Toxic Chickens, Anyone?

Chestertown Spy: MD Farms Putting Arsenic in Chickens
Washington Post: A Deadly Ingredient in a Chicken Dinner

This is a hot topic in the area right now, as we are in the middle of the chicken belt and Perdue's national headquarters are smack in the middle of Maryland's Eastern Shore (which is almost entirely rural, and dedicated almost entirely to raising chickens and grain for chickens- both of which are sorely contested as one of the main causes of the failing health of the Chesapeake Bay).

There have long been reports of arsenic in the drinking water on the lower shore, especially around chicken houses, and many children have tested positive for highly dangerous levels of arsenic in their systems.

This is the bit that got me going though:
"“It’s inhumane to withhold effective … treatment from sick animals,” Krushinskie said, comparing it to withholding antibiotics from a sick child."

Let's be clear that this is referring to giving arsenic based medication to chickens who are raised in chicken houses, to keep alive long enough to get to slaughter, because of the filthy conditions they live in- which are already about as inhumane as you can get.

Delegates against the ban actually argued that there is no problem with arsenic because it is natural and organic, citing its presence on the periodic table of elements as a basis for their argument. And of course, if the FDA says its ok, it must be.

Perdue claims to have stopped using it for their chickens but really have been using it off and on again, based on how much pressure they are getting from the companies they sell to (such as McDonald's). None of this is particularly surprising though, especially as Jim Perdue, CEO of Perdue, was recently awarded a prestigious award by the governor of our state: http://www.perdue.com/company/news/press_releases/press_release_detail.html?id=1224

Perdue cites their commitment to stewardship, sustainability, and family farming as the reasons for the success of their company- though they are well known around here for submitting their farmers to surveillance, harassment, and threat tactics to keep them from saying anything bad about the company, and several Perdue "family farms" have recently been sued for the MASSIVE amount of nutrient run off from their farms- including record levels of E. Coli, which run off straight into the Chesapeake Bay.

Just another example of how government officials are in the pocket of major corporations (did you catch O’Malley say he frequently turns to Jim Perdue for advice???), how corporations are able to get away with murder and yet still receive recognition as pillars of the community (AS IF), and how we are all in really, really deep trouble.

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Chickening Out, Pt 2

The reason the whole chicken thing is so significant (aside from the fact that I broke a nearly ten year hiatus on meat), is what it implies. When I was standing there watching the chickens have their throats slit with one of my neighbors, she asked why I had decided that I needed to watch the chickens die. She wasn’t the only one- a lot of people have been asking why I couldn’t just decide to start eating meat, why I had to be there to witness the blood (there’s less than you’d think) and guts and gore (which is mostly fat).

And I told her that my biggest problem with our food system is that it allows you to look away. A live, feathered chicken looks absolutely nothing like the chicken you buy in the grocery store, and it’s amazing how quickly after death they cease to look like animals and more like hunks of meat. And that’s fine- you wouldn’t want to eat it with all the feathers on- but people in our culture have the luxury of not having the faintest clue where their food comes from. And when you don’t know where your food comes from- especially when it comes in a bright and shiny package in the store- you divorce yourself not only from the knowledge of what went into the process of bringing that food to your table, but from the responsibility of choosing foods that are not only going to nurture your body, but are thoughtful, humane, and environmentally friendly choices.

In direct contrast to my afternoon standing outside in the sunshine butchering chickens, last night the college showed a PBS Frontline feature called “Poisoned Waters.” In it, journalist Hedrick Smith explores the causes of the vast amounts of pollution in the Chesapeake Bay, pollution that never seems to abate regardless of how much money we pour into the problem. And he traces that pollution, unsurprisingly, back to CAFOs- Confined (or Concentrated) Animal Feeding Operations, a term more commonly used to apply to cattle, but which can also refer to chickens. The audience around me gasped at images of vast chicken sheds- often holding as many as four hundred thousand chickens in one long building. Chickens live in close, cramped quarters, usually in darkness, frightened and falling all over one another. They end their lives by being unceremoniously dumped into a truck, driven down the highway to one of the plants (plenty of ‘em down around Salisbury), and butchered on an assembly line. Stainless steel belts filled the screen- workers in gloves and hairnets and masks each making one cut, each only doing one part of the process, as fast as possible- and certainly not talking to each other. I had to lean over to the person next to me and point out the difference- our slaughter was a community event- people came to see their chickens before picking them up, they brought their kids, they talked and caught up and brought snacks. Not so in the poultry industry.

Smith interviews Jim Perdue, Chairman of Perdue Farms, one of the biggest poultry growers on the shore. Perdue argues that to succeed in business you need efficiency- and “efficiency is often size. Things had to become bigger to keep costs lower.” And this does indeed keep prices down. But chickens on the Delmarva, in addition to providing cheap chicken, produce about 1.5 billion pounds of manure. A year. And there’s not a whole lot you can do with 1.5 billion pounds of chicken s***.

Instead, a lot of the nutrients are washed into the bay. At one site where manure tainted water was running off into the bay, E. coli counts were found to be 48,392 colonies. The standard for clean water is 126. Arsenic was found at 9 times the standard levels- not to mention the high doses of nitrogen and phosphorus, which cause the algae blooms that suck the oxygen from the bay and cause massive fish kills every year.

