fresh vegetables and whole grains. The reason is simple enough: kids don't like vegetables and whole grains. Unless, of course, they've already been trained to like them at home.

The University of Michigan researchers said they are encouraged by a recent movement toward exposing children to fresh, local produce and programs that encourage children to walk to school and exercise more -- just the sort of things being pushed by Michelle Obama in her "Let's Move" campaign, as well as "Healthy Schools" legislation pending here in the District of Columbia. The USDA also is considering new school food standards developed by the Institute of Medicine that would put a cap on the number of calories served in school meals, reduce starchy foods, and increase servings of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.

The University of Michigan study comes as Congress considers re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, for which President Barack Obama has proposed splitting an additional $1 billion annually between school meals and other food programs. Some advocates say that amount is not even enough to put an apple on kids' cafeteria trays. Ann Cooper, the "renegade lunch lady," in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, says what schools really need is another $1 per day for each child in the federal program, which would work out to something like $5.4 billion a year.

But this latest study points to something even more ominous that should occupy the attention of federal lawmakers: a growing bifurcation of the food system wherein poor kids are routinely subjected to cheap processed food that damages their health, while kids from wealthier families get access to the best our local farms have to offer. That is the underlying message of the growing Farm to School movement: that all kids deserve fresh, wholesome food, not just the ones whose parents shop at Whole Foods or the farmers market.

More studies like this one will undoubtedly show that school food quality is a social justice issue that demands immediate attention. And while some politicians might be loathe to pay for improving it -- that is, if they think about it at all -- it is also a health issue with potentially devastating consequences for the national budget.

Book Review: Eating History by Andrew F. Smith

Jill Richardson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 05:20:41 GMT

Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine by Andrew F. Smith was the third of three books I recently read that trace American food and agricultural history (the other two are The War on Bugs by Will Allen and Kitchen Literacy by Ann Vileisis). As I said before, the three books provided complementary information to give readers a full picture of how our food and agriculture came to be as they are today. That said, if you have to skip one of the three books, skip this one.

The 30 turning points chosen traced several different plotlines - manufacturing, packaging, and transportation advances; war; the making and defining of gourmet food in America; the roles of nutrition reformers; and the role of marketing. Surely those broad categories leave out many of the 30 chapters in the book, but they also encompass quite a few of them. In some parts, the book reads like the TV show "Unwrapped," and it's written from an impartial point of view (thus not criticizing a number of developments that play roles in making food less healthy). In most cases, I feel that it was probably just fine to provide an unbiased view (as the book is intended as a history book, not a call to action), but in the section on genetically modified foods, "unbiased" turns into "overly favorable" and in fact, wrong.
In the very beginning, transportation was quite costly. This theme runs through all three books. With the opening of the Erie Canal, and later, the transcontinental railroad, non-local food could compete with local food on price. I found the first chapter particularly interesting, as it describes Oliver Evan's automated mill. The first mills in the U.S. required a lot of manpower, and when a man named Oliver Evans invented a more efficient mill, nobody wanted it. The workers didn't want to lose their jobs, and the mill owners didn't want to cough up the money required for the initial capital investment. The new mill was not only more efficient; it was also better at making refined white flour (which people then preferred, not knowing it was less healthy).

Chapter two builds on chapter one, telling the story of the Erie Canal. Prior to the opening of the canal, upstate New York could not sell flour to New York City and beyond due to the prohibitive cost of transportation. With the canal reducing transport costs, many cities along the mill built the new style of mill and the savings from the more efficient mill more than offset the cost of transporting flour. Thus, Americans learned (for the first time) to buy the cheapest product instead of buying locally produced food.

War plays a major role in shaping American food as well. First, when the South seceded from the United States, Congress could finally pass through bills that Southern Congressmen had opposed, including four related to food: the transcontinental railroad, the creation of land grant universities, the creation of the USDA, and the homestead act. Just like the Erie Canal, the transcontinental railroad lowered transportation costs and made non-local food a cost effective reality for more Americans.

The war also gave some of the first canners enough business (by selling canned foods to the government to feed soldiers) to become profitable. Along the same lines, the war exposed soldiers to canned foods, perhaps speeding up their introduction and acceptance. The Civil War also homogenized American cuisine (which differed regionally before the start of the war), as men from around the U.S. came together and tried foods they'd never tried before.

