Last week I assigned some homework, to read an article in the NYT Magazine entitled "Learning to Love GMOs." I realized that I haven't written anything about GMOs, which is odd since it's the most discussed agricultural topic in the media. I usually write on topics that are not so well known, so I guess I skipped over GMOs for that reason. I'm writing this assuming that you read the article, so if you didn't get to it, you can click here.
Via genetic modification, plant biologist Dr. Cathie Martin developed a tomato plant that produces fruit with a high level of anthocyanins, a class of flavonoids that is responsible for the purple pigmentation of certain fruits and vegetables like blueberries, blackberries, plums, purple potatoes, and eggplants. While some of the anthocyanins of tomato plants exist in the fruit, most of it is stored in the leaves. By inserting a gene from the snapdragon plant into the genetic code of a tomato plant, Dr. Martin was able to turn on a "switch" that changes the location of anthocyanin production from the leaves over to the fruit. She fed the resulting, deep purple tomatoes to mice, who lived longer than those mice who were fed normal tomatoes without that switch turned on (of course you knew this, because you read the article). Seems like something reasonable at first, does it not?
This leads me to the purpose of this week's newsletter: I would like to problematize, if I can't answer, the following question: are GMOs inherently bad? We know that as they currently stand they are without question horrible. The environmental effects, the effects on human health, the actions of companies like Bayer-Monsanto, etc, are all well documented, and I will not spend time on them here. But could GMO technology perhaps be viewed like a tool? A hammer can be used to build a house, though it could also be used to hurt someone. We know that GMOs are now used en masse to hurt someone, but could the technology be used to build a house? The author of the article, Jennifer Kahn, while acknowledging some the current harmful effects of the hammer (though there are several false statements in her article), and Dr. Martin certainly believe that it can be used to build a house.
Well, not so fast. While the idea of increasing the concentration of a specific nutrient in a tomato seems nice, there is a lot to consider. Let's start by zooming in by asking some questions about this particular case involving Dr. Martin's purple tomato. I'll be tying each of these questions to a specific point, which I will discuss immediately after asking the question. At the end of it all, I'll zoom out to discuss the issue within a larger, philosophical framework where I hope to lend an answer to the initial question that I posed above. My hope is that this piece will provide you with a fresh perspective on the GMO debate.
Question 1: Anthocyanins protect plants from stress caused by excessive heat, drought, flooding, pests, and disease. As many of these stresses affect leaves, how much, if at all, does the production of anthocyanins in the fruit affect their concentration in the leaves?
Purpose of question 1: Plants have been around for a long time. They have over 500 million years of evolution under their belts. During this time they have developed numerous means of protection. It's why they have survived for so long. The pathway for anthocyanin production emerged around 450 million years ago, around the same time that plants emerged from the sea and began to colonize the land, where there existed different forms of stress. Many plants produce it, not just tomatoes. Anthocyanins are just one means of protection that plants developed, and all of these pathways are amazingly beautiful in their complexity, so much so that it is but it isn't a stretch to say that plants have some form of sentience.
We do not have and probably will not have any time soon a complete understanding of this complexity. When scientists modify plant genes, they subvert this complexity that emerged from hundreds of millions of years of evolution. This leads to the following objection: "GMO technology is just doing quickly what nature itself does already, whatever 'nature' means anyway." This objection does not hold ground when we consider one major difference between natural evolution and genetic modification: while plants have evolved in accordance to what THEY themselves require, we modify plant genes in accordance with what WE desire.
Since our understanding of these pathways is limited, and since many scientists have a tendency to reduce complexity in order to find an independent variable to achieve some predetermined aim, it is very likely that something important will be overlooked. One thing that could be overlooked in this case could be the natural protection of the leaves provided by anthocyanin. If such genetic modification methods become commonplace and extend to other plants within the next few decades, and if at the same time we experience (even more) severe weather conditions due to climate change, the natural, adaptable resiliency of these crops, what PLANTS require, could likely be compromised. That's a big long term risk to take for the immediate reward of a more nutrient dense purple tomato, what WE desire, when we could just eat more blueberries and blackberries for the same anti-oxidative effects. What plants require and have established via evolution usually translates to what's best for us, and what we desire through genetic modification could end very badly.
And just a corollary to mention quickly: yes, we use hybridization to promote traits in plants that WE desire, but that's very different from genetic modification. Hybridization involves assisted natural reproduction, and this is what happens in nature all the time. Hybridization maintains evolutionary protections, unlike GMO technology, which alters them and which will never occur in nature. They are worlds apart. No need to discuss this further.
Question 2: Under what conditions was the normal red tomato that was fed to the mice grown?
Purpose of question 2: While plants have developed protective compounds, they can't develop them out of thin air. The biosynthesis of anthocyanins requires carbon, phosphorus, magnesium, nitrogen and a number of trace elements. It is further optimized by the presence of cyanobacteria in the soil. If the soil is properly built up with the addition of carbon from high quality compost, magnesium from dolomite lime, phosphorus from soft rock phosphate, and nitrogen from either cover cropping or blood meal and with the encouragement of biological life via minimal tillage, the entire plant will have much higher levels of not only anthocyanins, but also a whole host of other beneficial compounds. The concentration of anthocyanin specifically would not be at the level of Dr. Martin's tomato, but it'd be just fine for a healthy plant that yields sufficiently nutritious fruit. Scientists who genetically modify plants generally do so without regard for the findings of agronomists and organic farmers. It takes proper soil management to produce resilient plants and nutritious food, and genetic engineers work under the incorrect assumption that we need complex genetic alterations to produce healthy plants that yield nutrient dense food.
GM tech currently solidifies conventional agricultural techniques. While in this specific case it may increase the concentration of one beneficial compound in the fruit, in that process it may lead to the conclusion that organic practices are not necessary to produce nutritious food. That may very well be the case, but what of other negative impacts of conventional agriculture? There is no mention of how synthetic fertilizer negatively impacts the environment and creates dead zones in bodies of water far away, or how they destroy carbon sequestering microorganisms in the soil; no mention of the impact on native flora and fauna and the ecosystems they support; and no mention of the depletion of soil of vital trace minerals. GM proponents tend to focus on single thing, whether it is anthocyanin concentration in tomatoes, vitamin A concentration in GM golden rice, or Bt production in GM sweet corn and claim that this one thing will improve the world. They tend to ignore everything else that comes with the territory. The harm of solidifying conventional agriculture greatly outweighs those less substantial perceived benefits.
Question 3: Why wasn't there any additional control where the mice were feed blueberries or another anthocyanin-rich food?
Purpose of question 3: Not including another control group of mice strikes me as very odd. Essentially not doing so implies that purple tomatoes are necessary. If another control group of mice was fed blueberries, and the life extension was similar to those mice who were fed the purple tomato, as it likely would have been, it would imply that this specific genetically modification is not necessary. The project would lack purpose. In an interview, Dr. Martin explains that you can eat 70 grams of blackberries to get the same amount of anthocyanin as only two purple tomatoes. She says that that's a lot of blackberries and laughs, and that you'd be eating a lot of sugar in the process. That sort of made me laugh too: 70 grams of blackberries is like a handful of blackberries. I can eat that in less than a minute. And not only do blackberries have very low levels of sugar (they are keto-friendly), but the sugars found in fruit, when maintained as whole fruit and not juiced, are great for you. Contrast this to Dr. Martin's goal of marketing a juice derived from her purple tomatoes: tomatoes still have sugars, and when you juice any vegetable or fruit the glycemic index shoots through the roof. This all struck me as silly.
Besides, it's okay that tomatoes don't naturally have high levels of anthocyanin or other flavonoids. This specific compound is found in much higher concentrations in blueberries, blackberries, raspberries, pomegranates, grapes, cherries, cranberries, plums, red cabbage, beets, purple potatoes, purple peppers, eggplants, purple beans, purple cauliflower, and purple peas. Tomatoes have much higher concentrations of other beneficial compounds. In fact, they have one of the highest dietary sources of lycopene, a carotenoid that is beneficial for cardiovascular health and protects against the sun and certain types of cancer. It's completely unnecessary that tomatoes have high levels of anthocyanin. Why should they when anthocyanins are readily available elsewhere in high concentrations?
