they aren’t “super”markets, they’re “corn”markets

Even though it may seem contradictory to what “see” in the market, a huge percentage of our farming is commodity farming, specifically corn farming. In fact, when people talk about farms being subsidized, it is not all farms, it is only commodity farms (soy, cotton, wheat, and corn).

Corn is the biggest. As we know it is used as a sweetener and an ethanol, but did you know it goes into the box that your cereal is in? And, by the way, the cereal, too? In fact, corn is in everything. There is not one aisle, except ironically the produce aisle, where you do not see corn on a daily basis.

Even your meat.

What? You think I am insane, don’t you?

Some brief history… in the past, our livestock was raised eating grass, or worms, or our extra food. It benefits us for them to eat this way. Take the cow, for example. Grass is an amazing plant high in fiber and nutrients, like omega oils. We want those nutrients but it is nearly impossible for us to digest grass to get those things out. The cow has evolved over centuries to be ruminants just to be able to digest this food. The nutrients are absorbed into its cell tissue, we eat the cow, we get nutrition that we would otherwise have no access to. It is the circle of life. Cows were healthy walking around all day long, munching on clover, not standing in its own waste.

And then, demand for cow went up and farmers needed to get it raised, killed and out to market in the shortest time possible. Grass became a limitation and so they started working with the surplus from the corn growers and gave that to the cattle. But, they aren’t designed to eat the corn. So they get sick… hence, an increase in antibiotics. Not to mention that they are now contained, standing in inches deep of their own fecal material, so they need even more antibiotics.

Oooh… and, here’s a fun fact. Did you know that grass fed cattle does not have “marbling”? That this is a consequence of grain/corn fed cattle, and as a result ranchers heavily marketed to the USDA to make “marbling” a positive quality and a rating system, when in fact it is a sign of a diseased animal. Yum.

Why am I bringing this up? I just read an interesting article from some scientists out of Hawaii that studied the chemical composition of food from restaurants all over the country.

“The pair found that 100% of the chicken in these three chains had been reared on corn alone. Some 93% of the beef came from cows that had been fed a corn-only diet.” And, “the team was even able to determine what type of oil the fries had been cooked in – a mixture of vegetable oils at McDonald’s and Burger King, corn oil at Wendy’s. In fact, of 160 products purchased at Wendy’s, the researchers did not find a single one without some corn component.”

One conclusion: …notes that government subsidies that favour corn have encouraged pesticide- and fertiliser-intensive monoculture farming in the US. “We are using corn in ways that are completely unsustainable,” says Hird.

And, I hope he doesn’t mind, but I also really liked this comment:
The problems with corn also include nitrogen fertilizer runoff that has been cited in several scientific reports and a number of news articles as causing expanding dead zones off the USA Gulf Coast and in the Atlantic. What should be done for animal feed is turning to alfalfa and related legumes with some soybean meals as soybeans also give oil perhaps to be used as fuel or made into a butter. Soybean milk substitutes would avoid cows that belch methane.

But the one certain step needed is to forget biofuels. Why? Because they are only a carbon dioxide recycling process that removes not one carbon atom from the balance of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere. We need to get a shift for hydrogen, which seems to be getting ignored especially by big energy tangled with big oil that fears several trillion dollars in refineries and oil field investments will be wiped out. We should also be expanding windmills for electricity as they would be recovering some of the energy lost by burning fossil fuels causing global warming.

Dr. J.Singmaster, Fremont, CA, USA

“Vote with your fork. You get three votes a day.” – Michael Pollan, Food Fight

HERE is the article

slow down, you move to fast

I really wanted to go to Slow Food Nation this weekend in San Francisco. But for whatever reasons, it just didn’t happen.

For those of you who don’t know, Slow Food Nation was created to organize the first-ever American collaborative gathering to unite the growing sustainable food movement and introduce thousands of people to food that is good, clean and fair. The organization is dedicated to creating a framework for deeper environmental connection to our food and aims to inspire and empower Americans to build a food system that is sustainable, healthy and delicious. It was started by Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse, in Berkeley, and one of the first US chefs to create a restaurant around sustainable eating.

