OPED on the link between industrial ag and antibiotic resistent bacteria, worth a read

If you are looking for some ammunition in the war against CAFOs, see Nicholas Kristof’s fine oped. As much as we might worry about other aspects of industrialized agriculture and the associated loss of resilience, we should never underestimate the problems associated with the widespread use of antibiotics.

Some Recent Resilience Links – Worth a Quick Look

From the Goat blog, an Ed Quillen link on resilience vs. sustainability at the recent Headwaters Conference at Western State College.

Which led the the following link for Dr. Devon Pena, whose work on resilience is very relevant to us all here on the Front Range.

Goat Cheese Class Experience

On Saturday afternoon, we had a wonderful goat chees class, taught by Cathi Trippe. Gail and I have never been around any cheese work so we had a great time learning the basics from Cathi, who did a great job of explaining the basics and answering questions from our group. The group class was organized by our local Slow Food chapter (or is that convivium:)). and our thanks to Eileen Reilly for getting the ball rolling on this class.

Cathi covered the basic on inoculation, temperature tolerances and tricks to deal with the high plains climate, all the way through to the preparation of wonderful recipes with the cheese. It was a wonderful way to spend a day and now we have to try to tease out some time to apply the lessons learned.

Rhythm – The summer farmers market

One of the wonderful things about farmers market season is the rhythm that comes with it. On Saturday mornings, we go out at opening, 9:00AM, and get the best of the early goodies. If we are lucky, Javernicks have fresh eggs or Larga Vista has chickens. If we are lucky there are a couple of fennel or a bunch of salad turnips. After we get the veggies and meat, it is breakfast time either from the Margarita at Pine Creek or the crepes.
And that is the joy, the magic of finding something unexpected, or something fully expected like a basket of peaches or a muskmelon, or a pork chop. And if we are lucky, we will see friends from the Colorado Slow Food group or folks we work with, all joining together in a common search for a wonderful meal in the next few days.
After a few weeks, it just feels natural to do it and when it ends in the fall, we miss the way it organizes our life. Home is where you find your food:).

This week, we got a reminder of how uncertain farmers markets can be as the temperature descended into the 50s and rain came down, not exactly the weather to make everyone smile and linger. But several vendors were unable to be there and the crowd was down to 10-20% of normal. This was a bad week for the buyers and the vendors. For the buyers, it creates uncertainty of supply. For the vendors, it generates uncertainty of market. For our food community to flourish, both buyers and vendors will have to get past convenience if we want to grow the community. We both need to be more dependable, if we want the rhythm to become embedded.

Signs of the Apocalypse:) – Local Food Everywhere!

In the past few weeks, there have been local food links in the local free paper (Woodman Edition – April 25, 2008 edition), the local paper (Gazette), and now in the May 2008 Food & Wine magazine.
The Woodman Edition had a front page story on the local CSAs and how each is attacking the local Colorado Springs market place. The Gazette food editor discusses Colorado artisinal producers and locavores. And now Food & Wine has ads for their “Grow for Good” initiative on local/sustainable agriculture, as well as an article on folks outsourcing their veggie patch to outsiders:). Some would say that all this attention points to the emergence of a national trend, I prefer to see it as the sure sign of an impending local food apocalypse:).
All this attention is likely to stress the local growers ability to meet market need this year, so I will be looking for signs of that stress at the local farmers market. Will the lettuce be gone by 10:00AM?? Will the turnips sell out before I get there?? Stay tuned!

Citizens Project Breakfast – Make sure you are there on June 5th

June 5th at 7:30AM, ;Citizens Project will be holding their annual fund raising breakfast at Mr. Biggs, make sure that you have a seat, and help contribute to building a diverse and resilient community!

Bees – A great site to stay on top of CCD

If you are like me, you have been following Colony Collapse Disorder in the honey bee population. Honeybeequiet.com is a great resource.

Santa Monica Farms Market – Morphing

Via Eat Local Challenge, a link to an LA Times an article on the evolution of the Santa Monica Farmers Market from its chef stage to its industrial stage.
As this farmers market has grown in popularity, wholesalers are starting to purchase significant quantities of the best and displacing a broad set of local customers, the chefs from local restaurants.
This is stage 3 of the evolution of the Santa Monica farmers market. In the beginning it was a place for individual customers to meet and buy from the farmers (stage 1). Over time, it evolved to support a flourishing chef community (stage 2) that created institutional or industrial pressure and displaced the individual customer. Now that is being supplanted by an industrial model, where wholesalers are purchasing the products for anonymous customers in the restaurant and food service industry (stage 3). Let’s take a quick look from each perspective.
1. The Farmer – Farmers, particularly produce farmers, deliver perishable products whose value degrades with time. If they harvest and bring to market with no large purchasers (stage 1), they are at risk of overshooting or undershooting the market need. So, to reduce market risk, the farmer can be influenced by predictability. If they can sell a significant percentage of each weeks production to a reliable buyer (chef in stage 2, wholesaler in stage 3), their risk is reduced, and their return should be more predictable. The farmers build a community of producers who share information on buyers, production methods, and sales techniques. Industrial buyers of high quality product (whether they are chef or wholesaler) will have no problems spreading the word on what they are interested in and getting product.
2. The Chef – The chefs have a dual desire. First they would like to have a predictable source of produce, and second, they would like creative and innovative producers who will take risks with new products or higher quality production techniques. Second, they want a community around the the market which gives them a regular rhythm for meeting, talking, and building a local culture of food. In the transition from stage 1 to stage 2, they are advantaged because they can afford to pay more for and buy larger quantities than an individual customer, giving them privileged status.
3. The Wholesaler – The middleman is looking to arbitrage quality and quantity. Because of industrial distribution methods, the wholesaler creates a larger predictable customer for the farmer than anyone else. But the wholesaler needs predictability in another way, the predictability of quantity. This will, in turn, lead to pressure to produce a non-diverse set of products using highly predictable means.
This market evolution is like watching the entire history of industrialization of agriculture being re-enacted on a small scale over a compressed timeline. One of the reasons that buying local and knowing your producer matters so much is to break the cycle, to short circuit this process. For individual customers and for individual farmers, it is critical to insist on closing the producer to customer loop. When we let the industrial intermediaries into the middle, the outcome can be predicted to be less diversity, more predictability, and gradual devolution back to the industrial model.
Let’s keep an eye on the Santa Monica farmers market and see where it goes over the next few year. If I were a betting kind of guy, I would guess that there will be a loss in diversity and a loss of quality that will lead the old-timers to say “I wish you had been here when…”.

Bison Project – Part 8 – Rib Steak

The rib steak is the most like beef of all the cuts we have done so far. This time we went with the simple treatment, just grilled in the oven. For the buffalo, we move the rack down to the lower levels to reduce the intensity of the heat and to keep it tender. That worked well again.
The flavor was very mild, almost none of the nutty game flavor of the other cuts. And it was very tender. Just a wonderful piece of meat.

Biodiversity Accounting – More Bad News

From Food Democracy, more bad news on biodiversity and the effects of industrialization and globalization.