Question 3 leads me to the unfortunate conclusion that these purple tomatoes are largely a gimmick to profit off the mass production of GMO derived tomato juice.
Enough with the questions. I hope that by zooming into this specific crop we can begin to ask similar questions for other GMOs. The devil is always in the details.
Let's zoom out. By having focused on the specific details of this one specific crop, can I extract a more general answer to the aforementioned question: are GMOs inherently bad? I think I can, and the answer will surprise you. No, I do not believe that they are inherently bad. Here is why.
Just because GMOs currently revolve around uncertainties in evolutionary biology, around the solidification of the detrimental effects of conventional agriculture, and around unnecessary gimmicks does not necessarily imply that the entire technology should be entirely discarded. I can imagine an ideal situation where we have a much better understanding of biology, where GM tech works within the framework of small-scale, organic agriculture, and where it is geared towards actual problems in agriculture that agronomists and farmers have been unable to figure out using good agricultural techniques. As of yet, none of these ideal scenarios have presented themselves. And they probably never will. I'm going to have to switch over to philosophy to really explain what I mean here.
Famous philosophers are hugely influential in world history. For instance, 19th century European culture and politics revolved around Hegel's writings and the responses to them, and we can even see echoes of this in American political culture today. The same applies to science: Francis Bacon sparked the emergence of modern-day science. He had a lot to say about science and our role in nature, and he conceptualized this within a Christian framework. For Bacon, our role as humans is to use science to recover our "dominion" over nature, which had been lost by the fall of Adam and Eve. By "dominion," Bacon does not mean our modern understanding of the words domination or exploitation. Rather, he means a peaceful coexistence with nature where humans are its philanthropic stewards through the use of science. He believed that knowledge and science must be subject "to the use that God granted, which is the relief of the state and society of man; for otherwise all knowledge becometh malign and serpentine." Whether or not we are religious, it's clear that Bacon was aware of the potential threat posed by a type of science that is not bound by responsible stewardship.
In the 1800s, when science and philosophy were compartmentalized and became more distinct disciplines, the two eventually divorced. Hence little introspection coming from genetic engineers as to to the overall social and environmental benefit within the context of Bacon's idea of the philanthropic stewardship of nature. As the natural sciences themselves further split into the branches of biology, chemistry, physics, and later biochemistry bioengineering, each field focused on its individual pursuits. Hence little communication between organic agronomists and evolutionary biologists and genetic engineers.
Due to the uncertainties in evolutionary biology, the solidification of the detrimental effects of conventional agriculture, and the unnecessary gimmicks, I would characterize GMO technology today as an unfettered form of science that regards humans as having absolute liberty to modify anything in accordance to our will with no regard to Bacon's idea of responsible stewardship. This echoes the anthropocentric conception that that humans are meant to exploit and conquer nature. This is an extremist position that does "science for the sake of science," or just for profit. History is full of examples of different types of hammers that do lots of damage. The GMO hammer is no different. But, this is not inherent to the technology. If the circumstances around GM technology would improve with homage to what I've mentioned and more, and would be in alignment with Bacon's ideas, I think that the GMO hammer might be able to be used to build a nice house. But, a word of caution, if there is any doubt about using a technology with such profound impacts, and doubt is a good thing, it's best to give up the hammer rather than risk accidently smashing a finger because someone overlooked something somewhere. There are many other tools in our toolbelt to accomplish the same task, ones that have been used for millennia that may not be perfect, but work just fine.
The Cold War, agribusiness, and capitalism
Last week I assigned some homework, to read an article published in The Guardian about the concentration of America's food industry. I am writing under the assumption that you read it, so if you weren't able to get to it last week, click here. Here we go.
In 1971 President Nixon's Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz gave Soviet Minister of Agriculture Vladimir Matskevich a tour of the American Midwest. It was during that time that Matskevich expressed interest in purchasing American corn, soy, breeding stock, tractors, and other agricultural equipment.
What in the world does this have to do with the fact that there are just a hand full of companies that control America's food supply today? Well, quite a lot. The Cold War had a profound effect on not only foreign relations but also domestic affairs: it impacted American culture, political ideology, the economy, and the role of the president. Agriculture and the food industry did not escape its clutches.
When Nixon came to office in 1969 he brought with him the policy of Détente, a relaxing of strained relations as a reaction against the traumatic events of the Cold War up to that point. Nixon and Henry Kissinger believed that improving trade relations with the Soviet Union would be a vital first step.
What became the 1972 US-Soviet Grain Deal was the most important trade agreement established during this period. Due to the inefficiencies of Soviet agricultural system and a series of droughts in 1971 and '72 in the Volga region, the Soviets looked to the US for grain. Meanwhile, the US government for decades prior had been purchasing surplus grain from farmers in order to stabilize prices, so it had excess stockpiles of wheat and corn. The Nixon administration viewed this as an opportunity to bolster the American economy, promote better relations with Moscow, and establish Soviet dependence on US agriculture which could then be used as leverage to influence other foreign policy negotiations. All sounds pretty reasonable, right?
Ever since the New Deal, the federal government had payed farmers to leave sizable portions of their land fallow in order to limit supply. Large grain surpluses during the 1920s-30s caused prices to plummet, which led to and exacerbated the Great Depression. But in the early '70s, Agricultural secretary Butz went on a campaign across the American countryside to bolster corn, soy, and wheat production. He was (in)famous for telling farmers to "plant from fencerow to fencerow" and to "get big or get out." Many farmers were hesitant to reignite Depression-era conditions, but Butz assured them that excess grain could easily be sold to foreign markets, including to the Soviet Union. The USDA funneled money to the farmers who listened, and a policy that is supportive of large-scale, industrial agriculture became solidified.
In 1972, after the deal was signed, the US sold the majority of its stockpiled grain to the Soviet Union at low prices. This saved Soviet citizens from starvation (including my mom. Thank you Nixon), but it had far reaching impacts on the US. Because, 1972 and 1973 were very dry years in rural America. With the resulting low yields and with no stockpiles, the price for grain skyrocketed in 1973. Farmers viewed the high prices as an opportunity: they wholeheartedly took in Butz's mantra of planting from fencerow to fencerow: they purchased more land, tractors, fertilizers, pesticides, and seeds and took on huge amounts of debt. It became a bubble. Overproduction ultimately led to plummeting prices in the 1980s and the FED's war on inflation at the same time led to double digit interest rates. The bubble burst. Countless farms went under, and the few that survived acquired the others at a low cost, hoping to make up the falling prices with even more supply. Butz's vision: the consolidation, "optimization," and corporatization of agriculture came to fruition.
In 1862 President Lincoln signed the Morrill Act. This gave every state and territory 30,000 acres per member of congress to be used in establishing a "land-grant" university. Millions of acres, most of which were violently taken from Native Americans no less, were used to establish universities in order to promote and improve American agriculture. Penn State, Rutgers, Yale, and the University of California are all land-grant universities and they all have large, hugely influential agriculture departments. Well, conglomerates have infiltrated these institutions. Earl Butz, before becoming the Secretary of Agriculture, was the Dean of Agriculture at Purdue University, another land-grant school. He was also on the board of the Ralston Purina company, a large conglomerate (which has more recently been acquired by Nestle) that produces pet food, which, you guessed it, is made from corn and soy. I mention this because I want to highlight the revolving door that exists between our education system, the private interests of large-scale agribusiness, and the federal government. This is not unique to Butz: Monsanto, Dole, Tyson, Cargill, McDonalds, Coca-cola, Kraft, ConAgra, and Walmart donate millions to the agriculture departments of the Universities of Minnesota, Arkansa, Purdue, and California, Penn State, Iowa State, and Colorado State and currently have corporate representatives that sit on these departments' advisory boards. These advisory boards are regularly consulted by the USDA for policy creation. And if I'd want to study GMO technology and how to create stronger pesticides and herbicides, it would be a good idea for me to apply to one of those schools.
