Food Systems Blog

by Erin McCarthy, cross-posted from the Green Fork blog.

Earlier this week, USDA Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack appointed 25 new members to the Fruit and Vegetable Advisory Committee for a two-year term -- including FOUR New Yorkers! Considering that several counties in NY State were declared disaster areas by the USDA this past fall due to heavy rains and the state's ag supply chain is severely broken this is uber good news for local farmers and eaters and everyone in between in the channels of distribution.

I decided to research the newly appointed NYers, and was pleased to dig up the following:

- Robert Nolan, Deer Run Farms, Brookhaven, Suffolk Country, Long Island (Lighthearted Locavore territory) - Nolan operates a small, 30-acre family farm that grows specialty lettuces, chicory, and escarole. He is also the former president of the LI Farm Bureau and 4th generation farmer. For many years, Nolan has been involved with educating Long Island children on where their food comes from.

-Brent Roggie, National Grape Co-op Association (think Welch's Foods, Inc. makers of grape juice and jams), the town of Westfield in Chautaugua Country. There's not much info on Roggie on the internet, but I'm happy to share the importance of the grape co-op to New York. Welch's is a top 100 food processor in the US and concord grapes are considered a "superfood" for their antioxidant power. NY State is considered the (concord) grape belt of the US - read more about juicy, purple concords from my Nov. 2008 post.

Looking for a way to concisely explain the link between food and climate change to your friends who didn't make it to Just Food, BP Stringer and NYU's Food and Climate Summit?  Check out this article by Jacquie Berger and Nadia Johnson of Just Food for five simple tips on reducing your own foodprint.

In this posting from the blog of the Food Bank for NYC, recent Princeton graduate Paul Hernandez looks back at the past incarnation of food stamps, and promotes The Food Bank’s Food Stamp Outreach Program, which makes the more efficient modern process even easier. 

A sign-on campaign for the first-ever and groundbreaking (if I do say so myself) NYC Food Pledge and Food Charter launched on Friday night.

I am a proud committee member and inaugural signatory. It's an incredibly comprehensive and well thought through document that takes a systems approach to address the social, environmental and economic impacts that food and agriculture have on New York and the planet.

Please sign on via this LINK.

NYC FOOD CHARTER
10 PRINCIPLES FOR A SUSTAINABLE FOOD SYSTEM

Food has a profound effect on the health and well-being of a community. The purpose of the NYC Sustainable Food Charter is to set forth the values and principles essential to a just, vibrant, and sustainable food system, and to spur the creation of such a food system for all New Yorkers.

1. Human Right
Access to nutritious, affordable, and culturally appropriate food is recognized internationally to be a basic human right. New York City should fully develop its foodshed and improve distribution systems in order to ensure easy access to healthy, sustainable food in all communities, particularly those with limited resources or at high risk for diet-related illnesses.

2. Equality
The harmful environmental, economic, and health consequences of the existing food system fall disproportionately on low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. New York City should erase this disparity and should combat hunger, obesity, and diabetes.

3. Health

The prospect of cultured or "in vitro" meat produced in a lab is one step closer to reality, according to a report in The Independent. Scientists in Holland have taken cells from a live pig and replicated them in a broth "derived from the blood products of animal foetuses," creating a "soggy form of pork".

Mark Post, a professor of physiology at Eindhoven University who's leading the research, told the Independent:

“We need to find ways of improving it by training it and stretching it, but we will get there. This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.”

At present there is a question mark over the taste as laboratory rules prevent the scientists eating the fruits of their labour.

If worldwide demand for meat and dairy products doubles by 2050, as the UN predicts, the resulting increase in greenhouse gas emissions could have dire consequences. Will cultured meat prove to be a palatable solution? The results thus far, described as "rather like wasted muscle tissue," don't sound terribly appetizing. But the project, which is backed by a Dutch sausage manufacturer and funded in part by the Dutch government, could yield "sausages and other processed products being made from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time."

Mmm, I can hardly wait.

A few weeks ago, Consumer Reports published a report on BPA in canned foods which tested the levels of the chemical in all the cans and noted that

Federal guidelines currently put the daily upper limit of safe exposure at 50 micrograms of BPA per kilogram of body weight. But that level is based on experiments done in the 1980s rather than hundreds of more recent animal and laboratory studies indicating serious health risks could result from much lower doses of BPA.

The FDA will be revisiting the issue of BPA in food again because a congressional subcommittee determined that the original guidelines were based too heavily on studies sponsored by the American Plastics Council.

BPA is the abbreviation for Bisphenol A, an important building block for plastics used in many products. It is a know endocrine-disruptor, which is why The Endocrine Society recently spoke out against its widespread use citing evidence of the effects on evidence of the effects "on male and female reproduction, thyroid, metabolism and obesity, among other mechanisms. "

The plastic industry claims that the dose makes the poison and levels of BPA in our environment are too low to case harm. A recent Google Search on BPA turned up a rebuttal to Consumer Reports by the Statistical Assessment Service as the first result. The group's funding the murky, but they also rebut global warming.