This was no surprise to me. After all, there was a reason I was only going to eat chicken from a farm where the chickens are raised on grass, and where the manure is just tramped down into the soil, where new grass grows up out of it. You can only do so many chickens this way, and chances are it is a far more expensive process. It is nowhere near efficient. Efficiency doesn’t even begin to account for expenses like pausing in cleaning a chicken to explain to a child why we saved out all the livers (for fishing) and what that green stuff was (accidentally slicing into a gall bladder). Not to mention that most of us had never butchered a chicken before, and kept pausing to compare techniques and debate over whether or not we’d gotten the lungs out (they are tricky little things).

The one problem I had with the film was its’ sideways attack on farmers. No, it’s not right that farmers allow so many nutrients to wash away from their chicken operations that the bay is barely functional. But the farmers are not the only culprit. The film spent a long time attacking the poultry industry- the CEOs who could very easily assist their farmers in upgrading their farms to manage wastewater and to prevent those nutrients from escaping into the bay- but who will not do so because of the cost. They certainly share a far greater portion of the blame than many of the farmers, who aren’t given a whole lot of options if they want to keep their land.

But there is one other place where the blame can squarely fall. After all, would Perdue produce millions and millions of chickens if no one was eating them?

What if the millions of people who eat chicken EVERY DAY demanded that chicken operations prevented those pollutants from running off into the water? What if millions of people actually visited the chickens they were eating, and then watched them being slaughtered, and took a turn at helping with the butchering?

Do you think we’d still have the system we do?

You can watch the full PBS special here: Poisoned Waters

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Chickening Out

So yesterday I butchered a chicken.

Actually, I cleaned a few chickens- I didn’t do any killing because it requires a firm hand and a steady stroke, and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to get all the way through the jugular quickly enough to prevent the chicken from too much pain.

Are you grossed out yet? I hope not.

I’ve been a vegetarian for about 9 years. And this week I ate a piece of chicken. It’s been an ongoing internal debate for months now- or possibly years- ever since I started spending time with people who raise chickens. And with chickens. And then started thinking to myself- well, why not, really? If my primary reason for not eating meat is that I disagree with the conventional method of raising and slaughtering animals, and here I have found a community of people who raise chickens in a sustainable, humane way, what are my reasons for not eating meat?

I really didn’t have any. I’ve never been much for the “its cute, so you can’t eat it,” sort of argument, because while animals are very cute and deserve to live long happy lives, there’s a line in there somewhere. Lions certainly aren’t contemplating whether or not the zebras are too cute to eat.

But clearly part of what makes us human is our ability to reason about things, sometimes endlessly. And so I decided that if I was going to eat a chicken, I wanted to meet the chicken. And I wanted to witness every aspect of its life, from birth to death, and let the chicken tell me if it was really ok. I spent hours with these chickens- held them, pet them, watched them run around in their outdoor pen, eating bugs and watermelons and grains. I found that chickens aren’t very talkative creatures.

When the time came to watch the chickens die, I was afraid I’d be grossed out. I was afraid I would throw up or something- and I was very afraid that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it. But my friend told me something very wise: no one has to be good at everything. And that includes killing. I’m very good at making clothes. He is not. He’s very good at raising and killing chickens. I’d probably be ok with the raising- but there is no reason for me to be ashamed that when it came down to it I didn’t actually cut their throats.

I did, however, clean the carcasses, pulling out guts with my bare hands, plucking the last few feathers, cutting off the feet and the head- oh yeah, I did all that. And all while standing around chit chatting with neighbors and friends from my co-op and their kids, who were fascinated by watching us pull out perfect little hearts and lungs and livers, and wanted to pick them up and feel them and see how they worked. At first it was weird- but within a few minutes we were comparing techniques and laughing and joking, and it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to stand there yanking on chicken guts.

However, when it finally came to eating a piece of chicken, I still hesitated- I was kind of afraid I just wouldn’t like it, and all of this would be for nothing. My friends roasted a chicken, and I sat down with four adults and two children. Having sat down at the “kids” end of the table, the adults sort of forgot that I was having a significant moment, and left me to my thoughts while I stared at the piece of chicken on my fork, wondering if it was the chicken I had sat and held for a good half hour a few weeks ago. The six year old next to me finally asked what I was doing. “I’m thinking about this chicken, and how it lived, and whether it had a good life, and thanking it for giving its life so I could eat it,” I said.

“Of course it had a good life,” she said, “I got to pet it.” She then proceeded to devour an entire chicken wing.

And so I ate the chicken. I like the dark meat better, by the way.

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Food Inc

I love this town.

No, I really do. Whenever there is a need, the entire town comes together to support that need. And the need last night was to support Colchester Farm, CSA, the place where so many of us get our food from June to October. The evening started with a cocktail hour, featuring delicious local foods (I went back for the roasted pepper ravioli several times), most of it made by local chefs, including Kent County High School, and several of the Colchester Farm board members. This was followed by a showing of Food, Inc., which, if you haven’t seen yet, you should. Soon.

