Latest News on Recipe for America 
Susan G Reviews Recipe for America on DailyKos
posted by Jill Richardson 2009-09-07 23:26:43Susan G posted a review of Recipe for America on DailyKos. Here's an excerpt of what she had to say:
"Richardson, who first discovered her talent for writing about food issues here at Daily Kos as OrangeClouds115, has turned in a terrific book in Recipe for America, managing to organize into one smooth narrative information as disparate as employing undocumented workers and the lobbying that goes into the Farm Bill. Under her educated eye, the pieces of the enormous puzzle of legislation, policy, science and environmentalism are woven together in a book that can serve as an introduction to those unfamiliar with the sustainable food movement, while expanding the base of knowledge of those who've been reading on the topic for years.
"This is no small feat. Juggling the needs of newcomers to a topic without losing the interest of the already informed is a problem that many writers with many more books under their belt than Richardson have failed to solve."
permalink
Book Tour Dates + Buying Autographed Copies
posted by Jill Richardson 2009-06-15 10:28:01
If you want to catch me on tour, here are the plans so far:
December 1 - Chicago, IL at Hull House's re-Thinking Soup at 12-1:30pm
December 1 - Oak Park, IL at Borders Books at 7pm
Past events:
San Diego
Philadelphia
Lancaster, PA
New York City
Pittsburgh
Morrisville, VT
Rutland, VT
Bellows Falls, VT
Boston
Shelburne Falls, MA
Northampton, MA
Seattle
Tacoma
Duvall, WA
Portland, OR
Madison, WI
Des Moines, IA
Los Angeles
Austin, TX
Orange County, CA
If your city isn't on this list and you want me to visit, please contact me at OrangeClouds115 at gmail.
permalink
My Book is Available For Pre-Order
posted by Jill Richardson 2009-04-04 22:37:47Great news! My book, Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It, is ready for pre-order. You can buy it on Amazon, Powells, or Barnes & Noble.
permalink
A New Blog on Food
posted by Jill Richardson 2008-07-05 23:28:28There's a new blog about food! Check out La Vida Locavore - a blog for anyone whose crazy life includes planting, growing, weeding, fertilizing, raising, picking, harvesting, processing, cooking, baking, making, serving, buying, selling, distributing, transporting, composting, organizing around, lobbying about, writing about, thinking about, talking about, playing with, and eating food!
permalink
The Dirt on Our Farms
posted by marrael 2006-12-26 10:03:44Check out The Dirt on Our Farms at Tompaine.com.
More news from our favorite news sources!
La Vida Locavore
Pot Luck
Pot Luck is an open thread...
Organic vs Conventional. Is that really the question?
Originally posted on Pesticide Action Network's blog, Groundtruth.
Media are all atwitter about a new Nature study by researchers at McGill University and the University of Minnesota that compares organic and conventional yields from 66 studies and over 300 trials. In extrapolating the study's findings to the charged question of how to feed the world, more than a few got it all wrong.
The core finding of the study is that "yield differences [between organic and conventional] are highly contextual, depending on system and site characteristics." In other words, sometimes organic does better, sometimes conventional does. In fact, the sheer variety of comparisons led Mother Jones columnist Tom Philpott to observe that the study "like a good buffet... offered something for every taste."
For example, yields of fruit and oilseed crops showed no significant difference between organic and conventional, while conventional cereal crops and some vegetables produced higher yields than organic counterparts under certain conditions. With irrigation, conventional averaged 35% higher yields than organic (with the authors acknowledging that organic systems were mostly compared to high-input commercial systems), but this difference dropped dramatically under rain-fed conditions (the reality for most small-scale farmers around the world)-confirming other studies that have demonstrated the superior water-holding capacity and water infiltration characteristics of organic systems.
Seufert et al.'s intense scrutiny of a relatively small number of studies (66) is intriguing, but-media hype aside-the study doesn't really tell us which systems are better suited to providing healthy nutritious food for all in the 21st century. And to the authors' credit, they acknowledge that.
Yields don't tell us how to feed the world
But let's cut to the chase. The animating question behind these "organic vs. industrial ag" debates is how to feed the world. Never mind that every study worth its salt points to poverty and inequity as root causes of hunger.
