Sourcing Your Food

Photo by gardngrl

Although my friend created a link to this article in a comment to an earlier post (Is It Safe?) I am posting the URL to this great article from the LA Times entitled "From a Chinese Oil Refinery to your Twinkie." If you're at all concerned about the quality or source of your food, this article is a good place to begin your exploration.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-0e-ettlinger29may29,1,4306189.story?coll=la-news-a_section&ctrack=1&cset=true

Undermining the Heart of Organics

Photo by gardngrl

For those of you who are interested in local, sustainable food production, the following article from the Canadian Globe and Mail about the co-opting of organic as a marketing coup by industrial agriculture is for you:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070530.wfood30/BNStory/National/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20070530.wfood30

Here is a small segment of the article:

Has big business turned organics into 'yuppy chow'?

MICHAEL VALPY

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

May 30, 2007 at 4:21 AM EDT

SASKATOON — Organic food is being taken over by big business, marketed as "yuppie chow" for the privileged, and increasingly packaged with as little concern for the environment as conventional food production, says a York University academic researcher.

In a paper to be presented on Friday at Canada's largest gathering of social sciences scholars, Irena Knezevic says that most of the major organic brands on the North American market are now owned by large corporations such as ConAgra, Cargill, Kraft, Coca Cola and Pepsi.

Mobilizing vs. Localizing

Photo by gardngrl

On some level I think it's tacky to open a post with an apology and an excuse. That, however, is exactly what I'm prepared to do today. I want to apologize (to myself as much as anyone) for not attending better to this blog. My thoughts and ideas haven't come to an end, but my downtime at work certainly has over the last three weeks. Alas, given the cycles of the academic year, my busy-ness is likely to only intensify in the short-run. But come mid-to-late June, I should be back on top of my game. So please pardon the infrequency of my posts and responses to comments. The end of the school year is in site.

Today, in the few minutes that I have, I want to point to something I read in today's New York Times. It's from the editorial entitled "Pondering Some Old, Familiar Questions on the Road Across Country" by Verlyn Klinkenborg. His editorial reads like a short essay on what it means to be able to live just about anywhere. The quote that stood out for me is the following: "...what I’m really asking when I wonder 'Could I live here?' is 'Who would I be if I did live here?' To that question I never know the answer."

Why does this quote intrigue me so? For starters I like Klinkenborg's implicit acknowledgment that a place imprints the people who live there. Moreover, in these few words of Klinkenborg's I believe there can be found the view that one cannot begin to know a place unless one has settled in that place for some length of time. What does that have to do with anything generally and this blog particularly? Well, I think the farther we get from something the less we know about it. Sure, distance may make it possible to take the macro view of something or somewhere. But in distance, relevant details are lost. It is this realization of the importance of proximity to familiarity that makes me doubt technology's ability to stand-in for local controls. Local is better because it can be witnessed, and not just by the eyes and ears. Viewing life through a local lens is also critically important because mobility undermines imprinting and the investment of peoples' time, energy and good will in a particular place.

What do others think?

A good Wednesday to you, one and all.

Is it Safe?

Photo by gardngrl


Does local oversight of goods (locally-produced or otherwise) result in greater consumer safety? I don't know the answer to this question, but I think it's one that is well worth asking. If you've listened to the news or read a newspaper in the last month you're probably aware of the U.S.'s mounting concerns over the safety of food (mostly as animal feed) and health products imported from China. Full disclosure: I have no particular quarrel with China. I do, however, see the folly of a U.S. import system so sprawling as to be overextended, and so underfunded and understaffed as to be dangerous. Does anyone even know who's driving this train anymore? Perhaps more importantly, can the system as it currently exists be mended? Is it possible that the system as-conceived is incapable of assuring consumer safety?

In the U.S., one of our favorite silver linings in the clouds of collapse is the promise of new technology. I suspect, however, that the safety of globally-traded commodities is something that improved technology cannot fix. Perhaps my readers will disagree. I certainly invite and encourage feedback. But in the absence of a technological fix, does it seem advisable to search for local solutions? What would they look like? What might the unintended consequences be?

