All posts by jgerber123

I teach sustainable food and farming at the University of Massachusetts and try to contribute to my local community without causing too much harm....

Food Policy and Advocacy

The Plight of the Honeybee

May 13, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

Jennifer S. Holland for National Geographic News – Published May 10, 2013

Bees are back in the news this spring, if not back in fields pollinating this summer’s crops. The European Union (EU) has announced that it will ban, for two years, the use of neonicotinoids, the much-maligned pesticide group often fingered in honeybee declines. The U.S. hasn’t followed suit, though this year a group of beekeepers and environmental and consumer groups sued the EPA for not doing enough to protect bees from the pesticide onslaught.

For the last several years scientists have fretted over the future of bees, and although research has shed much light on the crisis, those in the bee business—from hive keepers to commercial farmers—say the insects remain in deep trouble as their colonies continue to struggle.

The current crisis arose during the fall of 2006 as beekeepers around the country reported massive losses—more than a third of hives on average and up to 90 percent in some cases. Bees were flying away and simply not coming back; keepers would find boxes empty of adult bees except for a live queen. No bee corpses remained to tell the tale. The losses were unprecedented and fast.

Now it’s five years later, and though colony collapse disorder (CCD)—the name given to the mysterious killer condition—has dwindled in the manner of cyclical diseases, bees are still battling for their lives and their colonies are weaker than ever. The latest data, from the 2012-2013 winter, indicate an average loss of 45.1 percent of hives across all U.S. beekeepers, up 78.2 percent from the previous winter, and a total loss of 31.1 percent of commercial hives, on par with the last six years. (Most keepers now consider a 15 percent loss “acceptable.”)

Unprecedented Pollinator Crisis

Why keep worrying over the fate of a bunch of pesky stinging insects? Bees in their crucial role as pollinators are paramount. Western nations rely heavily on managed honeybees—the “moveable force” of bees that ride in trucks from farm to farm—to keep commercial agriculture productive. About a third of our foods (some 100 key crops) rely on these insects, including apples, nuts, all the favorite summer fruits (like blueberries and strawberries), alfalfa (which cows eat), and guar bean (used in all kinds of products). In total, bees contribute more than $15 billion to U.S. crop production, hardly small potatoes.

No, we wouldn’t starve without their services—much of the world lives without managed pollinators. But we’d lose an awful lot of good, healthy food, from cherries and broccoli to onions and almonds. Or we’d pay exorbitant costs for farmers to use some other, less efficient pollination technique to supplement the work that healthy natural pollinators could do. Plus, bee health can tell us a lot about environmental health, and thus about our own well-being.

Collecting honey from a honeycomb of the giant honeybee using smoke.

A man uses smoke to harvest honey from a honeycomb.Photograph by Tim Laman, National Geographic

Today’s pollinator crisis, which has also hit Europe and now parts of Asia, is unprecedented. But honeybees have done disappearing acts on and off for more than a century, possibly since humans began domesticating them 4,500 years ago in Egypt. In the United States, unexplained colony declines in the 1880s, the 1920s, and the 1960s baffled farmers, and in 1995-1996 Pennsylvania keepers lost more than half of their colonies without a clear cause. The 1980s and 1990s saw various new parasites that hit bees hard; Varroa and tracheal mites became major killers, and they continue to plague hives and keep beekeepers up at night.

When CCD appeared, the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture joined forces to study and fight the assailant, but a half-dozen years later they still lack a smoking gun. Recent work reveals higher loads of pathogens in the guts of bees from collapsed colonies versus healthy ones—making viral infections a likely culprit.

But this isn’t a case of one cause, one effect. Bee expert Dennis vanEngelsdorp of the University of Maryland likens the situation to HIV/AIDS in humans. “You don’t die of AIDS; you die of pneumonia or some other condition that hits when your immunity is down,” he says. Today’s bee mortalities may be behaving slightly differently. “But we’re pretty sure in all these cases, diseases are the tipping point” after bees’ immune systems are compromised.

So what makes bees vulnerable to those diseases, what’s killing their immunity, continues to be the $15-billion question.

Problems Piling Up

Zac Browning is a fourth-generation beekeeper based in North Dakota. His mostly migratory commercial operation runs about 22,000 hives in three states—meaning he trucks his bees to different locations at different times of year, renting out their pollination services to big farms like those producing almonds in California and canola in Idaho.

CCD devastated his hives a few years back, but “we’ve seen losses more recently from everything imaginable,” he says. “Pests, parasites, pesticide exposure, starvation, queen failures, you name it.”

In addition to these problems piling up, “our inputs have gone up one-and-a-half times in the last decade,” he says. “We now have to try to sustain bees [with extra food] when natural food is scarce, dearth periods that didn’t exist before.”

Part of the problem is keepers have to boost hive numbers to meet demand, “but the carrying capacity of the environment hasn’t changed.” In fact, it’s gone down. The amount of undeveloped land with good bee forage just isn’t enough to sustain the masses, he says.

Meanwhile, studies have shown that colonies with access to the best pollens (with more than 25 percent protein plus essential amino acids), which occur in diverse plant habitats once common across the landscape, are more robust and more resistant to disease than those in pollen-poor environments.

The Threat From Pesticides

Another adversary in the bees’ battle, as the EU reminds us, is pesticides. Pesticides themselves aren’t necessarily a death sentence for bees—and debate rages over whether, when properly applied, these chemicals can be used safely among pollinators. But exposure to them seems to open the door to other killers.

For example, bees exposed to sublethal doses of neonicotinoids—the type the EU is banning and that are used routinely in the U.S. on wheat, corn, soy, and cotton crops—become more easily infected by the gut parasite Nosema.