I wanted to start by praising our town though- we’ve kind of taken food on as our issue, for whatever reason. Possibly its just because we have access to so many wonderful local foods, grown by so many wonderful people who are such a part of the community. We’re proud of our food, proud of the fact that we’re a town in the so called middle of nowhere, which in reality is the middle of a cornucopia of delicious things to eat. And so fortunately we don’t constantly have to look the full brunt of the realities of the industrial food system right in the eye. We at least have other options.

So in some ways Food, Inc. didn’t have much to do with Chestertown. But in others, it hit a point very close to home. Most of the farming done on the Eastern Shore is in commodity crops- corn, grain, soybeans- and most of it goes to feed chickens down on the lower shore. Actually, there are plenty of chickens up this way too. If you sit out on 213 late, late at night you can watch the empty trucks go north toward Galena, and if you wait long enough, you can watch them come back again, full of chickens on their way to the slaughterhouse.

The movie isn’t for the faint of heart. If you don’t want to see the inside of a chicken house (and I have to say, this was a pretty decent chicken house, as far as they go- there were no cages and it actually had windows), don’t watch this movie. If you want to continue to eat industrial food completely unawares of what you’re putting in your body, of the horrors you’re supporting by eating that cheap chicken, don’t watch this movie. But if you’re interested in what plagues our food system- what plagues us, right here, on the Eastern Shore, then watch this movie.

I’ve talked so much about what’s wrong with the food system on this blog that I don’t currently feel the need to reiterate. The movie didn’t reveal anything to me that I didn’t know- but I’ve also made it my life’s work to take on the industrial food system, so I’d be curious to hear the reaction of someone who actually (for some reason?) still eats fast food. But the movie made a good point- not only do most people not know what’s going on behind the scenes in the places their food comes from, they’re not allowed to know.

If you want to trace your food back to the source, good luck to you. I hope you have a lot of time and a lot of money. We aren’t allowed to see inside those chicken houses- we definitely aren’t allowed to see inside the slaughterhouses. If we were- as sustainable farmer Joel Salatin says in the movie- our food system would be something rather different. That’s why he slaughters his chickens in an open sided shed, and invites all the people who buy food from his farm to come and watch and participate.

There was also a strong theme of better regulations for food in the movie. But at the same time, a lot of us are struggling locally to be able to get access to local meats and dairy because of the overbearing regulations of the state of MD. The contradiction came up during the Q&A, but I personally don’t think it’s a contradiction at all. I believe they even said, in the movie, that when you’re selling to a place like WalMart you need those regulations, you need to have had your food inspected and carefully labeled and have the assurance that it doesn’t contain E. coli, because the consumer has no other way of knowing. The shopper at WalMart can’t go out to the farm and meet the farmer and take a look around, because likely the farm is on the other side of the world- and likely the process that food item took to get from that farm to the WalMart would be more than enough to stop the consumer buying the item, anyway.

But in the case of local foods, you have the option of seeing what you’re buying produced first hand. Not everyone wants to watch their chickens get slaughtered- but when I talked to the guy who I plan to get chicken from last night, he invited me right on out to the farm to meet the chickens, allowing me to feel a little bit better about consuming meat. Locally, it really is a case of buyer beware- if you choose to buy locally, you are responsible for checking out the person you are buying from, not USDA. A farmer last night pointed out that this is a big risk for farmers- they could easily get sued- but I’ve heard a great suggestion that would solve that problem all around. What if we were allowed to opt out of the conventional food system? What if, as we do in so many other areas of our life, we were allowed to sign a waiver that said, we don’t want to participate in the conventional food system, thanks so much, and we hereby take responsibility for our food choices upon ourselves, swearing never to sue our local farmers, because we’re part of a community, and its our responsibility as well as theirs to double check on the process and make sure our food is safe?

Can you imagine what WalMart would say to that?

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Local Food Week!

In ye old Dining Barn. Oops, I mean, the Dining Pavilion.

This week Dining Services does a toast to local foods, so many of the things on the menu will be brought to you straight from Kent County farms. At the moment the dining hall doesn't seem to be labeling the things that are local to distinguish them from those that are not, but trust me, they are there.

Have you noticed the quality of the food seems to be going up, as well? There were actually three things I could eat when I popped in for lunch last week and they were all delicious. The Dining Hall has not had a good history in making food for vegetarians, but that was a pleasant surprise. Today we were back to slightly above normal, however.

In other news, we are now over on facebook as well, so if you are a mysterious reader of George Goes Green and are somehow not friends with me on facebook, get yourself on over there and become a fan.

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Local Co-op(ted)

When Local Makes it Big

So I like to talk about local foods on this blog. When I use the term, I am thinking in my head of something like… oh, I don’t know, food that comes from Kent County. Maybe if I were to stretch it I would include food from the Western Shore- maybe all the way to Virginia, maybe as far as PA, but that’s really pushing it. I can get most of what I need from a pretty compact area.

But now the Frito-Lay company is marketing their foods as local. That’s right. The massive national conglomerate that brings you junk food galore is claiming that their potato chips are local- at least in the areas that are more or less adjacent to their processing plants.

Back up for just a second. My brain quite literally balks at this concept. Frito-Lay- a division of Pepsi, which is actually an international corporation- is making claims of locality?