The invention and refinement of canning opened up a whole new possibility of prepared foods, reducing the amount of growing, storing, and cooking that Americans had to do themselves. Other advances in packaging, freezing, and microwaving continued this trend throughout the 19th and 20th centuries (and no doubt still today). Changes in marketing tracked the changes in packaging and transportation, and they also get a mention in the book. Perhaps most significant were the insane marketing gimmicks of the early 20th century (when marketing food was brand new and television did not exist yet) and the invention of the supermarket. Both supermarkets and marketing changed the way we buy food and thus the way we eat. (The book doesn't say it but in recent years we've seen an enormous shift in food shopping from supermarkets to supercenters like Wal-Mart, Sams, or Costco. Perhaps a future edition of this book would include that as a trend.)

A track of the book that somewhat surprised me was the making and defining of gourmet food. This began with the French restaurant Delmonico's in New York City, which first opened in 1835. Other French restaurants followed, taking advantage of the upper class American love affair with French food. Over 100 years later, Gourmet magazine started during a time of war, when Americans (who still loved French food) couldn't go to France to get the real thing. Obviously the magazine was a tremendous success. The book also tells about early influential cookbooks, and the two themes join up in the form of Julia Child, who taught French cooking in a way that average people could understand it, both in her cookbook and on TV. I suppose the modern day heirs to these two historical tracks are Alice Waters with her restaurant Chez Panisse and the very popular Food Network (both are included in the book).

As the book describes the industrialization of food and agriculture, it also tells of those who advocated for organic and healthy foods. One chapter is devoted to Jerome Rodale's Organic Gardening, also mentioning Sir Albert Howard and Frances Moore Lappe. It's good that we're enough of a blip in history that a food historian sees fit to include us in this book.

The book picked out some things I would have expected (like corn flakes, TV dinners, the founding of Thanksgiving as a national holiday, and McDonalds), and others that I had never heard of, or had heard of but would not have considered as so influential on history. I was quite surprised that some of the unhealthy parts of our diet were initially invented by people intending to create health foods. J.H. Kellogg invented corn flakes as an easy way for people at his sanitarium (who may not have had all of their teeth) to eat corn instead of less healthy breakfast foods like sausage or bacon. He opposed marketing, and he would certainly roll over in his grave if he knew how much sugar went into cereals that bear his name these days. (His brother, W.K. Kellogg, was less principled and he's the one who made Kellogg's Corn Flakes a household name. As you may imagine, doing so required quite a bit of marketing.)

If you are reading this book as part of my trio of books on food and ag history, this book provides a lot of details on technology that explain why things happened as they did, whereas Vileisis focuses more on how marketing and demographic changes affected the American people and their diets. Often an invention will show up in this book, but the American public will not accept it en masse for several decades, as described in the Vileisis book. Certainly many themes come up in both books, with only one of the two providing complementary bits of information. For example, Eating History tells of the invention of a calorimeter, which can measure the number of calories in food. Kitchen Literacy skips this, but tells about the beginnings of the Home Economics movement (which Eating History skips), when home economists urged women to feed their families scientifically, based on the number of calories or other nutrients in the food.

All in all, this is a great book, and I'm glad I read it.

School Lunch and WIC: We Have a Bill... Lots of Bills

Jill Richardson — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 07:53:43 GMT

There's a BIG LIST of new food-related bills in Congress (listed below), but the one generating the most buzz is Blanche Lincoln's proposed child nutrition bill.

