Archive for the ‘Guest Bloggers’ Category

Posted on March 1, 2010 - by Lisa Madison

Inspired by “Fresh”?

By Liz Reitzig, Secretary of National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association

Take action by serving a Local Foods Feast to Congress and Join in Grassroots Lobbying to Protect Local Food

Presented in conjunction with the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association Fourth Annual National Small Farm and Ranch Grassroots Lobby Day & Legislative Reception Wednesday, March 10, 2010.

You’ve seen Fresh and it taught you the importance of a local, safe food supply, but most in Congress haven’t seen the movie yet. Remind Congress about the importance of fresh Local foods and direct farmer-to-consumer trade.

Join farmers and consumers from around the country as we converge on DC on March 10 to lobby our legislators so they understand how certain bills will affect local food. Then enjoy a local food feast at the reception. If you cannot make it to DC on March 10, please call your legislators anyway; your voice is important and effective! You can schedule a phone meeting with your legislator’s office.

Need help? There will be a training call with all the info you need to have an effective appointment with your legislator’s aide.  More information about the training calls can be found here: http://www.nicfa.com/ffvdc.html

See www.NICFA.com to learn more about March 10, lobbying and for updates. Please sign up for future action alerts.

Posted on February 25, 2010 - by Lisa Madison

Raj Patel: Food Sovereignty

This post and accompanying video was originally published by our friends at Cooking Up a Story.

Part 3 of 3-part series.  First two segments can be found here: http://cookingupastory.com/raj-patel-the-value-of-nothing

Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing, explains what food sovereignty means, and why people around the world are fighting to have a say in their own food system. This is as much a fight for social and economic justice as it is a fight to protect the environment, along with the ability of communities, states, and nations to determine their own food and agriculture policies.

To read this post in its entirety, click here.

Posted on January 26, 2010 - by Lisa Madison

Café Boulud – Palm Beach

Guest Blogger: Bill Couzens, Founder of LessCancer.org

Café Boulud – Palm Beach opened its doors in 2003.  Its location in the historic Brazilian Court, a 1920’s Spanish styled Palm Beach landmark turned luxury boutique hotel, is in the heart of Palm Beach and moments away from the famed Worth Avenue. Café Boulud’s cuisine is not unlike its New York City sister restaurant Café Boulud NEW YORK where classic French dishes are prepared with ingredients sourced from the seasonal specialties available at local markets.

Chef-Owner Daniel Boulud is a seasoned restaurateur with five restaurants; one in New York City, one in Palm Beach, FL and three abroad with plans to open additional locations in Miami, London and Singapore in the coming year. Chef Boulud is also an accomplished author having published several books, including Cooking with Daniel Boulud (1993), Daniel Boulud’s Café Boulud Cookbook (1999), Daniel Boulud Cooking in New York City (2002),Daniel’s Dish, Entertaining at Home with a Four Star Chef (2003), Letters to a Young Chef (2003), Braise: a Journey Through International Cuisine (2006).

Boulud credits much of his restaurants’ success to his world–class team. One such invaluable team member is Chef Zach Bell, Executive Chef of Cafe Boulud-Palm Beach, recognized by StarChefs in 2008 as a Rising Star Chef and twice nominated for “Best Chef: South” by the James Beard Foundation.

Chef Bell makes it a practice to visit local farms and markets to personally inspect the local foods the restaurant will be serving. Local vendors Chef Bell shops with include:

Deep Creek Ranch for beef and lamb as they do not use hormones or other growth stimulants or routine antibiotic treatment.

Wild Ocean Seafood Market providing some of freshest local seafood.

Green Cay Produce CSA in Palm Beach County and as well as Swank Produce for hydro-natural lettuces, greens, micro greens tomatoes, beans, baby beats and carrots. According to their website, Swank Produce does not use fungicides, herbicides, or pesticides. This is important re the unintended consequences of pesticides that can cause harm to humans, animals, or the environment.

Erickson Farm
The Erickson family manages the tropical fruit, spice and vegetable farm. Mangoes are their specialty and they are grown with the philosophy that includes alternative practices instead of the use of pesticides and herbicides by using the effective organic solutions available and implementing cultivation techniques that aid in pest and weed control when possible.

