An open letter to Paula Crossfield at Civil Eats.
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 06/12/2009 - 5:18pm.
Hello, Ms Crossfield.
I read your review of the movie, Food, Inc., which I gather is a Michael Moore-style documentary of the food industry. Which, to me, means it's a gloves-off representation of the film producer's point of view. I haven't seen the movie, and maybe my characterization is incorrect. And maybe the film is thoroughly accurate and unslanted. That's what a good documentary should be, I think. Like The Parrots of Telegraph Hill. That's a documentary worth watching.
(Ms Crossfield is managing editor of Civil Eats, a website about food issues.)
In your review you say that the movie has Big Ag "shuddering," and I'm curious about something. How do you define "Big Ag?" And how do they shudder?
I write for Lancaster Farming newspaper, and blog daily on their website (click AgScene for the blog). Lancaster Farming is a weekly publication with some 55,000 mostly farmer readers.
I have a feeling that 90 percent plus of our readers would fall into your Big Ag category. Including some of our Amish readers. And probably close to 100 percent of them depend on Big Ag companies (Sauder's Eggs, Pennfield Feeds, P.L. Rohrer & Brothers, Inc., Messick's Equipment, to name a few local examples), to produce and market crops and livestock.
I've never farmed, but in several decades of dealing with farmers, their suppliers, marketers, support people, I have yet to meet a truly evil person, whether that person worked for Monsanto, or was someone selling strawberries from a table by the road.
The criticism I've been reading lately of the way our food system works - and it was the sense I got from your review - is that the system is evil, and that it's dominated by evil people with evil intentions whose only purpose in life is to rake in mind-numbing profits. Damn the consumers. Damn the environment. Animals? Nothing but vegetables with legs. Damn the animals. Damn the people who don't like us. Show me the money. SHOW ME THE MONEY!
Maybe that's the way it really is. Maybe Food, Inc. makes a compelling case for its point of view. From your review, I'm pretty sure you were convinced.
I plan to keep an eye out for the movie and will watch it as soon as I can.
I'll be looking for evil.
Not that I'm in the habit of watching dirty movies.
Food, Inc., hits movie theaters this week, I think, and it is said to be a withering indictment of the way Americans produce, market and consume their daily bread with all its bug parts, fecal matter and cancer-causing chemical contaminants. I want to see the movie, but I couldn't find it playing this week or next in an area around my home of 1,256 square miles. Yes, I really do want to see the movie, and yes, I will try to go in and come out with an open mind. When its out on DVD - which may be about 30 seconds after its general release - I'll put it into my DVD player, pop some toxic popcorn, eat a hunk of hormonally loaded cheese and try not to breathe the air, because we've got a farmer out back and who knows what he's up to. If the movie's showing near you, go see it. Meantime, you can read a couple of stories about it in this week's edition of Lancaster Farming.
I'll let you know when my review's ready.
This guy needs to work on a rap routine. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQHLbiFUVWU
Science discovers what every kid knows...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 06/11/2009 - 6:09pm.
As entertainment, science is some of the best - and most expensive fun we can have with our collective money (i.e., taxes). The current issue of Science Magazine, which is published by the American Association of Science has, for example, of how a seed from a tree in your front yard can sprout a maple seedling in a fencerow next to your rented ground three miles down the road.
Well, it seems that maple "whirlybirds," to use their technical name, start spinning as they fall from the tree. In spinning, they create tornado-like vortexes that give them more lift than airplane wings, helicopter wings or just about any other manmade device. The same kinds of vortexes are found in the wings of bats and hovering insects.
The researchers who studied the maple seeds used oversized models of whirlybirds spinning through a solution of glass beads suspended in oil, and then used real whirlies falling through a smoke chamber. Are there practical applications to finding out how how whirlybirds generate lift?
Improved helicopter blades and better parachutes and two possibilities.