Scientific American's headline, "Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?" is a mischaracterization of a paper that supports no such conclusion.
We know that agroecological farming can double food production across entire regions, and that investing in ecological farming is one of the best ways to improve rural communities' food and livelihood security in developing countries. We also know that it's not just how we cultivate our food that matters. The drivers of global hunger have everything to do with global trade, investment and ownership rules. Rewriting these rules, reining in corporate power and restoring democratic control over our food and farming systems are three of the most important ways we can fight hunger. Several of my colleagues have written an excellent piece addressing these points, carried yesterday by Huffington Post.
While any farmer will tell you that getting good yields is always desirable, a narrow fixation on yield measurements tends to blind policymakers to the bigger picture. Seufert et al. get this. They write:
Yields are only part of a range of economic, social and environmental factors that should be considered when gauging the benefits of different farming systems.
So Scientific American's headline to its coverage of the Nature piece, "Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?" was a disappointing mischaracterization of a paper that led to no such conclusion. In fact, Seufert et al. make an excellent case for increasing funding for organic farming research, to better understand how these systems already work so well and to identify "improvements in management techniques" that "may be able to close the gap between organic and conventional yields." What always amazes me is how close organic systems are to conventional in yield, in the absence of meaningful federal research, development and extension support for organic. (Philpott reports that less than 1% of USDA research funds go towards organic systems, with the other 99% going towards industrialized agriculture-a tiny improvement on the 0.1% of federal research monies designated for organic previously documented by the Organic Farming Research Foundation.)
Real-world relevance
I asked University of Michigan Professor Ivette Perfecto (a co-author on the seminal 2007 Badgley et al. paper examining organic farming's contributions to the global food supply) what she thought of the piece in Nature. Her reply:
Although it is useful for understanding what are the factors that may limit productivity of organic and conventional systems, the restricted selection of the studies limits its applicability to the real world. There are very few studies from developing countries and none that compares organic agriculture with the conventional systems practiced by small-scale farmers.
What our study demonstrated was the potential of organic agriculture in developing countries for achieving yields similar to the so-called "best conventional practices" but without the negative environmental impacts of conventional agriculture.
Having recognized that conventional agriculture is simply not an option for the 21st century, loaded as it is with intolerable costs to our children's health, our soil, water, biodiversity and even ecosystem function - shouldn't we be focusing instead on what investments are needed to bring organic systems to scale?
2,4-D corn: Another bad creation
Originally posted on Pesticide Action Network's blog, Groundtruth.
Spring has sprung, and farmers across the country are preparing for planting season. One of their biggest headaches will be dealing with the millions of acres of cropland that have been infested with superweeds and new generations of superbugs.
These superpests have evolved as the direct - and inevitable - consequence of Monsanto's aggressive promotion of its genetically engineered "RoundUp-Ready" and insecticidal seed packages over the past 15 years.
I'd like to be able to say that help is on the horizon, and that USDA is preparing to launch a full-scale effort to enable farmers to transition off the failing pesticide-GE treadmill once and for all - onto cleaner, greener methods of farming more suited to the 21st century. But alas, the reverse is true.
At this moment, USDA is on the verge of approving Dow Chemical's new 2,4-D resistant corn, the first in a pipeline of "next generation" herbicide-tolerant crops that the Big 6 pesticide/biotech companies - including Dow, Monsanto and BASF - are planning to bring to market over the next couple of years. This is industry's response: more of the same. Except that the next generation is even worse: crops designed to be used with higher volumes of older and deadlier weedkillers.
Weed scientists are calling this chemical arms race a losing battle with evolution. And farmers too are up in arms; already 2,000 outraged farmers and food companies have joined the burgeoning new Save Our Crops Coalition to protest these unwanted products.
Growth engine of the pesticide industry
Simply put, 2,4-D resistant corn is a bad idea. It will drive a massive increase in pesticide use, placing the burden of increased costs and health risks on farmers and local communities. The big winners will be the pesticide/biotech companies. They stand to benefit from the sustained increase in herbicide sales that will coincide with the widespread adoption of these new herbicide-tolerant GE crops.