In addition to making every effort to shop local, organic ingredients, Chef Zach has a house rule of no corn syrup in any ingredient – including the ketchup – and so the restaurant no longer uses purchased ketchup but rather cooks its own from scratch.

Most notably Chef Bell and Café Boulud have joined in the supporting The Glades to Coast Convivium, a chapter of the slow food movement that includes Broward and Southern Palm Beach Counties. Slow Food is a global, grassroots movement with thousands of members around the world that links the pleasure of food with a commitment to community and the environment.

Palm Beach and the surrounding counties are mostly noted for the production of tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn, cucumbers and squash–though it is often difficult for consumers to find local produce for sale in neighborhood supermarkets which rely on larger farms that ship produce nationwide. However, large increases in the population during the winter months coincide with the growing season, opening possibilities for local marketing of produce. Every Saturday the Palm Beach farmer’s market promotes locally-grown fresh fruits, just-picked vegetables, fresh seafood, meats and poultry, dairy products, specialty teas and coffees, fresh-cut local and imported flowers, specialty foods, foods to go, pies, and breads.

“Beyond the obvious benefits in freshness, quality, and flavor, eating seasonally and sourcing food locally can be make  important contributions to reducing carbon emissions. The local farms that are additionally certified organic and the markets that sell organic foods also have great potential for reducing exposures to pesticides and other chemicals, benefiting both  the environment and  human health” according to Dr. Maryann Donovan, Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Devotees of Daniel Boulud will not only find comfort in Cafe Boulud’s exquisite fare and quality but they will discover that standards for buying local, organic and eliminating corn syrup from the restaurant is one best practice in working towards healthy people and healthy communities.

Posted on January 26, 2010 - by Lisa Madison

Sustainable Energy: Thermal Banking Greenhouse Design

This post and accompanying video was originally published by our friends at Cooking Up a Story.

This is the second in a series of “how-to” videos showcasing the knowledge and creativity of farmers who are have worked with the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (SARE)—either as grant recipients, cooperators or leaders. In the first video, Jeanne Carver (Imperial Stock Ranch, Eastern Oregon) described her ranch’s approach to value-added marketing. Now we turn to the Midwest where Steven Schwen of Earthen Path Organic Farm (Lake City, Minnesota) has built an innovative greenhouse that allows him to extend his growing season while reducing energy costs. SARE’s Farmer-Rancher Grants program provided critical assistance for Schwen in the beginning phases of his project.

At Minnesota’s latitude, farmers who can extend their growing season have a distinct advantage in the marketplace: By offering a product outside the “normal” growing season, they can receive a higher price. That’s what Schwen has done with his greenhouse vegetable production, starting earlier in the year with seedlings of warm-season vegetables (tomatoes, cucumbers, basil and peppers), and continuing production into the fall and even the winter months when he grows cold-tolerant crops such as salad mix, cilantro, scallions and carrots. Season extension is a common enough practice, but what makes Schwen’s operation so unique is the added innovation of thermal banking, which significantly reduces the energy costs of running a greenhouse for cold-season production. Schwen’s simple description of thermal banking is that it’s like a savings account: Instead of money, you save (or store) energy for future use. In this case we are talking about the heat that accumulates in a greenhouse during the daytime, especially on sunny days.

For more, click through to Cooking Up A Story

Posted on January 13, 2010 - by Lisa Madison

Mie N Yu: Georgetown Eatery Focuses on Local and Sustainable Food

By Bill Couzens, Founder of Less Cancer

Mie N Yu
3125 M Street, NW
Historic Georgetown, in Washington DC

This Georgetown restaurant’s culinary and service team pride themselves on the fact that they are serving “the highest quality products to their guests.”

Mie N Yu’s Chef Tim Miller and General Manager Oren Molovinsky have personally visited all of the farms that the restaurant’s wonderful products are sourced from. “I’m always surprised by the incredible advantage in flavor and texture that local products have, for example, it’s very important that our meat products have never been injected with hormones or antibiotics from birth…” explains General Manager, Oren Molovinsky.