And you might come up with some more thoughts after you watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ce2HUKizMTw
What happens in Lancaster County, stays in Lancaster County. At least that's what Harry Campbell would like to see when it comes to chicken manure. With the help of an $800,000 grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Federation, chicken manure from some of the county's laying hens has been composted by Terra Gro, a Peach Bottom firm, into a dark, fluffy, nearly odorless nutrient-rich soil amendment. Because the compost stays in place, it does not flow to the Chesapeake Bay. This is a sign of hope for the Pennsylvania office of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, where Campbell works as a scientist. A story about the composting project appears in the Ag Innovations section of Lancaster Farming due in your mailbox Saturday.
A guest blog. (Because I chickened out on this one.)
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 2:57pm.
I don't do that anymore, not with the water, not with milk. My water comes from a tap or, in an extreme emergency, from an insanely priced $1.69 bottle. My daily quart of milk is always pasteurized. It's not homogenized only because its skim. The other day an item touting the superior benefits of raw milk showed up on the Huffington Post, which you can read here: I thought it would make good fodder for my blog, but I didn't quite feel enough passion to form an adequate response. Not so my fellow Lancaster Farming staffer, Charlene Shupp-Espenshade, an actual dairy farmer. Here was her take on the topic, in an email circulated 'round the office: While I like raw milk, that list is a pile of well... you know what. The fact that they say raw milk does not make you sick - they must not be from California, where people are suing a raw milk dairy farmer because their daughter died from a bad bug that was in the farm's raw milk. And we had a nasty environmental mastitis bug on the farm last year and we broke from drinking raw milk until we resolved it. Food keeps you alive. It can also kill you. What's a government to do? Pass some laws. Write some regulations. That makes sense, actually. But, says Brian Snyder, of the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture, there has to be some commonsense philosophy guiding the regulators. He delivers some plain talk about food safety in an opinion piece in our current edition. Your next cow dog probably won't be a Rottie...
Raw milk is a hot button for farmers who do or do not produce it, and for consumers who do or do not drink it. I drank raw milk now and again growing up. And I put my face directly into cold, clear springs (one of which had a resident lizard), and occasionally sipped from mountain streams when I was on a hike and my canteen went dry.
Hey guys,And I would like to live wherever there is no inspection for dairy farms. Last I checked we have at least two a year, but can have up to four (federal, state, co-op, milk marketing board, etc.). And it's hard as heck to pass. And that's IF you don't have a quality problem, then the co-op/dairy is camped out with you until it's resolved. If it's not resolved, they can refuse your milk and you are forced to dump.
Sorry - soapbox here - but you can tell the (Huffington Post) editor never farmed.
Raw milk does not make milk better. To get quality milk - raw or pasteurized - you need a farmer who takes good care of his cows.
Charlene Shupp-Espenshade
Special Sections Editor
Lancaster Farming
Are we missing something here?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 06/09/2009 - 2:45pm.
Switchgrass
What's seven feet tall and seemed like a slam-dunk for alternative energy five years ago? If you answered "LeBron Switchgrass," relax and pour yourself a glass of organic mint tea. Switchgrass, long the darling of conservation projects for its deep-rooted, hardy and self-replenishing ways, created a small torrent of news and commentary a few years back, but it seems like just a dribble, now.
Switchgrass was being touted as a feedstock for cellulosic ethanol plants by none other than President George W. Bush, who mentioned it in his January, 2006, state of the union address. There were magazine and newspaper articles, TV segments and National Public Radio spots. Everybody was high on switchgrass.
And it's a fantastic plant, whether it's grown for fuel, fiber, forage or as a way to stop soil erosion. Some of the enthusiasm for switchgrass reminded me of Miles Fry in the early 1970s. A Lancaster County farmer and conservationist, Fry was convinced that hybrid poplars, already an important conservation tool, could produce homegrown fuel for America. I interviewed Fry, did a story for Lancaster Farming and wondered over the years, if his vision would ever take hold.
It didn't. But Fry's descendants still operate Frysville Farms and they still offer hybrid poplar seedlings. You can buy some next spring if you want to start your own energy farm.
I don't know if hybrid poplars represent a missed opportunity or not. How would our country look today if we had been more diligent about alternative energy sources when Miles Fry was filling his pickup with gas at 35 cents a gallon?
Who knows? Would our air be cleaner? Would we have had a more deeply rooted prosperity? Would we have waged war in the Middle East? Would we be concerned about global warming?
