The Food Chain

Mike Keller, Michael A. Keller Associates

Turning ice into hydrogen fuel

They say, if we can get to the South Pole of the Moon, we can convert some of the frozen water we find there into rocket fuel that will take us on to the next best place.  That leads us to ask: 

Can hydrogen be farmed to fuel our future?

Topics include the prospects of turning water into rocket fuel; the difference between blue and green hydrogen; and how hydrogen might be used to clean the environment and fuel the economy.

 

contact:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

TOM BROZ, FARMER OF THE YEAR, LIFE EARTH FARM  

Community Supported Agriculture

Community is where everybody works together today to ensure that everybody can eat tomorrow.  This thought leads us to ask:

How does one farm community?

A while ago, I had a consulting contract on the island nation of Cyprus.  The task was to find a crop with an economy sufficient to repopulate an agricultural plateau near the village of Akourdahleia, that had been depopulated by the jobs available in coastal casinos.

As I strolled the plateau with my hosts we came upon a village of Greeks happily harvesting their grapes across the way.  Though they were too far away to hear what was being said, we could easily hear their laughter and sense their joy at being engaged at the task at hand.  It was a living picture straight out of the Bible!  “This,” my host said, “is what we want to bring back to Cyprus.”

I recently heard that same laughter and sensed that same joy while strolling the grounds of Live Earth Farm in Watsonville, California, and have been endeavoring to capture its essence with a three-part Food Chain series on what I call “Contrary Farming.”  By contrary, I simply mean in opposition to the convention of the day.

The first show in the series, “Farming Children,” featured Jessica Ridgeway and the Farm Discovery Program, which brings children – many children – to the farm so they can reach down to the earth and harvest a living food.

The second show, “Farming Nature,” featured Jo Ann Baumgartner from Wild Farm Alliance and Sam Earnshaw from Hedgerows Unlimited, who, like modern day Johnny Appleseeds, travel around the countryside to bring nature, and her wildlife, back to the farm.

As you can see, both of these shows feature a contrariness to the industrial model of farming that makes one smile.  And both also find a home in today’s show, “Farming Community,” in which we will ask:

How does one farm community?

contact: www.metrofarm.com

 

 

JO ANN BAUMGARTNER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WILD FARM ALLIANCE  &

SAM EARNSHAW, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HEDGEROWS UNLIMITED 

 

When an outbreak of Ecoli killed three people and sickened 200 others a couple of decades ago, those in charge of food safety began discouraging the existence of wildlife on farms. This leads us to ask:

Should wild life be allowed back on farms?

Back in 2006, a multistate outbreak of E. Coli O157:H7 killed three and sickened an additional 202. The source of that E. Coli was found to be spinach from California, and the cause was believed to be contamination from the spinach farm.

Consumers stopped buying the spinach, as well as other leafy green produce, and so growers had to leave their precious greens to go to seed in the fields.

Though the contaminated spinach came from one grower, the entire leafy greens industry suffered its consequences.  As a result of their suffering, and threats from the government, growers got together and formed the California Leafy Green Marketing Agreement, which in effect, laid down the law on how member growers could tend to their leafy greens.

Consequent to the implementation of the Agreement, growers began fencing off their fields from all the wild things in nature that might harbor E Coli.  Today, many of those farms are as barren of extraneous life as can be made possible.  No deer… no skunks… no birds… no anything!

But wait… Not everyone thinks that farms need to be without life.  In fact, some point in the other direction and claim that farms should foster the growth of as much life as possible.  And these contrarians lead us to ask:

Should wild life be allowed back on farms?

JESSICA RIDGEWAY, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FARM DISCOVERY AT LIVE EARTH

When people moved off the farm into the city, they took their children with them.  What children find on the streets of the city does not appear to bode well for their future nor the future of country.  And so we ask…

How can we lead children back to the farm?

I had the good fortune to having lived on the grandparents’ Montana farm when very young.  I still remember, to this day, driving my first working tractor at the age of six.  It wasn’t anything special.  Grandfather Karl hoisted me up into the seat, put the tractor in gear, and said, “I’ll meet you at the end of the field.”

Every living thing on the grandparents’ farm had a job to do, and nobody– nor anything– got by without doing the work.  It was not a policy laid down by the grandparents, who owned the farm.  It was just life.  If one did not work, one did not eat.  It was true for the people, the animals and the plants in the fields. We all participated in the business of life.

Yesterday I had the privilege of accompanying a couple of Montana boys– Braxton, nine, and Cohan, six–to their first major league baseball game in the big city.  Their enthusiasm for the game was infectious, and all who were seated around them in the stadium took joy in their excitement, especially when the six-year-old won the scramble for a foul ball.