The overproduction of corn and soy that resulted from Butz's policies presented an opportunity for already burgeoning agribusinesses, especially Tyson, Archer-Daniels-Midland, and Cargill. The last two are currently among the largest companies in the world, and Cargill is the largest privately held company in the US and fourth largest in the world. In fact, the president of Cargill was involved in negotiations with the Soviets for the grain deal. Anyway, during this time, in the 1970s, and due to the overabundance of cheap corn, these companies started building a lot of feed lots to raise poultry and pork and chemical plants to produce and refine corn syrup and corn starch. This was very profitable. Their revenues and with it their power grew. And this power, combined with a couple disastrous Supreme Court and district court decisions in their favor (Cargill vs. Montfort and Haff Poultry vs Tyson Inc), allowed them to acquire smaller companies until the point where, between them and a few other companies that grew in parallel, they now control the majority of everything you see in Acme and other conventional grocery stores. That's where we are today.
This is a crisis that came out of a complex history and is now normalized in our social-political-educational climate. What's the solution? Well, it's complicated, and I'm not sure that I have an answer for you other than the simple "buy local" mantra that I've repeated over and over again since I started this newsletter. First, I want to suggest how NOT to approach the solution.
Most articles I've seen written about this topic, including the one in the Guardian, identify capitalist food policies as the source of the problem. I believe that this is too simplistic. Politicians, pundits, and journalists often unconsciously or consciously throw around words that we have predisposed emotions towards in order to provoke, to garner attention, or to achieve some aim ("capitalism!" "socialism!" "communism!"). The words we use to label phenomena matter, and it's important to clearly identify a problem in order to solve it. Labeling the problem "capitalism" may lead people to believe that the natural solution would be some brand of "socialism," its polar opposite. But that's no solution at all. History has shown time and time again that the interests of harmful agribusiness conglomerates and governmental administrations align. The ideologies of capitalism and socialism both emerged from and still work within the same framework, that of modernity, where fewer and fewer farmers produce more and more food to support one of its most defining characteristics: urbanization. There is nothing inherent in either any brand of socialism or capitalism that would lead to the return to local, regenerative food production. I think a new socioeconomic discourse needs to be popularized to fix the problem.
In any event I would distinguish "capitalism" from the events that I described above. The idea of capitalism emerged out of the European Enlightenment, when philosophers like Adam Smith and John Locke emphasized the importance of individual rights over and above centralized monarchal power. Adam Smith conceptualized capitalism as a means by which to enhance the rights of the individual and to decentralize political and economic power away from the aristocracy. Everything I described above involves the consolidation of power into fewer hands, creating some sort of weird neo-aristocracy. It's not capitalism at all, especially because those judicial decisions I mentioned above essentially allowed Tyson and Cargill to engage in anti-competitive behavior by colluding with one another to fix prices. The labels of "monopolization" or "corporatocracy" are probably more fitting to describe agribusiness today.
This gives rise to the question, is there something inherent in capitalism the leads to monopolization and corporatocracy. Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin certainly thought so, and they wrote extensively on how the stages of economic development naturally evolve from capitalism, to monopolization, to imperialism, to socialism, then to the final stage of classless communism. It echoes Adam Smith's idea of the "invisible hand" unintentionally bringing about greater social benefits via enlightened self-interest. Capitalism is just as teleological as communism, they're both highly idealistic, and they both were imagined by philosophers, not economists, who knew nothing about agriculture. Both Smith and Marx were wrong about anything inherently leading to anything else. History rather moves via real people with real motives and intentions responding to circumstances beyond their control (like droughts).
So, this brings me to two possible solutions. The first is to democratically elect people with the right intentions and the right motives into positions of central power. I don't think that this would do much. Even President Biden's executive order targeting large conglomerates, as mentioned in the article, will do little to solve the problem. The educational, private, and governmental interests are so entangled and normalized that only a dictatorship could unravel them. I believe in the separation of powers and our system of government, so we are not going down that route. Besides, never has there been a politician who is fully committed to regenerative, local agriculture. Some have mentioned it in passing, but I have no faith in any politician to effectively and competently make a difference.
The second solution is where I do have faith: it is via decentralizing power in the manner that Adam Smith imagined. Rather than shopping at conventional grocery stores, shop at your local farmers market and encourage your friends and neighbors to do the same. A farmers market is the purest example of capitalism that we have in this country. By supporting local farmers and food producers, we are taking power away from that centralized neo-aristocracy and decentralizing it into the hands of ourselves and a larger number of small farmers and food producers. There is a lot behind the phrase "buy local," and I hope that everything I discussed gives it new meaning and greater appreciation.
Haven Local
Peaches this week! The peaches are early peaches. They're delicious, but they'll get better every week. Plums will be coming soon. This fruit is coming from Nathan at Sharrah Orchard, located near Gettysburg. I want to write about how Nathan and I met, because he is the biggest reason why my business is what it is today. Now hang tight, because everything that I'm writing - in usual longwinded fashion - is related to the big news for the day, that we have a new vendor coming soon to Creekside.
If you have been shopping with me since 2018 at Bryn Athyn farmers market, you may recall that I only had one table full of produce that I grew in my parent's backyard and microgreens that I grew in their basement in Huntingdon Valley (thanks mom and dad. You're the biggest reason why I have a business at all). Another vendor at Bryn Athyn, Tom from Heck of a Cookie, told me about the winter farmers market at Primex, where I decided to sell microgreens since they're easy to grow all year round.
In the winter of 2018-2019 at Primex, I had one small table up front with microgreens, while Steve from Clay Brick Farms was in the back selling his meats, produce, dairy, etc. One day while at market a man named Ben approached me and told me a secret: Steve is going to retire at the end of winter, which leaves a spot open at the Upper Gwynedd market, which had been his summer market. Ben was the manager of that market, and he invited me to sell my produce there on Thursday afternoons. So, I made a new crop plan to support both Bryn Athyn and Upper Gwynedd markets for the 2019 season.
Ben found other vendors to come to this market at Upper Gwynedd, and one of them was Nathan from Sharrah Orchard. As I got to know Nathan and tasted his delicious fruit, I suggested that he come to Bryn Athyn on Saturdays since we didn't have an orchardist there. He told me that he had to go to another Saturday market, but he offered that I purchase his fruit to resell at Bryn Athyn. I thought this was a good idea. I asked the Bryn Athyn market manager if this was okay. She was ecstatic that there would be peaches and plums, so I made my first order with Nathan. Didn't have much to loose after all.
Well that Saturday at Bryn Athyn was a big success. I had a line for the first time. Eventually I realized that I could keep adding items from other farmers I had met and befriended through the years. I called up a mushroom farmer I knew, so that following week I had a third table with fresh mushrooms. Then salmon, and on and on. With every item that I added, the line grew a little longer. Nathan sparked all this.
By the time the Thursday market at Upper Gwynedd started, it was common knowledge that Steve from Clay Brick Farm had retired. One of my customers, Rachel, saw that I was gradually adding more and more items from other vendors. And, she suggested that I contact Steve to see if he would be willing to continue farming and sell me his meat. It would relieve him of the long market days coming all the way from Lancaster early in the morning, and he would still be able to farm and have business income. I thought that was a brilliant idea, so I contacted both Steve and the Primex market manager. Everyone was on board. I sold Steve's meat at Primex during the winter of 2019-2020 along with everything else that I had.
Eventually things grew to the point that I needed a permanent location, which opened almost a year ago. Anyway, I wrote all of this because I want to highlight something I find to be fascinating: small businesses tend to emerge and evolve through relationships and passing ideas. Without my relationships and chance encounters with Tom, Ben, Nathan, and Rachel, I wouldn't be writing this today.