It makes a certain amount of sense. People want to know where their food is from, especially as issues of food security become more prevalent in the news, as well as more and more press in regards to the numerous benefits of the local food movement. Big companies are going to want a piece of the market, just as they did with the organic label (as the article points out). But as a result, the organic label has been worn so thin it means next to nothing. Almost anything can be labeled organic. And now, it seems, the same will be done with local- a term that seems so straight-forward it’s hard to imagine any way in which it could be co-opted.

But let’s think this through. If, in some places in the country, Frito-Lay buys potatoes from farmer’s within a relatively local radius of their plant, this is at least preventing them buying potatoes from the other side of the country, shipping them to their plant, and then distributing them nationally. This article says nothing about whether the chips from a certain plant are also distributed locally, but regardless, matching local farmers to local plants is a step in the right direction, right?

Well…

Yes, it’s better than shipping potatoes back and forth all over the country, as frequently occurs with other products. Frito-Lay has also banned the use of genetically engineered corn and potatoes in their products, and that may be an even greater step toward sustainability. But can their products be rightfully called local? There are a few missing pieces- whether the chips are distributed locally, for example, or if the chips from one particular plant are still sent all over the country, whether the ads are only displayed locally or not. Not to mention the simple fact that Frito-Lay has plants all over the country, and most of them only produce a few of their many products, which then have to be shipped over terribly long distances…

It makes you wonder, certainly. As the article eventually articulates, local, in the minds of most people, not only means local (regional), but small-scale. “Local” seems to imply some sort of added value aside from the mere distance between the buyer and the grower. However, this isn’t inherent to the term, and I think when we’re talking about what we value in our food it’s important to be as specific as possible, and not presume that when we say “local” or even “organic” anyone will have the faintest idea what we mean. I know for me, the best part of buying local (from within Kent County) is that I’ve met the farmers face to face, and usually have a nice little chat every Saturday morning at the market. I doubt I could do this with any of the farmers who grow for Frito-Lay.

As a point of interest, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frito_Lay) the Frito company started in 1932 producing 10 lbs of chips per day, in the owner’s kitchen. I’m going to take a stab and guess that these were, in fact, locally distributed.

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Der Markt

One thing, at least, Germany has in common with Chestertown. Well, again, sort of. Usually two or three times a week, every city or village has a farmer’s market.

The curious thing about the German farmer’s market is first, it’s size. Every one I’ve been to has been something of a crowded affair, with as many stalls as possible squeezed into a square that if you could see it empty would leave you with the impression a full out market could never actually fit into it later. And yet there are aisles of metzgerei (meat sellers), and gemuse and obst (vegetables and fruit) and always an apfelwein stand. You can usually, at least in the ones I’ve gone to, barely fit between the stands, between the narrow aisles and the many people with their oversized shopping bags and baskets and bikes.

The other thing, and this makes me miss my own farmer’s market despite the size and variety offered by the German markets, is that these are not my neighbors. Presumably they grow their vegetables in the vicinity of the city, but I wouldn’t know. For all I know they’re dragging their produce from the next state over. And, with my slow and careful German that apparently no one can understand, I have no way of asking. I prefer to shop from people I know by name, or at least by face, from having seen and spoken with them week after week.

I wonder where this bounty of German vegetables comes from. I suspect they are not all German, especially when we arrive at the market in early May to find zucchini, which in Germany’s climate really should not be ripe until at least August, and apples, which should not be ripe until at least October. Yet here they are, along with a wide array of other out of season vegetables that my friend’s mom tells me are probably from Greece. This is not the idea I have of farmer’s markets: the food is fresh, definitely, and maybe it is less pesticide laden or has traveled a shorter distance than the food in the grocery store (Greece is 2,100 km away, while New Zealand or Ecuador, where many grocery store vegetables come from, are more like 18,200 km). But I always come to Germany hoping to eat German vegetables, and other than spargel (asparagus- Germans love this stuff, especially the white kind, which we don’t have in the states), I am usually disappointed.

The same goes for other foods. Maybe I don’t notice it as much at home, where I’m not thinking about it as much, but looking for German cheese at the market came up with nothing (at least I found some from Holland, the next country over), and even the famous German bread, much to my disappointment, is baked from dough made somewhere else, in a big factory somewhere maybe, and only baked on the premises. It still tastes good, but with that in mind I start wondering about preservatives and artificial sugars, which at home I would avoid at all costs.

It makes me wonder. When I go with my friends to the store, they want to drink Italian wine, or Californian. I only want to drink German, because finally I have a selection of some of my favorite wines in the world, and they are grown and fermented only minutes away. But it really brings into perspective how seldom even someone who thinks most of the time about where her food comes from in actuality is eating locally. After all, I drink German wine when I’m at home.

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King Corn, Pt II

Among the many, many things we discussed last night after watching King Corn- in what seems to be a constant and never ending discussion of the food system, and eating, and what to do about it all- one thing in particular stuck out. It’s all damnably complicated.

And that’s just it: a hundred years ago food came from the farm, to you, without a lot of steps in between, and food was, well, food. Not food plus 30 unidentifiable ingredients. Bewildering does not even begin to describe the number of food choices we have, not to mention the complexity of a system that moves food all over the globe to your plate, with a dizzying array of steps in between. This is why movies like King Corn focus on one thing, like corn- and even then can’t fit more than a small percentage of the issues into one film.