Meanwhile, last year a French study indicated that this same class of chemicals can fog honeybee brains and alter behavior. And a British study on bumblebees, a natural pollinator in decline in many places, reported neonicotinoids keep bees from supplying their hives with enough food for queen production.

A queen bee.

A man shows his hive’s queen bee.Photograph by Marcio Jose Sanchez, AP

“Honeybees are complex,” says Browning. “If you reduce their lives by even just a few days, the colony itself never thrives, never reaches its maximum potential. Sublethal effects that don’t kill adults outright may still render hives weak and lethargic. And those hives might not survive the winter.”

What takes down the individual bee doesn’t necessarily wipe out the colony, vanEngelsdorp explains. And pesticides, like other factors, do their worst when combined with other chemicals or stressors, not necessarily all by themselves. “It’s synergism,” he says. “One plus one may equal 10 with the right two products or insults together.” (Samples of bee-collected pollen typically contain residue from numerous pesticides.) In the end, then, an immune-suppressed colony faces a downward spiral, unable to cope with stressors that weren’t a problem during healthier years.

The chemicals of modern agriculture have long been vilified, and they certainly represent a vital and active line of inquiry: The number registered for use in the U.S. exceeds 1,200 active ingredients distributed among some 18,000 products, and state pesticide use records are mostly unavailable, leaving a lot of question marks. No one knows much about how low-level exposure to various chemicals over time or how various combinations affect the insects. Meanwhile, migratory colonies likely have very different chemical exposure than those who stay put. The landscape is messy.

A New Concern

In newly worrisome findings, a study from a team at Penn State has revealed that “inert” ingredients (adjuvants) used regularly to boost the effectiveness of pesticides do as much or more harm than the active “toxic” ingredients. In one study adjuvants were shown to impair adult bees’ smelling and navigation abilities, and in a separate study they killed bee larvae outright.

The formulas for these other ingredients “are often proprietary information and not disclosed by the companies,” says Penn State’s Maryann Frazier, who wasn’t an author on the study, “so they cannot be independently tested and assessed for toxicity. When [the] EPA screens pesticides for registration, they only consider the active ingredient,” she says.

In addition, “there are no requirements by [the] EPA for companies to test the impacts of pesticides on immature stages of pollinators,” she says, “only adults.”

The EPA participated in a stakeholder conference last year to discuss honeybee health (a report is just out from that event). An EPA spokesperson declined to comment on the pending lawsuit but noted that the agency has been working to speed up its review of research related to neonicotinoids and their effect on honeybees. It is also tweaking existing regulatory practices to address various concerns including pesticide dust drift, product label warnings, and enforcement of bee-kill investigations.

Barrage of Stressors

So in addition to a changing climate and bizarre local weather systems, bees are threatened by chemical exposure in untested and unregulated combinations, disappearing foraging habitat with increasing monoculture that requires trucking bees from place to place, and fungal and viral intruders, plus the dreaded Varroa mite.

Meanwhile, nature is not sitting still. The diseases that are taking out immune-suppressed bees are quick to evolve resistance to farmers’ attempts to protect their bees. “Based on our management surveys last year, not one commercial product against Varroa worked consistently,” says vanEngelsdorp, citing numerous examples.

With the barrage of stressors bees face, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re no longer as resilient as they once were. And honeybees, vanEngelsdorp points out, are among the most robust pollinators. The native insects, such as bumblebees, stingless bees, and flies, may be in worse shape, though their plights—and role in the ecosystem—are far less well known.

Meanwhile, the lawsuit against the EPA is just revving up (the first hearing was March 15), and scientists continue to push hard to get more information on the unregulated ingredients in agrochemicals that are proving harmful. “Unless we can get at what’s actually being used on fields, we can’t analyze their effects,” says toxicologist Chris Mullin, a co-author of the Penn State adjuvant study. And some products, he says, “are nearly 100 percent adjuvant. Illogically, they are considered safe until proven otherwise.”

Other voices have risen strongly against current land use practices. “Honeybees need habitat,” Browning says. “That’s any floral source with good nutrition. And that’s not wheat, corn, or soy, crops that take up well over 60 percent of U.S. farmland.” We’ve traded bee needs for biofuel, he laments, and we’re paying the price.

“We also need good cooperation from [the] EPA—and from farmers and pesticide applicators—to implement and enforce best management practices,” he says. Also on his wish list: a better battery of tools to effectively combat the Varroa mite, the bane of all beekeepers.

“Bee culture has adapted to fit monoculture, and that’s not healthy,” says Browning. “If we can instead invest in good sustainable practices in agriculture, we can still thrive.”

But his confidence in the future, along with that of many of his fellow beekeepers, is declining with his hives. “We’re just about tapped out,” he says. “Without some real action we’ll see this industry dwindle away.” And as the industry goes, so go the little yellow insects that put so much good food on our plates.

Jennifer S. Holland, a contributing writer to National Geographic, wrote about pollinators in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic.

Original Post

Education

Congratulations to the 2013 SFF Graduates

May 11, 2013 jgerber123

Thanks for joining us for a luncheon before the college graduation ceremony so our faculty could meet your families.

Deans Goodwin and Baker stopped by to wish our graduates well

Dr. Barker acknowledged the student with the highest GPA in the graduating class

This was the largest graduating class for the Sustainable Food and Farming major ever! Congratulations to all of our seniors!

Getting ready outside the Mullins Center

Stockbridge was in the front row in recognition of our role at the beginning of Mass Aggie

The Mullins Center was full!

