Living the American Green

Fresh from the Huffington Post oven…

Top 10 Recent Developments on Factory Farming and Vegetarianism

PhD applications are running my life these past few months, and another two to go – but a quick stop by LtAG to share two recent New York Times articles that corroborate my earlier musings on the importance of ramping up our venison consumption on the East Coast, especially when we can eat it instead of factory-produced meat with its astronomical carbon footprint and barbaric animal treatment standards. 

Christopher Walken is watching you not hunt for your own food.

One article is called “The Urban Deerslayer”, and deals with a Virginia man’s new entrepreneurial classes called Deer Hunting for Locavores – in which he teaches urban and suburban people committed to eating more responsibly how to hunt for their own food. The classes have been a huge success, as they play into the contemporary trend of being as close as possible to the food cycle that sustains us, while also having the feel-good element of helping to reduce some of the environmental pressure the deer are placing on Eastern forest ecosystems – not to mention combatting the unnerving trend that only about 22% of hunting today is for food.

The other article is an even better idea, in my opinion, than training trendy urbanites to be even more environmentally sensitive than they already are. This concerns a bill that was introduced last winter in Connecticut to allow hunters to cull additional deer if they donate the meat to food pantries struggling to meet their needs. As legislators put it, this proposal addressed three problems at once (and reminded us again that taking responsibility for our ecosystems is emphatically not some hippie cause that doesn’t help people): it combats the deer overpopulation and defoliation due to the destruction of their natural predators, it redresses the dire straits that many food charities are facing as their demand increases and their supply dwindles during the recession, and it helps to reduce the risks of Lyme Disease in the region. 

And it’s not just Connecticut. Ohio has a similar program to enroll hunters – who are often pejoratively treated as backwards or insensitive by urban folks – in the effort to help the poor outlast the economic downturn and help the land recover from its many mismanagements. And my prediction? We’re going to see more and more of these kinds of solutions on the ground, because communities need them, and everyone wins. Forget the dicks-in-hands dithering of Dems and Repubs on Capitol Hill – here we’re bringing together hunters and environmentalists, rugged individuals and community service charities….this is bipartisanship in practice. 

An Ethanol Molecule. You know... Science Stuff!

The other week, I posted a few things about Ethanol: how the lobby was holding up the Waxman Bill, etc.  As per my usual, it was one part educated conjecture, one part politics, one part research a six parts B.S. (essentially, the patented  LtAG 9 part system!)

After Mark made the fair point that numbers might be a good thing, I tried… but lets be honest — I don’t know much about “science”.  On the other hand, I know people who know things.  Some of them even know a lot of things.

One of those people, a Mr. James C, was kind enough to tell me a little ’bout Ethanol, and about why we shouldn’t let that ship sail off to the proverbial land of the elves just yet.  (Yeah, that was a LoTR reference.  So what?)

James works for a company makes enzymes for the corn ethanol industry, so he has a dog in this fight.  However, he also has “knowledge” of “science” stuff, so we have to suspect that he knows what he be talking bout.  The following is all his words, and let me tell you: they make sense.

“I have come to believe that while corn is not the ideal crop, it is the currently the only means to reduce emissions in cars on the road today. Even when we look slightly into the future, technology is still lacking. While electric cars will become more of a reality in the future, the battery technology is not here yet and they will likely be expensive when it is. Also, we have to think about where the electricity is coming from (ie, coal is worse that solar but solar costs a lot).  Funding into fuel cells has been cut by the DOE as it’s not really a feasible technology.  Algal biodiesel likely will never happen (it’d be great if it does but there are too many hurdles such as how to collect it). (Editors Note: Crap!  We were really jazzed about that!)   Finally, we can make more efficient cars, but they will still need liquid fuel likely in conjunction with electricity (hybrid electric).   (more…)

Not…that we’ve ever had one of these “daily” tips before. But no matter! Today is Earth Day and it’s a great to start (and realistically, finish) such an initiative.