One of the most logical ways to eliminate food deserts – those places that don’t have adequate access to fresh fruits and vegetables – is through urban agriculture. In Brooklyn, residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant are fighting to keep their urban farm – which produces 7,000 lbs of fresh produce per year – alive in the face of development. Reverend DeVanie Jackson and her husband, Reverend Robert Jackson converted a garbage covered lot into a farm to support their work feeding 4,000 New Yorkers every month at the Brooklyn Rescue Mission. Now the city wants to take the land back to build affordable housing. You can sign the petition to save this neighborhood farm from destruction, and then take a look at this video directed by Dulce Fernandes over at the Green Fork blog.

Tom Philpott's best known as the food editor for Grist and cofounder of Maverick Farms in North Carolina. But in a not-so-long-ago previous life, he was a business writer living in Brooklyn. Philpott draws equally on his command of economics and firsthand farming experience to make a compelling argument in Newsweek for an overhaul of our government's ag policies. As Philpott explains, the infrastructure so essential to small-scale farming has been systematically dismantled in recent decades and must be rebuilt if we truly want to support sustainable agriculture.

Crosspost from Lighthearted Locavore Blog....According to the Wall Street Journal, the Towns of Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island are suing New York State's Department of Environmental Control (DEC) for its new fishing regulations because the State forgot to ask the Town's permission. Interestingly, Andrew Cuomo, NYS Attorney General, is not coming to the DEC's defense. And, local fisherman and town trustees are fighting for their rights -- recreational and commercial fisherman alike -- based on a Colonial Law, the Dongan Patent which says that Towns have jurisdiction over the fishing (and not the State or Federal Governments).

Long Island Fishing License Comes with A Colonial Catch, Wall St. Journal, 11/10/09

This week, the NY Times reported on a study by NYU and Yale that suggests that New York's fast food calorie labeling requirement may not be changing many consumers' ordering and eating behavior. Confoundingly, the Times reports:

Last Thursday, Food advocates, locavores and other interested participants from all over the country bubbled over with enthusiasm at the US Department of Agriculture’s first ever live Facebook chat.

The “Know Your Food, Know Your Farmer” team at the USDA hosted the interactive conversation which featured a streaming video question and answer format with Deputy Secretary of Agriculture, Kathleen Merrigan.

For about a half an hour, Merrigan gave thoughtful answers to questions on topics that ranged from farm to institution to restaurant supported agriculture and beginner farmer programs to the importance of local and regional agriculture to build wealth in rural communities and connect urban dwellers (and children) to where their food comes from.

Kareem Fahim had a fun piece in this weekend's NY Times wondering about the connection between registered Democrats and Fairway shoppers. (Scroll down to the last section for his mini-article.) Store manager Ed Burke is quoted as saying "There’s always someone outside. People for cats.
People for dogs. Someone is either shaking the cup or shaking the hand.” It's nice to think that good food leads to political engagement. Not everyone needs highfalutin produce, though. Just fresh fruits and veggies would be a tremendous improvement for many in our city. Imagine the change we could bring to bear if residents became more engaged in the political process and began to demand from policymakers ideas that led to greater access to affordable, fresh food.

Kim Severson does it again with a great article in last week's Dining section of the NY Times detailing the challengs faced by NYC public schools' food programs. Perhaps it's overly optimistic in an educaiton environment where schools struggle simply to prepare their students to perform well on standardized tests so they can advance to the next grade. But how great would it be to return to an older time and teach our kids about what it takes to make a meal. Or a thousand meals? There'd need to be some creating approaches to child-labor laws and health code requirements, but involving kids in making schools lunches has the opportunity to bridge resources and knowledge gaps on each side. Private or charger schools may be a place to test out such an approach.

In this Sunday's NY Times was yet another excellent article in the annals describing the dangers of a huge, inscrutible food system that combines (and recombines) scraps of meat from many different producers without holding them accountable for their wholesomeness. (Wait. That sounds strangely like the way mortgages were wontonly issued for over a decade!) Reporter Micheal Moss recounts the story of how a young Minnesota woman contracted E. coli from poorly handled ground beef sold by Cargil. It uses company and USDA documents to highlight the flaws in a system (or lack of a system) of regulation and consumer protection when it comes to the safety of meat. But beware the unintended consquences of more regulation on promoting a healthier food system.

Shane Crary-Ross shares what she learned in this post on the Green Fork.  In particular:

From the Green Fork Blog:

Recently, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) released draft permits that would require two of National Grid’s power plants to reduce the number of fish they kill each year. The public is asked to comment on these draft permits, with a deadline of late September for one plant and early October for the other.  In the upcoming months, the DEC will release permits for the other three plants.

School Lunch Talk presents Senator Gillibrand and NYC Council Speaker Quinn's plan for improving child nutrition here.

Last month, the University of Vermont's Honors College held a three-day food systems seminar for 30 university professors as part of its summer program for educators. They defined food systems, discussed the benefits and challenges of local and regional supply chains, visited a Burlington, VT farm, picked berries and cooked. On the second day, a full morning was devoted to farm-to-school food systems with a focus on New York City Public School Food case study and the Vermont school system's farm to school program.

Co-presenters on school food included: Chef Jorge Collazo, Executive Chef of New York City Public Schools Office of School Food, Megan Camp, of Shelburne (VT) Farms and FEED, the farm-to-school organization in Vermont, and myself, Lexi Van de Walle, editor of the Lighthearted Locavore blog, member of the NYC Alliance for the Child Nutrition Reauthorization, and presenter and organizer for the Slow Food Long Island's School Food Lunch Eat-in.