Astrid O'Connor spoke on behalf of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture — Astrid O’Connor spoke on behalf of the Stockbridge School of Agriculture

Jordan Teboldi's graduation cap — Jordan Teboldi’s graduation cap

Congratulations to Graduating Sustainable Food and Farming students:

Liz Altieri
Ashley Barrett
Rose Boyko
Max Carbone
Brooke Dillon
Becca Drew
Morgan Dugan
Thayer Dugan
Brian Eaton
Dan Finkelstein
Amber Halkiotis
Jacob Harness
Katie Houghton
Andrew Kapinos
Astrid O’Connor
Nora Seymour
Jordan Teboldi

Business

From fish to produce, local CSAs continue to flourish

May 2, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

Ed Struzziero of Cape Cod Fish Share, left, talks with Kevin Landau of Pelham, Saturday, after Landau purchases fresh Hake and Cod in the Wheat Berry parking lot in Amherst.

In 1986, Brookfield Farm on Hulst Road in Amherst became only the third CSA farm in the country. CSA stands for community supported agriculture. The way it works is that members of the CSA pay for a share of a farm’s produce up front in the spring, then receive crops as they come in from June to November.

Winter shares of storage crops such as potatoes are also available. The farmer gets working capital; the share owners get super-fresh local produce, and the local community benefits because agricultural land is kept in useful — and scenic — production.

Today the CSA concept flourishes in both its original and new forms.

Brookfield farms has over 500 shareholders for whom it grows 50 crops on 30 acres of land. Its success has helped inspire several other local CSA farms. But while these and other farms produce an enormous variety of vegetables, pretty much the rest of our other food still comes from far afield: meat, fish and baking supplies are a few examples.

Increasingly, though, enterprising food producers have been turning to the CSA model to distribute their products. Now it’s possible to get fish, meat and grains on the share system, thus providing the protein element essential to the human diet. Locavores — people committed to eating local and regional foods — can find lots of food grown right here in the Valley or within the hundred-mile radius that most locavores define as the range of regional fare.

Since we live many miles from the ocean, fish seems one of the more unlikely candidates for the share system. Since 2011 Cape Cod Fish Share has been ferrying fresh fish from Chatham to its 400 members located in towns throughout the state, including Amherst and Northampton.

Here’s how it works: Members sign up for 5-week shares so the amount of fish is predetermined, and the fishermen have a guaranteed market. The fish bypasses the usual auction process, and can be sped westwards faster and fresher.

Share members get two kinds of fish each week. Since many fish are seasonal, says Ed Struzziero, one of the founders and a University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate, “We choose a species mix that takes advantage of what’s available. We had northern shrimp for a few weeks in spring, Nantucket Bay scallops in late fall, striped bass and bluefish in the summer, and so on. We balance mild fish with more exotic species, all caught using sustainable fishing practices.”

While old favorites such as cod, haddock and swordfish often appear in members’ shares, Struzziero notes that, “For many members, the share has introduced new treats: monkfish, skate, hake and redfish among others.”

The quality is startling, too.

“People are blown away at how tender swordfish and tuna steaks are when fresh,” Struzziero said.

He describes the share system as a “win-win situation.” The large orders the CSA places for less common species remove the economic risk for the boats to fish and land anything other than the “greatest hits” that are found elsewhere, he said.

“When we place our order, the purchase has happened. Our customers have trusted us to provide their fish, and the boats in turn have trusted us to take possession.”

As for ways to cook the fish, the weekly newsletter announcing what’s in the next share includes several recipes.

Ben and Adrie Lester of Wheat Berry pose for a portrait with Gabriel Lester, 1, Saturday, next to the grinding station at Wheat Berry in Amherst. The station allows for customers to grind their own grain after purchasing it from the local grain share.

In Amherst, the Cape Cod Fish Share van delivers to share-holders at Wheatberry Bakery & Cafe at 321 Main St. Saturdays from to 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The van often arrives with extra scallops and sometimes fish for sale to non-members.

“Best to come early,” Struzziero advises nonmembers hoping to buy. They also have brochures or can be contacted via email at ed@capecodfishshare.com.

Surprising grains

While picking up fish, members often stroll into Wheatberry, where they will see a display of gallon jars filled with grains and beans and dried corn.

Wheatberry owners Ben and Adrie Lester graduated from culinary school, and are enthusiastic members of a CSA farm and committed to eating local foods. As bakers they wondered if they could buy locally grown grains. Most local farmers told them they could not; grains don’t grow in our soil and climate, they told the Lesters.

Undeterred, the couple rented land and sowed wheat and other grains — and they thrived. They also discovered that some local growers were experimenting with the grains that aren’t supposed to grow round here, including rice.

“Now there’s 18,000 pounds of locally produced grains,” Ben Lester said. “It’s not a lot in one sense, but considering that there were no grains here at all 5 years ago, it’s terrific.”

Working with local growers, Wheatberry now offers a grain CSA, which provides its members with about 115 pounds of 10 to 12 organically grown grains, including wheat, barley, emmer, spelt, a couple of sorts of corn, black beans and more. (A half share is also available.)

“To most people nowadays grain means flour, and so we have a self-service mill where members can grind their share into flour if they like,” Lester said. “But we also emphasize cooking grains whole and serving them as you would rice, or topping them with a pasta sauce.”

Since grains are harvested once a year, there is only one share delivery, so share owners don’t have to pick up every week: “An easier commitment than the weekly pickups at many other CSAs,” Lester said.

Fifty of Wheatberry’s 167 grain CSA members live in the Boston area, while others come from Maine and New York.

“We didn’t advertise,” he said. “They found our website on the Internet when they were looking for a source of organic whole grains.”

For information, visit www.wheatberry.org.