So this brings me to the big news, which is the result of another relationship. In the coming days at Creekside you'll see some construction in the spot adjacent from my stand. A contractor is building a kitchen for a chef and good friend of mine to start his business. His name is Tam Fuard and the name of his restaurant will be Haven Local. You can follow him on Instagram.
I met Tam about a year ago back when I was setting up at the Sisters of Holy Redeemer in Huntingdon Valley before Creekside opened. If you've been on this newsletter for a while, I'm sure you remember those days. For those of you who joined more recently, Covid had shut down all of my farmers markets, so I sold at first from my parents driveway and then later at that beautiful convent down the road. The list below originated from those times when you would verbalize what you wanted from a safe distance while I'd put the items in a bag. Since I'd help each customer individually in order to maintain distance, the wait was very long. During one Saturday at the convent, Tam, after waiting in line for quite some time, came by and introduced himself and told me about his plans to open a restaurant in which he'd use local food. We had the same values and similar personalities so we instantly became good friends.
Tam invited me to check out the space where he was going to open his restaurant, on the other side of Old York Road inside the building where the Subway, Fitness 19, and Marco Polo are located. I thought it would be much better if he came to Creekside. I wrote him a long, heartfelt email (this newsletter isn't the only place where I write long emails haha). He got back to me a while later and said he was convinced. I made the introduction to the owners of Creekside and they've been working out the details. The lease has since been signed by all parties and construction will begin shortly.
A few words about Tam: he's a great chef, lives a few blocks away from Creekside, and has been trained by superstars in the culinary world. On a more personal level: never have I met anyone who puts such thought and care into every component of a dish. We have had hours of conversation about how food is sourced, how he plans to use every part of an animal so that nothing goes to waste, and about how eager he is to support local farmers while getting to know the Elkins Park community. Tam will be offering high quality soups, sandwiches, savory pastries, meat and cheese plates, rotisserie chicken, and lots more.
I've mentioned before that I'm a big believer in lean businesses: meaning in businesses that do a lot with a little. His space is equally small like my space. It takes real skill and ingenuity to make a small space work for people, for the planet, and for oneself. Tam has this skill and ingenuity, and I can't wait till the grand opening later this summer.
My experience in my business life has taught me that our relationships, whether close, distant, or passing, are humbling and immensely valuable for overall well-being and productivity. On a large scale, big historical events often unfold through such relationships. And in our own lives, we learn and grow from our interactions with others. Nothing brings people together quite like good, ethically sourced food. Creekside is gradually becoming a hub for such interactions, and I'm happy that Tam will be joining the web.
Local Rice
I apprenticed on a farm in New Jersey for a season, Chickadee Creek Farm. Right next door was another organic farm, Blue Moon Acres. While weeding I'd often peek up to look at the rice fields across the street. I thought it was so interesting that they were growing rice without flooding their fields.
Traditionally, rice fields are flooded to control weeds. While rice can grow just fine in flooded conditions, weeds cannot. But, flooding fields comes at a cost. The problem is that ground water contains arsenic, and rice, for some reason, uptakes arsenic at much higher levels than most other plants. The result is that store-bought rice, either organic or non-organic, has levels of arsenic that far surpass what the EPA and WHO consider safe.
Fortunately, overnight soaking and washing store-bought rice before cooking removes most of the arsenic. Also, it's always best to use more water than is needed when cooking. The rice should still be swimming in water when it's ready to eat. Otherwise, the arsenic goes right back into the rice.
The rice from Blue Moon Acres, since the fields are not flooded, has very low, safe levels of arsenic. The rice is also fresh. It was freshly husked a couple weeks ago, making a big difference in flavor and nutrition. And of course, it's local. Most rice eaten in the US is coming from the deep south or the Midwest (only about 4 percent comes from Asia). This rice is coming from 45 minutes away in Pennington, New Jersey from a fantastic farm that's using great principles. You can read more about it here. I'm excited to be carrying it!
Raw Milk
So I've decided to discontinue carrying pasteurized milk. I never felt good about carrying it, and I'm pulling the plug once what I currently have in stock sells. And just to maintain my reputation of long-windedness, here is why:
As is the case with many interesting (and tragic) stories, it all begins with alcohol. Distilleries and craft breweries were popping up all over the place in large northeastern cities in the early 19th century. Meanwhile, people were concerned about milk spoiling on the long journey between the countryside and the city. Distillers and brewers had a brilliant idea: why not start dairy operations adjacent to our breweries and distilleries so that we can just feed our grain waste to milking cows to provide the urban population with cheap, fresh milk. Since there were no pastures to graze on in Manhattan, the spent grain comprised 100% of the cows' diet. Unfortunately, cows don't very much like eating too much grain. In fact, it makes them terribly ill. On top of that, the cows were confined in tight quarters where they were knee high in feces. The resultant "swill milk," as it was called, was dreadful. The distillers and brewers added chalk to hide the blueish tint, and molasses and salt to hide the taste. But, what's far worse is that the milk was deadly. Thousands of children died in Manhattan alone. Not so brilliant an idea after-all.
In France Napoleon III commissioned microbiologist Louis Pasteur to save the French wine industry. Why was wine souring when kept in storage? Pasteur discovered that bacteria was the culprit, and he experimented with heating wine. It worked. Years down the line this method was applied to milk as a reaction to the dangers posed by swill milk. It was something that was hotly debated state to state. Many raw milk advocates believed it destroyed the nutritional content of the milk. Advocates of pasteurization claimed that it would save lives. While they were both correct, I think that Teddy Roosevelt's surgeon general Walter Wyman put it best in 1908 when he wrote, "While pasteurization is not the ideal to be sought, practically, it is forced upon us by present conditions."
We live in a different era now. Raw milk dairy farms are closely inspected on a regular basis. Bottling facilities are sanitized after every milking. The milk is regularly tested for pathogens. And cows freely roam on open pasture, feeding on their ideal food: grass. Pasteurization is only necessitated by the existence of unsanitary industrial agriculture. When things are the way that they are supposed to be with any type of food, processing, chemicals, pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, etc are not necessary.
Pasteurization (and homogenization, but that's another story-and A1 milk is another problem for another day) destroys most of the nutritional benefits of milk. I don't have time to get into it all, but Realmilk.com is a great resource to understand the science. I highly recommend exploring the website.
I encourage you to try the raw milk from Kimberton Hills. I hope to increase the amount that I order to support this amazing farm and to spread the joy of drinking delicious and healthy raw milk.
My Time in Turkey
Normally I reserve this newsletter for topics concerning agriculture and local food. I’m going to make an exception this week because something of importance to the Armenian-American community, of which I am a member, happened on Saturday.
Every April 24th, Armenians all over the world commemorate the genocide perpetrated against the Ottoman Armenians by the Ottoman Turks in 1915. On that day 106 years ago, the Ottoman government arrested and murdered over 200 intellectuals and leaders of the Istanbul Armenian community. What followed was a massive, organized campaign to exterminate the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian population. They were deported to the Syrian desert, were told that they were being relocated for their safety, were forced to march in no particular direction in the scorching heat, and massacred along the way in accordance with orders coming from the top levels of the Ottoman government. Approximately 1.5 million Armenians were exterminated.
The Turkish government, to this day, denies that this ever happened, although the vast majority of historians understand it to be undeniable. I’m not going to go into the specifics, but, considering the amount of evidence that we have, denying the Armenian genocide is akin to denying the Holocaust.
Up until this past Saturday, US presidents have not called the events that took place in 1915 a genocide. The last several presidents: Bush senior, Clinton, Bush junior, Obama, and Trump all campaigned to label it genocide but reneged since they did not want to strain US-Turkish relations. On Saturday, President Biden was the first ever president to say the word.
There are so many more details that I can go into about this topic: what led up to the genocide, the reasons for denial, and the strategic importance of American-Turkish relations, but I’m sure these were explained on the news on Saturday. What I’d like to share here is what all of this means to me on a more personal level, and how my identity led me to become a farmer.