Tip: For huge water savings over the long term (the next big thing, remember?), a phenomenally easy thing we can do is boil less water while cooking pasta. Some statistics for whcih I did virtually no fact checking suggest that Americans consumed 4.5 billion pounds of dry pasta and 500 million pounds of frozen or fresh pasta in 2000 alone. I personally probably consumed about 300 million of those pounds (I love me some pasta). And on those pasta packages, the recommended amount of water is 6-8 quarts per pound. Meaning….30-40 billion quarts of water used in 2000 to cook pasta in the USA.

i miss my italian family

Now. I’ve been trying a little experiment in the weeks leading up to Earth Day. Every time I cook pasta (which is, as a bachelor on a budget, frequently), I have been using incrementally less water, to try to find a sweet spot where the water savings are big without yielding sticky or undercooked pasta. And such a sweet spot exists, at about 3-4 quarts of water. Half of the recommended amount. And we’re not talking about sacrificing quality, here – I still end up pouring some down the sink when I drain it, and with just a little bit of oil the pasta doesn’t cling any more than usual.

But the water? A full 50% saved. On a national scale, this little experiment would save 15-20 billion quarts of water annually. And even though we don’t (yet) have to ration water this way, why not volunteer a bit of metaphorical belt-tightening? Doesn’t hurt the food, but it helps the lilies of the field (or something).

See kids? Math is fun! That or guilt inducing. Or fun!

This is what happens, Larry.  This is what happens when no one knows what a word means!

I don’t want to throw this table at the top of this post, but there is a big list of the words that can be defined under the rubric of “green”.  A big list.  This means, of course, that when people use that word, they are often speaking in cross purposes, in riddles, and in secondary meanings.

Food Yields are Dropping.

The Punjab, India

India is in trouble right now.  Large sections of the Bread Basket of Asia are experiencing lower and lower farming yields as they pesticide their soil to the point of no return.  This is the sort of bad news (though I think that it’s something environmentalists have seen coming) which Monsanto and like companies were certainly ignoring for long stretches.   (Much like SOMEone and his post on Monsanto!)  A future without a dramatic change in farming methods and an improvement in land stewardship is one likely to look a lot like the American Dust Bowl in the ’30s, and the Joads know how that worked out.  It goes with out saying that India’s food sources are not going to be able to hold up under all of the top soil blowing away.

A depressing and potentially horrific story in it’s own right, it also highlights for me how much Green-washing and Green Language needs a new set of words.  You know, copyrighted words.  That no one else can use.  ‘Cause that’s how language works.

The “Green Revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s meant that if farmers embraced chemicals and high-yield seeds, their fields would turn lush green with crops. (An official at the U.S. State Department, William Gaud, apparently coined the term in 1968.)

During the Cold War, the term also implied that if countries like India could stamp out hunger, the population would be less likely to foment a violent revolution and go communist. (more…)

So last week I was all grooving on Michelle Obama’s praise for the USDA’s support of community gardening…and this week, look what happens: ground has been broken on the White House’s own produce garden on the south lawn. 

In my mind the most exciting part of this is not that the Obamas will have even more organic food (arugula included) to shovel down their gullets. The exciting part is that Michelle plans to have area public schoolers invited to serve as gardening manpower. On LtAG we’ve been musing periodically on the value of getting kids especially involved in urban agriculture, not only for the Calvin’s-dad-esque character building but also to plant the seeds (yuk yuk yuk) for further involvement in community greening activities. And here’s the first lady echoing our sentiment, according to the NYT: ”My hope,” Mrs Obama said in an interview in her East Wing office, “is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”  Of particular interest to me, an agriculture education partnership between the White House and the public schools means that schools may actually start taking it seriously.

And to those naysayers who maintain that gardening is an elitist pastime, please note the startup cost of this executive garden with 55 kinds of produce: $200. Not even close to prohibitive if you’ve got an entire neighborhood ponying up – and it’ll pay itself back in a season when you’re not buying your tomatoes from California. The remaining question, though, is the time needed to tend a community garden…and that’s a very real concern in a society with ever-decreasing leisure time.

But the moral of this story? The Obamas are reading LtAG. You heard it here first, kids.

Watch this space.