In addition to his role as General Manager for Mie N Yu, Oren and his business partner Jack Boyle have set up a Farm to Table Partnership involving twenty local Virginia Farmers and participating restaurants to supply chefs with whole animals. He also makes it a practice to visit the farmers that supply the restaurant.

Mie N Yu has sourced close to a dozen local farms, sourcing everything from lettuce to lamb. Examples of the Virginia Farms that supply Mie N Yu include: Whitewood Farm; The Plains Virginia for Black Angus Beef; Oak Spring Dairy; Upperville Virginia-Raw Milk Artisan Cheeses; and Cannon Hill Farm, Mount Jackson, Virgina for Certified Organic Belted Galloway Hereford and Angus Beef.

There are many benefits to buying locally. Oren can frequently visit the farms to ensure that the restaurant will receive the best quality meats, produce, cheeses and eggs. Because of the relationship that he builds with each farmer, Oren is able to develop a partnership to reinforce with the farmer the importance of continuous improvement of best practices for natural or organic farming and attention to animal husbandry and environmental stewardship.

All of the farms are at most located within a 5-6 hour drive of the restaurant. Several are Certified Organic and/or Certified Humane. In addition, the Farm to Table DC program has added the additional requirement that farms be family owned, excluding mass production farms. Importantly as a healthy choice- the criteria stipulates that the foods by hormone, antibiotics, and medication free and the preference is that animals be fed non- GMO food.

The establishment of rigorous criteria for food sourcing can be especially important for reducing unnecessary and preventable exposures to chemicals and pesticides, some of which have been shown to have biological effects in laboratory studies and have been identified as contaminants in humans by researchers as well as in studies of body burden levels of contaminants that are being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention according to Dr. Maryann Donovan, Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.

Mie N Yu is aware that as consumers become more conscious about the environmental and human health impact of their purchases, restaurants are also becoming more aware of what it takes to bring food from the farm to the table. Working with local farmers means fewer miles to the table, which reduces carbon-emissions and fuel usage by restaurants.

Posted on January 5, 2010 - by Lisa Madison

Seeds of Life: David Vs. Goliath

Posted on December 28, 2009 - by Lisa Madison

School Breakfast Initiatives First Please!

By: Jan Katzen-Luchenta, author of Nutrition for Learning

“There must be thousands – very likely sixty or seventy thousand children – in New York City alone who often arrive at school hungry and unfitted to do well the work required. It is utter folly, from the point of view of learning, to have a compulsory school law which compels children, in that weak physical and mental state which results from poverty, to drag themselves to school and to sit at their desks, day in and day out, for several years, learning little or nothing.” … an excerpt from Poverty, a 1904 book by Robert Hunter. In response to this guttural plea, educational communities across the U.S. began the school lunch program.  Early school lunch programs in Boston led by The Women’s Educational and Industrial Union began serving hot lunches to high school students.

In 1909 lunchrooms were installed in schools in Cleveland to replace the ‘lunch wagons” and “lunch baskets” arriving at school by noon providing hot meals to students. Despite the fact that children were still coming to school hungry, school lunch programs continued to be the moral and nutritional focal point of subsequent school initiatives including The National School Lunch Act, a federally assisted program signed into legislation by President Harry S. Truman in 1946.

Today, we have world renowned chefs from across the globe rolling up their sleeves and revolutionizing school lunch programs with healthier, fresher food items. TV shows are being launched with the intent of remaking and redefining the school lunch menu. Grass root movements including The School Lunch Revolution, School Lunch Initiative, and School Lunchbox Project are sprouting up everywhere. Health conscious food markets, chefs, and local farmers are uniting to make sure that children are getting the most bang for the buck at lunchtime.

But what about the most important meal of the day for children? BREAKFAST? I don’t understand why the main focus for many rebel-rousing school wellness advocates is lunch. On second thought, I do know why. THEY ARE NOT TEACHERS!

One thing is for sure – not only is feeding children in the morning important but the composition of what they are fed matters. Take protein for instance. Protein is made up of amino acids that build and rebuild neurotransmitters that effect brain performance.
 There are approximately 60 neurotransmitters that have been identified.

