Category Archives: Green

GM/ Organic/ Conventional : What is a Seedless Watermelon?

Posted on July 19, 2012 | 3 comments

It is the peak of watermelon season and  some consumers will only buy the seedless variety. So, have you wondered why some watermelons have seeds and some do not (the appearance of the mini/ “personal” watermelons is also fascinating for me but that is a topic for another post!) ?  The  explanation is here, basically this variety has been developed by a two step process: first, one  type of watermelon is treated with a chemical that doubles the number of chromosomes and then it is cross bred with another variety to  achieve the final product which contains no seeds.  There is no genetic engineering involved but there are changes involved at the chromosomal level. Would this change the way we categorize this fruit?  And if not, then why is labeling GM so crucial? An informed discussion is essential.

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Posted in Farm Technology, Food Safety, Green, Living, Nutrition

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A Tomato in Any Other color

Posted on June 29, 2012 | 2 comments

 

When ever there are reports on food in the media, the comments following the article are often as interesting as the article itself and reveal what people are really thinking.  The news that the unnaturally red and firm tomatoes in the grocery store were developed for looks and lost their taste as a result was not startling news to most of us. Consumers associate redness and firmness with ripeness and that is what producers must provide. Consumers also want tomatoes in their grocery stores at all times of  the year and in every corner of the country. For this, tomatoes need to travel and that is possible only with refrigeration.  But somehow the assumption is that producer greed drove these developments. Yes, producers will pursue profit but they do listen to market signals. So if we are carrying home bags of big red tomatoes and trying to keep our balance as we wade through snow, then, tasteless tomatoes is what we will get. There is a disconnect from actual food production which creates unreasonable demands. We need to be reminded that in food, as in life, we cannot have it all.

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Posted in Farm Technology, Food Policy, Green, Hunger, Living, Nutrition

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Farm Fresh in a Frozen Corner

Posted on June 21, 2012 | 3 comments

While I struggle to shield my scraggly tomato plants from the glaring sun and feel daunted by the idea of adding another pot to my miniscule vegetable corner, here is this lovely story of a family that created a farm in a remote corner of  Alaska. They had to find ways to do things that had never been done before but they persevered and now have fresh fruits and vegetables, sustainably grown for themselves and their community!

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Posted in Farm Technology, Food Security, Green, Living, Nutrition

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Atlantic Food Summit Today

Posted on May 24, 2012 | 1 comment

I will be attending the Atlantic Food Summit today, eager to hear the discussion on childhood nutrition, obesity and most important, how to feed 9 billion people sustainably. I will be sharing  and posting on all of that in detail and for the first time, will also attempt to tweet as it happens! Please follow @thegreenfork for updates. Martha Stewart and Mario Batali will be participating, among others, so it should be a good thing….

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Posted in Climate Change, Farm Technology, Food Justice, Food Policy, Food Safety, Food Security, Green, Hunger, Living, Nutrition, Price Rise, Urban Farming, Urban Garden

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Climate Change Not Pizza Needs Our Attention

Posted on May 15, 2012 | Leave a comment

The furor over pizza being declared a vegetable for the school lunch menu rages on. It was argued that pizza itself was not declared a vegetable but the tomato paste used could qualify as part of the required fruit and vegetable component for a meal. Today a bill has been introduced to block that move. Now, I am all in favor of reforming the school lunch system (the pizzas are, indeed, gross) but I do wish that the same attention could be brought to bear on the issue of climate change and its impact on the food system as well. Unstable and unpredictable weather events, too much rain or none at all, is already affecting the ability to produce food. This issue needs to front and center at  Rio+20 next month. More on agriculture in the time of climate change here.