Other CSAs

Meat, too, is being produced by the CSA system. For several years Jeremy Barker-Plotkin has been growing a myriad of popular vegetables, including heirloom varieties of tomatoes and potatoes, at Simple Gifts Farm on North Pleasant Street in Amherst. Now the farm has started raising pigs, so as well as offering vegetable shares it also has pork shares. A typical share provides five pounds of pork every month for four months or a single delivery of 20 pounds. The pork comes in various forms: sausage, hot dogs, bacon, chops and ribs.

“A 20-pound box of pork stores more easily in the freezer part of a fridge than most people think,” Barker-Plotkin said.

Barker-Plotkin’s pigs are reared on organic grain and the natural foods they find as they snuffle the pasture.

“We are supposed to eat vegetables and exercise,” he points out, “So it makes sense to eat meat from animals that have also eaten vegetables and exercised.”

The supply of pork is continuous, so one can buy a pork share at any time.

For information, visit www.simplegiftsfarmcsa.com.

Like several other CSAs Simple Gifts raises chickens for purchase by members. In addition, our area now has at least 10 farms specializing in meat shares. Among the newest is Valley Fresh Meat, which offers chicken, beef, pork, turkey and goat meat raised by Hadley neighbors Sunnybrook Farm and Copperhead Farm.

Dee Scanlon of Copperhead Farm began raising chickens five years ago to provide her three children with better eggs and meat. Today she also raises goats and turkeys, while the Boisverts at Sunnybrook raise pigs, beef and chickens.

Both farms give their animals plenty of outdoor pasture so they can ramble and hunt for nature’s treats, and all the grain or hay used for supplemental feeding is free of hormones and antibiotics. Teaming together to form a CSA that could offer a variety of different kinds of meat seemed a good idea.

“Shares are available throughout the year; there’s no sign-up period. And we’ve designed the shares to take account of different needs and families,” Scanlon said. “You could get a share that gives you enough meat for the year, or you could do one that gives you enough for a month.”

The pickup point is the North Hadley Sugar Shack on River Drive in Hadley, which also stocks the meat for purchase by customers who do not belong to the CSA.

Shares typically include a variety of meats the farms produce — and that includes goat, which has not traditionally been part of the mainstream American diet. Scanlon says the goat meat is popular with customers who are immigrants, and others are beginning to try it.

“Really, you can cook it like you’d cook beef: use it ground in sauces or barbecue or slow-roast the bigger pieces. The ribs are delicious,” she said.

Committed to producing healthful food, she notes, “Farm fresh is not as outrageously expensive as a lot of people think and the food is local and really good for you.”

For more information about this meat CSA, visit www.valleyfreshmeat.com. For information on the many CSAs now operating in our area, visit the Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture (CISA) website buylocalfood.org. Go to the heading Buy Local and from there Find Local and then to CSA Farm Listing, which provides a complete listing.

Original Post.

Local Food

Sorry, but your meat may not be safe to eat (unless it is local)

May 2, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

Gut bomb: That turkey burger could kill you, and here’s why

By Tom Laskawy

OK, meat eaters, do you want the good news or the bad news first? Hey, I know! I’ll start with the bad news: In a just-released study, Consumer Reports tested 257 samples of ground turkey from supermarkets, and found that virtually every one was contaminated with either fecal bacteria, staph, or salmonella. Even worse, most of the fecal bacteria were resistant to one or more antibiotics important to human medicine.

Clearly, between this study and the Environmental Working Group’s recent report on the high rates of fecal (and antibiotic-resistant) bacteria, it’s fair to conclude that the meat industry is struggling to keep its product safe.

The bit of good news here is that Consumer Reports tested both meat raised with antibiotics and meat raised without them. While meat raised without antibiotics had about the same rates of overall contamination as the industrial alternative, it had far lower levels of antibiotic-resistant strains — and it’s the antibiotic-resistant bugs that should scare you. Infection with them puts you at far greater risk of serious illness or even death if you’re an infant, elderly, or immune-compromised.

The message to consumers is simple: Buying meat raised without antibiotics will reduce your exposure to the nastiest bacteria. Which is a good thing.

There’s a message here for the meat industry, too: Restricting agricultural use of antibiotics would have a big effect on meat safety. Of course, any Danish pig farmer would tell you the same thing. But here at home neither Big Meat nor the government agencies that police it are ready to face that reality.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture certainly understands that regulations surrounding meat safety need reform. In fact, the agency is moving forward with a proposed new regulation for poultry inspections that the administrator of its food safety division declared last year would “further the agency’s transformation to focus solely on public health and help address the challenge we have to reduce foodborne illness.”

Sadly, it would take generous definitions of most of the nouns and verbs in that sentence for it to be accurate. The new USDA regs would actually reduce the number of government inspectors, shifting responsibility for visual inspections to slaughterhouse company employees, while increasing the speed at which the chickens move along the processing line and increasing the number and frequency of chemical disinfecting washes used on the carcasses. Sigh.

It may come as a surprise to learn that virtually all of the chicken you buy at the supermarket has been chemically disinfected, most frequently with chlorine but also with other, more toxic chemicals. It’s no sure fix, of course, since pathogens can hide in nooks and crannies that the sprays, which focus on surface contamination, can’t reach. It also does nothing to address the root causes of how the bacteria got onto the meat in the first place.

The USDA claims [PDF] that its new system is a more science-based approach that relies less on inspectors’ eyes and more on risk assessments of where the pathogens are and how to kill them. That claim is, of course, the subject of some dispute. Food and Water Watch uncovered documents that suggest that slaughterhouses that tried out the new regs actually had higher rates of salmonella contamination than those using the old system.

