Sunday, January 21, 2007

Schine Center goes organic...or at least a little bit

On Saturday, I stopped by Schine Student Center cafeteria at Syracuse U. to have lunch with my five-year old daughter. After we loaded our tray with the usual not-so-good for you fare of pizza, we spied a far-corner section of Schine cafeteria that, amazingly enough, included a display of organic snacks and apples. Organic snacks and apples in Schine? Schine Student Center home of Dunkin' Donuts, the chocolate covered donut and the canned whipcream Mochaccino? Yes, there is a small section off to the right in Schine stocked with Nature's Way products: energy bars, cracker and cheese packaged snacks, organic chips and nuts, and even some fresh fruit--Granny Smith organic apples from Washington state--probably grown in the Columbia Basin (maybe 50 miles from my family's orchard).

It was good to see this display, and we grabbed up an apple and put it on the tray to (futilely) blot out our fatty pizza. But I was immediately thinking of ways that the organic food display could stock locally grown organic produce and fruit--maybe farfetched since the dining services contract may not allow for this. But what that contract does allow for is some percentage of organic products now or they wouldn't have these. This may seem like it is about health--but it's likely about economics. These products will sell b/c organic food is big money--the health claims are persuasive to consumers; the sell factor is persuasive to the distributors. Whole Food has made organic products mainstream, and the dining services contracts at universities will increasingly reflect that--even Sysco.

So maybe it is the prime time to work on getting local food to SU. Why not? Many colleges and universities have moved to serving a certain percentage of locally grown food. When one of the eating clubs at Yale served organic food, the students started swarming the place. At Oberlin, students go out to local farms and buy produce, fruit, and meat directly and bring it back to prepare at their dining halls. Some universities have established direct relationships with farmers, getting them to supply organic milk, for instance.

Local Beak and Skiff cider has been sold at the snack bars and dining centers here on campus, so why not locally grown organic apples, organic mixed greens grown locally in greenhouses for the salad bar, free range organic chicken breast, etc.

OK, food for thought.

The national Farm to Cafeteria project is one way that local food is catching on campuses. The Farm to Cafeteria project brings together local farmers with public schools, colleges/universities, hospitals, prisons and other places where there are large scale dining facilities. The goal is to stock these places with local food--often organic, although not always. The point is to reduce shipping costs (fuel use in transporting food), and to guarantee fresher food. Instead of the food traveling 1,300 miles to the table, it will travel 30-50 miles. A big difference in creating C02 admissions, and we'll be able to taste the difference, in most cases.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

Starbucks/Frankenbucks Coffee

I've never been a huge Starbucks fan even though I lived in Seattle for seven years. But here's some good news about Starbucks these days, and it could be even better, and it should be since Starbucks uses a huge amount of milk in its coffees and drinks.

After receiving pressure for the last five years to stop or decrease its use of recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBST), Starbucks has responded by stating that it will cut back on rBST milk: "We are actively engaged with all of our dairy suppliers to explore a conversion of all core dairy products - fluid milk, half and half, whipping cream and eggnog - to rBST-free [rBST is the industry euphemism for recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone] in our U.S. company-operated locations. Significant work on this front has already been accomplished, in fact 27 percent of the dairy we buy is already rBST-free and 37 percent will be rBST-free starting in January, 2007."

This will help push the industrialized dairy industry in the US to stop using rBST, and it is, hopefully, a step toward getting rid of artificial hormones in milk. Yes, there will be industry resistance--after all, higher milk yields can mean more money in the pocket of the processor and supplier and, to a lesser extent, the farmer, but Starbucks much publicized shift will send a strong message to dairy processors/suppliers, farmers, and agriculture programs at research universities (who helped develop the hormone and pushed farmers to use it) that American consumers don't want hormones in their milk.

The next fight is to get Starbucks to sell a great percentage of Fair Trade coffees--the subject of a future posting!

To Insure or Not to Insure: Farming as High Stakes Gambling

Heather S. asked a good question about crops insurance in response to my posting about the citrus disaster in California.
Yes, it is possible to buy crop insurance against natural disasters like wind, hail, rain, freezing conditions, etc. The Crop Insurance Corporation sells many different policies for up to 100 crops, including yield insurance. The problem is that crop insurance is relatively expensive, and most small farmers have fairly small profit margins and little capital to expend on risk management. Many farmers take their chances with the weather b/c it costs so much money to grow and harvest the crop that it would be that much more to actually insure it. Some farmers insure only part of their crop or if they have some bad years, they may be more likely to insure (although they may be too broke at that point to insure).

For more on crop insurance, the USDA has a useful link. http://www.rma.usda.gov/policies/

They mention crop insurance against natural disasters like what happened in CA with the citrus industry and also yield insurance. Mostly, farmers hope for good conditions or if there are disasters, they may look to government programs for relief for specific losses.

Again, being a farmer with one major crop is like being a high stakes gambler. You can really lose big if you have hail, a freeze, a drought, or high winds.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Gettin' Back In & Oranges

Well, 2007 already, a new semester. I had a Mexico-induced hiatus from blogging, and now is the time to start up again.

I'm ready to start blogging on food politics and agricultural issues again plus some other topics. I do want to say it has been horrific to see the news coverage of the citrus crop freeze-out disaster in CA. To lose 75% of your crop is to lose your future livelihood and your ability to farm. Some farmers are already hanging on by a slim thread, and one crop freeze-out can mean no ability to pay back production loans, which will mean foreclosure. I wonder if this freeze-out will mean a significant end to the citrus industry in CA with orange imports from Mexico and Central America replacing those CA oranges? Or maybe Florida growers will pick up the slack. As bad as things are for the farmers, you can be sure they are even worse for the migrant workers who pick and pack the crops. I'm glad to hear the CA govt is planning unemployment benefits of some sort.

I have to say, too, that seeing all the media images of frozen fruit on the ground this week freaked me out. Growing up on an apple farm, I (and my family) lived in dread that a freeze, hailstorm or windstorm would ruin our crop. One year we had a significant blow-down or windstorm. Right before harvest, a good percentage of our apple crop actually was knocked off the trees by high winds. I remember crawling around on the ground picking up windfalls to be sent to the Tree Top Juice Plant. I remember my Dad saying that the apples were dollars hanging on the tree and pennies rotting on the ground.