By not following up on Fry's vision, did we have a reaction to an inaction, like that other butterfly in Bolivia? The one that created a tornado in Kansas by not fluttering his wings? Who knows?
I'm starting to ask myself the same questions about switchgrass and other cellulosic feedstocks. Are we letting an important opportunity slip through our fingers? Who knows?
If you'd like to know more about switchgrass, there is tons of material on the Web. All you have to do is google "switchgrass 2005."
A legal battle by mostly Amish farmers to establish an ag security area for their Lancaster County farms may or may not be over. The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court recently ruled in favor of the 12 farmers in East Lampeter Township who want to include their farms in an ag security area. But the township supervisors haven't decided whether or not to appeal. The story of the case was reported by Ryan Robinson, writing in the Lancaster New Era and reprinted in our current edition. The New Era and Lancaster Farming are both owned by Lancaster Newspapers, Inc.
A day in the life of Paris Hilton's pet pig. I don't know about you, but I found this much more interesting than any footage I've ever seen of Paris herself. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QXiyqKWmJY
Pitchfork philosophy...Forgive your enemies. It messes with their heads.
Gardening at Longwood can be s-o-o-o tough...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 06/08/2009 - 2:36pm.
Five fellows in the University of Delaware's Longwood Graduate Program took off last Monday for a three-week learning tour of public horticulture institutions in China. The group includes two people from the Lancaster Farming readership area - Shari Edelson was working as a curator intern at the Swarthmore College Scott Arboretum in Swarthmore before taking off to China, and Keelin Purcell of Delmar, N.Y., was working at Longwood with their school and youth programs.
The fellows will be accompanied by two representatives from Longwood Gardens, and they'll visit a wide variety of public gardens in Beijing, Kunming, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, and Shanghai. In addition to touring the grounds, they will meet with upper level managers of the gardens, and representatives from the Chinese Institute of Botany.
The fellows will be blogging about their experiences throughout the trip.
Check it out. And if you've got two years to spare, you might want to download one of those graduate program applications. I would, but I don't think the paper would let me go that long. Or maybe they'd forget who I was.
When Molly Harris started her Edible Garden restaurant in Richmond, Va., four years ago, her goal was to serve her customers locally produced farm products. Harris's customers liked her menu, they liked that she referred them to her suppliers when they wanted to cook at home, and business was going well. Then the economy went so far south we could all see penguins in the distance. But Molly took action, and Lancaster Farming correspondent Jennifer Merritt tells her story in our current edition.
They never quite delivered on the thundering stampede, but this was fun... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dh58RctY1_k
The pitchfork philosopher says... Never buy a cow from a guy named "Slick."
Better luck next year...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Fri, 06/05/2009 - 3:39pm.
Pork producers didn't seem to have a lot to celebrate this week at the 21st World Pork Expo in Des Moines, Ia. Prices in the past year were down, costs were up and then along came swine flu. But Sam Carney, president elect of the National Pork Producers Council, thinks by the time the 22nd Expo rolls around, things could be better. "I just hope things are better for us by this time next year," Carney told Dan Piller, a reporter with the Des Moines Register.
No doubt the rest of the 18,000 producers at the Expo shared his hopes and frustrations. The event has been held every year since 2001 at the Iowa State Fairgrounds, a venue that promotes a festive air that includes barbecues in every conceivable style, pig races and nonstop swine judging.
Carney is a fourth-generation farmer who runs about 6,000 hogs through his operation each year on his Adair, Ia. farm. He also raises corn and soybeans. Carney told Piller he was encouraged by the growing balance in the NPPC voluntary savings investment plan. It went from $1.4 million last year to $1.7 million in the latest audit. The investment plan is a voluntary contribution of 10 percent of members' profits, and is separate from the pork checkoff program, which is run by the National Pork Board. The money is used to support the Pork Producers Council's lobbying and export promotion efforts.