Meet four that are of extreme importance to any child who is expected to focus and learn.

1. Acetylcholine – responsible for controlling areas in the brain responsible for attention, learning, and memory. (Deficiencies in the brain are associated with Alzheimer’s disease.)
2. Glutamate – vital for forging the links between neurons that are the basis of learning and memory.
3. Norepinephrine – plays a large role in attention and focus.
4. Dopamine – controls arousal and motor control in many parts of the brain. (Dopamine disorders can cause a decline in attention, memory, and problem solving abilities.)

Complete proteins contain all of the necessary amino acids to make all of these wonderful neurotransmitters that the child needs most – in the AM! Animal protein, cottage cheese, yogurt, tofu (fermented), milk, eggs are all complete proteins. All from grass-fed and healthy animals! Wild fatty fish (lox) is fabulous before school (you get the essential amino acids from the protein and brain enhancing essential fatty acids (omega-3s; DHA/EPA) from the fish.

Though I will be the first one to applaud any school initiative intended to improve the nutritional quality of foods and snacks being served to children I still have to kvetch and say it again:   BREAKFAST IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MEAL OF THE DAY FOR CHILDREN!

Learner’s Fact: The impact of carbohydrates with protein on learning.
Fischer et al tested carbohydrate to protein ratio in foods and subsequent cognitive performance. Their findings suggest that the carbohydrate to protein ratio in food specifically influences higher cognitive functions in the morning.
”Except for a transient positive effect of rising blood glucose after a carbohydrate-rich meal, a protein-rich or balanced meal seems to result in better overall cognitive performance presumably because of less variation in glucose.”

And to add to the juiciness of this topic:
 recent scientific literature supports my personal experience as a Montessori educator that a child’s cognitive ability improves dramatically if fed 30 minutes prior to the work or testing cycle (as opposed to no breakfast at all or eating breakfast 2 hours prior).
 That is why our classroom hummed after the children ate steel cut oatmeal with walnuts or beans with sunflower seeds.
 An hour and a half later (approximately 45 minutes before lunch) the children served each other fresh vegetables they prepared themselves.

So you can try to camouflage vegetables in pizza sauce served at lunch or teach a child how to snap beans, grate carrots, and seed, pick, wash, and eat plants and vegetables. Nothing tastes as good as the experience of shared community in the garden and kitchen where all defenses against fresh VEGETABLES seem to be left at the kitchen door. 
Since the children have their nutrient quotients raised in the AM, their IQS are amped up, so they will walk into the lunchroom happier, healthier, and wiser. (And in a much better mood to try new food items.)

Okay, now its time to tackle the school lunch issue. And to think downer cows – prodded to stand up to pass USDA inspection, are on the menu. Yes, Robert Hunter, much work still needs to be done – children are still coming to school hungry!  And they don’t necessarily come from impoverished families.

Posted on December 16, 2009 - by Lisa Madison

Ayrshire Farm:
 
A Model of Sustainability

Ayrshire Farm
 
A Model of Sustainability that Raises the Bar to Protect the Environment and Human Health

By Bill Couzens, Founder Less Cancer

Ayrshire Farm, Upperville, Virginia has a long rich history, as early as 1821.  The present Farm was purchased in 1912 by Brig. Gen. James A. Buchanan of Washington, D.C. The historic property of approximately 800 acres was purchased from his descendants in 1996 by Sandy Lerner.

Since Ayrshire’s rebirth in 1996, Lerner has brought back the farm’s roots by early-on subscribing to farming practices that, at the time, seemed by many to herald back to practices from a time gone by. As it turns out Ayrshire was ahead of the curve, using farming practices for the new century, practices that would prove to enhance the environment and human health.

In the later half of the 20th century, with the development and uses of chemical pesticides,  Lerner recognized the importance of returning to organic practices because of the healthy results they yield.

Organic farming can be especially important for reducing pesticide exposures according to Dr. Maryann Donovan, Director of the Center for Environmental Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.  Donovan says “having certified organic farms is an asset to any community for a number of reasons.  For example, organic farms reduce exposures to pesticides that may contribute to ill health and they also provide a local source of healthy and nutritious foods.  Clearly this is beneficial for both the environment and human health.”

