There’s been a lot of noise on the foodie twitter/blogosphere about the EPA’s reluctance to ban Atrazine. As someone who grew up in the midwest, and who has relatives who grow corn and soybeans, let me tell you, that stuff is everywhere. I’ve also long wondered whether the sharp increase in agricultural chemicals was in some way responsible for the cancer cluster in which I grew up (the Zion Nuclear Power Plant didn’t help either). But we all got our water out of Lake Michigan, and all those chemicals were running into the lake. Here’s a piece from the Atlantic…
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Ill-conceived from the start, and as usual, a program with paperwork burdens that were prohibitive for small farmers, looks like the USDA has come to its senses and killed NAIS. U.S.D.A. Will Drop Program to Trace Livestock – NYTimes.com.
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In farming news, I was heartened by this editorial by Tom Vlisak, Secretary of Agriculture about his plans for revitalizing rural America. There’s still more in there for Big Ag than I really like, especially the biofuels stuff (we still haven’t figured out a way to make a biofuel that doesn’t require more fuel to grow, harvest, ship and process than it generates), but this point cheered me up: Third, link local farm production to local consumption. Investments in local processing and storage facilities will allow for large scale consumers in rural communities to buy locally produced goods from smaller…
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Your Tuesday round up of interesting bits and pieces I’ve been finding online: Why Big Ag Won’t Feed the World – The Atlantic Food Channel Why are libertarian right wingers defending a dysfunctional, state-engineered food system? | Grist Destroying Sustainability along with Inventory (This one really stings. Not only did my publisher “pulp” the paperback copies of Place Last Seen when it went out of print, they screwed up my order and damaged the copies so badly that they never even sent them. I have one copy of my own paperback. Sigh.) Saving Michigan With a New Green Industrial Revolution…
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We were lucky enough to be the recipients of several large roasts that came from a tiny herd of cattle that one of Chuck’s friends raises. Last year, we had a roast beef from one of their steers, and it was the best piece of meat I think I’ve ever eaten. There really is something about meat that hasn’t seen the inside of a feedlot. So, yesterday, being grey and rainy and full of football and all, I cooked a five pound chuck roast. While it was searing the house filled up with this amazing beefy smell. I don’t think…
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Here’s an interesting article about buying meat in bulk, including practical tips for those of you who might be interested but don’t know where to start. The Seminal » Food Sunday: I’ll take half a cow and ten chickens please. We’re lucky here in Montana — not only is it pretty easy to find a rancher who will sell you part of an animal, we’re one of the few states that still has small local slaughterhouses. Big Ag has managed to kill them in most other states — I have a friend in Colorado who would raise cattle for her…
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Way back in my youth I worked in New York for a company that repackaged magazine material into cookbooks — our biggest client was Gourmet Magazine. So I’ve watched with great interest as Ruth Reichel has taken that hoary old magazine, run by women from the suburbs who at least in the late ’80 were still known to come to work in plaid skirts and knee socks (knee socks! I remember my shock that grown women would go out dressed like old girls — oh, and in blouses with those big floppy bows that women wore in the ’80s in…