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Posted in Climate Change, Food Policy, Food Security, Green, Hunger

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Dinner in 2035

Posted on April 23, 2012 | Leave a comment

What would dinner look like in the year 2035? That is the subject of “The Taste of Tomorrow: Dispatches from the Future of Food” By Josh Schonwald, reviewed in The Washington Post. The author identifies 3 main components of a meal in the future: salad (which he studies right in Salinas County, home of John Steinbeck and known as the “World’s Lettuce Bowl”), laboratory raised meat and farmed fish, all of which might come together with an ethnic flavor profile that is unfamiliar to us today. What was interesting to me from this review is that while he would prefer, like most of us, to be eating organic vegetables and humanely raised animals, he came to recognize that biotechnology will have a place at the table of the future and that is not a bad thing. Often we forget the need to balance what we would like to see on our plate with what the planet can bear, a consideration that needs to be made more often given the rising population and the impact of changing climate.

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Posted in Climate Change, Farm Technology, Food Policy, Food Security, Green, Hunger

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Reflections on World Water Day

Posted on March 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

Today is World Water Day. It is a reminder of a growing crisis in our lives. With a growing population, access to clean drinking water is far from universal. Agriculture, which provides food, also takes up most of the freshwater that we draw from the environment each day. As the demand for food increases, more and more underground water is being pumped up to deal with the situation. But this also means that we have lower reserves to deal with droughts and that is a cause for concern as climate change becomes more pronounced.  A hidden source of concern is also the virtual import of water. Industrial production of asparagus in Peru, for instance, is drying up wells and leaving small farmers with no access to water. Here is a great infographic on import and export of water through trade in commodities.

This is a crisis which we need to attend to without delay and promote the conservation of water as much as possible by choosing efficient methods of water use such as drip irrigation in production, by thoughtful use in our daily lives and also by eating in season so that undue stress is not places on water resources to grow produce to suit our unreasonable diets.

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Posted in Climate Change, Farm Technology, Food Security, Green, Hunger, Living

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New Role for Heirloom Seeds

Posted on March 14, 2012 | Leave a comment

 

ImageSeed vaults usually conjure up dark images of a post catastrophe future when the planet is devastated and the protected seeds need to be brought into use. But a recent story, showed a different side: an appreciation of the benefits that we can derive from heirloom varieties of seeds today itself. As we prepare to deal with the impact of climate change, these vaults may be sources of varieties that are better able to withstand drought or heavy rain. The emphasis during the last century was increased productivity as the pressure to feed a growing population was intense. At this moment, however, we need to nuance our choices in the presence of constraints. The yield has to increase but this effort needs to be respectful of the environment as well.

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Posted in Climate Change, Farm Technology, Food Policy, Food Security, Green, Hunger

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How Climate Change Caused the Quinoa War

Posted on March 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

The last time I wrote about quinoa, I had yet to try it. All around me though, there was a buzz around this wonder food. Even then, it was unsettling to know that while there was a huge demand for quinoa abroad, back in Bolivia, the high prices for this crop was forcing consumers to move over to other options including novelties (to them) like soda and white bread. Now, there is a new twist to this story: climate change has lead to warmer temperatures in quinoa growing areas so now more land can be used for this purpose. This has sparked conflicts among farming communities eager to grow more quinoa and take advantage of the high prices they can get.

I did eventually bring home and cook quinoa and we all enjoyed it. But it also brought into focus the troubled future of food where there is increasing pressure on the food system to feed the growing population while climate change forces us to change the way we grow food.

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Posted in Climate Change, Food Policy, Food Security, Green, Hunger, Living, Nutrition, Price Rise

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Read the Whole Label for the Whole Truth about Whole Grains

Posted on February 8, 2012 | Leave a comment

If you thought reading the box cover and checking that your cereal contains whole grains or is ” multi-grain” is enough, think again: the truth actually lies in the ingredient list at the back of the box. This is what we need to read to make sure that whole grains are actually included and if they figure somewhere in the middle of the list, perhaps there isn’t a whole lot of them in the box after all.

“On Wednesday, the Center for Science in the Public Interest will petition the Food and Drug Administration to stop letting manufacturers label their foods “Whole Grain” when they really aren’t and to start putting the percentage of whole grain on the packaging. The government has encouraged Americans to eat…

via Companies Not Telling the Whole Truth About Whole Grains.

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Posted in Green, Hunger, Living, Nutrition, Uncategorized

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