Farm Market in Brockport, New York

Thanks to Lori at The Skoog Farm Journal http://skoogfarm.blogspot.com for sending me these photos of a farm market in the U.S.A. this last weekend.

She writes:
"More and more vendors are appearing now that the fruit and vegetables are ready to eat. We live in and area that is full of orchards as well as big farms that grow veggies. Thanks to the horses, our dirt is very rich and our gardens do very well."

I just posted pictures of a French market from last Saturday, and it's interesting to compare the difference in prices, especially given how low the dollar (or 'peso' as some less charitable people in Europe call it now) is against the euro.

Please do send me pictures of your local farm market. I am particularly interested in also hearing about the clientele and their demographic.

Of course here in France, the notion of a 'farm market' is not one that really exists. There are simply markets that have been in existence for centuries and which continue to flourish, at least as far as food is concerned.

For other products, such as clothes, with so many cheap imports from China available to all wholesalers and retailers, many market stall holders are struggling to compete against regular shops. Their price advantage has evaporated and the timing of the markets (during the week and working hours mostly, except in the larger towns) doesn't suit a more office/factory workforce when the markets had traditionally served more flexible agricultural communities and ones with more non-working women.

What has changed though, certainly, is a dramatic increase in a new generation of well-educated, lifestyle driven and especially organic 'petits producters' (small producers). They are breathing new life into markets that during the 80s and 90s were struggling to differentiate the quality of the food available with that of the supermarkets.

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WTO asks U.S. to lower farm subsidy ceiling

GENEVA: A compromise proposal to break a deadlock in talks on a global trade deal would require the United States to lower its ceiling on farm subsidies to about $14.5 billion (7.28 billion pounds), sources familiar with the talks said on Friday.The United States said on Tuesday it was ready to cut its ceiling for trade-distorting farm subsidies to $15 billion (7.5 billion pounds) a year to help unblock the World Trade Organisation talks.A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the U.S. offer still stood at $15 billion, compared to its current ceiling of $48.2 billion under WTO rules."We have always signalled that additional flexibility is contingent on an entire package containing additional market access," the U.S. official said.Under the compromise proposal, the EU would be required to lower its ceiling for trade-distorting farm subsidies by 80 percent to 24 billion euros ($37.7 billion) although that figure was within the scope of reforms already approved by the EU.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/25/europe/OUKWD-UK-TRADE-WTO-USA.php

Something you don't see very often these days

IW: Hand-cutting and raking with a traditional silage/hay rake: something you don't see very often these days and which I passed by last Friday.

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Troubled world trade talks show signs of progress

GENEVA: Global trade talks showed signs of progress Friday after crunch negotiations among seven crucial countries and regions, ministers and officials said.In a sudden turnaround suggesting that a week of deadlock was finally breaking, ministers began to talk of a possible success at the World Trade Organization talks."There has been progress made, yes," the EU trade chief, Peter Mandelson, told reporters. He said progress had been made in most areas of the talks, which are focusing on moves to open up trade in agriculture and industrial goods. Asked whether a final deal was in reach, Mandelson replied: "It's possible, it's possible."A WTO spokesman, Keith Rockwell, said new ideas to narrow gaps between rich and poor countries had emerged in five hours of talks on Friday among the seven ministers and would be passed along to a meeting of ministers from 35 countries.Earlier, the WTO director general, Pascal Lamy, had warned that the talks risked collapsing Friday if members failed to narrow their differences, following a day of intransigence Thursday.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/25/business/wto.php


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Blue tongue reaches my corner of the Auvernge

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Backlash brewing against ethanol in United States

OKLAHOMA CITY: "Why Do You Put Alcohol in Your Tank?" demands a large sign outside a gasoline service station here, which reassures drivers that it sells only "100% Gas.""No Corn in Our Gas," advertises another station nearby.Along the highways of this city, and elsewhere in the United States, a mutiny is growing against energy policies that heavily support and subsidize the blending of ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, generally made from corn, into gasoline.Many consumers complain that ethanol, which constitutes as much as 10 percent of the fuel they buy in most states, hurts the efficiency of their cars and chokes the engines of their boats and motorcycles.As ethanol has spread around the country to reduce the consumption of petroleum, gas station owners and wholesalers are catering to concerns about ethanol that are often exaggerated but not entirely unfounded. High gas prices seem to be helping them plant seeds of doubt in customers' minds.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/25/business/ethanol.php



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A Place in the Auvergne

IW: My wife thinks this blog needs pictures.

So I'll be posting a few, more of which can be found at my rural blog http://www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com/

I went with my friend and neighbour who makes 'fourme fermiere' (cows milk cheese) to help out on his regular Saturday stand.

This is market day in Puy-en-Verlay, Haute Loire, France. (Every Saturday.)

In France, it is safe to say that markets are not the highly priced reserves of high-income families, as in the U.K and parts of the U.S.A.

