A Whole New Local

So, here's the thing, my 4YO is going to be out of school in mid May, but until then he's in school for 3 hours a day. My 2YO naps two hours a day...sometimes. My 9MO is sort of thinking about maybe starting to sleep through the night pretty soon. So you can see that I have a lot of free time lately and I wasn't sure what on earth I was going to fill it with. So, we're moving.

An important side effect to this decision is that my whole radius of local is going to change in May. Balance Rock Farm, formerly my hot spot for locally and responsibly produced meat products, open M-F but not on Thursday when my in-laws have the boys, balanced because they have one candy product for every one meat product, is now going to be a 25 minute drive instead of a 16 minute drive. That may not seem like much to the average Joe, but remember I'm coordinating five here. I can't go on Thursdays or during the baby's first nap or during the baby's second nap or during the 2YOs nap which happens after the baby's first nap and during the first 30 minutes of the baby's second nap. I can't go in the morning when I'm dropping the 4YO off at school or around noon when I'm picking him up from school, or at 4:30 when I'm making dinner. After school gets out for the summer I think there's a 56 minute window between breakfast, first nap and lunch when I can maybe slip out with all three kids in tow and drive down there. Assuming, of course, no one poops. Then I lose 4 minutes and it just can't be done.

I have to admit, though that I'm excited to find some new local sources. Kiwi Magazine's website has this great tool where you can put in your zip code and it will help you find local Farms, Stores and Restaurants and it has a good list for me to work on as soon as we're settled. That should get me started in locating the local meat, eggs, and honey that we have grown accustomed to. And with Spring starting it will be nice to get some fresh fruit that hits a little closer to home then Chile. Oh, about that...

I have been buying fruit from Chile. This is a total cop-out on the local front. I'm slightly ashamed but only slightly. I've come to the conclusion that local is a great idea but in practice, in Massachusetts in the winter, it's impossible. My kids will not eat canned or frozen fruit. They will not eat 90% of all cooked vegetables. I've tried serving them over and over and over and over. Even if it is environmentally and morally wrong, I just can't stop buying fresh Chilean blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. I don't know where my fresh green beans come from but I know that once I've engaged my son in a crunching contest (thanks Nanna) he'll chomp them right down. This question that I've posed in my blog title turned out to be more about a family of five having a healthy and nutritious diet more than could I actually find products in a local and responsible way. The answer is unfortunate from my perspective.

I need my kids to eat healthy fruits and vegetables.
I need them to eat them all year long.
I feel I have no choice but to buy them and serve them.

Is this awful? Can I balance out the awful by dedicating myself to buying local produce the second it becomes available in my area? They have carbon offset credits, how about local offset credits. I mean, let's face it, I've never really checked a label before in my life until I started this blog. Now I look at them ALL THE TIME. I've become more conscientious of where my food is coming from and what it contains then ever before in my life. Does this make up for the fact that when I can I buy local, when local's not an option I buy organic, and when organic's not an option I buy from Chile? I don't know. The answer does not seem to be in the California chardonnay I'm sipping. Not yet anyway. There's still a good half a bottle left. Maybe the answer's like the prize in the box of cereal...at the bottom. Didn't your mother tell you you couldn't have the prize until you finished the cereal? I better get drinking. I'll let you know.

Enough Already

All right, enough of the doom and gloom already. I promise my next post will be back on mission, featuring all the highlights of my fun-filled attempts to buy local foods without succumbing to my kids constant and obsessive desire for candy and marshmallows.

Before I move on...

As much as I highly plagiarized Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma, there is much I left out. I do recommend you pick it up at your bookstore or library. I never before thought I could be interested in farming, but his description of the symbiosis between animal and vegetation that occurs on Joel Salatan's farm was absolutely fascinating. You will never again find yourself quite so enthralled with cows, pigs, chickens, grass, grubs, and poop. Plus mushroom hunting now sounds like a most exciting adventure, and I think mushroom taste like moldy dirt!

Anyway, I promise to move on. I hope you read the book. Let's get back to local.

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 4

Chickens.

Yup, I'm going to ruin the chickens for you.

I've done beef and pork. Are you sure you want to hear about this?

Well, if you're that much of a glutton for punishment...

Laying hens (the ones your eggs come from) spend their short little lives piled together 6 or 7 together in a wire condo about 24" x 24". They are packed too tightly to ever fully stretch their wings. All of their natural chickeny instincts are thwarted. There's no ground to scratch or bugs to eat from yummy 4 day old cow poop. The accommodations are so caring and loving, the chickens often resort to acts of cannibalism as well as rubbing their breast against the wire mesh until they are bald and bleeding. Roughly 10% of the hens, ungracious enough to appreciate the care and concern put into their upkeep, respond to the stress of their existence by dying; don't worry, that loss is figured into the cost of production. When the surviving (not to be confused with living) hens output begins to ebb, they are "force-molted" to stimulate a last surge of egg laying before they give out; this is accomplished by the five star treatment of, no not massages and manicures, but by cutting them off from food, water and sunlight for several days. They lay their last few eggs, then they die.





So...now you know what I know. Don't you feel better now? Oh, and just so you don't think that the hen's pitiful existence was all for nothing... When you are looking through the eggs at the grocery store, and you put a package back because one of the dozen is broken, the grocery store does not switch out the broken one with a whole one, it just tosses the perfectly good remaining eleven into the garbage. Go us!