Imagine if we could have stopped Roundup Ready in its tracks 15 years ago. American agriculture now stands at another, equally important crossroads. Do we speed up the GE-powered pesticide treadmill, or do we transition off of it?
Take Action » We have just one more week to tell USDA that we want off the GE-pesticide treadmill. The dangerous and antiquated herbicide 2,4-D shouldn't be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up its use by introducing 2,4-D resistant corn.
This blog was originally posted on Rodale Voices.
Pot Luck
Pot Luck is an open thread...
As Hunger Grows in America, Governor Corbett Moves Pennsylvania Backwards
On May 1, Pennsylvania will become the latest state to (re-)institute asset testing for food stamp recipients by order of Governor Tom Corbett, a measure which even top Republican legislators in our state are opposing.
This move, unfortunately, does not require state legislative approval, so here in Pennsylvania we will once again (the old PA asset test was overturned by Democratic former Governor Ed Rendell in 2008) soon join the sad list of the handful of states which will require those in need of food assistance to... beg harder, I guess. Because to folks like our governor, poor people can never be shamed enough, apparently.
More below the fold...
In the meantime, my US Congressman, Bob Brady (D, PA-01), will be taking part in the 'food stamp challenge' here in two weeks...
The Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia and the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger are asking area residents during the week of April 23 to live on $5 a day, which is the average food stamp benefit in Pennsylvania.The "Food Stamp Challenge" is to raise awareness about proposed changes to Pennsylvania's food stamp program that would eliminate eligibility to those that have assets of more than $5,500 -- $9,000 for seniors -- on May 1.
One high-profile participant in the challenge will be U.S. Rep. Bob Brady, D-Philadelphia, whose congressional district is the second-poorest in the entire country.
If not for occasional family help, and the leftover residual benefits from my previously successful life, I'd be right there too. Most days right now, I generally live on under $5 worth of food per day myself, but I never go hungry between meals and I'm fortunate enough to have good cookware, a full kitchen, time to cook(!), and also to live within easy access of grocery stores, farmers' markets, and imo, the single greatest place in the entire world (Reading Terminal Market!).
As far from 'bad off' as I know I ultimately am, I still can't even imagine what it would be like to live like my mother did as a kid, bouncing back and forth between public housing projects in North Jersey and The Bronx with her mother and her numerous brothers and sisters to briefly get away from her often abusive, alcoholic father (who himself was a WWII veteran who slipped through the cracks upon his return home) for instance, or as about 1.5 million of my fellow Pennsylvanians (and countless other millions of our fellow Americans) currently still do right now.
I want an America which is better than this. To every single one of us. We can, and should, do this. Shame on anyone who tells us we can't.
Coming Up for Air
My apologies for my absence lately on this blog. Unfortunately, the blog got buried under the list of other priorities - things like finishing my book (the deadline's June 1 and I've got 4 chapters to go), earning money, and taking care of my mental and physical health (kind of a drag that I have to take time to do that, but, well... no choice, ya know?) Here's what I've been doing to earn money:
1.Story about Kenyan ag
2. Story about Iraqi woman who was murdered in the town next to mine
3. Forget the Farm Bill - I wanted the title to start with a different word that begins with F but that didn't happen.
I've got another story on agriculture in Kenya that will be up at Latitude News soon-ish. And I did a piece for a Chinese publication on the U.S. trend of backyard chickens, which was a huge pain because some woman volunteered to be interviewed for it, and then - AFTER I wrote the entire article - told me I couldn't use her name or anything about her. Legally, I could have still used her info... but that would have been a lousy thing to do. So I didn't.
At some point, I need to finish all of the Kenya diaries on this blog. I still haven't written up the rest of the Maasai visit, the rest of my time in Bondo, and a really interesting trip to Ngong Hills that came up unexpectedly on my last day there.
In other news, one of the chickens drowned in the rain barrel, and we're gonna get two more to replace her, since I think introducing a single chicken to a flock is mean. The baby chick, Muppet, is doing well and growing her feathers. She's having so much fun with her Mama that it makes me thinks no chickens should ever have to be born in an incubator if it can be avoided.