S. 3123: Growing Farm to School Programs Act of 2010, introduced by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT) with 13 cosponsors.
S. 3124, to reduce the paperwork burden on child care sponsors and providers, introduced by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) with 1 cosponsor.
S. 3126, a bill to promote wellness policies by Sen. Klobuchar (D-MN) with no cosponsors.
S. 3127 a bill to require continual updating of foods provided under WIC by Sen. Klobuchar (D-MN) with no cosponsors.
S. 3128, a bill to make all foster children automatically eligible for free breakfast and lunch by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) with no cosponsors.
S. 3129, a bill to change WIC so that once qualified, participants are in the program for a year before they must be re-certified by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand with no cosponsors.
H.R. 4734 and S. 3040, a bill to improve summer meal programs by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) and Sen. Lugar (R-IN) with 1 cosponsor in the House and 4 in the Senate.
H.R. 4710: Farm to School Improvements Act of 2010 by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) with 17 cosponsors.
H.R.4638: The Healthy Start Act, a bill to provide $.05 in federal commodities for school breakfasts by Rep. Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD) with 10 cosponsors.
H.R.4148: The Hunger Free Schools Act, a bill to provide direct certification for free breakfast and lunch by Rep. David Loebsack (D-IA) with 21 cosponsors.
H.R. 3705: Expand School Meals Act, a bill to expand the number of children eligible for free school meals by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) with 47 cosponsors. (It appears that this bill makes meals free for any children who are currently eligible for reduced cost meals.)
H.R. 4402: The Nutritious Meals for Young Children Act and S.2749, a bill to improve access to food for young children in child care by Rep. Paul Tonko (D-NY) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand with 41 cosponsors in the House and 5 in the Senate.

What will probably happen is that most of these bills will die, and components of them will be folded into whichever bill ultimately becomes law. Lincoln's bill, which I don't think she's actually introduced yet (and the text of the bill is most certainly not available from the Library of Congress yet), has a darn good chance of ultimately becoming law. More on that below.
Blanche Lincoln, as the chair of the committee that will pass the child nutrition reauthorization (a bill governing WIC and school lunch as well as other programs), just announced her bill (The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act) this week. And, from skimming her press release, it looks great. Of course, it's not likely that any Senator would put bad news in a press release. More details are available from the Des Moines Register's Philip Brasher (a man whose writing I often read but far less often agree with). He notes that the bill will FINALLY give the government the authority to restrict junk food sales in schools (yay!). That's great news but no surprise.

The big thing everyone's looking for in the bill is the change to the reimbursement rate (the amount the government spends per kid per school lunch). What will it be? $.20? $.35? More? Well, I don't think the news there will be good. The only mention the reimbursement rate got in any source I've found was a $.06 increase as an incentive for schools that provide healthy meals. And that would be wonderful IF it were on top of another, much larger increase in the rate for everybody. But is it? So far I can't find anything that says that it is.

The current rate is about $2.68 and only about $1 out of that actually goes for food. But food is not the only ingredient in a healthy lunch - labor, training, and equipment are necessary as well, and they cost money. If I understand correctly, the School Nutrition Association wants an extra $.35 and that's to help schools meet their current budget shortfalls for school lunches without even improving the quality of the food. School lunch reformer Ann Cooper says a $1 increase is necessary to actually make school food healthy. And Blanche is giving us $.06? Dear god, I hope not. Please let this be a misunderstanding.

The other news is that our good friend Blanche decided to give money to school lunches by taking money away from an area she feels isn't very important: conservation. Yes, that's right. The school lunch bill gets a total of $4.5 billion (with a B) in new money, and that's coming right out of the EQIP program. The silver lining is that the EQIP program, although it began as a true conservation program, often gives money to factory farms. So it's not exactly the best conservation program we've got, but when the money goes to small, responsible farms instead of factory farms, it is money well spent. Conservation programs are perennially underfunded and by all accounts, they work really well but they don't do enough because they don't have enough money. I'm all for school lunches, but can't we find somewhere else to get the money? How about outdated Cold War era weapons programs?

On the more positive side, George Miller, Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said the following about the Lincoln bill:

For millions of children, the meals they eat at school, in afterschool programs or child care are their nutritional safety net. Senator Lincoln and I both know we need to do everything we can to help all eligible children have access to healthy, safe and nutritious meals. Senator Lincoln's focus on improving access and nutrition quality rightfully address many of the concerns I often hear from parents, stakeholders and school leaders. I look forward to working with her as we continue our efforts to strengthen and improve child nutrition for kids across the country.

Miller's one of the good guys so if he likes Lincoln's bill, then it must have some good stuff in it. Of course, maybe he was just being polite.

Take Your Food Politics To Motown: US Social Forum, June 22-26, 2010

EsperanzaRossi — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:27:51 GMT

Within the contemporary food movement, Detroit is well known as an an important site of food justice activism. In a city in which 500,000 out of 900,000 citizens are food insecure, a multitude of grassroots projects have emerged to rebuild Detroit into a sustainable urban environment for the future. Thus, What better place to host the second US Social Forum (USSF) than Detroit? This is exactly what the planning committee of the USSF thought when it selected Detroit as the host city, and recognized it as a "solution city" that is building on its history of solutions to rebuild the city for a sustainable future. Yesterday I dialed in and listened to one of the USSF call-in information sessions being held this month in Spanish and English. Here is what I learned...