Armenians have a very strong sense of national identity and pride. It’s just a matter of time after meeting an Armenian that you’ll hear about the food, the 3000 years of history, the fact that Armenia was the first nation to formally adopt Christianity, and, most importantly, the genocide. We have a real fear that if we do not strongly hold on to our culture, the original aim of the Ottoman government will be fulfilled ex post facto. As a child, I went to different youth groups and summer camps where we waved flags while passionately singing patriotic songs, loudly proclaiming our survival and what it meant to be Armenian.
I disassociated myself from this community when I became a teenager for two reasons. First, the extroverted tendencies of these youth groups were in conflict with my more reserved, introverted personality. Second has to do with the fact that whenever members of a group have a strong sense of who they are, with it often comes a strong sense of who they are not: in this case, the Turks. In the groups that I was a part of, this often translated to hatred of Turks, something that I did not share. I hadn’t even met a Turk before.
I struggled with my Armenian identity afterwards. At times I felt close to my culture, and at other times I felt distant. While at Ursinus College, I felt so distant that I decided to reconnect by switching majors from chemistry to history my senior year. I dived into every book written about the genocide during my last two years as an undergrad (I stayed for 5 years). I even read the books written by denialist authors to understand the strategies they’d use. Eventually, I started to realize that the Armenian Genocide was not the only unrecognized genocide in history. In fact, out of all of them, only the Holocaust is widely recognized and accepted by the perpetrating nation. This led me to study genocides comparatively. I learned to place them all within the context of wider historical movements, namely mass democratization, globalization, and nation building, things that were going on all over the world in the 19th and 20th centuries.
In graduate school at the University of Bremen, I dived deeply into some of these wider topics of modern global history, and one of the most compelling things I learned about was how quickly we urbanized and industrialized in the last couple hundred years. For most of world history the vast majority of us lived in the countryside and engaged in some form of subsistence gardening/farming. Within the span of 150 years, this all changed. Due to the sudden, rapid pace of industrialization and urbanization, a lot was inevitably lost.
In one of my seminar classes in graduate school, someone gave an excellent, truthful presentation about the Armenian Genocide. Afterwards, I approached him and asked, “Are you Armenian?” He replied, “No, I’m Turkish.” That was surprising. In Turkey it is illegal to acknowledge the genocide under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which imprisons anyone who “insults Turkishness.” Many Armenians in Turkey have been murdered for speaking publicly about it, and many brave Turks who speak the truth have been imprisoned. Here was a Turkish citizen who was risking his freedom. His name was Olur. We became best friends. He invited me to his hometown during a spring break. I remember his mother served me a number of traditional Turkish dishes. As she brought me the food, one by one, she began to explain to me how special and unique that specific dish was. And one by one, before she finished, I announced the name of the dish in Turkish and said, “I grew up eating this.” She was taken aback. We have the same culture, I told her.
During my visit, Olur took me to a foundation in his hometown that cared for children who came from families who were either abusive or who could not care of them financially, or who were orphans. I was fascinated by the place. Children running around, chickens, sheep, and cattle everywhere, a farm where they grew much of their own produce. After I completed my graduate studies in Germany, I contacted the foundation asking if I could volunteer there. They invited me, and I ended up living and volunteering there for six months. I occasionally worked on the farm. It was the first time I stepped foot on tilled ground. I remember harvesting peppers alongside one of the farmhands who was surprised as to why my Turkish was broken:
“I’m from the United States.”
“But you look Turkish,” he replied.
“I’m actually Armenian.”
After a brief pause, he looked at me and smirked sarcastically, “So what are you doing here??”
We both laughed. I had this same exact interaction with many others.
While I was in Turkey, I recalled some of the fondest conversations I had with my mother. She had told me about her childhood in Soviet Armenia: her father grew most of the vegetables they ate while her and her mother and her siblings preserved the harvest; my uncle would make spirits from mulberries and apricots that they grew in their backyard; chickens would freely enter and exit their house; and the neighbors would raise sheep and sell the meat for profit while they would pay the KGB to turn a blind eye.
It wasn’t at that time that I decided to become a farmer. I still wanted to be a history professor. But I realized that everything that I learned in school coincided with the fact that I am only one generation removed from some degree of subsistence agriculture.
My time in Turkey “planted the seed” to become a farmer, and my time there has everything to do with my Armenian identity, which indeed has shaped much of my life. President Biden’s declaration on Saturday closed a big circle for me, as it did for all Armenian-Americans who have their own stories to tell. It has helped me remember the suffering of my ancestors, has opened the path towards healing the wounds of the past, and has given me the courage to share with you how my identity has inspired me to bring to you local food.
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Earth Day
There is an immense amount of food waste in this country. Around 30-40 percent of the US food supply is "wasted." I put this in quotations because this statistic defines wasted as food that is not eaten: food in grocery stores that are past their prime are thrown into the dumpster; tomatoes on the vine or onions in the ground that are only partially rotten are picked and thrown off to the side. Given that 1 in 6 children in this country live in a state of food insecurity, this waste is a serious problem. Indeed, there are non-profit institutions that help alleviate this problem: Rolling Harvest, Philabundance, and Germantown Community Fridge are a few in our area that do great work. But in the grand scheme of things, the problem persists.
For our purposes, I'd like to expand the definition of "waste" to not only food, but also byproducts of food, things that we don't really eat but come from the things we eat, like avocado skins, egg shells, and banana peels. By far, most uneaten food and byproducts of food end up sitting in landfills. Sometimes they are incinerated. If they are sitting in a landfill, they are undergoing anaerobic decomposition: meaning that they are piled on top of each other to an extent that oxygen does not come into contact with them. When piles of organic waste do not come into contact with oxygen, they degrade into methane, a greenhouse gas that is forty times more harmful than carbon dioxide. When they are incinerated, they just turn into methane right away.
When organic waste comes into contact with oxygen and has the right moisture levels, a beautiful thing occurs: microbes convert the waste into stable carbon compounds that do not escape into the atmosphere. When spread onto the soil, compost feeds plants, which in turn more effectively converts more carbon from the air into oxygen. What's even more interesting is the fact that not only the plants but also the soil itself captures carbon from the atmosphere when organic matter levels are high. When all of this occurs, the "waste" is not really waste at all. It is just a part of a beautiful, natural, cyclical process.
If you're inspired to start a compost pile in your backyard, let me know and I will help you get started. There are also some great companies in our locale who will pick up your food "waste:" Back to Earth Compost Crew, Bennett Compost, and Mother Compost are all doing great work.
I've said this in a previous email, but I'll say it again here: if every farmer in the country added 1 inch of compost onto their soil each year for a couple years and every household composted their food waste, there wouldn't be any climate change, and one of the major visions of Earth Day would be realized.
Belated Happy Women's Day
Last week was International Women's Day. I'd like to say a few words. I was lazy last week due to the nice weather so I didn't write anything, but really, this shouldn't be limited to one day of the year.
Some statistics: the average age of a farmer in the United States is about 60 years old. Of all the farmers and ranchers in the country, 1/3 are women. Now, of all the young farmers who just started farming less than 10 years ago, 41% are women. Finally, and this is the most important point, even though there is no figure for this in the USDA census, I am willing to bet that the percentage of young farmers who just started farming less than 10 years ago AND are also farming organically is around 60%. Based on my decade of experience farming and what I've witnessed at conferences, apprenticeship programs, and workshops, there are many more young organic farmers who are female than there are male. Three out of the four farms I've apprenticed at are run by women (meaning, a woman makes all the decisions), and around 3 out of 5 farmhands at each of them are also women. At conferences and workshops, there are more women present, and at least half of the presenters are women.
We need more farmers. We need more young farmers. We need more young, organic farmers. And most specifically, we need more young organic farmers who directly supply their locale. Simply put, young women are at the forefront of the local organic food movement. It's pretty encouraging.
On this (belated) International Women's Day, thank you to all of the hard working, passionate women farmers and other food producers who have dedicated their lives to making a positive difference.