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ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COPYRIGHT IAN WALTHEW 2008

California becomes first state to ban trans fats

SACRAMENTO: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California signed a bill banning trans fats in restaurant food, making California the first U.S. state to ban the use of the cooking oils linked to artery-clogging cholesterol.The new law, modeled after a ban implemented in New York City, prohibits the use of partially hydrogenated oils, which contain trans fats, by the state's 87,000 restaurants beginning in 2010 and in all baked goods sold in the state starting in 2011.Trans fats, found in processed and fried food, candies and cookies, are vegetable oils that are treated with hydrogen to extend the shelf life of products. The oils have been linked to LDL cholesterol that clogs the arteries. New York began a ban on trans fats in all restaurants in December 2006."Consuming trans fat is linked to coronary heart disease, and today we are taking a strong step toward creating a healthier future for California," Schwarzenegger said in a statement
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/25/america/25trans.php



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Farm Blogs

African cotton farmers hope for trade breakthrough

OUAGADOUGOU: While besuited government officials slug it out at world trade talks in Geneva this week, African peasant farmers watching their cotton plants grow hope any deal will allow them to farm their way out of poverty.Subsidies that encourage farmers to grow more cotton in rich countries like the United States are blamed for flooding the market and depressing world prices in recent years, making it harder for poor farmers in Africa to make ends meet."It is the growers at the bottom who suffer," said Seydou Ouedraogo, who grows cotton near Leo, some 200 km (125 miles) south of Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou."We just want to be treated equally. It is our only source of income, and only cotton can lift us out of poverty. This is unfair competition," Ouedraogo said.At this time of year, the cotton plants here are still small, standing 20-30 cm (1-foot) tall. Their broad green leaves standing out against the rich, dark earth which has soaked up the seasonal rains of the past couple of months.
Burkina Faso, West Africa's top cotton producer, is a leading member of the Cotton-4, or "C-4" group, which has pressed World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiators to include extra restrictions on cotton subsidies in any final trade deal.The group, which also includes Mali, Benin and Chad, has had some success. Negotiators in Geneva are discussing a draft that would cut U.S. cotton subsidies by 82.2 percent -- more than the 60 percent cut proposed for other similar farm subsidies.Washington has paid out $2 billion (1 billion pounds) to $4 billion a year in subsidies in recent years to the 25,000 U.S. cotton farmers who export 80 percent of their output and account for 40 percent of cotton traded internationally around the world.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/24/africa/OUKWD-UK-TRADE-WTO-COTTON.php



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Peter Mandelson, the EU trade chief, calls WTO talks "potentially" closer to deal

GENEVA: Europe's chief trade negotiator said Thursday that the World Trade Organization might be closer than ever to reaching an agreement to free up trade as talks were extended to give negotiators more time to hash out their differences."We are potentially closer than we have ever been to a deal, but the final steps are the hardest and still look formidable," the negotiator, Peter Mandelson, wrote in his blog after he and trade ministers from six countries met for 12 hours in what he described as "some of the most difficult and confrontational negotiation of my time" as the European Union trade commissioner.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/24/business/wto.php



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European panel fails to endorse milk and meat from clones

European panel fails to endorse milk and meat from clones
BRUSSELS: The European Food Safety Authority pulled back Thursday from giving milk and meat from cloned animals a clean bill of health, making it less likely that such products could reach store shelves in Europe anytime soon.The final report from the authority, an independent advisory body, was less reassuring about safety than a draft in January. It comes after an earlier, negative assessment from a European ethics committee. The European Commission, which must decide whether to approve such products, will take both reports into account.The findings also contrast with those of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which concluded this year that such products were safe - although a voluntary moratorium on marketing them remains in place.Europeans seem likely to take an even more cautious approach similar to that followed with genetically modified crops - which has led to years of trade friction with the United States. Surveys show resistance in Europe to biotechnology remains high, especially when it comes to food.While cloning animals is still a young and inefficient technology, scientists expect it to improve greatly in the coming years. In theory, the procedure can produce meatier cows or pigs that are better able to resist diseases.
But in its statement Thursday, the authority said that "uncertainties in the risk assessment arise due to the limited number of studies available, the small sample sizes investigated and, in general, the absence of a uniform approach that would allow all the issues relevant to this opinion to be more satisfactorily addressed."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/24/business/clone.php



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Farmers in Afghanistan

FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE
Is Afghanistan a narco-state?
By Thomas Schweich
Published: July 24, 2008
[Thomas Schweich, who until June was one of the State Department's senior counter-narcotics officials, accused Karzai of protecting drug lords for political reasons. Schweich wrote in an article to be published Sunday in The New York Times magazine that "narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government."]