Detroit is empty. It is black and violent, poor and foreclosed, a gutted out postindustrial wasteland. Dilapidated houses and hollowed out factory yards serve as rotting corpses strewn across the landscape, bearing testimony to an industrial apocalypse. Such is the contemporary popular imagination of a city once known as the Paris of the West, famous in the late 19th and early 20th centuries for its Gilded Age architecture. Detroit gained its earlier fame as a major transportation and manufacturing hub in the late 19th century coach and shipbuilding industries. It rose to greater prominence after Henry Ford opened his first automobile manufacturing plant in 1899. Chrysler, Packard, Dodge and Durant all followed suit, turning the Paris of the West into Motor Town. With the new industry came new people. European immigrants and southern blacks poured into Detroit to take up positions on the assembly lines, filling out the city to a peak population of more than 1.5 million in the 1930s.

By the 1950s, Detroit began a slow decline as consolidation in the automobile industry, suburbanization and white flight initiated the exodus of jobs and people from Motown. Unemployment, poverty, crime, violence and drug use escalated in direct relation to the outflow of wealth. This slow bleeding of Detroit has continued to the present moment with the population now hovering around 900,000 and an estimated ten thousand people still leaving the city every year.

There is, however, another history to Detroit that has served as a source of hope and inspiration, a history of activism, struggle and social movements. Detroit is home to the United Auto Workers, one of the first unions to organize African American workers in the 1930s and to drive forward the unionization of US auto workers with the famous Flint Sit-Down Strike of 1936-1937. It is home to Grace Lee Boggs, a long-time feminist and anti-racism activist who worked with her husband James Boggs to establish Detroit Summer, a multi-racial and inter-generational collective working to empower Detroit youth and rebuild the city from the grassroots.

Within the contemporary food movement, Detroit is well known as an an important site of food justice activism. In a city in which 500,000 out of 900,000 citizens are food insecure, a multitude of grassroots projects have emerged to rebuild Detroit into a sustainable urban environment for the future. Among the larger organizations that are making this transition possible is the Garden Resource Program Collaborative(GRPC), which has created a network of more than 185 organizations working urban farms within Detroit. GRPC builds the Detroit food movement by providing these organizations with seeds, educational resources and networking opportunities. The Greening of Detroit, originally established to reforest Detroit, is now the home to GRPC. In an effort to support the urban farms and gardens emerging across the city to distribute and sell their produce, this organization has also established a network of small neighborhood farmers markets.

Earthworks Urban Farm connects food justice and environmentalism by teaching farming in Detroit as an act of human participation in the natural economy. Urban Farming, an organization that began in Detroit and spread to over thirty cities across the US, works with communities to build urban farms on unused public land, and goes further to connect those communities with youth programs, health services and green collar job opportunities. Finally, Detroit Community Grocery Store Coalition is building a network of locally-owned grocery stores that redevelop Detroit by bringing an end to local food desserts and by creating job opportunities for Detroit residents.

What better place to host the second US Social Forum (USSF) than Detroit? This is exactly what the planning committee of the USSF thought when it selected Detroit as the host city, and recognized it as a "solution city" that is building on its history of solutions to rebuild the city for a sustainable future. Yesterday I dialed in and listened to one of the USSF call-in information sessions being held this month in Spanish and English. Here is what I learned:

The USSF is an outgrowth of the World Social Forum (WSF), an open space (meaning not controlled by the political, economic or social agenda of any single group) for coalition building among grassroots social movements and activists across the world. The forum is a "movement among movements," serving as a convergence point for grassroots activists fighting against the social and economic injustices created across the world by governments and corporations that embrace neoliberal economic principles. The first WSF took place in 2001 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, inspired by the 1999 "Battle of Seattle" in which grassroots activists from across the world held massive protest against the WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999, which sought to shape a new round of global trade negotiations to usher in the new millennium. Like the Battle for Seattle protests, the WSF emerged in 2001 as a counter-mobilization to neoliberalism and globalization. This time it was in direct protest of the World Economic Forum, a meeting of government and business leaders from across the world to strategize on ways to address the social, economic and environmental problems of the world. Resisting the top-down and neoliberal-based solutions proposed by the World Economic Forum, the first WSF offered an alternative space for a more democratic and community based approach to building a better future. Now in its tenth year, the 2010 WSF is being held as a permanent year-long process that will take place through a series of events across the world.