Ayrshire Farm supplies other local outlets but also supplies two of Lerner’s brainchildren, the Home Farm Store, in Middleburg, Virginia and Hunters Head Tavern in Upperville,Virginia once known as the Carr House dating back to 1750.  The Home Farm Store is Ayrshire Farm’s gourmet retail shop, and offers USDA certified organic, certified humanely raised and handled, pasture-based meat and poultry.

The vegetable production efforts begin in the greenhouse, where vegetables and herb seedlings are started  and specialized greens are grown for Hunter’s Head Tavern during the cooler seasons.

Among the rare breeds are Shire horses, Scottish Highland cattle, Ancient White Park Cattle, Gloucestershire Old Spot Pigs, and several breeds of free-range chickens, turkeys. Pheasants and wild turkeys can be found in the Farm woodlands areas, which are being replanted and managed so as to provide “wildlife corridors” among the various habitat areas. Native trees, plants and grasses are being re-introduced as woodland cover, hedgerows, and fodder crops.

Ayrshire’s goal today is to make livestock and crop production self-sufficient and profitable. Additionally, Ayrshire is committed to achieving these goals by farming with humane, organic, and sustainable methods; preserving genetic variation in their herds of rare breeds, and contributing to seed pools for heirloom plants.

The Farms mission from their website so appropriately states  “Farm sustainably and profitably, promoting the benefits of locally produced, humanely raised meats and organic produce to the consumer, our community, and our children through education, outreach and example”.

Ironic that so many practices about Ayrshire Farm date back from a time gone by and yet everything they practice depends on our future and the future of the next generation’s health and environment.

Posted on December 7, 2009 - by Lisa Madison

School Lunch – A Sad Reflection of Our Nation’s Screwed Up Priorities

By: Jill Richardson
Author of: Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do To Fix It
Website: www.lavidaloavore.org

With the epidemic rise in diet-related chronic illnesses in the past few decades, many are looking to school lunch as a way to nourish children while simultaneously teaching them healthy dietary habits. It makes perfect sense, right? In fact, why would we choose to serve children anything BUT healthy food for school breakfasts and lunches? Healthy food costs more than junk food, but it’s money well spent because it’s an investment.

First off, it’s an investment in the children’s immediate health as it provides them with the nutrients they need to grow strong and healthy. Second, it’s an investment in their future health, as it teaches them what it means to eat healthy food. Third, it’s an investment in their education, as children are better able to learn when they have a belly full of good-for-you food instead of a bellyache from junk. (This is especially true when you consider that artificial food dyes are proven to cause behavioral problems in children, yet they are still legal to serve in school breakfasts and lunches. Why on earth would you purposefully make a child prone to behavioral problems and then send them back to class for their teacher to deal with them?)

Yet, in too many schools, healthy school lunch is NOT the reality. I asked the second grader in my life what she eats for lunch and she told me cheeseburgers, sliders, corn dogs, and hot dogs. These are the most processed forms of meat you can get – the cheapest, least healthy, and most risky. (In fact, this week USA Today came out with a story about meat tainted with salmonella that was served in schools and was not recalled even after it was known to be tainted.)

Why do we feed our kids such crap? Money, plain and simple. Let me explain.

School lunch food can be separated into two categories – the federally reimbursable school lunch (the food given to children who receive free and reduced cost lunch) and everything else. Everything else is called “competitive food” because it competes with the school lunch for children’s money and appetites. The two categories are regulated and paid for differently.

The USDA does regulate the nutrition of the school lunch. The regulations are out of date – the Institute of Medicine just came out with brand new recommendations to update school lunch nutrition regulations – but at least it’s better than nothing. Perhaps more powerful than the USDA’s nutrition regulations are Congress’s funding. Congress sets how much a school is reimbursed for every free lunch given away to students, and that basically sets how much schools spend on each lunch. Schools receive a certain amount in cash, supplemented by free commodities from the USDA. These commodities are given away as a subsidy to agribusiness. Right now the pork and dairy industries are in trouble so schools are getting a lot of free pork and dairy. Altogether (including cash and commodities), schools get about $2.60 or so per kid per meal. Of that, only about one dollar goes to purchase food and the rest pays for supplies, equipment, and labor.