But I was struck last night by the context the filmmaker put this in. In many places, people have given up on trying to make sense of the overwhelming complexity of the food system, and taken matters into their own hands: joining coops, building gardens, right there in their backyards, even in cities, discovering alternative ways of growing and raising food that make sense for both us and our environment. Essentially, this is what all of us who protest “the system” are doing- taking things back into our own hands, making them into a manageable size, and handling them on a person or community sized scale, where we can make decisions that are best for the people in that area, and not- well, I’m not even sure who’s benefiting from the way we’re making decisions now.

That’s really the devilish thing about the mess we’re in, and, at least in my opinion, a large part of why there’s so much apathy toward doing anything to change it. When faced with something as complex as our current food system, it seems completely impossible to create any change. The web of cause and effect is too dense to untangle, and pulling one string leads to yet another knot of issues and tangles. You can’t blame farmers, who are just as trapped as we are, and are trying to keep their families fed just like the rest of us. You can try and blame the consumer, but it’s not like consumers stood up and said, yes! Give us refined sugar and nutritionless food! Destroy our environment and our health! Not only are consumers often not given much choice in the foods available for purchase, but they’re also bombarded on all sides by the mixed messages of the media, who can’t seem to decide from day to day what’s “best” to eat. And if you try and blame the corporations, someone will inevitably counter that they wouldn’t be making all these unhealthy food products if we weren’t buying them (though they spend an awful lot of money convincing us we want them).

It’s enough to make anyone throw up their hands in defeat. How can we ever get ourselves out of this mess if we can’t even look at the whole thing at once? Well, after our conversation last night, I’m prepared to offer at least one way out of the labyrinth. The beauty of this way out is that it is small, manageable, and widely variant depending on who and where you are: and that, in itself, is part of the solution, because diversity is what makes the world go round. It was trying to make everything the same that got us into this mess in the first place.

Step One: What do you value? What do you really, deep down, value, above all else? Your life? Your health? The lives of your loved ones? Once you know the answer to this question, you can answer every other question accordingly, and define your goals. Is cheap food, for example, still valuable if it compromises your health? Or is cheap food the ultimate goal?

Step Two: What are you going to do about it? You decide that you want high quality, nutritious food that will maintain the health of yourself and your loved ones. You know that this sort of food is whole food, not manufactured food products with their diverse array of unknown ingredients (which include any number of suspect chemicals), you know that food grown with consideration for the environment and the soil also happens to be higher in nutritional content (well, if you didn’t know that you do now), and you know that food grown this way is also less likely to be sprayed with toxic chemicals, and if it’s grown locally, will maintain more of its quality in freshness.

All right, you know all this, so what are you waiting for? You don’t know where to get it? Well, the food system isn’t offering it- and you could ask the supermarket owner, or the CEO of the food company, or the government for it, but that’s no guarantee- and more likely absolutely nothing will change. Or, you could go to the source: the land. Which is a little easier to do through the medium of the farmer. If there isn’t a farmer? Do it yourself. And before you start going on about time and money, I’ll ask you again: what do you value? What’s worth giving up, if the thing at stake is your life?

Of course, eating like this means large corporations can't make a profit off your hunger. If it turns out a more traditional diet is healthier after all, and they can no longer sell novelty food products, where does that leave them? Not to mention that whole foods come without packaging, and when grown locally don't have to be transported long distances, and when grown sustainability don't require massive inputs of petroleum based pesticides and fertilizers- but that's really just the icing on the cake.

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King Corn

Most likely I should have posted this before we showed the movie, but better late than never.

King Corn

A definite watch for anyone interested in how our food system truly functions (ie, poorly). It's on netflix, as well, though if you buy it these nice fellows will get some money out of it. They based their work on Michael Pollan's investigation of the corn economy in Omnivore's Dilemma, though they actually went out to grow an acre of corn and try to find out what happened to it. Watching the reactions of everyone last night, most people are disgusted to find out all the problems with corn: how hard it is on the farmers, most especially, how it, along with other commodity crops, has destroyed the family farm, how cheap corn has lead to confinement lots for cattle (and cheap, fatty grain fed beef), how cheap corn has lead to the availability of cheap sweeteners, including high fructose corn syrup, which provide empty calories, little to no nutritional value, and are proving to be more and more deleterious to our health... well, we've talked about all these things on this blog before. Watch the movie!

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The Farmer’s Market (An Interlude)

Speaking of the farmer’s market, I want to take a moment to share a story that indicates why I love it so much. I won’t name names, as it's better you meet the farmers on your own- just keep in mind that I’ve worked with many of them, and see the rest every week at the market.