Nonetheless, the USDA estimates the new system will prevent up to 5,000 cases of foodborne illness annually — all this, while also saving taxpayers $90 million per year and lowering industry costs by just over $250 million per year. But it sure seems like the benefits are flowing the wrong way — that is, more toward industry than consumers (as in more chickens processed per hour and more profit).

One industry-associated food safety expert I spoke to, Michael Doyle of the University of Georgia’s Center for Food Safety, said the industry has relied on chemical washes without necessarily using them appropriately, and that these new regs will help address that shortcoming. That may be. But appropriate use for carcasses may not equal appropriate use for the slaughterhouse workers who, along with the chickens, will be exposed to them.

The Washington Post ran an exposé last week on the increasing health problems those workers are suffering as a result of increased chemical exposure. The article features former USDA inspectors critical of the new meat safety rules, both because the line speeds are now too fast for inspectors to see problems and because of the reliance on chemicals.

And these former inspectors aren’t alone. Lawyer Bill Marler, who represents victims of serious foodborne illnesses and their families, agrees that it’s a misguided approach. “The whole system is flawed,” he told me in an email. As he sees it, the problem isn’t in the particulars of the rules themselves. The problem is that the USDA sets allowable levels for the presence of dangerous bacteria like salmonella or campylobacter on meat. Marler believes that the level should be zero.

“Impossible,” you say. “Bacteria are everywhere!” Well, almost 20 years ago, the USDA set a zero-tolerance policy for the deadly form of E. coli (O157:H7 for those keeping score at home) that caused the fatal Jack in the Box outbreak in 1993. And while that strain still causes problems, especially in produce, we don’t see it as frequently in meat — with one notable 2009 exception — because companies were forced to eliminate it from their facilities. They didn’t like it, they complained about cost, but they mostly succeeded.

Many consumer advocates, including Consumer Reports and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, believe that until the USDA does the same with the newer, deadlier, antibiotic-resistant strains of salmonella and other deadly bacteria, no amount of chemical washing will solve the problems with our meat. The USDA has plenty of compelling evidence that attacking the problems at the source — that is, reducing the amount of antibiotics used in meat production — could drastically lower the most dangerous forms of bacterial contamination. But the USDA is too hemmed in by industry to make those changes.

And that’s where you, the consumers, come in. Your role goes beyond practicing good food safety at home and using helpful resources, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s new “Risky Meat Guide,” to avoid meat with the highest rates of bacterial contamination.

One of the great food-system success stories in recent years involves the dairy industry’s reluctant abandonment of artificial growth hormones in the face of a virtual revolt by (mostly) mothers of small children. If meat eaters demand meat raised without antibiotics — it’s not significantly more expensive to buy, as it doesn’t have to be organic — the industry will be forced to respond. Producers will have to change the ways they raise animals, which will have the added benefit of lessening the need for repeated chemical disinfection at the slaughterhouse.

That’s better for the animals, for workers, and for consumers — even vegetarians, since antibiotic-resistant bacteria aren’t just on meat anymore.

So, meat eaters. What are you waiting for?

Tom Laskawy is a founder and executive director of the Food & Environment Reporting Network and a contributing writer at Grist covering food and agricultural policy. His writing has also appeared in The American Prospect, Slate, The New York Times, and The New Republic. Follow him on Twitter.

Original post.

If you live in the Amherst, MA area, you are fortunate to have several sources of safe local meat. Try:

Simple Gifts Farm

King Creek Farm

Business

Two farms expand stores to meet local produce demand

April 29, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

By REBECCA EVERETT@GazetteRebecca Sunday, April 28, 2013

Especially in the summer and fall, Outlook Farm draws people from all over the region for apple picking, harvest festivals, pig roasts and other attractions at its spread on Route 66. It’s not unusual on a fall weekend to find its small store and restaurant so packed it’s tough to even get to the shelves of produce or the deli counter for its locally produced selection of meat.

After five years of planning, a year of construction and a $1 million investment, Outlook Farm is hosting a grand opening celebration this weekend to show off its new expanded store, which includes a new 3,000-square-foot barn modeled after a traditional post and beam barn.

Bradford Morse, who runs the farm with his wife, Erin, said they are thrilled to more than double their space. The store was 2,400-square-feet before, but half of that was an apple cooler.

The new addition at Outlook Farm in Westhampton

“We’ve been growing a lot for the last five or six years,” he said. Morse credits the “buy local” movement with drastically increasing the demand for his produce and pork.

“Five years ago, when we started with the barn, we were kind of ahead of the ‘buy local’ curve,” he said. “But now there’s still a huge market out there for it. There’s not enough produce grown in New England to keep up with the demand.”

Outlook Farm is not the only Valley operation looking to provide more produce through a store thanks to aggressive buy local initiatives.

Atlas Farm in South Deerfield will open its farm store at 218 Greenfield Road May 3. The farm, owned by Gideon Porth, previously sold its organic produce wholesale, at farmers markets or through farm shares. Porth purchased the farm store building, previously used by Deerfield Farm, along with 40 acres of adjacent farmland.

“It has been a long-term vision on the farm to do this and this was a great opportunity,” Porth said of the purchase.

The store will sell Atlas Farm produce as well as other local products like milk, flour and pickles, according to the Atlas Farm website.

Devon Whitney-Deal, of the South Deerfield nonprofit Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture, said though several farm stores have opened in the Valley in the last five years, it’s not quite enough to be considered a trend.

It is, however, a sound business move, if perhaps also a bit complicated and capital intensive.