The UN reports shattered the myth that poppies are grown by destitute farmers who have no other source of income. They demonstrated that approximately 80 percent of the land under poppy cultivation in the south had been planted with it only in the last two years. It was not a matter of "tradition," and these farmers did not need an alternative livelihood. They had abandoned their previous livelihoods — mainly vegetables, cotton and wheat (which was in severely short supply) — to take advantage of the security vacuum to grow a more profitable crop: opium.Around the same time, the United States released photos of industrial-size poppy farms — many owned by pro-government opportunists, others owned by Taliban sympathizers. Most of these narco-farms were near major southern cities. Farmers were digging wells, surveying new land for poppy cultivation, diverting U.S.-built irrigation canals to poppy fields and starting expensive reclamation projects.Yet Afghan officials continued to say that poppy cultivation was the only choice for its poor farmers. My first indication of the insincerity of this position came at a lunch in Brussels in September 2006 attended by Habibullah Qaderi, who was then Afghanistan's minister for counternarcotics. He gave a speech in which he said that poor Afghan farmers have no choice but to grow poppies, and asked for more money. A top European diplomat challenged him, holding up a UN map showing the recent trend: poppy growth decreasing in the poorest areas and growing in the wealthier areas. The minister, taken aback, simply reiterated his earlier point that Afghanistan needed more money for its destitute farmers. After the lunch, however, Qaderi approached me and whispered: "I know what you say is right. Poverty is not the main reason people are growing poppy. But this is what the president of Afghanistan tells me to tell others."
At the same time, the 101st Airborne arrived in eastern Afghanistan [Spring 2007]. Its commanders promptly informed Ambassador Wood that they would only permit crop eradication if the State Department paid large cash stipends to the farmers for the value of their opium crop. Payment for eradication, however, is disastrous counternarcotics policy: If you pay cash for poppies, farmers keep the cash and grow poppies again next year for more cash. And farmers who grow less-lucrative crops start growing poppies so that they can get the money, too. Drug experts call this type of offer a "perverse incentive," and it has never worked anywhere in the world. It was not going to work in eastern Afghanistan, either. Farmers were lining up to have their crops eradicated and get the money.
That is where we are today. The solution remains a simple one: execute the policy developed in 2007. It requires the following steps:1. Inform President Karzai that he must stop protecting drug lords and narco-farmers or he will lose U.S. support. Karzai should issue a new decree of zero tolerance for poppy cultivation during the coming growing season. He should order farmers to plant wheat, and guarantee today's high wheat prices. Karzai must simultaneously authorize aggressive force-protected manual and aerial eradication of poppies in Helmand and Kandahar Provinces for those farmers who do not plant legal crops.2. Order the Pentagon to support this strategy. Position allied and Afghan troops in places that create security pockets so that Afghan counternarcotics police can arrest powerful drug lords. Enable force-protected eradication with the Afghan-set goal of eradicating 50,000 hectares as the benchmark.3. Increase the number of DEA agents in Kabul and assist the Afghan attorney general in prosecuting key traffickers and corrupt government officials from all ethnic groups, including southern Pashtuns.4. Get new development projects quickly to the provinces that become poppy-free or stay poppy free. The north should see significant rewards for its successful anticultivation efforts. Do not, however, provide cash to farmers for eradication.5. Ask the allies either to help in this effort or stand down and let us do the job.
There are other initiatives that could help as well: better engagement of Afghanistan's neighbors, more drug-treatment centers in Afghanistan, stopping the flow into Afghanistan of precursor chemicals needed to make heroin and increased demand-reduction programs. But if we — the Afghans and the U.S. — do just the five items listed above, we will bring the rule of law to a lawless country; and we will cut off a key source of financing to the Taliban.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/24/news/27afghant.php?page=1




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Photos from Skoog Farm

IW: Now, this is the type of email I like to get! Thanks to Skoog Farm for a taste of summer.



Eggplant...today

Eggplant, peppers tomatoes, marigolds

sunflowers

Our organic garlic

Gary and his garlic

Strawberries are long gone

The back forty

Our windmill (non functioning)

The herd.

Sunrise

The Skoog Farm Journal http://skoogfarm.blogspot.com

Art Walks On Water http://artwalksonwater.blogspot.com

Picasa Web Albums http://picasaweb.google.com/artwalksonwater

Skoog Farm Website www.frontiernet.net/~skoogfarm

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Argentine agricultural secretary quits

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina: President Cristina Fernandez replaced her top aide and agriculture minister Wednesday following the surprise defeat of a government-backed farm tax bill that generated months of crippling protests.
Cabinet chief Alberto Fernandez, one of the president's closest confidants and her spokesman during the standoff with farmers, wrote in his resignation letter that he was stepping down to give the center-left government a fresh start and let Fernandez choose a "new team."
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/07/23/america/LA-Argentina-Farm-Crisis.php



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Q & A: Should you avoid food with mold on it?