Spices and Colonialism
For thousands of years spices from the Indian subcontinent were in great demand throughout Europe and the Middle East. For one, spices masked the flavor of food that had spoiled due to the lack of refrigeration. It was also a symbol of wealth and prestige amongst the aristocracy, who were often buried with peppercorns and other aromatics. Finally, the West historically romanticized goods that came from the "far-off" and "exotic" "Orient."
This demand was so high that, while today we can say that crude oil is one of the main drivers of today's global economy, spice was the main driver of the classical, medieval, and renaissance economies. They were in some fashion connected to the rise of the wealthy European merchant class, the emergence of the powerful Italian city-states out of the ashes of the Dark Ages, and the triumph of some of the most influential empires in history.
The fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453 put a strangle on the European spice trade due to the tariffs imposed by the Sultan upon spices that traveled through the Middle East to Europe. This led Christopher Columbus, Vasco de Gama, and Magellan to find an alternative route to Asia to continue to satisfy the European demand for spice, sparking the Age of Discovery. Well, it worked. The spice trade was reestablished and Spanish, Portuguese, and eventually British power was cemented. It is no overstatement to say that there would be no United States were it not for those little jars of peppercorns and turmeric inside our spice cabinets.
Fast forward a hundred or so years: the British East India company lands on the Indian subcontinent in 1608. Gradually it takes over and colonizes the entire subcontinent with the backing of the Crown. I won't get into how this impacted every segment of the subcontinent's society, but one of these segments was spices. The British classified, categorized, and organized spices into some mold in order to exploit them for profit. For instance, they arbitrarily favored the brightest yellow turmeric and the largest peppercorn varieties although these characteristics have no correlation with flavor or nutrient content. Also, the earliest branding marketing campaigns of the Company created Malabar pepper and Allepey turmeric, names that you'll commonly see in any grocery store. These are not botanical varieties. Rather, they are carefully created brands that used the colonial names of "exotic" places to entice the British consumer into purchasing a taste of the Empire. With the standardization of spices came quality assessment via color and appearance, not via flavor and smell, and certainly not by how it was grown. The result was the loss of countless heirloom varieties that had been cultivated for a couple thousand years.
As I mentioned above, the history of the spice trade enriched many people: from the individual merchant to entire empires: basically everyone involved except the farmer. This system remains largely unchanged to this day. The traditional supply chain from farmer to consumer involves the auction house, multiple traders, exporters, importers, wholesalers, and retailers. The price of the spice is marked up by each intermediary, and the farmer is left with little. The standard commodity market price in India for a kilogram of turmeric is around 35 cents. By the time it reaches the West, it's around $35. That's a big difference. The farmer gets 100x less than the final retail price. No matter if we are on the colonial or post-colonial side of history, the farmers seem to get the short end of the stick.
Luckily, there are some companies that are doing good work. Diaspora Company and Burlap & Barrel are devoted to "decolonizing the spice trade." They cut out several intermediaries by establishing working relationships with many farmers, which allows them to pay the farmers up to 10x the commodity price, overcoming the negative impacts of a globalized/colonialized economy. Also, they encourage the reintroduction of rare heirloom varieties into the western market, varieties that have been lost due to the legacy of colonization. Finally, their connection to the farmers allows them to support only the best agricultural practices.
One of the main reasons why I promote supporting locally produced food is because the further one gets away from the source of one's food, the more likely it becomes to overlook inequitable systems. Yet at the same time, the closer we look into these systems, the more likely we are to find inspiring business leaders who have dedicated their lives to change them. There is a lot behind the seemingly inconsequential jars of pepper and turmeric in our spice cabinets, and I thank these two companies for bringing much attention to easily overlooked items that we all use on a daily basis.
MLK Day
Yesterday was Dr. Martin Luther King Day, and today I'd like to write about civil rights within a context that we don't hear about very often: agriculture. One hundred years ago there were nearly 1 million Black farmers in the US, comprising over 10 percent of total farmers at the time. Today there are less than 50,000, comprising around 1.4 percent. There are many causes for this, and one of them has to do with the USDA's long history of racial discrimination against Black farmers. This culminated in the largest class-action civil rights suit in US history: the Pigford Case, where the federal government in 1999 admitted to racial discrimination and settled over one billion dollars to Black farmers who were denied farm loans and assistance (unlike White farmers) due to the color of their skin.
While the history of Black farming is tragic and unjust, from slavery, to neo-slavery in the form of restrictive sharecropping during reconstruction, to the New Deal's Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 inadvertently driving Black farmers from the land, to the more modern-day, conscious discriminatory farm lending practices of the USDA, it is also rich and hugely influential: George Washington Carver developed and popularized crop rotation practices to prevent soil depletion; Booker T Whatley not only was one of the earliest developers in the United States of the CSA and pick-your-own models, but he also authored a book in 1987 entitled How To Make $100,000 Farming 25 Acres. This book directly inspired contemporary "Rockstar farmers" (as we call them) J. M. Fortier and Ben Hartman to write similar books, which in turn inspired an entire new generation of young farmers, including myself. Finally, the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery would never have been possible were it not for Black farmers who owned farms along Highway 80 and who allowed marchers to sleep on their land, something that would never have been permitted by White farmers along the route. These same farmers also led fund raising efforts for racial justice for years leading up to Dr. King's movement.
While my interest for this newsletter lies specifically with agriculture, I'd like to conclude by saying that racial discrimination pervades countless other segments of our lives, many of which remain hidden or not well known, similar to agriculture. Dr. Martin Luther King Day reminds us to unearth these injustices, to remember how members of marginalized groups have contributed immensely to the strength of our nation, and to use such knowledge to become better citizens.
Creating a community of entrepreneurs
This week’s post will be the final part of a three part series where I discuss the philosophy that makes up the core of my business. If you missed part 1, you can find it here.
Part 1: Protecting and enhancing the environment and human health
Part 2: Building a local economy
Part 3: Creating a community of entrepreneurs
While parts 1 and 2 were heavy, this final segment is a bit more light. It’s light and fun because it’s the thing that I enjoy most about my job. It’s also central to everything, because parts 1 and 2 – protecting and enhancing the environment/human health and building a local economy – would not be possible, or at least much more difficult, without a community of entrepreneurs working together in some fashion. There is a lot going on behind the scenes in our local food movement, and I’d love to tell you about it.
There are a couple ways that this community can manifest. First, many of the producers who I supply from use ingredients from other producers who I supply from. For example, Fran and Mark from Castle Valley Mill supply Claire from Ursa Bakery with flour to bake bread. Tom from Kimberton Hills (where I also get herbal products) Dairy supplies raw milk to 7 Stars Creamery (they have their own herd but it’s big not enough so they get extra milk from down the street at Kimberton) for yogurt and Stefanie from Valley Milkhouse to make cheese and butter (butter from her coming soon). Jennifer and Chris from Piggyback Treats use organs/feet for their pet treats from Earl from Kaiser’s Peasantry, and we a working on getting them fish skins and belly from Amanda at Otolith Seafood and from Steve’s trout. While all of the items that you see on my stand are displayed as individual products, there is a hidden web that connects them.
Second, many of us sell each other’s products. Many even produce in the same location. For instance, Brian from Mycopolitan mushroom farm, located off Erie Ave in Philadelphia, subleases space for Ken to make and can his kombucha. Matt from Nilaa Coffee cans his coffee there as well. Brian also sells goat cheese from Catherine at Yellow Springs, which he picks up from me to save Catherine an extra trip. When I pick up eggs from Birchwood Farm, I also drop off my microgreens for them to sell.
Third, there are a couple chefs who I work with as well. Those of you who have been on this list since at least April may remember Max (same guy I mentioned in part 1 re the garlic). He made things like fresh pasta/pierogis (using Castle Valley flour), pasta sauce, and soup in my commercial kitchen (located in my house). I sold his food when I had market out of my driveway. Max has since found a more permanent location to cook, and I’ll be offering his amazing food again soon. He also has a food truck that he parks around town. You can follow him on Instagram here. There’s also Jon from The Omelette Bar. We both had a stand at the Bryn Athyn Bounty farmers market last year. That market didn’t happen this year so Jon started making and delivering quiches. He picks up all of his ingredients from me. You can follow him here and here and place orders on his website here.