The 2010 US Social Forum (USSF) is one of those events. The first US social forum grew out the rising awareness among WSF participants of the need to hold the US accountable for the economic degradation it reaps across the world. It also grew out of the question of just how US citizens would take up this task. In response, the first USSF took place in Atlanta in 2007, drawing together over 20,000 grassroots activists, mainly people of color, who came bearing testimony to social and economic crises occurring within communities across the United States.

This year's forum will focus on two goals. The first is to take up the most urgent social and political problems facing the country and the world: the economic crisis, the failure of neoliberalism, the devastation caused by disinvestment in social welfare and in communities, healthcare, immigration, the ecological crisis, the rising right-wing movements in the US, militarization, war resistance, indigenous sovereignty, LGBT rights, and the question of holding the US accountable at a global level. These problems will be taken up through a series of workshops that will serve as the spaces for exchanging information, shaping strategies of resistance and building coalitions. Proposals for workshops can be made by registered organizations by March 20, though there is a good chance that this deadline will be extended.

The second goal of the forum is bring some much needed focus on Detroit, one of the cities most negatively affected by the current economic crisis. Workshops on the second day (June 23) of the forum will focus on connecting Detroit to the rest of the country. This will give participants from outside a chance to understand and connect with what is happening in Detroit, and allow Detroit to connect with grassroots movements outside of the city. Participants of the USSF are being encouraged to come to Detroit with the intention to give back to the city for hosting the forum by supporting local social movements. Throughout the forum there will be a chance to get involved in grassroots projects to build gardens, repair houses, paint murals, and take part in locally organized protest marches. You can also bring a book to help build a new library, or bring a bike to help create an alternative transportation system.

The forum will take place over a five-day period. The first day (June 22) will be dedicated to opening ceremonies and a march. Workshops will then take place over the next three days with a focus on problems in the US and how they intersect with the problems in Detroit (June 23), the financial crisis and how to connect the US with the rest of the world (June 24), and solutions (June 25). The final day (June 26) will take the form of a gathering of Peoples Movement Assemblies (PMAs) working towards synthesis, resolution, and planning for future actions.

By closing the forum with the Peoples Movement Assemblies, the organizing committee hopes to emphasize the grassroots basis and coalition-building function of the forum. Participants are encouraged to start participating in the forum process today by organizing PMAs within their communities. The assemblies are gatherings of people and organizations that come together to analyze the problems that plague their communities, come up with visions for change, and make commitments to take action. The assemblies, which can be organized by place or by issue, are meant to build and expand grassroots efforts for change by people and for people. By then converging in Detroit, PMAs can connect with other groups from across the country fighting similar struggles to share information, inspiration and strategies for change. After the forum, the PMAs can return to their communities armed with new strategies for action and an organization that can serve as the basis for building change.

If you are interested in participating in the USSF, there are a variety or resources available at USSF2010.org where you can search for upcoming PMA activities in your area, or download a kit for starting a new PMA. You can also find information on registering for the USSF and getting involved with forum organizing efforts. There is also a useful guide for getting to the USSF at YES! Magazine.

For food movement activists there are great opportunities to connect with the local Detroit food movement by participating in the Food Justice Work Brigade. This brigade will work with Agriculture Network, East Michigan Environmental Action Council, and community residents to construct the ponds and greenhouses that will house pollution free fish and grow fresh organic greens for local residents. It will also assist community gardens across the city in need of volunteers to prepare soil and plant crops. Finally, it will provide volunteers to help construct a series of outdoor classrooms to be used in the summer by students as learning, art, play and food growing spaces. Food justice activists from across the country can also expect to join in discussion on the critical issues of food security, agriculture and small farms, all of which are themes that will be taken up by Climate Justice workshops held during the forum. And, perhaps more importantly, people and organizations concerned with food justice issues can gain a critical opportunity to bridge their voices and concerns with those of other movements.

So, see you in Detroit?

Cross-posted at Integral-Living.com and at Farm to Table.