This past Saturday I had it in my mind to make chili- the temperature is finally right where nothing is so satisfying as a hearty bowl of chili. I was dreading breaking into my cans of tomatoes, as I only can a small number every summer (small kitchen) and hoarde them throughout the winter, but I won’t abide the suggestion of making chili with store bought tomatoes. So imagine my surprise when I came across a crate of late tomatoes at the market- beautiful, plump red tomatoes, fresh as can be. I quickly loaded up my arms with as many as I could carry and made for the “counter”- the table set up for taking money. I laughed with the proprietor over the number of tomatoes I set down, explaining my chili dilemma, at which news she immediately disappeared to find me a few unusual peppers to go with the tomatoes. She gave me one of the purple ones, a pepper the color of eggplant on the outside but green inside, with a tart, sharper taste than a regular bell, and told me it was on the house- I needed a little color in my chili. She also regularly pushes the more unusual squashes into my arms as I stock up on my usual butternut and acorn, telling me just to try it, and waving away my attempts to pay for the additional bounty. She knows if I like it I will be back to buy in quantity.

The other vendors are just as giving- if you are doubtful as to which variety of apple you like best, most likely they will hand you one of each and make you try while they stand and watch, anxious to see your reaction. Each farmer grows something a little different, something you may not have tried before- whether it’s a variety of pear or a purple tomato, or cobs of corn meant for popping- and they are all happy to explain the best way to eat it, and usually happy to let you give it a try as a “bonus” with your regular veggies.

Therefore I always walk away from the farmer’s market with a bag stuffed with more than I can eat in a week, usually for under $10, and a huge, grateful smile on my face. Nothing beats the feeling of being a part of a community, of talking to the people I know as I browse, of sharing recipes and stories with the farmers as I fill up my bag, of petting dogs and smiling at wide eyed little kids, mouths stained with blackberry juice or covered in crumbs from an apple tart- unless it is the looks on my friend’s faces when they sit back after a meal, glass of local wine in hand, laughing over a shared joke.

Here’s my chili recipe, if you’re curious. Everything came from the farmer’s market except the beans, though if anyone starts growing them I guarantee I will switch in a heartbeat. The sugar is raw, from the Natural Food store.

3-4 medium cloves garlic
1 onion (I prefer yellow)
8-ish pounds of tomatoes, skinned*
2-3 carrots
1 cup vegetable broth or water and bouillon
1 can each black beans, kidney beans, chickpeas, drained
2-3 bell peppers
optional: other veggies, such as celery, green beans (cut small) or eggplant
hot peppers, to taste
spices: cumin, chili powder, oregano, coriander, salt and pepper, to taste
1 tbsp sugar
½ can tomato paste

In a large pot, sauté the garlic and onion in a little oil, until translucent. Add the tomatoes, carrots, broth and spices, simmer 10 or so minutes. Add the beans and additional veggies, simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed (but not all), and the veggies are tender. This is a matter of personal preference more than anything. Finally, add the hot peppers, sugar, and tomato paste, and simmer an additional 5 minutes, covered. Serve with bread and topped with cheese (I recommend Eve’s Cheese jalapeño Colby, also from the Natural Food store, and local). Depending on the quantity of tomatoes, can feed up to 6-8 people.

*If you’ve never skinned a tomato, the process is simple (and I find, very enjoyable and stress relieving). Core the tomatoes (cut out the hard bit where the stem was). Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil and turn down to about medium heat, then drop in the tomatoes for about three minutes each. Transfer to a strainer (a slotted spoon helps) and let cool for several minutes. The skins should slide right off, and you can squeeze them a little (be careful not to squirt yourself in the eye) to get out the majority of the water and seeds, before mushing them and adding them to the chili, or sauce, or what have you. If done over a bowl, this leaves behind a delicious juice you can strain and drink, or pour over your garden (its full of nutrients- but also acidic, so use sparingly).

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Take a Bite

Where's the Beef?

Finally, an article that acknowledges the fact that there’s more to global warming than planes, trains and automobiles…

Also, here’s a great blog by one of my favorite authors, Anna Lappé, daughter of Frances Lappé, author of Diet for a Small Planet.

Take a Bite out of Climate Change

And here's a new one: calculate the carbon impact of your food choices! This one is a lot of fun to play with.

Eat Low Carbon

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More "Sweet" Surprises

Yesterday I posted on the health concerns of high fructose corn syrup (hfcs). One of the things that drives me mad about the Sweet Surprise commercials is how stumped the actors are when they say, “oh, haven’t you heard about high fructose corn syrup?” and the other person says, “like what?” They can’t seem to think of a single thing to say.

The Sweet Surprise website itself points to one of the very real issues with high fructose corn syrup, the one that has no immediate effect on your health- unless you happen to be a fan of clean water (we’ll get to this in a minute). On their FAQ page, they answer the question, “Why did food manufacturers switch to hfcs?” with this tidbit: “While price may have been a factor in food manufacturers' choice in sweeteners more than 20 years ago, U.S. food manufacturers' continued use of high fructose corn syrup is based on the benefits it provides rather than its price relative to sugar.”

This is an intriguing concept. Until the jump in corn prices this summer thanks to biofuels, corn typically cost more to grow than to buy. It’s readily available. It can be grown in the US, in massive quantities. And the US government puts millions of dollars of subsidies into corn to keep the price level. This keeps the producers of hfcs in constant supply of very, very cheap raw materials for their products. There are a very small number of very large companies who corner this market- and it doesn’t take much poking around to realize they have the corner not only on hfcs, but on almost all of those mysterious ingredients you find in your processed foods (and biofuels! Another surprise): lecithin, maltodextrin, citric and lactic acid, emulsifier, xanthan gum, phytosterols, and all the rest. Food no longer comes direct from a farm, it is assembled and manufactured from a diverse array of mostly corn derived ingredients in a laboratory.