This Q&A from the IHT/NYT

Q. I've been told not to eat food that has a little mold on it because the mold has permeated throughout. Is this true?
A. Yes, mold that is visible on the surface of food is only the tip of the iceberg, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
Molds are fungi that have three parts: the root threads, which invade deeply into the food; a stalk, which rises above the food; and spores that form at the end of the stalk.
By the time the stalks are visible, the root threads, called hyphae, are embedded, so it is best to avoid food with any sign of mold.
Some molds can cause strong allergic reactions, including respiratory problems, in susceptible people. And in some varieties, the threads produce toxic substances called mycotoxins, which can make people very sick.
Molds may appear as "gray fur on forgotten bologna, fuzzy green dots on bread, white dust on Cheddar, coin-size velvety circles on fruits and furry growth on the surface of jellies," as a fact sheet from the USDA says. But molds have their good side; beneficial molds make blue cheese blue, and a common bread mold famously gave rise to the lifesaving drug penicillin. Also, molds play a big role in the decomposition of organic waste.
http://www.iht.com/indexes/articleindexes/thursday.php

IW:
I live in the Auvergne, some of my best friends are cheese makers, and if I were to advise my neighbours at the Thursday market 'to avoid any food with mold on it' (it's called the 'croute', the process of the 'affinage' of the cheese in their 'cave'; the 'bleu' inside their fourme fermiere) they would laugh me out of the market.

And on my Auvergne blog, I've also posted a story today about the terrible influence of Robert Parker on French wines.
'We don't make ink cher Bob', one producer says to Parker in his quest for deeply colored Bordeaux, and the slavish following this American has.
If this type of thinking is reflected in the American 'Slow Food' movement, heaven help us.



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Slow food savors its big moment

At the end of the summer, the gastronomic organization called Slow Food USA will host a little party for more than 50,000 people in San Francisco.
To get things ready, the mayor let the group dig up the lawn in front of City Hall and plant a quarter-acre garden. It will be the centerpiece of the festival, ambitiously named Slow Food Nation.Events will pop up all around the city over Labor Day weekend. Fifteen architects have volunteered to build elaborate pavilions dedicated to things like pickles, coffee and salami. Lecture halls have been booked, politicians invited and dinner parties planned. Nearly $2 million has been raised.
And for the first time in its 10-year history, the notoriously finicky organization has embraced corporate partners like Whole Foods, Anolon cookware and the Food Network.The Slow Food faithful say they want the festival to be the Woodstock of food, a profound event where a broad band of people will see that delicious, sustainably produced food can be a prism for social, ecological and political change.
They also realize that it may be their best chance to prove that Slow Food, as a movement, is not just one big wine tasting with really hard to find cheeses that you weren't invited to.
The American wing of the Slow Food movement, which began in Italy in 1986, has a tendency to polarize people. When it first took root here in 1998, some people were drawn to its philosophy, while others were put off by what they saw as elitism and an inflated sense of importance.
Slow Food's leaders, the chef Alice Waters chief among them, bristle at the criticism. But most acknowledge that the organization did not translate well to an American audience. As a result, it has never had as much cultural or political impact as its parent group in Europe.Now, they say, the organization is getting a makeover. And the festival in San Francisco will be the perfect place to show off a more inclusive and more politically attuned Slow Food USA.
"I don't know if it's going to be the youthful, happening Woodstock they want it to be, but it certainly has the potential," said Corby Kummer, a food columnist, book author and Slow Food board member.
"It will be a failure if it is only well-dressed people over 35 from the Bay Area treating it as if it's another Ferry Plaza Farmers Market" — a reference to the place where well-fed San Franciscans and celebrity farmers chat over perfect peaches and soft, ripe cheese.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/23/style/23slow.php


IW: This comment really caught my eye.
"It will be a failure if it is only well-dressed people over 35 from the Bay Area treating it as if it's another Ferry Plaza Farmers Market" — a reference to the place where well-fed San Franciscans and celebrity farmers chat over perfect peaches and soft, ripe cheese.

In my book about life in contemporary rural England (A Place in My Country http://www.amazon.co.uk/Place-My-Country-Search-Rural/dp/0753823888/ref=pd_sbs_b_title_14), I write about farmers markets and farm shops, which, certainly where I lived, were very much the preserve of the extremely affluent Cotswolds equivalent of the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market gang. Simply unaffordable for working or even most middle class families to be the backbone of how they shop.

Whereas here, in the Auvergne, the local market is used by everyone, and forms the very centre of our weekly shop.

Confession: about once every 6 months I go to Aldi (the low cost discount supermarket, much criticised for its use of GM foods) and buy the one product it does really well: 4.9% beer from Alsace for €1.99 for a six pack. A friend from Alsace (on the French/German border) tipped me off to this and he did me proud. It tastes great, is extremely cheap by European standards, and I can't resist. I try not to get spotted by my farming friends which is why it's a once in a while covert hit and run mission. Not busted yet, but I'll tell it all here!