Feeling very optimistic this last weekend I decided to take on a particular aspect of the health product safety issue to try and find out if it would make sense for a locality to produce their own, safe products. Since one of the recent New York Times articles features the problem of producers replacing glycerin in products with a toxic industrial solvent (diethylene glycol), I decided to try and figure out if a locality could produce its own glycerin for food, medicines and toothpaste. It didn't take long for me to become somewhat discouraged. While glycerin can apparently be manufactured from any number of plant and animal substances and is therefore not particularly problematic in terms of resource availability, it's manufacture is apparently labor intensive. Profitability seemed more and more questionable, the further I read. I can clearly see the benefit of economies of scale when it comes to the manufacture of glycerin. What I don't know is just how necessary glycerin is. Could we do without it? Given enough incentive, couldn't a suitable (and safe) substitution be made? Maybe? I haven't a clue. The point I want to get at here is that, the more I looked at this problem, the more complicated it became. Perhaps that was just reality dawning. What is certain is that a whole lot of people (and not just those people on the inside of the problem) need to be discussing the safety of the products we consume and the sourcing and inspection of those products. It seems obvious that, if it were possible to locally source and produce more of these goods, we could also more reasonably assure their relative safety. Alas, things are not that simple.

I'm very interested in what others think about this issue. I think it will take a lot of new thinking and the ideas of a good many people to being to turn things around. Is there a local solution to food and drug safety?

Friday Local Photo

I'm afraid I don't have much in the way of content to offer today. I'm a working stiff and by Friday I'm generally spent. So, perhaps this is the first of many Friday Local Photo postings (presuming I keep snapping photos--something I certainly hope to do). I snapped this photo a few days ago while walking about three blocks east of my house. This duck mom was pretty nervous about my loitering near her babies. She made a point to stay close by. I was able to snap a couple of closer-in photos of the ducklings, but I'll save them for another day.

I wish everyone a gentle and relaxing weekend.

Transforming Spaces into Places

So far in this blog I've written a lot about the benefits of localizing many of our structures and the things we depend on. And on some level, it's hard to argue with the claim that, for instance, local, shared ownership in trust of an area's land can increase access to affordable housing. But you may be asking yourself how a city or town can ever hope to get there. Just how does a location becomes a community? I ask myself some version of this question daily, and one response that consistently comes up for me is this: So much of how we live isolates us. In order to build a community and encourage local enterprise, we must first connect with one another. We must find ways to create ties that can lead to meaningful change.

I recently moved to a new house and I have yet to have a conversation with either of my neighbors. I'm not proud of that fact. I'm actually somewhat mortified. I also suspect that I'm not alone. When was the last time you had a conversation with someone on your street, meaningful or no?

I happen to believe that the structure of commerce and societal institutions conspire (perhaps without meaning to, or perhaps with intent) to keep us isolated. We are confronted with incredible inertia when we consider breaking routine or convention. For starters, many of us work too much and we're tired. But that fact isn't exactly to the point. What I want to make clear is that I believe building community and reducing personal isolation will take some doing.

So, where do we begin? The City Repair Project (http://www.cityrepair.org/wiki.php/about), based in Portland, OR, started with the assumption that the problem of isolation is literally "built" into our lives by the use of the grid as an organizational principal. Because of this, efficient movement of individuals from place to place is prioritized at the expense of truly public use of space. City Repair aims to actually "build" culture by creating places and therefore opportunities for public gathering. Through their "intersection repair" projects they have helped bring neighborhoods together to create lasting public spaces that truly belong to their respective neighborhoods. City Repair calls this transforming "spaces into places." Many intersection repair participants report some measure of transformation in their relationships with neighbors, and the activities themselves have apparently had a transformational impact on Portland's bureaucratic structure. This is because prior to the first intersection repair it was illegal to claim an urban space by painting it or installing a gazebo (or whatever, you get the idea). But the unified actions of that first neighborhood led to a city ordinance that allows these "repairs" to take place.

There is an interesting video about the history of the City Repair Project at the aforementioned URL. Information about current repair projects is also listed. I encourage you to check it out. And I will be interested to see what other kinds of community enterprises may be developed as a result of the City Repair Projects efforts to reconnect people and create shared space.

Happy Wednesday!

Local Foods from Family Farms

According to the website www.foodroutes.org, there are a great many reasons for each of us to support our local food producers. By itself, the reduction in fossil fuel usage when products are produced and consumed locally makes for a pretty compelling argument (approximately 10% of food's fossil fuel usage is in production--the remaining 90% of fuel is consumed in packaging, transporting and marketing food products). Then there is also the issue of food safety--an issue I plan to take up in a future post. Keeping it simple, imagine how much easier it is to make choices about food, with your own health and safety in mind, when you know where it's grown, who grows it and the methods they employ. The transparency is simply much greater when your food comes from nearby.

