I live part time in Ithaca, New York, where I participate in a bread CSA (a prepaid “Crust Fund”) run by Stefan Senders of Wide Awake Bakery shown here on a recent pick-up day (in space borrowed from a cake shop).
His Mecklenburg-based bakery has quite a story—locally raised organic grains (mostly from Oechsner Farms), fabulous oven, baked to order—and its results are magnificent.
I’m partial to the ciabatta….
Eric Holt-Giménez. A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat. Monthly Review Press, 2017.
I wrote the Foreword for this book, which Food First published online as a Backgrounder (see my post of September 26).
Here’s what the publisher says:
In his latest book, Eric Holt-Giménez takes on the social, environmental, and economic crises of the capitalist mode of food production. Drawing from classical and modern analyses, A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism introduces the reader to the history of our food system and to the basics of capitalism. In straightforward prose, Holt-Giménez explains the political economics of why—even as local, organic, and gourmet food have spread around the world—billions go hungry in the midst of abundance; why obesity is a global epidemic; and why land-grabbing, global warming, and environmental pollution are increasing.
I’m collecting reports about meat.
The first is The Bacon Report from MeatPoultry.com.
And here’s Restaurant Report Card: What’s in your fast food meat?
Last week, the USDA withdrew its Farmer Fair Practices Interim Final Rule (a.k.a. the GIPSA—Grain Inspection, Packers & Stockyards Administration—rule).
The USDA announced this rule at the end of 2016 with great fanfare but, as I explained last April, then delayed it under pressure from the meat and poultry industries. Now those industries have succeeded in getting rid of it.
The official explanation? “Serious legal and policy concerns related to its promulgation and implementation.”
Oh, please.
According to last year’s USDA, the new rules would have leveled “the playing field for farmers by proposing protections against the most egregious retaliatory practices harming chicken growers.” Without this rule, family farmers have little defense against the mean and unfair practices of meat packers and poultry dealers.
Senator Chuck Grassley (Rep – Iowa) minces no words: The USDA is “just pandering to big corporations. They aren’t interested in the family farmer…The USDA is the U.S. Department of Agriculture, not the U.S. Department of Big Agribusiness.”
Told by Agri-Pulse of USDA’s decision to withdraw the rule, Sen. Grassley said he “violently opposed USDA’s decision to withdraw the rule:
If they would know how some of these people are treated that contract with these big multi-corporations, they wouldn’t be withdrawing that,…They’re just pandering to big corporations. They aren’t interested in the family farmer…Everybody thinks draining the swamp is firing a whole bunch of congressmen and a whole bunch of bureaucrats; it’s changing the culture of the bureaucracy…This is a perfect example of a swamp that’s being refilled by withdrawing these rules.
What happens now? More than 200 agriculture groups signed a letter to key ag-state lawmakers asking for more market transparency and anti-trust protections.
Will such calls grow? I certainly hope so.
For further reading
I’m going to be at the National Press Club in Washington DC tonight for the gala event celebrating the retirement of Michael Jacobson from 45 years as president of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
I first met him in 1978 when he and his director of nutrition, Bonnie Liebman (dressed as Bonnie Broccoli), came to a conference I was keynoting on nutrition and health at the University of California San Francisco. He’s been an inspiration to me ever since, not least for having been at it so long.
I love these photos of Bonnie and Mike in the 1970s and more recently (Source: Dan Charles in The Salt).
An inspiration indeed! Congratulations to Mike and best wishes for a busy retirement.
For those of you in New York, tonight at 7:30 Alice Waters will be at BAM talking with Hilton Als about her new book:
It’s a memoir of her early years leading up to the launch of Chez Panisse, her now famous Berkeley restaurant, in 1971 at the age of 27. The book recounts familiar stories of her discovery in France of the taste of fresh ingredients, and her attempts to recreate those tastes in America.
But it also draws on her experience with Berkeley politics in the 1960s as the inspiration for her life’s work. Most touchingly, she dedicates the book to Mario Savio, the now-deceased leader of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement, and talks about the importance of her work on Bob Scheer’s ultimately unsuccessful run for Congress in 1966.
The book is a lovely food memoir that answers lots of questions about what got Alice started on this path.
What it does not do is explain the enormous effectiveness of her moral force—the movement for fresh, local, seasonal, sustainable foods and ingredients; the White House garden; and the thousands of schools with gardens and food as part of the standard curriculum.
I hope she will do another memoir to explain how all that happened, as well.
Raj Patel & Jason Moore. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. University of California Press, 2017.
I was pleased to do a blurb for this one:
This is a highly original, brilliantly conceptualized analysis of the effects of capitalism on seven key aspects of the modern world. Written with verve and drawing on a range of disciplines, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things is full of novel insights.
What are the seven things so cheap that they are not valued appropriately?
Read the book to connect the dots. As Patel and Moore conclude, if what they say “sounds revolutionary, so much the better.”
FoodNavigator reports that Public Health England is taking on—what a concept!—calories as a means to prevent childhood obesity.
It will be looking at ready-to-serve meals, pizzas, burgers, savory snacks, and sandwiches in an effort to help children cut back on the excess 200-300 calories a day they are currently consuming.
The UK is planning targeted reductions in sugars in processed foods.
The food industry doesn’t like this: bans on advertising sugary foods to kids are “choking the industry.”
I once attended a White House meeting at which I heard representatives of food companies insist that they could not stop marketing to children. This was their line in the sand. They had to keep marketing to children to stay in business.
As for the United States, the CDC has just published the latest data on obesity in adults and children.
The trend? Upward.
Looks like marketing to kids works, and well.
Public health, anyone?