I’m always thinking about how I can help expand and strengthen this community. I believe that we are all more likely to succeed if we all work together as best we can in some capacity. And, if we all succeed, parts 1 and 2 will more likely be realized to their fullest potential.
Finally, the friendships that I’ve made in this whole process are invaluable to me. The best business relationships are often extensions of personal relationships, especially when there is a common environmental and economic vision.
So, as we approach Thanksgiving, I want to extend my immense thankfulness to all those I work with and to all those who support us. Have a lovely Thanksgiving.
Building a local economy
This week’s post will be the second part of a three part series where I discuss the philosophy that makes up the core of my business. If you missed part 1, you can find it below.
Part 1: Protecting and enhancing the environment and human health
Part 2: Building a local economy
Part 3: Creating a community of entrepreneurs
Let’s consider for a moment a random object that we come into contact with on a regular basis. How about a soda can, just the can itself. The production of something as simple as a soda can is immensely complex. The bauxite is mined in Africa or Guinea, shipped off to either Europe or the US to be smelted, refined, and produced into alumni, then to China to turn the raw alumina into aluminum sheets, where it is shipped again to the US to be manufactured into cans. It’s then combined with the thingy on top that opens the can, the labels, and the beverage, all of which have their own journey. The components of a single can of soda have circumnavigated the world several times before reaching our hands. Most things that we come into contact with everyday have a similar journey. It’s pretty mind blowing to think about.
World history, for better or (well, and) for worse, has always steered towards the strengthening of global economic connections. Wars have been fought, world leaders have been overthrown, and elections have been decided to establish, maintain, or to enhance these connections. National economies depend on them. Also mind blowing to think about.
Globalization has resulted in plenty of good. No doubt that it has lifted millions out of poverty. No doubt that it has led to the low cost of essential goods. Since there simply aren’t any local mines and refineries, without globalization, we wouldn’t have soda (ok, maybe not so bad), and, if we are to have automobiles at all, they would be as rare as private jets (though I have always wanted a horse and buggy). Point is, unless we are willing to go back three thousand years, globalization is here to stay.
But of course, it’s a double-edged sword.
First, the global economy is vulnerable to major world events. World War 1 for instance completely disrupted the global connections that were established in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and it wasn’t until the early 1990s that the same level of connectivity was reached, after the fall of the Soviet Union. And most relevant to today: pandemics. Nothing is worse for the global economy than a pandemic: the bubonic plague, yellow fever, and now Covid-19 all resulted in major disruptions that took/will take years to recover from.
There are a host of other problems associated with globalization: environmental degradation (see part 1), homogeneity of products, job exportation, wage stagnation, wealth inequality, tax havens, multinational corporations exerting influence over sovereign nations, etc. None of these are inherent to globalization and can be rectified by better policy and policing. But there is one thing that is indeed inherent, and that’s what I want to focus on: the impact on our local community. For every dollar that’s spent at a huge multinational corporation, 70 cents is immediately taken out of the locale where that store is located: much of it goes to China; much of it goes to executives who live far away; and much of it is paid out in dividends to shareholders who can live anywhere. Only very little remains for the local employees who work at that store. If less money is kept within the locale, that means that the money that these local employees would otherwise have spent at other local businesses is accumulating in far off parts of the world. It also means that the taxes that that municipality would otherwise have collected are not being collected by any government anywhere, since many large corporations are very good at avoiding a tax bill. In the end, it costs more for a local municipality to have a big box store (road work, policing, etc.) than it does to have a mainline of small, independently owned shops. Ouch.
So, where am I going with all of this? As I mentioned before, globalization is necessary to meet the demands of a modern lifestyle. Even with all of these problems, we can do the best we can to improve upon them incrementally, but the system is here to stay unless we want to go back millennia. But, there is one sector where it can all change, one sector that is ripe for renewal, one sector that need not be dependent on global forces, and it just so happens to be the largest economic sector in the world: agriculture. Whereas there are no local mines and refineries around us, there is soil everywhere; whereas there is no local automobile manufacturer around us, there are many local farmers.
Every time we support a local farm (or a local store that supports local farmers 😊) we help to accomplish a number of things: we keep money within our locale; we help inspire others to farm once they see the demand (we need more farmers); and we are more likely to be safe and secure if a war or pandemic disrupts the vulnerable global food economy. Yes, it costs more (I will be accepting EBT soon) since small, local farms don't have the economies of scale to offset distribution expenses. But, as I mentioned in part 1, in the long term, Chinese garlic, North Carolina pork, Chilean farmed salmon, and Californian lettuce are much more expensive.
Supporting local farms and millers/bakers/cheesemakers who use locally grown products is one of the most impactful things that I could do to help build a local economy, a guiding principle for my business.
And finally, everything I wrote is debatable. If you know me well, you know how much I love a good debate!
Local food and the environment
This week’s post will be the first part of a three part series where I discuss the philosophy that makes up the core of my business.
Week 1: Protecting and enhancing the environment and human health
Week 2: Building a local economy
Week 3: Creating a community of entrepreneurs
Although these three points are interrelated and there will inevitably be some overlap, I’d like to begin this series with a discussion about the environmental impact of a global vs. local food system.
Before I get into it, I’d like to mention that this discussion is working under the assumption that climate change is real and that it is caused by humans. But, I need to say a little more about this topic before diving in: I don’t actually “know” that climate change is real and that it is caused by humans. I haven’t done the research, and I honestly can say that I don’t understand the science. This stuff is complex, and I don’t have the scientific mind for it. However, what I can do is apply Pascal’s wager to the whole thing. Pascal was a 17th century polymath who came up with a philosophical argument concerning the existence of God. But let’s apply his logic to climate change. There are four scenarios.
Scenario 1: We make no effort to do something about climate change, and climate change ends up being false. End result: nothing different
Scenario 2: We make an effort to do something about climate change, and climate change ends up being false. End result: we create a new industry, create new jobs, save people from air pollution deaths. It would be expensive to implement, but nothing really bad happens, and there will be mostly good that results in my opinion.
Scenario 3: We make no effort to do something about climate change, and climate change ends up being real. End result: we are doomed.
Scenario 4: We make an effort to do something about climate change, and climate change ends up being true. End result: we saved the world.
In the scenarios that involve taking action, the results are either positive or extremely positive. In the scenarios the involve not taking action, the results are either extremely negative or just neutral. I think that this logic is much more convincing than having absolute “knowledge” or “certainty” on the matter, and I think that if this logic were to be employed by more media outlets, the air surrounding climate change would be less controversial. Anyway, this is convincing enough for me to dedicate much of my life to addressing climate change.
So, having written this long preamble, I’ll now get into how a non local food system impacts the environment and human health.
Best to use a specific example. Over 60% of the garlic sold in the United States is grown in China. China is by far the largest producer of garlic in the world, accounting for 80% of sales worldwide. Before harvest, Chinese garlic is irrigated using untreated sewage water that contains lead and sulphites, fertilized using synthetic fertilizer, sprayed with dangerous pesticides/herbicides/fungicides. After harvest, it is soaked in bleach to remove blemishes and fumigated with methyl bromide (a known carcinogen and ozone depleter) to kill any bugs and to prevent sprouting. The garlic is then shipped via air or sea freight all over the world, eventually making its way to the shelves in a conventional grocery store, changing hands dozens of times in the process. Since it takes a long time to import, allicin, the major component of garlic that is responsible for its health benefits, depletes and is almost absent. And, when it finally gets onto your plate, it tastes metallic anyway.
Compare this to a local food system: last week I got garlic from my friend Max. He uses nothing but locally produced compost and some woodash from his wood-burning stove as fertilizer. These inputs aid the soil’s microbial life, which sequesters carbon from the atmosphere. We were going to hang out anyway that day, so he just brought along the garlic, which I now have on my stand. That’s all. It’s pretty simple. No chemicals, healthy, minimal fossil fuel burning (actually no fossil fuels, Max drives an EV which is powered by solar) and a net positive impact to the environment.