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Japan recycling more leftovers for animal feed

SAKURA, Japan: With prices for animal feed and fertilizer at record highs, Japan's food-recycling industry is seeing greater demand than ever before for pellets for pigs and poultry made from recycled leftovers.
Japan disposes of about 20 million tons of food waste a year, five times as much as world food aid to the poor in 2007. The leftovers used to be dumped in landfills where they decomposed and produced methane, a greenhouse gas.
But government legislation since 2001 has helped stimulate a recycling industry that turns food scraps into animal feed and fertilizer or ships leftovers to facilities where the methane gas produced by rotting food is harnessed to power industrial plants.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/23/business/food.php



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McDonald's posts $1.1 billion in profit on European sales

McDonald's, the world's largest restaurant company, posted a $1.19 billion profit in the second quarter, spurred by European sales of hamburgers and chicken sandwiches.Sales at European outlets open at least a year advanced as the company sold higher-priced hamburgers in the Britain and snack-sized chicken sandwiches in France.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/23/business/23mcdo.php


Where I live in the Auvergne, we don't have a MacDo as they call it here. I am told you need a catchment area of 20,000 people to support a MacDo.

But in our town of 14,000 we have 9 bakeries, 5 butchers, a thriving weekly market (check-out entries for Thursdays on www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com), 2 fruit and veg shops PLUS 2 enormous supermarkets and an Aldi (discount supermarket).

Hope yet.



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Salmonella traced to jalapeños

Federal food officials have matched a bacterial strain found on fresh jalapeños in a Texas distribution plant with the strain responsible for what has become the nation's largest food-borne outbreak in the past decade.
The strain found on the jalapeños, Salmonella Saintpaul, was a genetic match to the strain found in lab tests of many of the 1,251 people who have become sick from salmonella poisoning over the past three months.
It was the first time officials had found the strain on fresh produce. But the discovery still does not tell investigators whether the contamination occurred in Mexico, where the peppers were grown, or at the distribution center in McAllen, Texas. The contamination might have also occurred somewhere in between, Dr. David Acheson of the Food and Drug Administration said Monday in a conference call with reporters.
The agency is warning consumers not to eat fresh jalapeño peppers or foods containing them. The small-scale distribution plant, Agricola Zaragoza, initiated a recall of jalapeños, said Acheson, the associate commissioner of foods for the agency. But it is unlikely that the recall will account for all contaminated produce on the market because the McAllen distribution network was so small.
Dr. Robert Tauxe of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the salmonella outbreak, which caused at least 229 people to be hospitalized, was continuing.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/22/america/22salmonella.php



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Ethanol industry braces for EPA decision on its future

The ethanol industry, until recently a golden child accustomed to favorable treatment from Washington, is facing a critical decision on its future.The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is asking the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected as soon as this week.Perry, a Republican, says the billions of bushels of corn being used to produce all that mandated ethanol would be better suited as livestock feed than as fuel. Feed prices have soared in the past two years as fuel has begun competing with food for cropland."When you find yourself in a hole, you have to quit digging," Perry said during an interview. "And we are in a hole."His request for an emergency waiver cutting the ethanol mandate to 4.5 billion gallons, from the 9 billion gallons required this year and the 10.5 billion required in 2009, is backed by a coalition of food, livestock and environmental groups. Farmers, carmakers, ethanol and other biofuel producers are lobbying to keep the existing mandates.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/22/business/ethanol.php



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U.S. offers to cut farm subsidies by $1.4 billion to help trade talks

GENEVA: The United States offered on Tuesday to cut its ceiling on trade-distorting farm subsidies to $15 billion in a bid to close world trade talks this year, but leading developing countries said it was not enough.
"This is a major move, taken in good faith with the expectation that others will reciprocate and step forward with improved offers in market access," U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab told reporters.
The move came on the second day of a meeting aimed at reaching a long-awaited breakthrough on farm and manufacturing trade issues at the centre of the nearly seven-year-old Doha round of world trade talks.
Because of high international farm prices, current U.S. spending on trade-distorting farm programmes is about $7 billion, or well below the $48.2 billion ceiling the United States is allowed under World Trade Organisation rules.
But Schwab said the offer -- which is dependent on other countries opening their markets to more foreign farm and manufactured goods -- would require Congress to rewrite recently passed farm legislation.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/22/business/22wto.php


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'A Midsummer Harvest of Bogus Trend Stories'