For more on the Pork Expo and the industry outlook, check out Piller's reports at
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009906040355 and http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2009906050397
A multi-million manure management system at Kreider Dairy Farms in Manheim, Pa., has come under intense scrutiny from two of Pennsylvania's most influential environmental groups, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and PennFuture. PENNVEST, a state agency that approves low-cost loans sewer, storm water and drinking water projects that meet environmental guidelines. In January, PENNVEST approved a $7.75 million loan for the Kreider project. Lancaster Farming staff writer Chris Torres reports on the controversy surrounding the project in the issue due in your mailbox tomorrow.
From The Onion - the politics of potatoes. (Warning: old guy says a few cuss words.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1FuGpGlRFw
Foreign aid or neo-imperialism?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Thu, 06/04/2009 - 6:18pm.
Funds from Chinese and oil-rich Arab countries are being funneled into some of the world's poorest countries to buy and/or lease farmland. Over the past two years, more than 8 million acres have changed control from the have-not nations of Sudan, Ethopia, Congo, Pakistan and others to the cash-rich haves.
While money pouring into a poor country might seem to be a good thing, these are government-to-government transactions where politicians are less than eager to share the wealth. The new owners grow staple crops or biofuels on the land and ship the output home.
The deals are usually shrouded in secrecy. One Cambodian observer noted that one contract to lease thousands of acres of rice land contained fewer details than a house rental agreement.
But, maybe the new capital will result in higher production, more employment for locals and a better economic outlook for the nations on the receiving end.
That's the somewhat ambivalent view by a reporter in the May 21 issue of The Economist. To read more, click here: http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=478044&story_id=13697274
Going to battle on horseback seemed like a time warp for Col. Mark Mitchell, a Special Forces soldier who did just that in 2001. Mitchell is one of the key figures in a new book, Horse Soldiers, by author Doug Stanton. The book tells the story of how American troops rode their mounts into Afghanistan after 9-11 to hunt the Taliban down. An article about the book appears in the June edition of Mid-Atlantic Horse, a supplement on the first Saturday of every month to Lancaster Farming.
If you're concerned about rabies or losing a finger, don't do this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--WwQTx-Ii8
Is this your newest sports drink?
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 10:39am.
Training for your next marathon? Drink tart cherry juice, and your post-race pain will be significantly lower than that of your fellow runners struggling breathlessly at your heels. According to a study you can read about here http://www.bio-medicine.org/biology-news-1/Is-cherry-juice-a-new-sports-drink-3F-8627-1/ cherry juice might be more beneficial for post-exercise relief than ibuprofen, acetaminophen and other non-steroidal anti-flammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
In a study of sixty healthy adults aged 18-50 years, those who drank 10.5 ounces of cherry juice twice a day for seven days prior to and on the day of a long-distance relay had significantly less muscle pain following the race than those who drank another fruit juice beverage. On a scale from 0 to 10, the runners who drank cherry juice as their "sports drink" had a 2 point lower self-reported pain level at the completion of the race, a clinically significant difference.
Pennsylvania, with 3 million pounds year, ranks fifth in the nation in tart cherry production. So, if runners are saying "Cherries!" instead of "Cheers!" at their post-race parties, Pennsylvania producers could be celebrating right alongside them.
The tole truth about Pat Oxenford is that she's a crafty lady married to a crafty guy and they specialize in painted metal. He makes them, she paints them. Pat's husband, Ray, now retired from the antiques business, also encouraged her to focus her talents on the historic craft of tole painting. Lancaster Farming staffer Sara Miller, herself an artist, tells the Oxenford story in Section B of the current edition.
This is really fruity. And a little bit nuts. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fnDS2pZ5Iw&feature=fvhl
Did they say "ethical?"
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Tue, 06/02/2009 - 1:07pm.
There should be an organization called People for the Ethical Treatment of People. I don't believe that PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) would be much interested in joining, but that's just a guess. I base my assumption not just on all the nasty stuff you can find on the Internet about PETA, but also some of their own material. Much of it is decidedly anti-human. PETA's avowed goal is the complete "liberation" of all animals - your cows, your hogs, your chickens, your horses and cats and my dog Louie.