Memorial will remember victims of dangerous pet food

Deep Harm — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:56:27 GMT

Attention, pet owners: You are the beneficiaries of an extraordinary gift.

Five acres of serene, forested land in Oklahoma have been donated for a memorial sanctuary where, at no cost to owners, every pet that has fallen ill or died due to dangerous pet food will be remembered with a personalized memorial stone. The sanctuary, named "Vindication," is located at Keystone Lake in Oklahoma and is expected to open this June. The donor hopes that Vindication will comfort grieving owners.

They all mattered to someone,
They all matter in Vindication.
Vindication will Never Forget Them; Nor why They Died.

TruthAboutPetFood.com

Plants, benches and memorial stones, will line pathways winding through wooded acres - all a gift to you from an anonymous donor, a family of modest means who lost six pets to melamine-contaminated pet food and decided that "enough is enough."

Susan Thixton, at TruthAboutPetFood.com, who also knows the pain of losing a pet to dangerous food, is leading the effort to spread word to every owner of a pet sickened by petfood. Considering that many thousands of pets may have died from the melamine incident alone, this is a daunting goal. Your help, gentle readers, will be critical to success.

What you can do

1. Go to TruthAboutPetFood.com and read more about Vindication.

2. Register the names of pets you may have owned that were sickened or killed by pet food.

3. Pass along word of Vindication to other pet owners.

Cross-post this diary (in its entirety if you wish) to other websites. You have my permission in advance. Tweet and email the news to others and post it on social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Print out the flyer posted at TruthAboutPetFood and post it wherever pet owners gather in your community--animal hospitals, groomers, doggy daycares, dog parks and pet supply stores--as well as general gathering spots, like coffee shops and dry cleaners. Fax or email the Vindication press release to media outlets, particularly those in your hometown, and bloggers. (Don't forget freebies like City Paper.)

Check back at TruthAboutPetFood.com/Vindication for updates. A donation page should be available there, soon, to accept voluntary contributions toward the perpetual maintenance of Vindication.

Never forget

What happened to pets in 2007--and continues to happen--is a national disgrace. Both food manufacturers and government officials betrayed hundreds of thousands of beloved family members for company profits. Then, after witnessing a flood of illnesses and deaths, manufacturers failed to destroy the contaminated food. Instead, they sold recalled pet food to farmers to feed to livestock meant for human consumption and continued to mislead consumers about the threat from melamine. For more on that, see my series of diaries exposing the deceptions.

Sadly, those responsible for this deadly debacle received only a slap on the wrist - a modest fine and probation. But, that need not be the end of the story.

Vindication is ours. As you read this Vindication is being sculpted by the donors into flowering gardens with handmade stones lining the cascading pathways. Careful selections of flowers are being chosen; flowers will bloom both day and night. At the very front of our land will be 16 handmade stones circled into the pathway beginning. These 16 stones signify the 16 "official" pets that died at Menu Foods testing laboratory long before the deadliest recall in world history was announced.
From the Remembered 16 Circle will be pathways that cascade over our land. Each stone lining each pathway will be handmade and personalized with the name of a pet killed or sickened by pet food. Each innocent victim will be remembered. Thousands of pets - each with their own personalized pathway stone will be honored here.
TruthAboutPetFood.com

In closing

Of the many diaries I have written, none has given me more satisfaction than this one. The creation of Vindication, possibly the first memorial related to food safety, is a deeply touching and generous act; a loving hug to grieving pet owners. It is also an important message in the making that will put food manufacturers and regulators on notice that wrongdoing will not be forgotten.

Vindication logo

Photo Credits
Kitten: CarbonNYC at Flickr.com
Dog: SeeMidTN.com (aka Brent) at Flickr.com

Cross-posted from Daily Kos

Last Week's Antitrust Workshop

Jill Richardson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:08:47 GMT

Friday, the DOJ (Department of Justice) held the first of a series of "workshop" to deal with antitrust issues in agriculture. This first one was in Iowa, focusing on issues of concern to farmers. In anticipation of the event, a broad coalition of family farm, anti-hunger, religious, environmental and public policy groups established the website Bust Big Food (obviously in support of government action in breaking up corporations that prevent fair competition in the marketplace).