FROM SLATE

A Midsummer Harvest of Bogus Trend Stories
Drivel from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.
By Jack Shafer
The bogus trend story thrives thanks to the journalists who never let the facts get in the way when they think they've discovered some new social tendency. Take, for example, the story on Page One in today's New York Times titled "A Locally Grown Diet With Fuss but No Muss." Its first sentence declares, "Eating locally raised food is a growing trend."Although the piece collects anecdotes from San Francisco; New York City; Santa Fe, N.M.; Berkeley, Calif.; Mill Valley, Calif.; the Hamptons, N.Y.; and Vermont, it presents no evidence of a rise in the consumption of locally raised food. The closest the piece comes to quantifying its assertion that backyard gardens, "cow pooling" arrangements, and vegetable subscription programs are taking off is the fuzzy sentiment sourced to a Bellevue, Wash., research firm that for a "growing number of diners, a food's provenance is more important than its brand name," and a National Restaurant Association survey of 1,200 chefs working at chain restaurants or large food companies. The survey found that locally grown produce was the second-hottest food trend—right after bite-sized desserts.The Times was beaten to this bogus trend by sister paper the Boston Globe on June 3 in a piece titled "Amid City Streets, a Growing Trend: High Produce Prices Send Urbanites in Search of a Spade and Handful of Seeds." The Globe's proof that a million gardens are blooming comes from two companies: American Seed, which shipped 18 percent more vegetable seeds to dealers this year, and New England Seed, which says its vegetable seed sales are up about 20 percent from last year. But a one-year increase in seeds shipped or seeds sold by two companies doesn't necessarily constitute a trend. Has a competitor gone out of business, leaving the two firms with more market share? Were the frigging seeds even planted? Will they be brought to harvest? Or, as with every garden I've planted, will the sprouts fry themselves into ribbons of cellulose by August?The Globe story makes much about the waiting list of 41 names at one Boston area community garden. Is that up or down from last year? The story doesn't say. But if you're interested in long-term trends, please see this 2002 business story in the Times about the seed business, which indicates that the American backyard garden is a wisp of its former self. In that story, the research director of the National Gardening Association tells the Times that the average backyard garden shrank from nearly 800 feet to 100 feet over the last quarter-century, attributing the decline to the wider selection of fruits and vegetables—including organic—in supermarkets. Both the Globe and the Times dispatches capture more noise than data.
http://www.slate.com:80/id/2195763/

Enjoy your own homegrown food without the sweat

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer's market, let alone plant a garden?
That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.
Call them the lazy locavores - city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.
Even couples planning a wedding at the Plaza Hotel in New York City can jump on the local food train. For as little as $72 a person, they can offer guests a "100-mile menu" of food from the caterer's farm and neighboring fields in upstate New York.
"The highest form of luxury is now growing it yourself or paying other people to grow it for you," said Corby Kummer, the food columnist and book author. "This has become fashion."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/22/america/locavores.php

Cuba to grant private farmers access to land

MEXICO CITY: President Raúl Castro continued his rollout of changes in Cuba on Friday with the start of a plan to boost the island's sluggish food production by granting private farmers access to up to 99 acres of unused government land.Cuba seized land from most large-scale farmers after the 1959 revolution; the latest announcement in the Communist Party newspaper Granma stopped well short of a return to pre-revolution private enterprise.Under the new system, private farmers, who have continued to exist under Cuba's socialist system, would have access to the plots for up to a decade, with leases renewable if conditions were met and taxes paid. Cooperatives and state farms would also qualify for more land, for up to 25 years. But the fields would stay in the hands of the government, which controls an estimated 90 percent of the island's economy.The new plan, mentioned several months ago but formally announced Friday, is intended to jump-start food production at a time when Cuba is feeling the effects of the global rise in food prices. Last year, Cuba spent nearly $1.5 billion for food imports, much of that from producers in the United States that were granted a special exemption from Washington's trade embargo on Cuba. This year, the island's bill for food imports is expected to rise by another $1 billion, officials have said, calling the issue one of national security.Cuba's government released statistics last month showing that fallow or underused agricultural land had increased to 55 percent in 2007, up from 46 percent five years earlier, The Associated Press reported.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/21/america/19cuba.php

Trade powers struggle to save WTO round

GENEVA: The United States, the European Union and emerging economic heavyweights will try again on Tuesday to line up the long-elusive trade-offs needed to save a deal to dismantle export barriers around the world.
The United States resisted calls on Monday to announce a cut in its ceiling for farm subsidies as a critical week of talks opened, saying it was ready to act as long as others do likewise, especially developing economies like Brazil and China.
The World Trade Organisation's Doha round of negotiations risks years of further delay without a breakthrough this week.
But some top trade officials doubted that would be possible, given the range of issues to be resolved and the fundamental differences that still separate rich and poor countries.
"I have to say that after today's meeting I am less optimistic than before," said Egyptian Trade Minister Rachid Mohamed Rachid after WTO chief Pascal Lamy summoned more than 30 ministers to spell out what they can do to secure a deal.
http://www.iht.com/articles/reuters/2008/07/21/europe/OUKWD-UK-TRADE-WTO.php



www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

EU to slash farm tariffs to help global trade talks

GENEVA: The European Union began crucial global trade talks on Monday with an offer of reducing its farm tariffs by 60 percent - the highest figure it has yet offered - in a challenge to developing countries to make concessions.
The offer from the European trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, aimed to kick-start several days of vital discussions on the stalled Doha trade round, which was started seven years ago.
Until now, the EU has offered a maximum of 54 percent tariff reductions, but Mandelson's spokesman, Peter Power, said the higher figure could be achieved by including a range of tropical products.
It remained unclear whether the EU's intervention would break the overall stalemate in the talks because the basic shape of the European offer remains the same.
The talks this week in Geneva are seen as the last chance to achieve a global deal to liberalize trade in the near future. With presidential elections looming in the United States and the EU due to change its trade negotiator next year, a breakthrough this week is seen as essential to any hopes of a swift agreement.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/21/business/21talks.php