To achieve their ends they operate on an annual budget of nearly $30 million for TV ads, riotous gatherings punctuated with animal blood, slanted propaganda and payments to people who can only be described as terrorists. They don't condone the firebombing of drug research labs, but they "understand it." That's where my organization, P.E.T.P., might step in and say, "You can't 'understand' somebody who firebombs buildings that may have people in them. Not to mention research animals that are being roasted to death."
I spent some time on the Web looking at both sides of the PETA story after our local daily paper reported that Armstrong World Industries received one of PETA's BADDY awards for running a flooring ad that featured a trained grizzly bear. BADDY awards are designed to embarass companies and individuals deemed by PETA to be mistreating animals.
Armstrong promptly pulled the ad, because it just wasn't worth the hassle of wrangling with PETA, according to Cathy Riley, who handles investor relations for Armstrong. She was shocked to learn about the BADDY award a month after PETA was advised that the ad had been pulled.
PETA's Elizabeth Graffeo told me by phone that while Armstrong did pull the ad, the company refused to pledge never to run the ad, and they refused to pledge never to use exotic animals in any future ads. "They would not negotiate with us on those points," said Graffeo, "and that's why they got the BADDY."
"That was disingenuous of her," Riley told me, also by phone. "Actually, it's an outright lie. They asked us to pull the ad. We pulled the ad. They never asked us to do anything else."
In her PR release to news organizations around the U.S., Graffeo said that after the ad appeared on cable channels, PETA was "deluged" by complaints about the bear's mistreatment. That deluge turned into 2,300 form emails to Armstrong's corporate offices. In the ad, the bear was shown resting on one of Armstrong's hardwood floors before it chowed down on a few groceries.
I couldn't find the ad on YouTube or anywhere else, but I suspect the grizzly might have been "mistreated" in a manner similar to what you see here: http://www.armstrong.com/flooring/flooring-ads.html
I would never say that animals are not mistreated. I also would never say animals don't need a champion. But I would say that an organization that uses lies, intimidation and bullying tactics in pursuit of its goals is not the ideal champion.
And I would add that the majority of the animals that we keep for companions, food and fiber are treated well. Being inhumane is not the norm for humanity, I believe. And in the case of farmers, mistreatment means mismanagement, which means a farm business that's going out of business.
The term "animal husbandry" has been around for far longer than PETA.
(Full disclosure: I was a copywriter in the Armstrong advertising department from 1969 until 1972, when I quit to become editor of Lancaster Farming.)
Farmer-philosopher Troy Bishopp penned his annual tribute to Memorial Day in our current edition. He writes eloquently about the skeletal remains of a century-old dead elm tree, a barn torn down and the passing of his favorite goat. His regular Grass Whisperer columns are always a delight to read.
First-time pig farmers name their pigs. How cute! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGIZVdhQDI4
A million years of monoculture...
Submitted by Dick Wanner on Mon, 06/01/2009 - 10:23am.
...sounds like a recipe for crop failure, according to proponents of sustainable agriculture. But that's exactly how leafcutter ants have been making a living since long before men could even say "leafcutter ant." Or even "ant."
Leafcutter ants harvest more greenery from South American forests than any other animal. They use it to feed just one species of fungus, which they propogate by cloning. There is absolutely no genetic diversity within the fungal crop, which should be highly vulnerable to disease and disruption.
But the ants are not of a mind to broaden their fungal garden. Their favored food might be what really good baked beans are to us. Imagine eating beans, beans and more beans morning, noon and night and nothing but beans for millions of years. Now imagine a planet with six billion people eating beans and nothing but beans. Since forever.
To take your mind off that thought, you might want to check out the ant story at http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/could-ants-hold/#previouspost
NAIS is a solution looking for a problem, according to Lancaster Farming reader Dan Vaughan of White Hall, Md. Vaughan attended the recent NAIS information-gathering meeting in Harrisburg, Pa. He tells USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsak why he thinks the program is seriously flawed in an opinion piece in our current issue.
Never, NEVER put steroids in the feed trough. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTmzLpV4zpU
I can be reached by email at rwanner.eph@lnpnews.com, or by phone at 7117-419-4703. If you would like AgScene in your mailbox every morning, Monday through Friday, drop me a line.