WHY Hunger says the following about competition in food and agriculture:

There are 2 million farmers and 300 million consumers in the US. Standing in the middle are a handful of corporations who control just about everything that happens to our food between the farm and our plate -- how much it costs, how it's grown, where it comes from, what's in it, and who sells it. Most of what probably matters to you about why food isn't healthier, safer, tastier, or all around better is affected by that narrow bottleneck of power between producers and consumers.
Standard economics holds that if the top four companies in any industry control over 50% of the market, that industry is no longer freely competitive. Right now, the top four companies control 85% of the nation's beef, 70% of pork, and 60% of the nation's poultry. Three corporations process over 70% of the nation's soy. Just one company controls 40% of our milk supply, and Monsanto holds patents on 80% of corn seed. Our food system has become one of the least competitive sectors of the marketplace.

If you want to send comments to the DOJ, please do so here (the deadline was Dec 31, 2009 but it seems that they are still accepting comments).
The night before the first workshop, many of the same groups behind the Bust Big Food website came together in a town hall format. Their goal was to allow everyone to speak, including people who would not be heard at the official DOJ event. You can see a video of this town hall here:

WHY Hunger wrote the following about the town hall:

Last night in Ankeny, Iowa, just north of Des Moines, a standing-room-only crowd of over 250 people called on the Justice Department and USDA to "bust up big ag!" and put the needs of people before corporations. Today is the official listening session where the government agencies will hear from all interested parties on the issue of corporate concentration in the food system - particularly, this round addresses "Issues of Concern to Farmers" - but the scheduled panels today are heavy on business and light on actual farmers. Several local groups organized Thursday's town hall as a venue for farmers to voice their real concerns.
The evening began with a panel of independent farmers from Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri addressing concentration in seeds, dairy, and livestock; a representative from the United Food and Commercial Workers Union; and good food advocates talking about consumer issues (I had the great privilege to be one of those last speakers).
And then the floor was open to public comments. About 50 people spoke, almost all of them farmers. They told heartbreaking stories: The 29th anniversary of one man's parents was a farm foreclosure. "The American Dream has turned into the American nightmare" for a southern Iowa dairy farmer, whose milk prices have been so low he can't afford his feed costs. The 15-year-old son of a fifth generation dairy farmer wants to become the sixth generation, but if things don't change in the next six months, they're not going to have a farm.
Things are dire for farmers - as they are for so many of people who don't have control over their food - but they're ready to fight. They made powerful demands of the Department of Justice and Congress to enforce antitrust laws and break up the hugely concentrated ag industries. But government isn't quite the last hope; people are. A family farmer from near Des Moines wanted to talk about power: "Industry cannot turn one wheel unless people make those machines work," he said. "We have the power here, and we need to understand what that power means."

Then came the DOJ event itself. Two cabinet members were present - Attorney General Eric Holder and Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack. According to Reuters:

Holder told the crowd of farmers, labor and consumer groups and corporate representatives that the Justice Department sees erosion of competitive markets as a significant threat to the U.S. economy, thus a national security matter.
"We want everybody to have a fair shot," said Holder. "Big is not necessarily bad, but big can be bad if power that comes from being big is misused. That is simply not something that this Department of Justice is going to stand for."

As the hearing was held in the heart of corn and soy country, much of the hearing as devoted to discussing Monsanto's control over the seed market. Monsanto sent a Vice President to the workshop, who of course denied any wrongdoing by Monsanto. Unfortunately, according to Business Week, the Supreme Court may have paved the way for a Monsanto victory.

It seems, from this NPR story about the workshop that Iowa's other major farm product - hogs - came up on the agenda as well:

Jim Foster with his old open-air hog barns in Montgomery County, Mo., will be in Ankney, Iowa, for those sessions, and he is one of the producers looking for change. "Bought this place in '63 when I got out of college and got married, been here ever since," Foster said.
It hasn't been easy keeping this rambling operation together. Big packing companies took over most pork production years ago. That drove down prices and drove most of Foster's neighbors out of the industry.
Twenty-five years ago, Montgomery County had about 200 independent hog farmers. Foster is one of two now. He's got just one steady buyer for his hogs.

I'm loving all of the national attention on Monsanto's wrongdoing, but this story about hogs reminds us that seeds are but one of many concentrated and anticompetitive industries. Hopefully these hearings will address and take action on all of them, not just corn and soy seeds.