We did an interesting interview on Brian Lehrer Live this week, particularly up thammuzzy’s alley: a food policy discussion with Ian Marvey, the Executive Director of Added Value and Herban Solutions inc., and Joe Holtz, General Manager and a co-founder of the Park Slope Food Co-op.  Cool folkz, and interesting subjectz.

Enjoy!

Lots of cool stuff in there, especially in terms of Added Value.  Dudes are doing it right down there.  I wish we had gotten to even more of a discussion of how to scale this scene up to the size it needs to be to affect more of the City on a daily basis, but when we did manage to touch on that, Ian had some cool ideas.  More to come: May 2nd conference on food in the city!

You remember that Applebees Jingle?  It used to get stuck in my head for DAYS.

Urban Farming

Bees! They're GOLD!

So, LtAG went to this thing.  It was called The Educated Eater, and it was held by the Council for the Environment of New York City.   It was on Saturday, and all the cool urban farmers were there.  It was a veritable who’s who of Green market stalwarts, including the director of the Greenmarket program (Michael Hurwitz), a guy who raises chickens in his backyard in Redhook, someone from Manhattan Borough President Stringer’s office and a Massachusetts native (pictured, graphically, right) who raises Bees on the roofs of New York.

The event was free free form, to put it mildly, with a lot of questions as we gained steam and not a lot of ideas (at least expressed aloud) about a cognizant theme holding us all together.  This hardly mattered, however, as the entire room was packed with people who were already super in the know, to the point that questions from the audience were just as likely to be fielded by the audience as by the panelists.  A tad overwhelming for the overworked/transient young Yipster like myself, but exciting none the less.

My eyes were opened to some easy “snack off the land” opportunities that don’t involve becoming a wholesale Urban farmer but do involve delicious eats and not much work.  Thammuzzy and I spent the entire time there trying to figure out what parts of it scaled to what we were able to accomplish in every day life.  I’m not the kind of dude to throw a beehive on the roof, and there’s no chance I own a building in this incarnation of life, so something like rooftop farming was cool to hear about but theoretical for my position in life. (more…)

Despite the danger of LtAG turning into a straight green foodie blog, this, from SLOG, is down right hysterical.

Drown your fears in PARMAGEDDON!

Some friends and I have a concept: the olive garden challenge, in which five of us try and plow through all 42 possible pasta and sauce combination in one sitting (for only 8.99 per!  And all the bread sticks you want!).  However, the addition of this (inevitable?) monstrosity to the menu would pretty much knock us out.  Or, mandate a 6th person.

-Thammuzzy-

Time for a bit of housekeeping here at LtAG. We recently gained a new member on the team: an upstanding twentysomething with upstanding ecological cred (in a former life he was a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History and wrote a college thesis on evolutionary theology – don’t ask), who is going to do his darnedest to bring some new perspectives to the table. This is probably going to involve some musing about food (a lot of musing on this topic gets done, believe you me), cooking, farming, fermenting things, the feasibility of locavory, freeganism, occasional apoplexy at the general dipshittiness of Monsanto: things along these lines.

In the interest of full disclosure, however, we have to note that this new writer, who (spoiler alert!) happens to be the writer of this post, is a vegetarian (well, lazy vegan) – thus invalidating the claim in our “About Us” page that we don’t hold truck with tofo and sprouts and other such namby-pamby secretly-socialist born-in-Indonesia freedom-hatin’ side-dishes. Today for lunch I made myself some sautéed brussel sprouts dusted with turmeric and ginger: Q.E.D.

But this raises an important question – why in fact is there such a well-worn association of environmental concern with the renunciation of tasty animals? I’ve heard it said by some of my more hardcore Veg associates that it’s a contradiction in terms to be a meat-eating environmentalist. I certainly see their point. But I would prefer to leave the jury out on that one, and I don’t go in for guilt-tripping as an effective mode of dialogue. I suppose it’s a running question of mine, asked in genuine and unselfish curiosity (as I have no real interest in going back): how can the production and consumption of animal products be made a sustainable practice?

More on this later, we promise. We’ll figure something out for y’all. Be cool, cats and kittens – we got this.