The Food Chain

Ep. 1362: Bonders Metropolitan Bees

Emily Bonder, Apiarist & Educator, Santa Cruz Bee Company

(metropolitan bee keeping, apiarists, honey bees)

They say bees are responsible for one-third of every bite of food we eat.  Given how much we love to eat, and how much we love to hear the buzzing of bees, we simply must ask:

How does one keep bees in the city?

We all know how important honeybees are to the productivity of natural and man-made food chains. 

And so, when we look about the garden and see fewer and fewer bees every year, we get to wondering what we will do for food should all the bees disappear.

Of course, there would still be some pollinators buzzing or crawling about, but would they be sufficient to feed all us very hungry people? 

Having hosted a number of feature stories about bees on the Food Chain Radio Podcast, I have become attentive to their numbers as they buzz about the garden.  And though I have not taken a formal census, I do believe there are fewer and fewer bees in the garden.

The wife and I recently decided there is one way to allay fears about bees disappearing, and that is to become metropolitan beekeepers.  Today we take the first step in that direction by asking:

How does one keep bees in the city?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1361: Driscoll's - Barons of Berries?

Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry

(Food industry consolidation, Driscoll's Berries,  

Across the landscape of American agriculture, one can see where there were many, there are now few.  What we see leads us to ask:

Is it better to have a few big farms or many small farms?

The Food Chain Radio Show & Podcast with Michael Olson hosts Austin Frerick, Author of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry, for a conversation about the consolidation of the nation’s food chain into the hands of a few.

Topics include how the share-cropping of the antebellum South has been adopted by industrial agriculture; how share-cropping has been used to control production and market share; and whether big successful businesses, like the Driscoll’s berry company, are “robber barons.” 

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

Radio Host:  www.santacruzvoice.com

 

 

Ep. 1360: Maizie's Marketing Magic

Maisie Ganzler, Chief Strategy and Brand Officer Bon Appetit Management Company & Author, You Can’t Market Manure at Lunchtime  

(Food marketing, advertising and public relations)

He who has a thing to sell, and goes and whispers in a well, is not so apt to get the dollars, as she who climbs a tree and hollers!    And so we ask:

How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food?

Much of our food now comes from far, far away, where it was grown, processed and packaged with mysterious technologies by complete strangers.  Therefore when it comes to knowing what we should buy to eat, and what we should not buy, we city people are pretty much babes-in-the-woods. 

As babes-in-the-woods, we need a mother to tell us what in all those colorful plastic bags that line the grocers’ shelves, we should buy and eat, or not buy and eat.  Trouble is, everyone wants to be our mother, and so we babes-in-the-woods are continually assaulted with messages that say “Buy this!… at this… “No, this is better than that, so buy this!” …

With all those voices out there telling us what to eat, who should we babes-in-the-woods trust to be our mother?  And so today we pause to ask: 

How does one win the minds and dollars of those who eat food?

Ep. 1359: Local Versus Natural

Fred Provenza, Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Ecology,  Utah State University & Author of Nourishment: What animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Food Nutrition and Labeling)

The supply chain that feeds our food chain now extends across the country and around the world.  Given what we see happening across our country, and around the world, we simply must ask:  

Can we go back home again with food?

I just returned from attending Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim, which bills itself as the having the largest collection of natural, organic and conscious food products available anywhere.

It took me 6 hours to hike the 7 or 8 football field-sized exhibition rooms filled with various foods and supplements.  Most all of the foods were available for tasting, and the 60,000 foodies in attendance were eating away at them.

But I was on a mission and so did not stop to taste many of those samples – only a few.  The first was some granola infused with Earl Gray Tea.  I guess the idea was to wake myself up and get fed in one bite!

My mission at the Natural Foods Expo, was to find natural foods that had a good story to tell.  Though I did find a few good stories, I did not find many natural foods.  What I did find were what seemed to be thousands of ultra-processed foods in brightly colored packages.  

 

Michael Olson’s “natural” foods are the plants one forages or the animals one hunts in nature.  Next in line are the real foods, grown from real soil, by real farmers.  Last in line are ultra-processed foods grown with the industrial technologies of energy-intensive agriculture – and they are the foods that come with in brightly-colored packages with lots of promises. 

Given that the supply chain that now feeds our food chain extends across the country and around the world, and given what we see in the news of our country and the world, we simply must pause to ask:

Can we go back home again with food?

Connect:  www.metrofarm.com

 

 

Ep. 1358: Meadowlark - The Canary of the Prairie

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In Company of Meadowlarks

(Environmental Degradation and the Vanishing of Song birds)

 

Meadowlarks are the canaries of the prairie.  Where one hears their song, its safe to go out onto the prairie.  But where the meadlark’s song is no longer heard, there is danger on the prairie.  And so we ask:  

Can people get enough to eat if canaries sing?