There are a few reasons why school lunch food is so bad. First of all, it’s hard to buy an entire meal of healthy food for a dollar. Second, because each meal contributes so little to covering the overhead costs of the lunch program, schools must sell as many lunches as possible. To do so, they often have to appeal to the lowest common denominator. In other words, junk sells better than healthy stuff. Last, many schools simply lack equipment and staff to cook healthy food. They aren’t equipped for any food prep beyond heating meals up, and that severely limits the food they can serve.

The best thing Congress can do in the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization bill to improve school lunch would be to substantially increase the reimbursement rate – the amount given to schools to cover the cost of each lunch given out to students who qualify for free or reduced cost lunch. The amount needed is subject to debate, but clearly $2.60 ain’t enough. The School Nutrition Association is only asking for a paltry additional $.35. Others say the reimbursement rate should be raised as high as $5. In addition to raising the reimbursement rate, Congress should also set aside money for grants for schools that wish to upgrade kitchen equipment or train staff so they are better able to provide healthy meals.

Then there’s competitive foods, the a la carte items sold in the lunch line. Currently, there are technically some rules governing the nutrition of these foods, but in practice it’s a free-for-all. There is no food too junky to serve in schools. This is going to be changed (most likely) in the upcoming Child Nutrition Reauthorization. There’s already a bill in Congress for this – “The Child Nutrition Promotion and School Lunch Protection Act” (S.934 in the Senate and H.R.1324 in the House) – and it will hopefully be added as an amendment to the Child Nutrition Reauthorization and then passed. Congress won’t set the actual nutrition standards themselves – their bill will direct the USDA to do so.

The cost of competitive foods is not regulated by the federal government because competitive foods are purchased by children, not given away to recipients of free or reduced cost lunch. However, in many cases schools use profits from sales of competitive foods to cover the costs of the entire lunch program. For this reason, they often choose to sell foods that kids like and are likely to buy – junk.

Even worse, sometimes schools get kickbacks from beverage companies under so-called “pouring rights agreements.” The school signs a contract with Coca-Cola or PepsiCo to only sell products from their company (water, juice, sports drinks, and soda) and in return, the school gets kickbacks. This is a sad reflection on the state of school budgets, and I believe that pouring rights agreements should be banned. While there’s been a nationwide voluntary effort to get caloric sodas out of schools, none of these drinks are great for kids. Water should be free, and all drinks besides 100% juice, water, and milk are basically junk. While 100% juice is good for you, it is only good in very small quantities. Juice is high in sugar and, unlike fruit, it lacks fiber to fill you up.

So that’s the lowdown on school lunch. Mostly the entire issue comes down to money. Schools need money to teach children so they don’t have to turn to pouring rights agreements for extra cash. Schools need money for kitchen equipment and trained staff. And schools need money to buy and serve healthy food for lunch. Schools should not be a dumping ground for cheap commodities that no one else wants to buy. And nutrition standards should be updated according to the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations so that our children are given a healthy start in life, healthy habits, and the best possible chance to learn while they are in class.

Cross posted on FireDogLake.org’s Seminal Food Sunday

Posted on December 4, 2009 - by Lisa Madison

Young Activist reviews FRESH

By Orren Fox

Orren with Blueberry

Orren Fox is 12 years old and lives in NoBo (North of Boston). He goes to school where there is a greenhouse and a bee hive! Orren has 24 chickens and four ducks (three Call Ducks and one beautiful Mandarin). He is really interested in farming and the ethical treatment of animals. Orren would love to change the way egg layers and meat birds are raised. He says he has a lot to learn. He blogs and tweets about these issues.