Do Not Read This Blog Post: Part 3

So let's talk about corn.

How did the US develop into a country with a corn-based food system?

1. In the early 20th century American corn breeders figured out how to make a hybrid corn seed that ensures a large crop of corn per acre. However, the seeds this hybrid corn makes produces crappy corn, so farmers who use it are forced to buy new seeds every year.
2. 1947 marked the end of the war. All that leftover ammonium nitrate, previously used to create explosives, made perfect nitrogen for plants, and especially for the afore-mentioned hybrid corn which consumes more fertilizer then any other crop.
3. In the fall of 1972 Russia purchased 30 million tons of American grain, pushing the sale and price of corn sky high.
4. In 1973 the inflation rate for food was so high that housewives were protesting at the supermarkets.
   
5. In response, the Dept. of Agriculture pushed farmers to grow more and more, and changed the earlier practice of giving loans to farmers during down seasons into a plan of direct payments to farmers.
6. With these new subsidies in place, it didn't matter what price farmers set on their corn, the government guaranteed they would make up the rest. Since the government was subsidizing every bushel of corn, farmers were encouraged to flood the market and grow as much as possible.
   
7. Today, it costs roughly $2.50 to grow a bushel of Iowa corn, and it's being sold for $1.45 a bushel. So, the more the farmer grows, the more money he'll get in subsidies. Thus...lots and lots and lots of corn.

So, now the government had solved the issue of farmers going out of business. Of course, now that everyone was growing corn instead of other produce we had to start shipping the other produce across the country because local selection was now very limited, but that's another day and another problem. Let's talk about what the real problem is...what do you do with all this friggin corn? I mean, it's not the sweet stuff that we butter, salt and pepper and serve with our corn...er, I mean steaks. This is mostly feed quality stuff and we've got more than we know what to do with. What on earth could we possibly make it in to? I'll tell you.

• Corn is fed to steers (steak), chicken, turkey, pig, lamb, catfish, tilapia, and salmon. (Salmon are carnivores but are being genetically modified to eat corn to help us deal with the surplus.)
• Milk, cheese and yogurt come from cows that eat corn, so are essentially of corn.
  
• Eggs, from corn.

Then there's:

• corn flour,
  
• corn oil,
  
• licithin,
  
• mono-, di-, and triglycerides,
  
• citric acid,
• high fructose corn syrup,
  
• beer (alcohol fermented from glucose refined from corn),
• modified and unmodified starch,
  
• glucose syrup,
  
• maltodextrin,
  
• crystalline fructose,
• ascorbic acid,
• dextrose,
  
• lactic acid,
• lysine,
• maltose,
• MSG,
  
• polyols,
• caramel color,
  
• xanthan gum,
  
• the shine on the cover of your magazine,
• the vegetable wax on your cucumbers,
• the ethanol in your automobile.

Have you ever seen these ingredients before? Well, I think you should look a little closer at what's in your cupboard. (Actually, that's not true. I don't think you should look. I don't even think you should really be reading this at all. I can't stress this to you enough , but I sense that I am not getting through.)

• Ninety percent of the bread in the bread aisle at your grocery store contain as the second or third ingredient High Fructose Corn Syrup (yes, even your whole wheats).
  
• It's in your Kraft Mac & Cheese as Citric Acid and Lactic Acid.
  
• Coco-Cola? about 50% corn.
  
• Your ketchup has High Fructose Corn Syrup and Corn Syrup.
  
• Ruffles should be all potato, right? Well, it depends on which oil is currently cheepest so it could very well be Corn Oil (that's why it says "Contains One Or More Of The Following").
  
• Hood Ice Cream Sandwiches also have High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Mono and Diglycerides.
  
• Old El Paso "Flour" Tortillas: Mono and Diglycerides, Corn Syrup Solids, Corn Starch.
  
• Cheerios: Modified Corn Starch, Corn Starch.
  
• The first two ingredients of Log Cabin "Maple Syrup" are Corn Syrup and High Fructose Corn Syrup.
  
• Stove Top Stuffing: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Protein, Caramel Color, Citric Acid. Yup, we're stuffing our corn chickens with corn stuffing.
  
• Oreos: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Cornstarch.
  
• Betty Crocker Potatoes Au Gratin: Corn Starch, Maltodextrin, Modified Corn Starch, Mono and Diglycerides, Lactic Acid.
  

In fact, if you look at the ingredients in the snack aisles of your grocery store you'll find that eighty percent of the products contain corn in one form or another. None of our food is actually made of food anymore. It seems like it's just broken down, reformulated, enriched flour, random chemicals, and corn in all of its various forms. And we just keep growing more.


So now you know how we came to the corn thing. If you read the first post that I specifically told you not to read, you'll understand why I personally have come to the conclusion that corn is not so good for cattle. Here is one more reason why our corn-based agriculture system is not such a good idea:

Add together the natural gas in the fertilizer used on the hybrid corn we grow, with the fossil fuels it takes to make the pesticides, drive the tractors, and harvest, dry, and transport the corn, and what you find is that every bushel of industrial corn requires the equivalent of between a quarter and a third of a gallon of oil to grow it; around fifty gallons of oil per acre of corn. Think about that the next time you hear someone touting the wonders of ethanol as an alternative to our oil consumption problems!




*I'm in everything image originated by NatalieDee.