So what about corn? Corn, from which corn syrup is obviously derived, is a finicky plant. Most of the corn crops (about 70%, I believe) are fed to livestock, most of the rest go to make sweeteners and preservatives for your crackers. Either way, we grow a ton of the stuff. And it’s not exactly the most environmentally friendly plant. You see, corn doesn’t take up nitrogen very well (which all plants need to survive), so it’s usually rotated with a nitrogen fixing plant (alfalfa, soybeans). Most people have heard how the Native Americans grew corn with squash and peas (peas are nitrogen fixers). However, we grow corn in monocrops (all by their lonesome), so while it’s in the ground, it needs major amounts of nitrogen input to produce lots and lots of corn. Since the corn isn’t absorbing most of this, it runs off… into the water. Here in Maryland, we typically use a lot of chicken manure for nitrogen input, as it’s readily available (what with Perdue being right down the Shore). And when it rains… into the Bay. Remember that whole Pfiesteria scare, where they kept talking about chicken manure in the water? That would be from corn fertilizer. High nitrogen loads are also responsible for creating the major algae blooms that kill off crabs, oysters, and fish, and create dead zones in the Bay. Agriculture isn’t the only source (sewage treatment is right up there), but it does account for a large percentage.

Now don’t go jumping all over farmers for letting nitrogen into the water. Remember, they wouldn’t be growing corn at all if there wasn’t a market for it, and there’s a market for it because people eat a lot of chicken and eat a lot of products with corn derived ingredients. It wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t growing so MUCH of it, and all together, without any crop diversity. To keep corn inexpensive enough to keep food prices down, we have to grow absurd amounts of it, and grow it with enormous fertilizer inputs. So next time you see one of those commercials, or someone asks you what’s wrong with high fructose corn syrup, let them know. It’s a long list. And remember: pay attention to who pays for what ads.

For more information:
Archer Daniels, one of the big corn processing companies
Cargill, the biggest corn processor of them all
And our favorite, Sweet Surprise.com

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Another Argument for Local Foods

"Eating locally not necessarily better"

Another article that fills me with raging annoyance at the complete lack of insight of most paid journalists. Way to miss the point, Mr. Commentator.

First, there seems to be a mistaken belief that buying local foods doesn’t actually help the local economy. I’m puzzled about this one. If I buy a tomato in Fountain Park for $1, then the farmer I just bought it from gets $1. If I buy a tomato at Superfresh for $1 (or less), then Superfresh gets about 10 cents, the oil used to transport the tomato (by truck and by ship) sucks up another 40 or so, marketing gets a good 10, another 35 or so goes to line the pockets of the big international company that’s shipping the tomatoes into the states in the first place, and finally about a nickel ends up with the farmer. That’s a rough estimate, mind.

Allow me to point out that none of that helps the local economy. Except maybe the 10 cents that went to Superfresh. Here’s an article that explains it well.


AS for the carbon footprint of locally grown food- well, here’s another place where this man is vastly mistaken. I don’t care HOW efficient cargo container ships are, they are still cargo container ships. They burn a hell of a lot more fuel than my neighbor’s pickup. He has a point about how food is produced- you are going to lower your carbon footprint a lot more by eating veggies than eating beef, no matter where the veggies are produced- but he misses the profound point that in common sense terms, shipping tomatoes across the ocean when you can grow them perfectly well in your own region is entirely pointless. There are some arguments to be made about suitability of soil types, but he fails to address this, so I’m not going to get into it. This commentator also fails to realize that by dint of the fact that they are growing locally, most local farmers grow more sustainably BECAUSE they aren’t mass producing and shipping their produce all over creation. They are smaller scale, use more labor and fewer pesticides, and are typically more considerate of their location- because their consumers are their neighbors, after all, and they will complain.

This, I think, is the biggest benefit of buying locally. It also ties in to the last point in this article. When I buy a tomato locally, I usually know the person I’m buying it from. If I really wanted, I could ask them politely if I could see their farm, and they’d probably say yes. At the very least they’d bring me some pictures and happily describe their operation. When I buy a tomato at Superfresh, I have no idea where it came from. None. California? Mexico? Hell if I know. I also have no idea how it was grown, who grew it, if they were paid properly, if they are going to die an early death thanks to pesticide exposure, if their land was mercilessly ripped away from them by an international food distributor- oh, wait, I forgot, we aren’t supposed to talk about the new colonialism. Underpaid workers in Mexico and South America grow our food, we celebrate the efficiency of container ships, and enjoy our tasteless tomatoes on our tasteless “beef” patties. Don’t for a minute imagine that the people growing your food would be better off growing their own food, for their own consumption. No, keep patting yourself on the back for supporting poverty stricken countries with a few pennies from your imperial dollar. Mr. Commentator: there’s a big difference between having no money and being self-sufficient, and being in poverty because you don’t see any of the profit of your labor.