I have watched FRESH about 6 times. I just love it, it makes me feel great.  You have to go see it if you care about what goes into your body.  Try this.  Close your eyes and imagine a dark barn with the floor covered in a material that says on the package “may irritate eyes or lungs” and the barn is filled to the brim with chickens.  These chickens that have been bred to grow so fast that often they can’t stand up as they grow and when they die they stay on the floor of the barn.  The dead birds aren’t removed.  Oh and the hens that are alive are fed dead hens that have been ground up and added to their feed.  Hmm.  Not sure you want to eat that.  Now imagine a green pasture with an electric fence that keeps predators out but hens in. They have lots of space to roam and forage.  They are in the sun.  They can dust bathe.  What do you think?  Which would you rather support?  Watch FRESH.

After watching FRESH I just want to go to the barn and sing to my chickens, the way Joel Salatin “sings” to his pigs, “Here piggy piggy”.  Guess what,  they come to greet him.  Of course they do!  Mr. Salatin is a farmer who is using sustainable practices instead of industrialized methods.  He is a wonderful, inspiring “lunatic” farmer.  His pigs wander about, eat grass, root around, roll in the mud, smile, sing, and wiggle their tails – which haven’t been “trimmed” – most pigs raised in confinement have their tails trimmed so they don’t gnaw at them when they get frustrated being in such close confinement.  Actually think about that, confined pigs gnaw at their tails because they are so mad.   I would too. It isn’t good for the pigs to live in teeny tiny spaces, it pisses them off!  This is the way most pigs are raised in factory farms or confinement farms.  In fact one of the stories in FRESH is about a conventional/confinement pig farmer who was gored by one of his angry pigs.  He, the farmer, almost died.  He talks about how for years and years he had been continually treating his pigs with antibiotics, to keep them “healthy.”  The funny thing is his pigs weren’t healthy. They were a petri dish (my science teacher will be happy I used this term) for growing stronger and stronger bacteria.  The bacteria kept changing to respond to the antibiotic.  So when his angry male pig gored the farmer the bacteria was so strong that the usual human antibiotics couldn’t treat him.  Scary.  So actually his “healthy” pigs were crazy “sick.”  He stopped doing that and now raises pigs in a different way.  No antibiotics, pasture raised.  Healthy pigs.

AkuVn’s Blog This is what is so awesome about FRESH. You get to hear the stories of farmers from all over the United States who have decided to raise food in a different way from the “conventional” way.  It is so inspiring.  Conventional agriculture focus is more and faster.  The focus isn’t the taste of the food, or the welfare of the animals / farm workers, or the well being of the environment / community but instead of raising and growing as quickly and cheaply as possible.  I think they might argue that this is how you feed the world.  I think there is another way having watched FRESH.

FRESH also tells the story about my hero Will Allen and Growing Power, his non-profit that raises lots of food on 3 acres in the middle of Milwaukee.  The middle of a city, not farmland, a city. At Growing Power they have several greenhouses, hoop houses, ducks, turkeys, a chicken coop, a very ingenious system to raise perch / tailapia and beehives. Will Allen likes to say he “grows soil”. Awesome.  He loves worms. I love worms, they are quite amazing workers. Perhaps the most awesome thing is at Growing Power they collect  food “waste” in Milwaukee and feed it to the worms to turn into “black gold”. It is cool that Will Allen thinks food “waste” is valuable. It is! Think of all the hard work that went into growing/raising all the food, now imagine throwing it out. Not cool. By seeing him in the movie I think he proves that growing food is just about possible anywhere.

FRESH is inspirational and challenges you to think about food – What is really in the food you are eating? Where was it grown? How was the animal raised? Were pesticides used? The interesting thing is people say to me “If the pesticides were bad for you they wouldn’t spray it on food”. I’m sure this is what the manufacturers of the pesticide would say too. I bet the manufacturers may even have ’science – based information’ to prove it. Well I guess it just doesn’t seem to add up to me. Maybe I am naive. Actually I am sure I am naive, but think about it, the chemicals are sprayed to kill things, now it is on my food. See what I mean, it doesn’t add up. It probably won’t kill you, but something that is applied and meant to kill just can’t be nutritious.  So ask about your food, why not. Some people care more about the quality of the oil they put into their car than they do the quality of the food they put into their body. Odd.   Watch FRESH and be inspired to go find food that tastes great and was raised in a way that you agree with.