“It can definitely help them to sell more directly to their customers and provide a greater diversity of products — to offer more of a one-stop-shopping experience,” said Whitney-Deal, CISA’s member services coordinator. “But it’s a big investment and a big commitment, not just from the financial standpoint but also in terms of labor. You have to be open more hours, you need more staff. It’s definitely more significant than having a self-serve farmstand.”

Porth declined to say how much it cost him to start up the Farm Store. “It was definitely a big investment, but we feel like the marketplace is really good for this now,” he said. “There aren’t too many full-service farm stores like this.”

Jobs added

With his farm store expansion, Morse said he will probably hire six new workers, from counter help to managers. At the peak of the season, the farm employs about 25 people, he said.

Currently, the store’s retail shelves, meat counter, kitchen and restaurant seating is all located in the 1,200-square-foot front of the store, with a lot of the produce being displayed outside on the porch because of the limited space.

Contractors have transformed the 1,200-square-foot rear room of the store, which previously served as the apple cooler, into additional retail space. When the shelves and products are relocated there, it will allow for the restaurant that offers breakfast and lunch to expand in the front of the store and double its seating to 50.

“We have really limited seating — when you get the regulars in, there’s no room for anyone else,” Morse said Tuesday while surveying the crowded seating area.

Customers who walk to the far side of the former apple cooler space will find themselves in the meat market, where they can choose chicken, pork and beef from coolers or ask the meat cutter for a special cut of fresh pork. Previously, Morse said the meat counter was cramped in the small store and all the cutting was done in a different building, so meat could only be cut to order with advance notice.

Morse said the pork he sells is from Pennsylvania pigs slaughtered at Adams Farm and Slaughterhouse in Athol, so it arrives at Outlook Farm very fresh. “And pork is really best fresh,” he said.

Beyond the meat market is the recently completed, two-story barn, which will house most of the store’s produce as well as things that the store has never had the space to carry before, such as bulk quantities of local potatoes. Morse said he also hopes to have local artisans such as potters and quilters sell their wares here, as well.

One end of the barn is dominated by the 1880s cider press that the farm used to produce about 4,000 gallons of cider last year. It’s been on the farm since 1968, Morse said, but was located in a different barn.

“Now people can come watch cider being made,” he said. The attraction fits in perfectly with the other agritourism features that have been drawing families from near and far to Outlook. “We’re trying to make it all a destination point.”

The barn was designed as an improved replica of a late 19th-century barn that originally stood on Kennedy Road in Leeds. That barn was dismantled and given to Morse, but it blew down in February 2009 while it was still being reconstructed at Outlook Farm.

Morse said that was a huge disappointment, but he learned his lesson. “This barn is a duplicate but with beefed up engineering,” he said.

Timber framer Neil Godden of Cummington designed and framed the barn and Westhampton contractor Ronald Lamagdaline — a regular customer — built everything else, Morse said.

“We’ve been through it all, but now it’s done,” he said while surveying the interior of the new barn Tuesday. “And it’s going to be a great year.”

He’s feeling optimistic about his crops this year, including the 30 acres of fruit tree orchards. Although there have been a couple frosts, the temperatures weren’t low enough to do any damage to the fruit tree blossoms, he said.

He owns and farms 60 acres of land, half orchards and half ground crops, around the 136 Main Road store. He also rents another 30 acres around town.

The barn grand opening celebration on Saturday and Sunday will feature live music, pig roasts, barbecues, special sales, a chili cook-off and community craft and tag sales on both days from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The Atlas Farm Store will open Friday at 8 a.m.

left, Tom Devine, Stephen Giard and Robert Brennan, all employees of Kevin Gray Building out of Northfield work on the barn at Atlas Farm.

Rebecca Everett can be reached at reverett@gazettenet.com.

Source URL:http://www.gazettenet.com/home/5772081-95/two-farms-expand-stores-to-meet-local-produce-demand

Education

Groundbreaking for Agricultural Learning Center at UMass on nearby Amherst field

April 25, 2013 jgerber123

By SCOTT MERZBACH Staff Writer – Thursday, April 25, 2013 – Original Article

AMHERST — Growing up in Foxborough, Stockbridge School of Agriculture senior Jordan Tedoldi didn’t have many opportunities to work on farms before arriving in Amherst.

As a new 50-acre farm known as the Agricultural Learning Center begins life a short distance from the University of Massachusetts campus, Tedoldi and other Stockbridge and UMass students will not only have a place to learn about agriculture, but be full participants in planting and studying crops, raising livestock and practicing urban forestry.

“I know it will be an inspirational place for people who grow up away from the farms where they aren’t getting dirt under their fingernails,” Tedoldi said.

Jordan Teboldi and other Sustainable Food and Farming majors at the groundbreaking

The learning center is in part a response to the rapidly expanding Sustainable Food and Farming major at Stockbridge, which has increased from five to 80 students in the last decade. But the center also will allow other students to pursue studies focused on agriculture, including sustainable practices aimed at growing more food locally, enhancing the food supply and responding to concerns about climate change.

The center was the focus of a celebration and formal ground-breaking Thursday as part of UMass Founders Week 150th anniversary event. But it’s already very much a working farm — plowing began on some of the fields this week, where crops will soon be planted and the first livestock, belted Galloway cows, are expected to be raised.

David Bradham, Business manager of Blue Star Equiculture, left, and Wesley R. Autio, Director of Stockbridge School of Agriculture use a horse-drawn hand plow, Thursday, during a groundbreaking at the site of the new UMass Agricultural Learning Center on N. Pleasant St. in Amherst. Photo from Sarah Crosby of the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Unlike the research farm UMass has in South Deerfield, with its turf and vegetable plots, and the Belchertown orchards, all of which are primarily for professor research and Stockbridge majors, the learning center will feature the entire spectrum of farming in New England — pastureland for livestock to graze, vegetable and agronomic crops, tree fruits and landscaping.