www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

Mideast facing choice between crops and water

CAIRO: Global food shortages have placed the Middle East and North Africa in a quandary, as they are forced to choose between growing more crops to feed an expanding population or preserving their already scant supply of water.
For decades nations in this region have drained aquifers, sucked the salt from seawater and diverted the mighty Nile to make the deserts bloom. But those projects were so costly and used so much water that it remained far more practical to import food than to produce it. Today, some countries import 90 percent or more of their staples.
Now, the worldwide food crisis is making many countries in this politically volatile region rethink that math.
The population of the region has more than quadrupled since 1950, to 364 million, and is expected to reach nearly 600 million by 2050. By that time, the amount of fresh water available for each person, already scarce, will be cut in half, and declining resources could inflame political tensions further.
"The countries of the region are caught between the hammer of rising food prices and the anvil of steadily declining water availability per capita," Alan Richards, a professor of economics and environmental studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said via e-mail. "There is no simple solution."
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/21/business/21arabfood.php




www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

Alex Tiller's Blog on Agriculture & Farming

Alex recently wrote to me about his own blog from the U.S.A called Alex Tiller's Blog on Agriculture & Farming which you can find at http://blog.alextiller.com.

It's a very professional, well presented blog and here's what he has to say about himself on his home page:

"I am fascinated by agriculture and farming. I grew up in rural Ohio and spent many summers working on farms when I was younger. My family still owns farmland in the area. I visit lots of farms in different areas that grow all kinds of different crops and I share what I find with the world via this blog."

Here's a sample of recent posts to give you an idea of the sorts of topics Alex blog's on:

http://blog.alextiller.com/post/43028447/other-agriculture-farm-blogs

http://blog.alextiller.com/post/42934173/grain-elevators-feeling-the-pain

http://blog.alextiller.com/post/42483476/presidential-candidates-and-agriculture-part-1

http://blog.alextiller.com/post/42635125/presidential-candidates-and-agriculture-part-2

http://blog.alextiller.com/post/42019163/wireless-ag-weather-data-could-save-you-bundles

http://blog.alextiller.com/post/41758813/is-ethanol-viable-response-to-a-previous-comment





www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

The Woolly Shepherd Recommends

Val, the Woolly Shepherd in Somerset (http://www.smallholdinginsomerset.blogspot.com/) has over 23 years experience as a smallholder in the West of England. Having kept most types of livestock she has just reduced the flock from over 80 to 18 sheep. She has an ethical wool and fibre business which is expanding into eco friendly felt for domestic, fashion and horticultural use. She also hosts & runs courses in everything from smallholding for beginners to dyeing for the terrified.

You can follow life on this permaculture based holding with the Woolly Shepherds Diaries http://www.smallholdinginsomerset.blogspot.com/

Val recommeds another blogger from Somerset in England, her friend Lavendar Jack.

Jackie has been married to Gordon for 20 years and they have two daughters, Alexandra (19) and Stephanie (16). They're dairy farmers in Somerset and you can find her at http://lavenderjack.wordpress.com/

The blog is entitled

Just Me, Really
Me and my ramblings

That about sums it up - a pure farming blog it isn't - but great photos, an easy, fun, thoughtful style and recommended by the Woolly Shepherd.

Here's a taster:

"Yesterday we went out and bought a calf, something we haven’t done for many years, but there was a good reason. We wanted a friesian bull calf that wasn’t related to any of our herd so that in eighteen months or so we could start breeding from him. We have four types of calves on our farm - British Friesian males and females (both sire and dam are Friesian) and Hereford cross males and females where the mother is a British Friesian and the father is Harry, who is a pedigree Hereford. Harry is what’s known as a sweeper-bull. Our herd are made pregnant by artificial insemination (AI) but it isn’t always successful because it’s not as reliable a method as the one nature has provided. That’s where Harry comes in. Any of our herd that aren’t pregnant by the summer are caught by him and he then takes care of that problem. The reason we don’t have a fully-grown Friesian bull is that they’re notoriously bad-tempered. This one’s two weeks old and he’s already kicked me in the shin! Gordon says it’s because he’s frightened, which he may very well be, but I didn’t take kindly to being kicked whilst trying to feed him."
http://lavenderjack.wordpress.com/2008/07/10/thursday-10-july-2008/