The man got one thing right. It is important to pay more attention to how your food is produced. And the only way to do that is to buy from a farm where you KNOW how the food is produced. And that would be local.

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Food Crisis? What They're Not Saying

There’s a lot of discussion right now about an upcoming food crisis. A lot of the blame has been placed particularly on biofuels- if corn is used to produce ethanol for gasoline, it isn’t used as a food source, many claim. The debate about biofuels is grounded in legitimate concerns, as biofuels alone can never replace our current reliance on fossil fuels. There isn’t enough land on the planet to produce that volume of organic material.

However, it doesn’t hurt to look at where the vast majority of corn is actually going. Corn, along with the other grain crops (soybeans, wheat, barley, rye), makes up the vast majority of what we call conventional agriculture in the US, particularly here on the Eastern Shore. But those grains are not raised for people food (nor for biofuels). They are primarily fed to chickens.

All across the country, low-grade grain crops are raised explicitly for chickens, cows, and other livestock, who are fattened on the high protein grains just before they find their way to the store. The amount of grain it takes to produce a pound of beef could alternatively produce about 12 loaves of bread. The media (and most of the UN committees) claim we need to up food production in order to meet the crisis, but in reality, we are producing more than enough food, but using it inefficiently. Aside from feeding our grain crops to livestock, our biggest problem is distribution. People are starving because they have to buy food imported from elsewhere, which makes very little sense when you consider the places with the highest rates of starvation (developing countries) could largely support themselves agriculturally- if only those regions weren’t devoted to producing exports of their own. For a very, very long time (thousands of years) people have supported themselves on what they could grow in their own region, and got along fairly well doing so. Why does this make sense? Well, because it means people aren’t paying for both the food AND the shipping that brought it to them, and a few middle men along the way. They’re just paying for the food, or raising it themselves.

This isn’t the end all be all solution. There are many, many complex issues involved with agriculture (and I will likely post on them again). But I wanted to take this opportunity, as the weather warms, to point out that we have one solution to a global food crisis right here in Chestertown. And that is the weekly Chestertown Farmer’s Market. That’s right, if you want to support agriculture, farmers, and help prevent a food crisis right here on the Eastern Shore, all you have to do is take a trip down to the Farmer’s Market. Pick up some beautiful local asparagus. Sample something you may not be familiar with- a new type of lettuce, or something a little more exotic like bok choi. Meet your local growers, and learn something new. Best of all, keep your money right here, in the Eastern Shore economy, rather than seeing it paid out to some distant company that’s importing their tomatoes from South America and spending all their profits on shipping and advertisement. In turn, the people of South America can start growing food for themselves, rather than you- and maybe come a little closer to alleviating a worldwide crisis. Sound farfetched? Maybe. But we have to start somewhere, and when it gets down to it, the Eastern Shore tomatoes taste better anyway.

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Farm Fresh

Whatever happened to walking to market? In my hometown of York, PA, I’ve been fortunate enough to experience the Central Markethouse, Eastern Market, and other local markets where local farmers sell fresh produce, meat, and delicious Pennsylvania Dutch food. I was used to walking across the street at work to get my lunch. I was used to knowing where it came from. In fact, my mother buys from a stand where the produce was picked by my cousin. It is never hard to find fresh, local food in York.

It shocked me that while living in Cork, Ireland, many of the people I studied with were delighted and amazed by the English Market, where a 10 minute walk down the street revealed a centuries-old markethouse that sold meat, cheeses, vegetables, pastries, and anything else in between. Besides being local, the food sold there was usually a fraction of the price of grocery store goods. It made sense – there were no transportation costs or distribution and packaging fees. Straight from farm to market to me. That’s the way I like my food.

Where is the downside of locally grown food? Availability. Many urban or sprawl areas just don’t have access to farmers’ markets, either because of transportation or simply because there isn’t one. Even in York I watch as more and more farmland transforms into suburbia and new condos. When my friends visit I always show them the old farmhouses surrounded by the sprawl. That land’s crop-growing days are over.

But, in Chestertown, we are fortunate enough to have a Saturday morning farmer’s market in Fountain Park, where I pick up fresh fruit, vegetables, and flowers. I also work for a share of produce at Colchester Farm, a Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) farm where, if I help harvest the crop weekly, I can take some of my own. I will also soon acquire some broiler chickens from the farm, and I hope to buy more local meat (very rarely do I eat any meat that I haven’t seen first or know exactly where it came from anymore).

So, why buy local? By buying locally, you help keep business in the local area, supporting local farms and fellow neighbors. It’s what helps keep small-scale farms operating; otherwise, like some farms on the Eastern Shore, they could be bought out by developers, and the same thing that’s happening in my home county can happen here. Buying at market shows that you support your community and want to preserve the integrity of smaller farms.

Next time you’re at the grocery store, picking up some California strawberries and Perdue chicken, think to yourself, “I can get some local strawberries and chicken Saturday morning. I’ll wait on these.” And, if you don’t have access to a market, look around for signs at the store that say “Locally grown!”. Every time you buy something local, you help strengthen community support for farmers, and keep that farm from disappearing. What would we do without farms? Do we really want to drive down the street to see suburb after suburb, especially here on the Eastern Shore? I think not.

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