Having grown up on that narrow slice of geography that lies between the peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the grasslands of the high prairie, I learned at a very early age to take joy at the song of the meadowlark. 

  The yellow-breasted robin-sized bird’s song could be heard from a great distance, when conditions allowed, and whenever I heard that song it would bring a moment of great joy to whatever I happened to be doing at the time.  I would often try to whistle the song right back, though it did take a wet whistle to even come close.

However, the song of the meadowlark is becoming increasingly rare for the same reason buffalo no longer eat the prairie grasses in any significant number.  People and their agriculture have moved onto the prairie, and meadowlarks ­– and many of their feathered kindred – have been forced to move out, thus portending that “silent spring” Rachel Carson promised. And so the canary of the prairie leads us to ask:

Can people grow enough food for themselves and allow birds to sing?

 

Contact:  www.metrofarm.com

 

Ep. 1357: Yellowstone's Crows of Winter

John Marzluff, Emeritus Professor of Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Author of In the Company of Crows and Ravens

(Animal Nutrition and Environment)

Yellowstone Park in winter is a cruel place for the wildlife that can no longer endure its cold, snow and hunger.  And yet what is cruel for some can be a blessing for the corvids of Yellowstone’s winter   And so we ask:  

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?

There was a stretch of years when wife Marlene and I would sneak off to Cooke City, Montana, for some cross country skiing.  In winter, Cooke is a snowbound little town at the very end of the only open road through Yellowstone Park. 

Though Cooke City is well known among snowmobilers for its access to the stunningly beautiful high country, snowmobilers and cross-country skiers are not of a kind.  Our aim, as skiers, was Yellowstone’s Lamar River Valley, which is, thankfully, off limits to the noisy, smelly snowmobiles.

The Lamar Valley is the wintering grounds for many of Yellowstone’s animal populations.  And our cross country skis allowed us to fly over the surface of snow packs the animals had to plow their way through.  We were not the only ones flying about the Lamar with such abandon.  So, too, were the corvids – Yellowstone’s black birds on white snow.

Yellowstone’s winter is a cruel time for the animals that can no longer survive the cold, snow and lack of food.  But from what we saw, while flying over the snowpacked landscape, was that winter was treating crows and ravens with lots of opportunity to feast, and their feasting often sounded as raucous as an out-of-bounds wedding celebration. 

From watching their feasting, and from watching them watch us as we flew across the landscape, we came to see corvids as being winners of Yellowstone’s season of losing.  And we wondered:

Can anyone love the black birds of Yellowstone’s white winter?

Ep. 1356: Carnivore, Herbivore or Omnivore?

Fred Provenza, Emeritus Professor of Behavioral Ecology at Utah State University, Author of Nourtishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Animal and Human Natural Nutrition)

One person’s faith allows them to eat anything, but another, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables. The one who eats everything must not treat with contempt the one who does not, and the one who does not eat everything must not judge the one who does, for God has accepted them.

Carnivore, herbivore or omnivore?

Back in the day…  Way back in the day… We were all hunters and gatherers.  That is to say, we hunted down and gathered up whatever nature had to offer, when nature wanted to offer it.

Then we got smart, and figured out how to manage the growth and development of plants.  That cleverness allowed us to corral plants and animals, and live in cities.

Today we hunt and gather foods grown and packaged thousands of miles away.  And we don’t even need mother nature nor her unpredictable offerings.  Today we can just swing by a convenience store, grab a plastic bag of something that tastes good, and walk out the door.

Given all this extra time we now have, we have the opportunity to decide how we should go about this business of eating, and often our discussion become very heated.  Those heated discussions lead us to ask…

Carnivore, herbivore or omnivore?

Ep. 1355: A Taste of Place

Fred Provenza, Author, Nourishment:  What Animals Can Teach Us About Rediscovering Our Nutritional Wisdom

(Animal & Human Environmental Nutrition)

Animals learn what to eat, and what not to eat, from their mothers – before they are born.  It is a taste they pick up in utero, as the mother eats her way across the landscape.  If such is the case, we wonder: 

What tastes are American mothers teaching their children to desire?

Researchers believe that humans have been using plants as medicine for over 1,650,000 years.  Birds, fish, insects, and other mammals are also known to self-medicate with plants when experiencing illness. 

In the last hundred years or so, we humans began industrializing our food chain, and now we no longer rely on plants to be our principal source of medicine.  And why should we?  After all, the grocers’ shelves are filled with potions and notions that claim to be able to cure just about every malady.  And so today we are free to roam the range all day, without having to eat a single plant.  

But then, we wonder:  Are we missing something by turning our backs on plants?  Is there some kind of magic that occurs when earth, sky and water come together to present us with a plant?  And we wonder: 

What tastes are American mothers teaching their children to desire?