Stephen Herbert, director of the Center for Agriculture at UMass, said the idea is to get students into the active part of agriculture and supplement the training they get in the classroom. “Students will come and use the crops that are grown,” Herbert said.

As an example, Herbert said a student taking a soil and crop management class may get to see how the size of corn ears varies depending on how densely the crop is planted. The student will be able to see the larger or shorter ears and calculate the yields.

Other projects could include learning about planting cover crops, something that is done in campus greenhouses, which don’t always mimic real conditions.

Students are looking forward to these real-life opportunities.

“This center represents everything that I joined this program to do,” said Kaylee Brow, a junior from Northampton.

Brow said she expects the learning center will be an incredible opportunity.

“This is both very important for hands-on education and significant for the university to reinvest in agriculture,” Brow said.

Max Traunstein, a junior from Granby, said he expects the learning center will offer better hands-on experiences than other agriculture-related opportunities now on campus.

“There are some small places on campus to do permaculture, adjacent to the cafeterias,” Traunstein said.

John Gerber, a professor of Sustainable Food and Farming at Stockbridge, agreed, saying this will be real farming, not gardening.

“On campus, there’s really no sense of what farming is like,” Gerber said. “This will be a farm.”

Gerber said he anticipates that some classes will begin at the site this summer, with the year-round UMass Student Farming Enterprise class one of the first to take advantage.

Stockbridge already grows organic vegetables at the South Deerfield Farm, but the learning center, Gerber said, will allow students in both Sustainable Agriculture and Botany for Gardeners classes to actually harvest vegetables that will soon be planted.

“There are 27,000 students at UMass who don’t know where their food comes from,” Gerber said. “Our students will be a lot of the teachers when they walk over here.”

During the ground-breaking ceremony, UMass Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy said the learning center brings UMass back to the roots when it was founded by Levi Stockbridge in 1863, but is also part of a vibrant food-secure future.

“The new center represents the spirit of our history and the cutting edge of agricultural understanding,” Subbaswamy said. “It will be a showpiece and destination for people to learn about agriculture.”

Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy announced the creation of the new UMass Agricultural Learning Center at the site on North Pleasant St.

The 50-acre site is made up of parts of four former farms, but has been primarily hayfield in recent years.

Alice Wysocki, whose family once owned a portion of the land, said she is pleased to see a return to agricultural production, especially in a sustainable way much like her family farmed it.

“My father would be very pleased. This was a way of life in the ’ 20s and ‘30s,” Wysocki said.

Jane Adams Roys, whose father Robert C. Adams ran a dairy farm on the land, traveled from Florida for the ground-breaking.

“I just think it’s wonderful for agriculture going on here,” Roys said.

Roys said she wished her father were still alive to see this project come to reality.

The learning center is expected to eventually have an 1894 horse barn and the Blaisdell House moved to the site from campus, though this depends on financing. Plans call for the ground level of the horse barn to have the horse stalls converted into a 90-seat classroom, while the loft becomes teaching laboratories.

Massachusetts Farm Bureau Federation president Rich Bonanno presented a $10,000 check in support of the project, and has pledged $500,000, and the university is expected to undertake a fundraising campaign to have work done so the center can formally open in fall 2014.

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And from Channel 22 TV news: Groundbreaking new 50 acre working farm for UMass

Education

Herb Fest Today!

April 23, 2013 jgerber123

Lots of Sustainable Food and Farming majors were at Herb Fest!

Its open until 1:30pm today – please stop by!

http://www.umass.edu/mpp/herbfest.html

Education

Sustainable Food ‘Is on the Brink of Going Viral’ on Campuses

April 16, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

To the Editor:

Anyone concerned about quality of life on higher education campuses—especially food service operators—should appreciate and take heed of William R. Wootton’s “Fire Your Food Service and Grow Your Own” (The Chronicle, March 11).

I especially appreciate his point about the clashing missions of colleges and food-service providers. Whether a college food service is run independently or by a corporation, it is incongruous for the two entities to run separately and with different goals in mind. Only when food-service providers and their universities begin to align their respective missions and work collaboratively will we begin to see the systemic change his article calls for.

Here at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, UMass Dining is an independent, college-operated food-service provider. UMass Dining places local, certified-organic sourcing as top priority. The students demanded it, and we’ve listened. Yet, as Mr. Wootton pointed out, it becomes difficult to change sourcing if you’re locked into a third-party contract. Nine times out of 10, financial feasibility seems to be the insurmountable hurtle—or, rather, the companies “have little financial or managerial incentive” to make changes.

If both independent and corporate food-service providers opened their eyes to the intangible values above the bottom line, we might find ourselves moving towards the future envisioned in this article.

UMass Dining’s mission is “to contribute to the campus life experience” as well as the local community. Our well-established relationships with neighboring farmers allow us to source nearly 30 percent of our produce locally. In turn, UMass provides healthy, vibrant, and engaging products, services, and knowledge that complement and support the academic, recreational, and social goals of the University.

We have successfully initiated and staffed one of the most aggressive and progressive sustainability programs in the country. Our switch to trayless dining, coupled with a dogged belief in composting and recycling has led to a waste-diversion rate in excess of 70 percent (at UMass Amherst we divert over 1,000 tons of organic waste annually), all while we continue working to reduce waste entirely.

In terms of education, UMass Dining and the university’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture have formed a partnership to expand academic programming for sustainable food systems. UMass also has one of the fastest growing undergraduate and graduate degree programs in sustainable food and farming in the nation, and many of our students elect to focus on permaculture within this degree.

