Tuesday September 9th, 2008

In this issue:

• Oil
• Slow Food
• Upcoming events
• Recipes

Escalating Oil Prices Mean Organic Food Will Soon Be Cheaper than Chemical & Energy Intensive Industrial Food

By Graham Tibbetts
Daily Telegraph (UK), September 2, 2008

It is currently regarded as a luxury purchase by shoppers, who have been forced to turn to lower cost, intensively-farmed produce by the economic downturn.

But a study suggests that the price of oil could soon make cereal crops grown with fertilisers more expensive than those produced more naturally.

Industrial farming relies on fossil fuels to mine, manufacture and transport fertilisers which replace nutrients in the soil.

Organic farming, however, improves soil fertility through crop rotations and is less affected by oil prices.

With oil predicted to reach $200 a barrel within five to 10 years, the profit margin on organic wheat, barley and oil seed rape would be as much as £411.

This compares with up to £348 for the same crops produced by non-organic methods, according to the study by Andersons, the farm business consultants.

Peter Melchett, policy director of the Soil Association which promotes organic farming, said: "This study suggests that as oil inevitably becomes scarcer and costs more, economic forces will increasingly favour organic farming.

"Organic systems are not perfect, but they do use less energy, generally emit fewer greenhouse gases, can sequester carbon in the soil, provide more jobs and support more wildlife. This report suggests they could also offer a more secure long-term financial future for the UK's farmers."

Organic farming is backed by Prince Charles, who has one on his Highgrove estate.

The report comes a week after organic food sales were reported to have dropped by 20 per cent in the past eight months to £81 million in August.

Charles Bourns, chairman of the NFU's poultry board, said: "I was talking to someone in the NFU and they were saying it's happening in beef and everywhere, because at the end of the day it's a nice-to-have, not a need-to-have."

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'Come to the Table' Slow Food for Thought

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080922/schlosser

By Eric Schlosser
The Nation, Sept. 3, 2008

"Come to the Table" was the motto of Slow Food Nation '08, and over the Labor Day weekend roughly 60,000 people heeded the call, gathering in San Francisco to eat organic food, meet local farmers and listen to panel discussions about the future of sustainable agriculture. The plaza in front of City Hall was transformed into a fruit and vegetable garden flanked by an outdoor market. An exhibition space at Fort Mason, near the waterfront, featured "taste pavilions" with artisanal foods and meals prepared by well-known chefs. Measured solely by attendance, the first get-together of this kind in the United States was an unqualified success. The crowds were large, the lines were long and almost all the events were sold out. The food and the weather were terrific. Among the many vegans and carnivores, the cheese lovers, wine connoisseurs, raw milk advocates, biodynamic farmers, locavores and chocolatiers, a consensus emerged that what had previously been considered a slogan--"slow food"--was now a genuine social movement. Largely missing, however, was a group of people who will ultimately determine whether this movement gains importance beyond the Bay Area: the workers who harvest, process and serve the food we eat.

The idea of slow food has its origins in the Northern Italian counterculture of the 1970s. While American hippies were forming communes and going back to the land, some of their socialist counterparts in Italy were embracing the traditional music, food and agriculture of life in the rural Piedmont region. Carlo Petrini, a brilliant and charismatic journalist, became the leading spokesman for the notion that there is nothing contradictory about championing pleasure and working for change. After staging a protest at a new McDonald's near Rome's Spanish Steps, Petrini and his allies issued a Slow Food Manifesto in 1987. "We are enslaved by speed," it declared, "and have all succumbed to the same insidious virus: Fast Life." Two years later, the manifesto was endorsed by delegates from fifteen countries, as the destructiveness of a mechanized, industrialized food system became increasingly clear. Today, Slow Food International has about 85,000 members in more than 100 countries.

At the heart of Petrini's Slow Food philosophy is a set of fundamental values that aim to distance its celebration of pleasure from mindless decadence. According to the Slow Food trinity, food must be "good, clean, and fair." The "good" refers to taste; the "clean," to local, organic, sustainable means of production; and "fair," to a system committed to social justice.

I never made it into any of the taste pavilions at Slow Food Nation, where the ideal of "good" was amply represented. During panel discussions billed as "Food for Thought," the movement's leading writers and intellectuals discussed the harms that modern agriculture is imposing on the world. Patrick Holden, who heads the largest organics group in Britain, warned that the coming shortage of fossil fuels would consign industrial agriculture to the dustbin of history. According to Holden, ten calories of fossil fuel energy are now required to produce each calorie of food. The rising prices of basic inputs--such as the natural gas necessary to produce fertilizers, the petroleum that allows long-distance trucking of livestock, the jet fuel that brings strawberries from New Zealand--will force a return to more traditional farming methods. Vandana Shiva, a passionate defender of India's small farmers and opponent of genetically modified foods, argued that free trade was actually "forced trade," imposing the needs of multinational agribusiness upon Third World economies. And Michael Pollan, author, most recently, of In Defense of Food, explained how the latest US farm bill is really a "food bill," providing subsidies to the manufacture of unhealthy, processed foods while maintaining high prices for healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables. Most panelists, including myself, signed an admirable twelve-point Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture.

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Upcoming Events

LET US EAT LOCAL

When? TONIGHT! Tuesday, September 9, 2008 ?
Where? NYC Water Taxi Beach, Long Island City
Join us for an unforgettable evening savoring a diverse sampling of all that is local, picked at the peak of harvest, and skillfully prepared by our region’s most sought-after chefs.
This year Just Food inaugurates Let Us Eat Local, a tasting event and awards ceremony dedicated to the pursuit of our delicious mission: supporting local family farmers and ensuring that all city residents can find and afford to eat sustainable, seasonal food.
Telephone 212.645.9880 for ticket info

Eighth Annual NYC International Pickle Day?

This free multi-cultural event features pickles from around the world, sharing culinary practice, home canning tips, exhibitions, great music and tasty treats, including an abundance of free pickle samples.?
When? Sunday, Sept. 14th 2008?11am - 4:30pm
Where? Orchard Street between Grand and Broome in Manhattan's old “Pickle District” ?on the Lower East Side

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Recipes

Braised Kale With Caramelized Onions

8 cups torn and stemmed kale pieces, firmly packed
1 Tbsp. olive oil
2 cups thinly sliced onions
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 Tbsp. minced garlic
2 cups vegetable stock
1 tsp. cider vinegar

.In 2 batches, blanch the kale for 2 minutes in a 6- to 8-quart pot of boiling salted water. Transfer with tongs to a colander and drain well.

.Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the onions, salt, pepper, and red pepper flakes and cook until the onions are golden brown, stirring frequently.

.Add the garlic, kale, and stock and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 to 10 minutes, or until tender.

.Add the cider vinegar in the last minute of cooking, then remove from the heat. Serve immediately

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