As I enjoyed the boy’s enthusiasm, I wondered how that enthusiasm would be met by life in the city.  On the farm enthusiasm and love of living were always well nurtured by the business of life.  But what in the city can manage and give guidance to the enthusiasm of young boys and girls?    

Not finding a ready answer, I ask…

How can we lead children back to the farm?

contact: www.metrofarm.com

 

 

DR. JOHN FAGAN, HEALTH RESEARCH INSTITUTE LABS 

There are many ways in which industrialization has served to make food cheap.  One way is to subvert the growth of natural competitors, like weeds, with herbicides, like glyphosate.  This leads us to ask…

What happens to the chemicals after they have been used to made food cheap?

In the 1930s, people began the migration from the farm into the city.   Those farmers who were left on the farm began growing food with money, which they used to buy equipment and chemicals to do the work that people once did.

Thus it became cheaper to grow food with money, than with people.

This industrialization of the food chain has proceeded without pause ever since, and now the world is literally drenched in the agricultural chemicals used to grow food. 

Broadly speaking, two kinds of chemicals are used to grow food:  fertilizers and pesticides.  

Fertilizers provide the nutrient elements plants require to grow and develop, and include the macronutrients nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.   

Pesticides provide farmers with the ability to fight off natural competitors for the growth and development of their crops, and include herbicides that kill weeds, fungicides that fight off diseases, insecticides that kill insects, and desiccants that manage growth.

The herbicide glyphosate, which travels under the trade name Roundup, is one of the most used chemicals in agriculture.  

• Since 1974, 18.9 billion pounds of glyphosate has been sprayed upon the World.
• Use of glyphosate has increased 15-fold since the introduction of crops genetically modified to withstand glyphosate.

That our world is literally drenched in a chemical that the World Health Organization claims is a “probable cause of cancer,” leads us to ask:

What happens to the chemicals after they have made food cheap?

Ken Kimes & Sandra Ward, New Natives, Microgreens

It is really simple:  Sow some uncontaminated seeds in organic soil.  Add clean water, fresh air and sunshine.  Then enjoy eating the maximum nutrition of microgreens.  This leads us to ask: 

If it really is this simple, why doesn’t everybody eat microgreens?

It seems as though we are running out of food.  That is not to say that we are running out of things to eat.  No! On the contrary, there are many things to eat, and they are cheap, too!

And yet, so many of those things we are being offered in brightly colored packages for so little money have very little food in them.  In fact, one of the ways they make food cheap is to take the food out of it and put it in a fancy package.

And so we eat the cheap food because its cheap and easy.  And yet when we do our bodies cry out for more nutrition.  So we eat more cheap food and yet our bodies still cry out for more, nutrition.  So we eat more cheap food, and our bodies rebel by storing up fat, and breaking down.

Then one day we wake up to the fact that cheap food isn’t!  What to do?

One thing to do is to turn to the essential simplicity of the maximum nutrition we can get from microgreens. 

How simple?  Sow some uncontaminated seeds in organic soil.  Add clean water, fresh air and sunshine.  Then harvest the sprouted seeds and enjoy eating the maximum nutrition of microgreens. 

 

Tending to California's Golden Agriculture

Karen Ross, California's Secretary of Agriculture

Begin with a Mediterranean climate; add a long range of mountains to collect and store winter’s precipitation; carve out a deep valley at the foot of those mountains, then add to that valley rich, alluvial soils.

It is a fact, the nation’s Golden State was designed and built for agriculture.

Stand back and have a look:  California’s 77,000 farms and ranches produce nearly $50 billion dollars of revenue a year, and that is nearly double the revenue produced by #2 Iowa.   The state’s farmers and ranchers grow more than 400 commodities, including a huge percentage of the nation’s fruits, vegetables and nuts. 

Though agriculture has done its part in maintaining California’s golden glow, it must now compete with many other interests for the state’s resources.  And this competition leads many to ask:

How can California farmers and ranchers keep growing the gold?

Guest:  Chef & Restaurateur India Jozseph Schultz

His India Joze restaurant was the West Coast capital of fusion food-ism.  The taste that lingers of that fusion leads one to ask Jozseph Schultz: 

How can one cook East in the West so the hungry return for more?

Topics include how India Joze served an ever-changing menu of the world’s spicy foods in a commercial restaurant; how that restaurant become a cultural hotspot; and how a restaurant that fuses so many culinary traditions with so many cultural traditions can survive as a business.