UMass is not perfect, nor do we believe we have all of the answers, but we are certainly trying. In an effort to connect sustainable leaders and food-service providers from campuses around the globe, UMass Amherst is hosting the 2013 Permaculture Your Campus Conference this June. Students, food-service directors, and faculty and staff members will explore diverse models of institutional sustainability and establish an international network of colleagues working to create the culture of sustainability that every campus needs.

We pride ourselves in the fact that the aforementioned “good stuff” is a direct reflection of UMass Amherst as land-grant institution. The better our program is, the more we contribute what it means to be part of the campus community. But ours is just one example of the many university-dining programs that are joining this nationwide trend to source sustainable food and place a strong emphasis on educating their students about food and agricultural systems. The trend is on the brink of going viral. We can only hope that more universities and foodservice providers start working to the same end so we can collectively tip the scales toward a more sustainable future.

Ken Toong
Executive Director
Auxiliary Enterprises
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, Mass.

Original Post

Education

Highlighting the Importance of Student-Run Cooperatives

April 15, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

by Meghan McDonough, (University of Massachusetts, Amherst student)

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an original report written for GEO.)

At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, approximately 145 full-time undergraduate students work as co-managers at seven different student-run cooperatives across campus. Ranging from a copy shop, a bike repair shop, and numerous food venues, these student-run businesses service all different areas of campus. Each co-manager in every cooperative has an equal say in business decisions, is involved in numerous committees (purchasing, marketing, catering, books, payroll, etc) and gains valuable, hands-on experience running a business.

Several student-run food venues such as Earthfoods, Greeno Sub Shop, and Sweets & More accept the Your Campus Meal Plan (YCMP) swipes, valued at $9.50 each. People’s Market, another student-run business located in the Student Union, however, is not permitted by the University to accept the YCMP meal plan because they do not technically sell “meals”, but rather food items as a market would. For several semesters, People’s has been advocating for a change to this policy so that they can begin accepting this meal exchange.

Recently at UMass, a University-owned Starbucks stand has opened in the Integrated Sciences Building, a populous and buzzing area of the University. Catering to students and faculty alike, this new coffee and pastry hotspot has stirred up controversy around campus. This venue sells Starbucks products, yet is permitted to accept the YCMP meal plan swipes whereas similar food venues such as People’s Market cannot. While meal exchange is just one of the apprehensions that this venue is raising, many other student advocacy groups such as the Student Workers Invested in Fair Treatment (SWIFT) and the Student Labor Action Program (SLAP) are voicing their concerns regarding the allowance of corporations on campus, as Starbucks is the first at UMass.

The Center for Student Businesses (CSB) is the University’s administrative department for these student-run businesses and is working to raise awareness about the benefits that each cooperative brings to the University in the hopes that more will be established on campus. Co-managers are voicing a “pro-collective” and “pro-community” mentality, not an anti-Starbucks one. They insist that the skills needed to be an effective student co-manager as well as the amount of information and abilities learned throughout a co-manager’s experience are both valuable and unique. Everything from purchasing, pricing, marketing, catering, books, payroll, cashout, community outreach and in-store responsibilities all require diligence and reliability.

The University employs 145 co-managers for this opportunity, which is a small number when compared to the 20,500 undergraduate students currently enrolled at UMass. Current co-managers would like to see this opportunity open up for more students.

Rumors have been swirling that there is intent to open even more areas on campus to sell Starbucks products, including in the Southwest residential area as well as the new honors dormitories scheduled to open in September, 2013. Though confirmation of this has been denied, if UMass continues to open University-owned Starbucks throughout the campus, co-managers argue that it would be beneficial to consider the advantages of having students more involved in the operation as the student-run cooperatives on campus already operate. Co-managers are assets to the community as well as the University. The skills acquired by working at a collective are rare in today’s workforce, where it is common for a college intern’s most important duty to be fetching coffees for the office.

The Center for Student Businesses itself is an asset to UMass as it gives students the opportunity to run a business and make all operating decisions as a collective. Should more students be given this opportunity, UMass will have an even stronger, unique community for students to gain valuable experiences.

Food Policy and Advocacy

NYT Editorial: Eating With Our Eyes Closed

April 12, 2013 jgerber123 Leave a comment

The food that comes from factory farms is ultimately consumed by the public, which gives the public an interest in knowing how that food is produced. But in most of the major agricultural states, laws have been introduced or passed that would make it illegal to gather evidence, by filming or photography, about the internal operations of factory farms where animals are being raised.

Op-Ed Contributor: Open the Slaughterhouses (April 9, 2013)

The precedent was set by Iowa in 2012, when Gov. Terry Branstad signed a law that makes undercover investigation of animal abuses in these facilities a crime. Utah and Missouri have passed similar laws. Some states already exempt factory farms from animal cruelty restrictions. Now these proposals would make it almost impossible for anyone to gather the kind of information that might provoke enough public outrage to get these exemptions modified.

Factory farms, like all homes and businesses, are already protected by law against trespassing. The so-called “ag-gag” laws now being considered by several states, including California, Illinois and Indiana, have nothing to do with protecting property. Their only purpose is to keep consumers in the dark, to make sure we know as little as possible about the grim details of factory farming. These bills are pushed by intensive lobbying from agribusiness corporations and animal production groups.

The ag-gag laws guarantee one thing for certain: increased distrust of American farmers and our food supply in general. They are exactly the wrong solution to a problem entirely of big agriculture’s own making. Instead of ag-gag laws, we need laws that impose basic standards on farm conditions and guarantee our right to know how our food is being produced.

Meet The New York Times’ Editorial Board

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