But neither of these tremendous benefits are at the heart of what I want to write about today. Instead, I'd like to focus on what many call the "endangered" family farm. Why are they better, and, perhaps more importantly, why are they endangered? In this blogger's informed view, independent, family-owned farms localize wealth to a greater extent than large, corporate-owned operations. Not only do local family farmers spend more of their money locally, they also have more of it to spend, because when we deal directly with farmers, we eliminate the middle man and farmers make a better profit. What's more, family farms are responsive to local needs and demands. They promote local control of food systems and promote healthful eating in ways that distant, large-scale industrial farms simply cannot. These are just a few of the reasons why, I would argue, independently operated family farms are better than the alternative. They are, unfortunately, endangered. Why? Because not enough of us support them.

Due to huge subsidies on a few commodities (corn, soybean, wheat, etc.), and through the "efficiencies" of industrial agri-business, price has become the leading consideration for most of us when we buy our food. As I mentioned in an earlier post, however, the price of a particular product seldom reflects its cost. And although there are a lot of costs that our current industrial system of agriculture passes on to the rest of us, perhaps the biggest is the loss of family farms.

According to the USDA, since 1935 the U.S. has lost approximately 4.7 million family farms. It is estimated that there are fewer than 1 million remaining family farms in the U.S. Since we certainly haven't scaled back our eating in the last 72 years (and our population has grown significantly), it's a safe assumption that our diets have become increasingly supplemented by food produced overseas and by domestic industrial agriculture. Independent family-owned farms cannot hope to "compete" for your food dollar when corporate-run farms receive the added benefits of federal subsidies, widespread distribution and marketing, and the economies of scale that hundred-acre mono-cropping makes possible. Food Routes Network also reports that, in 2002, family farmers received the lowest real cash income for their labor since 1940. That means that, given the current heavily-subsidized, price-driven system, family farmers' own access to the things they need to survive is being dismantled. While they're at work feeding others, they are struggling to feed themselves. Is this how we want to treat those who make it possible for us to live, and to live well? Perhaps more to the point, can we afford to lose the remaining million of these family farms? Do you think that corporations care whether the food they sell you is actually good for you? Do you think they're concerned with your long-term health? Most independent, family-owned farms should and do care. Without your patronage they have no livelihood. It's in their long-term interest to do right by you. I'm merely suggesting that it's in our long-term interest to do right by them, too.

If you are interested in learning more about local food systems in your area, copy and paste the following URL into your browser:

www.foodroutes.org

The Food Routes Network is a national non-profit whose sole interest it is to promote and support the efforts and development of local food systems. They achieve their mission by helping to connect you with food produced in your area.

If you need a more comprehensive list of reasons why you should consider supporting family farms, you can access Food Routes Network's page on the subject at:

www.foodroutes.org/whycare3.jsp

Lastly, if you're inclined to learn more about the issues facing family farmers today, visit the National Family Farm Coalition site at:

http://www.nffc.net/

Local Wage Standards

This morning I tried to gather information about the statistics that comprise the basis of the federal minimum wage rate (currently $5.15/hour). My efforts have thus far gone unrewarded, and that's after calling and speaking with someone at the U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division. In the spirit of getting to the bottom of this issue I combed over the Fair Labor Standards Act for a while. Then my eyes began to hurt and I gave up. Does anyone reading this know on what set of statistics or indexes the current federal minimum wage is based?

I ask because a couple of days ago my friend Rob sent me this URL:

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/anth484/minwage.html

I presume he was frustrated, as am I, with what the current federal minimum wage represents in terms of purchasing power. The aforementioned web page demonstrates, graphically, just how far the cost of living outstrips the purchasing power enabled by the federal minimum wage (this is done by comparing "nominal dollars" to "real dollars"). Now, to be fair, I haven't checked the sources of the data on purchasing power and cost of living. It would not be at all surprising to find the CPI referenced, but, as I said, I haven't looked into it. I try to look upon all statistics with some skepticism initially, and I also try to account for their situational nature. That said, it's pretty tough to laugh off the other basis of comparison that the authors use: that of the federal poverty level. According to the last chart, in 2004, the federal minimum wage equaled just 55% of the federal poverty level for a family of four. Does that seem right to you?