www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

Rise in food prices has Bolivian coca farmers planting rice

SINAHOTA, Bolivia: Soaring food prices may yet achieve what the United States has spent millions of dollars trying to do: persuade Bolivian farmers to sow their fields with crops other than coca, cocaine's raw ingredient.
The unlikely advocate for change is the Bolivian president, Evo Morales, who as leader of a powerful coca growers' union fought U.S. crop-substitution programs for two decades. But rising grain prices and food shortages have made Morales reconsider, and he is now asking coca farmers to supplement their crops with rice and corn as a way of holding down coca production while helping to feed the poorest country in South America.
U.S. programs have often banned the planting of coca - a small, green leaf sacred to Andean peoples and the base ingredient of cocaine - as a condition for farmers to receive aid for trying new crops.
In his own twist on alternative development, Morales is willing to split the difference: Growers can maintain up to one "cato" of coca - about a tenth of a hectare, or a third of an acre - which earns them about 720 bolivianos, or $100, a month while they receive a loan to plant other products.
The cato limit - in practice since 2004 - is seen by U.S. drug officials as a questionably legal concession to drug smugglers, but it has become the linchpin of Morales's strategy to fight narcotics while supporting the leaf's traditional use as a mild stimulant with medicinal qualities.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/20/america/bolivia.php





www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

President of Argentina withdraws tax increase on grain exports

BUENOS AIRES: The president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, has said that she would revoke tax increases on grain exports, a measure that had set off months of farm revolts, food shortages and nationwide protests.
The move on Friday to revoke the tax increases was a humbling retreat by the president and was necessary to stop the hemorrhaging of her seven-month-old presidency, political consultants and risk analysts said, after the Argentine Senate rejected the plan and Kirchner's own vice president, Julio Cobos, broke a tie to defeat the measure.
Kirchner's government has lost much of its support during the conflict, with her approval rating falling to as low as 20 percent in some polls.
In explaining the decision to rescind the tax plan, Alberto Fernández, the president's chief of staff, said that in a democracy one had to "respect the popular will" and "preserve the quality of institutions."
He gave no indication of whether the government planned to revisit the measure, but he said it was committed to its vision of redistributing income to the lower classes, a justification the government had used for the tax increases.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/20/america/argentina.php




www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

WTO: Farming exporters tell rich nations to open agriculture markets

GENEVA: Developing countries and food exporters from rich and poor nations on Sunday demanded that the United States and European Union open their farm markets and eliminate trade-distorting subsidies.
Trade in farm products was at the center of discussions as ministers from three dozen trading powers met in negotiating alliances to prepare for next week's make-or-break talks on a new world trade pact.
Pascal Lamy, the World Trade Organization director-general, called the ministers to Geneva to seek a breakthrough in the seven-year-old Doha round to free up world trade. The various alliances among the WTO's 152 members, from the Cairns group of food exporters to the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries met Sunday to plot strategy.
"Those members responsible for the most significant distortions in global agricultural trade - the EU, U.S. and Japan - bear a heavy responsibility," the Cairns Group of agricultural exporters, which includes Canada, New Zealand, Argentina, South Africa and Thailand, said in a statement. "We can and must now seize this opportunity to secure the main parameters of the Doha round. The costs of failure are too high."
Australia, which is serving as leader of the group, said the prospects of a Doha deal were better than ever.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/20/business/20wtofw.php




www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com

As price of corn rises, U.S. catfish farms dry up

LELAND, Mississippi: Catfish farmers across the American South, unable to cope with the soaring cost of corn and soybean feed, are draining their ponds.
"It's a dead business," said John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s. Last year, Dillard and his company raised 11 million fish. Next year it will raise none. People can eat imported fish, Dillard said, just as they use imported oil.
As for his 55 employees?
"Those jobs are gone."
Corn and soybeans have nearly tripled in price in the last two years, for many reasons: harvest shortfalls, increasing demand by the Asian middle class, government mandates for corn to produce ethanol and, most recently, the flooding in the Midwest.
This is creating a bonanza for corn and soybean farmers but is wreaking havoc on consumers, who are seeing price spikes in the grocery store and in restaurants. Hog and chicken producers as well as cattle ranchers, all of whom depend on grain for feed, are being severely squeezed.
Perhaps nowhere has the rise in crop prices caused more convulsions than in the Mississippi Delta, the hub of the U.S. catfish industry. This is a hard-luck, poverty-plagued region, and raising catfish in artificial ponds was one of the few mainstays.
Then the economics went awry. Feed is now more than half the total cost of raising catfish, compared with a third of the cost of beef and pork production, according to a Mississippi state analysis. That makes catfish more vulnerable. But if the commodities continue to rocket up - and some analysts believe they will - other industries will fall victim as well.Keith King, president of Dillard & Co., calculates that for every dollar the company spends raising its fish, it gets back only 75 cents when they go to market."
What's happening to this industry is sad, but being sentimental won't pay the light bill," King said.
Dillard and other growers take their fish, still squirming, to Consolidated Catfish Producers in the hamlet of Isola, where workers run the machinery that slices them into filets. With fewer fish coming in, Consolidated Catfish is resorting to layoffs.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/07/18/business/catfish.php





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