Thought + Food

Lately we have been reading a lot about the conditions under which animals are raised. This is an issue which many urban consumers do not like to dwell on because our mental image of  cute lambs running around on green fields collides with the reality that this going to be on a plate, maybe our plate , one day. While that is a reality, that is no indicator of how the animals are raised. Farmers raise their animals with care no matter what their purpose, here is an account from a farmer about the reality of raising animals and how her children are learning about it as well.

(Image Courtesy Polansuk at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

ProMusa Banana Community celebrates with this stunning visual of banana diversity! Read more here.

Ever thought about the cows that provide the milk that makes the cheese that brings so much delight to so many of us? Most of us, people of the cities would have a mental image of a cow , standing in a field, perhaps swishing it’s tail and munching slowly. All that munching would certainly make for healthy cows that provide high quality milk, but, also, it provides a lot, and I do mean a lot, of poop.

Now, of course, this is not a subject that would pop up in daily conversations; but it has been in the news recently for its contribution to climate change. It is an issue so what to do about it? The options, according to one farmer from Italy are endless, as he shows us in his Museo della  Merda, The Museum of Shit.  Here you can see how cow dung is transformed into energy, plastic, bricks and urea. It is a stylized, surprising  and in fact inspiring presentation of the possibilities of a subject we usually do not want to see much of!

(Image Courtesy franky242 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

#Farming Friday 34 : do read this farmer’s excellent piece on myths about farming and the unnecessary fears around the food we eat.

A few things in food news that were interesting….

Grist.org has an absorbing series on farm size, is “big” always “evil”?

Lessons from watching Gwyneth Paltrow  attempt to live on a SNAP allowance for a week, something squirmy about trying to replicate another person’s reality and complete cluelessness reflected in the lime factor!

Agriculture and the Sustainable Development Goals  insights into different variables like biodiversity, resilience, trade etc.

How the changing climate is impacting coffee production and ways to deal with it.

What does Chipotle’s announcement that they are eliminating GMOs from their menu actually mean? Their attitude to farmers in the past is also intriguing.

(Image Courtesy: Stuart Miles from FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

#Farming Friday 34: Spring on the Farm!