At some level, localities have always recognized local variations in needs and living costs. This is, I presume, why numerous individual states have, over the years, enacted their own minimum wage laws, with rates that often exceed the federal rate. Furthermore, as a response to the fact that in many places in the last decade the largest sector of job growth has been the unskilled, low-wage sectors, many individual cities have adopted "living wage" standards, to help ensure the long-term economic stability of their regions.

http://www.cfpa.org/issues/issue.cfm/issue/LivingWage.xml

For better or worse, the basis for this "living wage" is the 1968 federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation ($9.12/hr) and rounded up slightly ($10/hr). If I follow this logic correctly, then, a one-earner family of four who is paid an adjusted wage of $9.12/hr can expect to occupy a space at 90% of the federal poverty level. According to the site listed above, however, an hourly "living wage" of $10 would move that same family just above the federal poverty level. While I applaud efforts to address poverty and raise earning standards, I'm not convinced that this is enough. I'm also not convinced that using federal standards as a basis for determining wages in a particular place makes sense.

What do other people think?

I realize that very few economies in the U.S. are currently primarily "local." This is why it doesn't surprise me that local "living wage" standards are adopted as a means of responding to human needs while working within the current, more generalized system. Even so, I cannot help but imagine that a local wage system, situated within a local economy, that is responsive to local needs, makes the most sense. What would this look like? In truth, I'm not sure. This vision of mine is highly dependent on a lot of assumed infrastructural factors already being in place: predominantly local employers, predominantly local markets, predominantly locally-sourced goods, etc. With these structures in place, it would be manageable to determine a minimum standard of compensation that takes the needs of a place and its people into account.

The problem is, this country, and the cities therein, are a long way from there. We're perilously dependent on unseen systems, distant suppliers and a "market" that determines the worth of our labor. Life as we know it in this country is supported by unsustainable energy resources (as we make unsustainable energy demands) and policies that will, at some point, come to a crashing end. That's why I'm interested in how we get from where we are now, to the place I'm envisioning. Or perhaps there are alternative possibilities. I'm embarrassingly ignorant about a good many things. But I want to learn more about our present state of things and start envisioning an altogether different response. Where would your thoughts take us?

Time-Strapped

This beautiful, pristine patch of earth near the Lakes Region of NH is where I'd like to be today. It looks so tranquil. Meanwhile I feel so besieged. The truth is, work commitments have prevented me from thinking about local issues much today, and my time for writing has run short. I have been letting a few ideas incubate, however, and I'm pretty excited about them. I hope to get to one of the topics tomorrow.

I want to thank those friends (you know who you are) who have proffered ideas and daily inspired me to think about the many facets of our fragile interconnectedness. Brainstorming possible local solutions to some of these complex problems speaks to my sense of purpose. At the very least it allows me to mentally step away from the numbing work that I do to pay my bills.

Let's hope that tomorrow I find a few minutes to write. In the meantime, keep those ideas coming!

Local Indexes: Honest, Representative Measures

So much for tomorrow. This has been a crazy week and I expect it to be an equally demanding weekend. Perhaps next week will bring relief?

Today I want to write a little bit about local economic indexes (do I know how to party or what?). A few days ago my partner initiated a discussion about just how easily the data in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) can be manipulated, and how there are some who believe the CPI is manipulated, wildly, already.

For those of you who wouldn't know a CPI from a GPS device (and I count myself among you), in its most simplistic terms, the CPI attempts to measure the average rate of inflation in the U.S. The term inflation represents a loss of purchasing power due to increased prices on goods and services. The increased prices are not reflected by increases in quality. So, in theory, the goods being measured are equal to the goods measured last time, and its the prices alone that have changed. Are you still with me? I hope so.

There are critics (of the current administration, of government regulation, or of economic forecasting more generally) who argue that the CPI is routinely manipulated by government to achieve specific political and economic purposes. Why would the government want to tinker with measures of consumer prices? Well, the theory goes that by suppressing inflation figures (current figures are below 3%) the U.S. saves a lot of money. How? Cost of Living Allowance increases (COLA), salary and pension adjustments and the interest on the national debt are all impacted by the rate of inflation. If the rate is low, the government spends less on all of the aforementioned things. There are allegedly many ways that the statisticians manipulate these figures, but I don't know enough about them to explain them satisfactorily. Apparently, "geometric weighting"(a process by which the prices of "volatile" categories, such as housing, energy and health care, are simply eliminated from the tabulation), rolling back price increases for products with quality improvements, and not accounting for subsidies on goods are the mainstays of this manipulation. In truth, I don't pretend to be an expert on this topic. I just think that it's interesting.