Chinese garlic is just one example. Similar things can be said of most non-local sources of food. Don’t even get me started on Atlantic salmon from Chile or some of the huge mono-cropped lettuce farms in California (ok I actually did start writing about them but realized I don’t have to write a book to get to the point…you can talk to me if interested).
From beginning to end, this is a continual process of compounding destruction: the agricultural practices kill the microbes in the soil that are responsible for carbon sequestration; the chemicals used on the farm and the fossil fuels used in transport get into the atmosphere where they contribute to air pollution and climate change. The resulting climate change makes it difficult to grow food in certain regions of the world, which then results in farmers clearing more land elsewhere and so on. It’s a chain reaction.
This is going a little bit into part two, but I’ll mention it briefly here: the only seeming advantage to nonlocal foods is lower prices. Chinese garlic costs around $1.49/lb, compared to $11.99/lb from me. Atlantic salmon costs around $10.99/lb in Acme, compared to $18.99/lb for wild Alaskan sockeye from me. Californian lettuce costs a dollar compared to $3 from me. While the costs for nonlocal food are not immediate, they are much more significant in the long run: healthcare costs, the costs of environmental degradation, etc. Instead of asking why local, organic food is so expensive, I try to ask myself, why is conventional, non-local food so cheap. The answer to this question in fact negates the question itself: it’s not so cheap after all.
Supporting businesses that are doing good things for the environment is central to my business philosophy: mushroom farmer Brian from Mycopolitan uses sawdust from a local saw mill, which, after it is broken down by the mushrooms, is returned to the soil where the tree was capturing carbon before it was cut for wood. Cheese maker Stefanie from Valley Milkhouse gives her whey, a byproduct of cheesemaking, to a local farmer who feeds it to his pigs, reducing the amount of higher footprint grain feed. When I harvest microgreens, I feed the roots and potting soil to earthworms and work in the resulting vermicompost into the garden. Small, local producers are much more likely to do environmentally positive things like this. And what’s best for the environment is also what’s also best for you and your family’s health. This is the type of food production that I will always support.
Thank you for reading!
Salt of the earth
This week I'd like to write a bit about soil health. All I'm about to write is related to a new product I'm offering this week, so hang tight.
Plants need at least 60 different elements in varying amounts to be healthy: calcium, boron, nitrogen, zinc, sulfur, potassium, phosphorus, manganese, etc. Each element has a unique role in plant health. If just one is short, or even in excess, the plant may be stressed. The science behind all of this is complex, and agronomists constantly debate, but it is very clear that plants need a lot more than the standard fertilizer that you'd find in most garden stores.
For millennia, farmers used manure (even humanure), a complete fertilizer, all over the world. But, like everything else, this all changed with the industrial revolution and 19-20th century European science, which were focused on efficiency, simplification, and finding independent variables. People moving to cities to find opportunity meant less farmers. Population booms meant more people to feed. Imperial ambitions and total warfare meant troops had to be fed. So, scientists stepped in to solve the problem. One of these scientists, probably the most influential, was chemist Justus von Liebig, often called the "father of the fertilizer industry." He postulated that nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (N-P-K) were essential to plant health. He also postulated that other minerals were important as well. But, no one paid attention to this second part for some reason, and eventually, the NPK fertilizer industry was born. It was too expensive to be practical for a while until the German chemist, Fritz Haber, figured out a way to convert the nitrogen in the air into ammonia (mainly to get around the British blockade of Chilean nitrate to create explosives during WW1, but this was eventually applied to fertilizer). Anyway, if you go into a garden store you'll still find many fertilizers that have nothing but NPK.
For about 100 years, most conventional farmers have used, and still use, nothing but NPK fertilizer. It results in high yield, important for feeding a booming population. But, it also results in weaker plants that have compromised immune systems: they are more disease prone, which is why these farms spray chemical fungicides; weak plants are more likely to be attacked by pests, which is why these farms spray chemical pesticides; and if you're going to standardize everything, might as well spray some chemical herbicide too. A typical tomato grown in a conventional tomato farm in Florida has about 100 dangerous chemicals in it that go directly into our bodies. Not to mention the terrible labor practices that make this all happen.
But NPK fertilizer doesn't only lead to all of these chemicals, it also leads to much lower nutrient content. The more NPK fertilizer is used, the most depleted the soil gets of other vital minerals. Back when food was more local, you could measure someone's bone density based on the amount of calcium present in that person's local soil. These fertilizers also destroy important biological life in the soil (and to nail the coffin, these fertilizers easily run into our water supply, even making their way into the ocean where they create dead zones in which no marine life can live). Crops grown even a few decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than what is grown today. Von Liebig and Haber of course couldn't have known all this. "Progress" unfortunately often has unforeseen consequences.
All the vitamins and minerals that are contained in vegetables originate from the soil (well I guess they originate from rocks which were turned into soil via bacteria breaking them down, and those rocks originated from asteroids and stuff, and those asteroids from....ok I'll stop). These minerals are essential to plant health and hence human health.
Organic farmers are obsessed with building up the soil through compost, naturally occurring minerals, bacterial/fungal life, cover cropping, etc. And another special thing, which finally leads me to the new product that I'm offering: unrefined sea salt. This is a newer development in agronomy. There is a body of research coming out of universities that suggests that adding very small amounts of unrefined sea salt to the soil, specifically Redmonds Real Salt, is beneficial. I've been doing it for the past 3 years. Several of the farmers in Lancaster where I get produce from are doing it too.
Real Salt is also great to use in your cooking. It's mined from an ancient ocean in Utah, has over 60 vital minerals, and doesn't have any of the dangerous additives found in normal table salt (dextrose, anti-caking agents that contain aluminum). It tastes much better than any other salt, and it's more local than Himalayan Salt (from Pakistan) or Celtic Sea Salt (from France). I guess I can't really say "everything I sell is local" anymore. I'll make an exception for salt :)
That was a really long-winded post to just say "I have salt now." haha
Squash
.I'd like to tell you about an interesting story behind some of the squash varieties that I'm offering. But first I want write a bit about the difference between open pollinated heirloom varieties and hybrid varieties. I guess using the tomato as an example works best. Heirloom varieties, which we all know and love, are disease prone, low yielding, ripen unevenly, and are difficult to pack/distribute since they are all different shapes and sizes. It's not fun to grow them, and this is why they are so expensive. But, they are so darn delicious! To help farmers solve some of the challenges involved with heirloom varieties, plant geneticists began to develop hybrids (this is not the same thing as genetic modification) so that they would yield more, be more resistant to disease, and be more uniform in shape and size. But, they don't taste nearly as good! So, it's a trade-off.
Generally when plant breeders make new varieties, they do so for the interests of industrial agriculture: uniformity and yield. Usually they don't pay much attention to flavor (this is one of the reasons why tomatoes in the grocery store are flavorless). So this is where the squash comes in. You may have heard of Dan Barber, the chef/owner of Blue Hill at Stone Barns. He was one of the pioneers of the farm-to-table movement. If you have Netflix, you can watch an episode about his restaurant on the first season of Chef's Table (I watched it and immediately emailed him asking for a job in-between farming seasons. I worked there for 6 months slicing bread for 10 hours a day, but that's a whole different story haha). Anyway, Barber approached Michael Mazourek, a squash breeder from Cornell University (who I've met and have had several discussions with), and asked him to breed squash specifically for flavor. Mazourek, who had always bred varieties for industrial ag, was surprised: He never before had anyone ask him to breed for flavor. This was the start of a fruitful (pun intended) relationship between the two. Honeynut squash was the first variety they developed: a much sweeter, smaller version of butternut squash. Then came the koginut, intensely sweet and creamy. Last came the tetra squash, which is meant to be a "zero-waste" squash, since the entire plant, including the stems and even immature fruit, are edible and delicious. I'll be offering all of these!