And now that it's legal in San Diego to get miniature goats, some of my friends (two couples) got a pair of goats together. They are Nigerian Dwarfs, a dairy breed, and one is likely pregnant. The other is still too young. I've visited them once but should go back with my camera so I can post about them. They are seriously the most mellow animals I've ever met. It's hard to think that they would have been illegal just a few weeks ago, given that most dogs are more of a nuisance than they are.
I think that's about it from my end. Apologies once again for my lack of blogging. With luck, I'll be done with writing the book as of June 1 and then will have more time for blogging once again.
Pot Luck
Pot Luck is an open thread...
Monsanto's endless pipeline of bad ideas
Originally posted on Pesticide Action Network's blog, Groundtruth.
As if the disaster of RoundUp resistant superweeds sweeping our farmland weren't enough, Monsanto is now preparing to launch an even greater disaster: a new soybean engineered to be resistant to the older, more toxic weedkiller, dicamba. The seed - which Monsanto plans to market in 2014 if approved - will also come stacked with the company's RoundUp Ready gene, and is designed to be used with Monsanto's proprietary herbicide "premix" of dicamba and glyphosate.
More dicamba-tolerant crops (corn, cotton, canola) are all waiting in the wings. If this new generation of GE crops is approved, then dicamba use will surge, just as it did with RoundUp. And we all know how well that didn't work out. To the giant pesticide company, this chemical arms race is all part of the plan.
If you're thinking that pouring more chemicals onto already devastated farmland sounds a bit like pouring gasoline on a fire, I'd have to agree with you. So do some hefty farm businesses, as it turns out.
Farm business rejects Monsanto's answer
The Big 6 pesticide companies' pipeline of new herbicide-tolerant crops poses a serious risk to farmers' livelihood and rural economies. Weedkillers like dicamba and 2,4-D drift far and can easily destroy other farmers' crops of tomatoes, grapes, beans, cotton, non-GE soy - just about any broadleaf plant. That's why farmers and some large ag companies are getting worried. As Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture for Red Gold, the largest canned tomato processor in the United States, testified before Congress in 2010:
I am convinced that in all of my years serving the agriculture industry, the widespread use of dicamba herbicide [poses] the single most serious threat to the future of the specialty crop industry in the Midwest.
Smith warns of the damaging surge in dicamba use that would accompany introduction of dicamba-tolerant GE crops - both over more acreage and throughout the season. He predicts widespread crop damage, harm to non-target plants that would result from spray and volatilization drift, and financial loss - not only to growers but also to processing companies like his that would suffer major supply disruption, even conflicts erupting between neighbors eroding the social fabric of rural community life. His testimony concluded:
The introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans is a classic case of short-sighted enthusiasm over a new technology, blinding us to the reality that is sure to come. Increased dicamba usage, made possible through the introduction of dicamba tolerant soybeans, is poor public policy and should not be allowed.
We can choose to get off the pesticide treadmill
We've just witnessed an incredible victory with the removal of the infamous cancer-causing pesticide methyl iodide from the entire U.S. marketplace. So we know that we can win. And we know that the threat that pesticides pose to farm sustainability, our water and air quality, our communities' and our children's health can be blocked. But we have to be dedicated and smart.
The widespread use of dicamba is incompatible with Midwest agriculture.
- Steve Smith, Director of Agriculture, Indiana-based tomato processing company Red Gold
Right now, companies like Monsanto, BASF and Dow are planning to drive up their pesticide sales by introducing a new generation of herbicide-tolerant crops, designed to be used with their proprietary weedkillers. The test case before us -the first of this new generation up for review and currently awaiting USDA approval - is Dow's 2,4-D GE corn ("a very bad idea" as my colleague Margaret Reeves explains). The most effective thing we can do to protect farmers and consumers from dicamba-tolerant crops is to shut down the pipeline of herbicide-tolerant crops - beginning with 2,4-D-resistant corn.
Take Action » Tell USDA that we want off the GE-pesticide treadmill! This dangerous and antiquated herbicide shouldn't be on the market, and we certainly should not be giving Dow license to profit from driving up use. Sign our petition to USDA.