So, the critics (understandably) take issue with official numbers that are so low when it's obvious to anyone with a pulse that the cost for most things, especially essentials like housing, health care and energy, are increasing by double-digit increments nearly every year. I do find it interesting that there doesn't appear to be a whole lot of documented discussion of this dissonance.

The manipulation of these figures, the critics contend, leads to a false sense of consumer confidence and encourages overspending, due to artificially low interest rates. Ultimately, instabilities and vulnerabilities result. What would happen, I wonder, if we relied on local measures and indexes of cost and economic activity, instead of the Bureau of Labor and Statistics' CPI? Would the numbers be so easily manipulated? Certainly statistics can be massaged into saying just about anything, but wouldn't it be much easier to take the authors of a local measure to task if the lived reality and the report didn't match?

It seems to me that persons of a given locale would be better served by the transparency and accountability that is likely to come with designing and using local measures of purchasing power. Responsible spending might be one benefit. Employer COLAs that have some basis in the local reality might be another. And I have to imagine that when the persons of a community witness the rapid climb in price of an area necessity, some of them might be inspired to respond with creative and regionally appropriate solutions. Less manipulation. More problem solving. A clearer, more honest picture. I'll admit that I like the sound of that.

I'm interested to hear what others have to say, about the CPI or local measures. A good weekend to all!

Food for Thought

Well, folks, I'm back. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I'm limping along. Is it possible to perish from a migraine? While this is not a site dedicated to the discussion of health concerns, I'd be interested in tapping into the collective wisdom of how to cope with two or three days of agony every month. So, if you have something to add to the topic, don't be shy.

Anyhoo...my friend Steven posed a series of very interesting discussion questions to me last week and, post-weekend/post-headache, I'm finally able to attend to his questions and give them some thought. I hope to include the products of my ruminations in this and future blog entries.

Steven is interested (correct me if I'm wrong, Steven) in the role of information technology in fostering community, in breaking down the barrier of distance, and just generally collapsing the commonly-held notion of "local." Before I write anything else I should probably disclose that I'm more technology phobic than savvy. Am I, then, qualified to speak to this topic? Not terribly, no. But that doesn't mean I won't try. I'll bring to it what I can and I hope some of you will post comments and add to the discussion.

The question of Steven's that most interested me is this: How much inherent value is strictly in the physical proximity of a local producer? In other words, is something still lost even when technology makes it possible to know the conditions of production of your favorite tea 7,000 miles away? And while this is a question I hope to return to many times, my initial response to this question is, I don't know. Do I think something is lost? Certainly. I'll go into some of the more obvious qualities that would be lost by replacing localization with technological connection. How much is lost? Well, I'm not sure. It depends on what each lost quality means to an individual and to a community. In the end, all I can do is discuss what I think would be lost and why.

So, what exactly is lost when we substitute technology for actual proximity? The use of local resources to meet local needs, for one. The internalization of all of a product's costs (it's one thing to pay the true cost of a product when it's made nearby and you know some of the people you're supporting with your purchase--it's another thing to pay 3 or 4 times as much for the box of tea when you don't have a direct investment in the success of the enterprise that brings it to you) is another. Additionally, and, to my thinking, most importantly, in a scenario in which technology collapses distance and obfuscation in trade, wealth is still largely funneled out of a locale, rather than staying put. I see this as the biggest potential loss when one tries to imagine substituting IT for local economies. I would like to support communities all over the world, but that is impractical. A much more elegant arrangement is one in which I buy things that are locally produced, and I support, in perpetuity, the labor and resources that I consume. By the same token, if I'm the producer of a local good and I'm responsive to the needs and demands of my local consumers, I would rather have their business, than the business of someone from another place who could be helping their own community instead.

I realize that this is a simplification and that it assumes that other communities will be providing local goods and services to meet their citizens' needs. There is still another assumption that frames my thinking on this. I assume that the members of a community learn to discern between needs and wants. For surely no local economy can respond to all of the individual wants of its people. But I do think that providing for a community's needs and keeping much of its wealth localized in order to do just that is a desirable objective. That's the place I'm coming from.

Quite honestly, Steven's questions have triggered many thoughts, most of which aren't yet fully formed. But I'm inspired to continue thinking them through and to test my own understanding of what local means in the 21st century. I sincerely hope that others will (respectfully and productively) comment on this topic, or any other that it has inspired.

Until tomorrow...