If you have been a frequent reader to this site, then you know this cause is near and dear to my heart. One phenomenal thing that has come out of this event is the “Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture”. This is a twelve point plan for remaking the Federal Farm Bill. If you could take the time, I would love it if you could go here and sign it.

Something needs to be done about our current food crisis in this country. I feel this is an amazing first step.

oh my ears!

I am not sure where to start with the discussion of food, because this is the issue I am the most passionate. I feel this subject is inextricably linked to issues with the environment and our economy, and possibly the leader in creating our future demise.

Let’s start with the substance that is a very close second to oil as a commodity that we are addicted to… High Fructose Corn Syrup.

Simply, HFCS is a sugar that is added to almost every single food item that is manufactured. The obvious is sodas, cookies, and chocolate. The not so obvious is ketchup, pretzels, and green tea…. oh yes, you bottled green tea drinkers. You think it’s healthy? READ LABELS!!!

HFCS is made by converting corn kernels into corn starch, and then through the additional of enzymes and a chromatography step it is converted from glucose into a highly concentrated fructose. Yum. Oh, and if you are a consumer that tries to avoid genetically modified food… you might want to stay away from HFCS… cause two of the three enzymes the manufacturers use are GMO. (This brings up a much larger discussion of GMO food, which 80% of the corn industry is made from GMO seeds by Mansanto. But that deserves its own discussion, later.)

There are numerous health issues affiliated with HFCS. First off, HFCS is blamed by most people in the health professional to be the major cause of obesity. One theory being that your liver, not knowing what to do with this engineered product, turns the fructose into fat. Another issue is that it doesn’t switch the trigger in your body that tells you that you are full. So, you can drink a liter bottle of soda, which is the caloric equivalent of a Thanksgiving dinner, not feel full and so you continue to consume even more food. Research has also found a direct link between fructose and higher levels of diabetes and high cholesterol. I think, however, the most shocking information is that, last year, HFCS surpassed alcohol as the leading cause of cirrhosis of the liver. SURPASSED.

Look…. you would no sooner put strychnine in your body because of the effects and resulting death… it just happens quicker. However, the general population has no problem guzzling it down as soda or bread or ketchup or fruit juice, creating the same effect… death… it just takes longer.

Why did HFCS become the commodity it is? It has a long history starting with a Farm Bill, subsidizing corn, in the 80’s which also coincided with self imposed limitations of importing sugar. Essentially we have created a system in which the cost of importing sugar is artificially high, and the price of corn is artificially low. In addition, we have an abundance of corn. I’m sure some person who is a part of the “powers that be” realized that, because of the overabundance, we were subsidizing a product that we inevitably threw away. Why don’t we do something with it? Let’s make a fake sweetener out of it, put it EVERYTHING, and make some money back.

Of course, the farmers see none of the reward. It costs $3.20 to make a bushel of corn. This includes seed cost, equipment, labor, etc. The farmer makes back $2.20 on that same bushel. This creates another issue affecting the environment. Because of the high cost, low reward, it is only beneficial to the farmer to have huge plots of land. This results in having to buy huge pieces of equipment that burn fossil fuel. In addition, as any good farmer knows, soil needs turn over. It doesn’t do well with one crop, over and over and over again. The corn industry is creating large areas of land that are dead zones. The soil cannot grow food. Without the plants, there are no insects, without the insects there are no birds and so on and so on and so on. Currently, it is estimated that each American has access to 1.2 acres of cultivated food per year. Most scientists estimate that in 5 years…. really let this sink in…. 5 YEARS… each American will only have access to 0.6 cultivated acres. Half of what we have now, in 5 years!! (I bet most of you reading this have plans for five years that you think are reasonable expectations. Do you want to rethink your plan?) The reason behind the 50% decrease in food… more farms converting to industrialized crops like corn, soybean, and canola combined with an ever increasing population.

You think that’s bad…..

Here’s an ironic twist. As discussed, it is making us sick. But because YOUR tax dollars are subsidizing the corn industry, we don’t have the tax dollars to supplement the health care which is needed because we are consuming so much HFCS and getting fat and sick.

Links:
The Future of Food
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
The End of Food by Paul Roberts
Mansanto Watch