Jonathan Silvertown- An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds.

Welcome to Texas Gardener’s Seeds, the weekly newsletter for Texas gardeners.
September 2, 2009

The garden reader:
Looking into the seeds of time
By William Scheick
University of Texas at Austin
Jonathan Silvertown. An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds. University of Chicago Press, 2009. 216 pp. $25.00.

When observing plants, it's sometimes easy to leap to faulty conclusions. For instance, it's easy to surmise, on the basis of their sheer number, that seed-producing flora must have always dominated the plant kingdom.
Or, on the flipside of this mistaken impression, it's easy to think of the non-seeders, including ferns and mosses, as odd deviations from the norm. In fact, though, seedless plants once ruled our planet's oceans and lands, and the "magic trick" of encapsulating sea-like nutrients inside a seed emerged at some later point in time.
When impression-nurtured beliefs are unchecked by bedrock science, mischief can ensue. Consider the sixteenth-century belief that ferns produce seeds because all plants must grow from seeds.
Never mind that no one could see any fern seed.
There were answers for that, including a legend about what happened to fern flowers. According to this ancient legend, ferns did not contribute any blooms to the Christ child's manger. As a punishment for such "bad-seed" irreverence, ferns were deprived of their flowers and their seed became invisible.
This curse notwithstanding, ferns were still thought long ago to be valuable for various medicinal remedies, and their now-invisible seed was especially prized by the gullible. Some even believed that fern seed could make a person undetectable.
Of course, collecting the invisible fern seed was deucedly difficult.
In An Orchard Invisible Jonathan Silvertown doesn't mention the fern flower legend, but he succinctly explains how invisible fern seed was harvested: "Fern seed could be collected on the stroke of midnight on Midsummer Night's eve, but only by catching it as it fell from the plant onto a stack of twelve pewter plates. It would pass through the first eleven, but be trapped by the twelfth."
A quaint belief, indeed! But I've been around awhile and seen too much, and so I can't help but wonder whether, even today, empty seed packets labeled "Rare Invisible Fern Seed" might sell pretty well.
As the Jack-and-the-beanstalk story highlights, seeds do seem to be magical. Seeds, though, are actually down-to-earth devices far more complex and ingenious than represented in any fairytale.
In An Orchard Invisible Silvertown explores the history and science of this complexity. He ponders various seed-mysteries, such as nature's always unsuccessful repeated "attempts to break the habit of sex in plants." Cross-fertilization, it turns out, is inextricably interwoven with genetic variation, random adaptability, inherited mutation and chance survival.
Why, Silvertown also wonders, is the nutrient-thick coco de mer so large — the biggest known seed, in fact? It's easy but mistaken to believe that, as its popular name suggests, this "bizarre and wonderful monstrosity" floats to and germinates on distant beaches.
A Maldive coconut is not the only strange fruit feature. Silvertown finds even fruit coloration to be more mysterious than meets the eye. And he examines, as well, why seeds that fly awkwardly on single, unilateral wings vastly outnumber those that glide.
Silvertown suggests, too, that caffeine in a coffee bean possibly functions like a poison deterring the encroachment of nearby plants. But, he adds, if it's obvious why some seeds are poisonous, why are so many not?
The notorious suicide tree (Cerbera odollam) bears fibrous-shelled fruits, each with two lethal seeds. (Photo by William Scheick)

Silvertown doesn't mention it, but the world's most infamous, if understudied, poisonous seeds are found in the four-inch, fibrous-shelled fruits of the suicide tree (Cerbera odollam). The alkaloid toxin in the seeds of this tropical oleander relative has been implicated in numerous deaths — most of them decidedly not suicides.
Silvertown examines the place of unseen cheaters in our gardens. For example, while hardworking female yucca moths diligently collect pollen to fertilize the plant that will host their eggs, cheater moths skip pollen-collection and simply deposit eggs in fruit previously pollinated by the diligent moths. By colonizing already developed fruit unlikely to be aborted by a plant, these cheaters potentially jeopardize the entire symbiotic moth-yucca relationship — yet they somehow don't.
There aren't only selfish moths and wasps. Silvertown also puzzles over "selfish DNA" — free-agent "genes that jump around the chromosomes, sometimes playing havoc with the genome." Corn, for instance, is botanically notorious for its thousands of selfish DNA.
In An Orchard Invisible Silvertown "look[s] into the seeds of time," but unlike Banquo in Shakespeare's Macbeth, he is willing to speculate on the patterns behind "which grain will grow and which will not." The result is ample food for thought.

Whole Foods Market Bows to OCA Pressure-Promises to Sell Significantly More Organics in 2010

QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Whole Foods Boss: We Sell a 'Bunch of Junk'

"We sell a bunch of junk. We've decided if Whole Foods doesn't take a leadership role in educating people about a healthy diet, who the heck is going to do it?"

John Mackey: Whole Foods Market Founder, The Telegraph (UK), August 6, 2009

http://www.organicconsumers.org/

Whole Foods Market Bows to OCA Pressure--Promises to Sell Significantly More Organics in 2010

The emperor of natural foods, Whole Foods Market (WFM), has no clothes. Throughout the 2009 summer months, OCA has been alerting organic consumers to the troubling fact that the overwhelming majority of grocery items (approximately 2/3) sold by WFM, even their private label "365" brand, are not certified organic, but rather so-called "natural" products that are typically just conventional products in disguise. After being defensive and unresponsive at first (basically saying "we sell more" organic food than any other retailer), and after putting pressure on OCA's advertisers to stop supporting us, WFM seems to finally be "seeing the light."

After thousands of emails from OCA members demanding that the company stop selling so many bogus "natural products" and embrace its stated mission to sell healthy organic foods, WFM's executives apparently realized last week that OCA will not shut up, and that they have a major problem on their hands. You can't just simply proclaim that you are a leader in selling organic foods, you must actually walk your talk. Last week, WFM announced it was launching a new "healthy eating" initiative with a greater emphasis on organics. In a highly publicized speech in the UK, John Mackey confessed the company's product selection had veered off course. The OCA will be monitoring WFM's practices closely to make sure that the giant retailers' actions match its rhetoric. Instead of 2/3 of its sales being so-called "natural" products, (with only 1/3 certified organic), OCA wants to see 2/3 of WFM's sales be organic by the end of 2010.




Thank Whole Foods: Under Pressure from Organic Consumers, Whole Foods Says it Will Expand Organic Offerings in 2010


The Organic Consumers Association has been pressuring Whole Foods Market and wholesale giant United Natural Foods to put a priority on selling organic, as opposed to so-called "natural foods."

Now, Whole Foods Market is bowing to OCA pressure and has promised to sell significantly more organics in 2010.

Please write to Whole Foods to thank them for putting a renewed focus on its core customers. If you can, please take the time to personalize your letter. Sample at: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/642/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27761

(If you wrote to Whole Foods and recieved a reply from them, you might be interested in OCA's response to Whole Foods' letter: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_18697.cfm )

Learn More: http://www.organicconsumers.org/whole_foods_unfi.cfm



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5978809/Whole-Foods-boss-We-sell-a-bunch-of-junk.html

TELEGRAPH.CO.UK
Published: 7:00AM BST 06 Aug 2009

Whole Foods boss: We sell a 'bunch of junk'
John Mackey, the chief executive of Whole Foods, one of London's leading organic supermarkets, has told customers he sells "a bunch of junk".

John Mackey, chief executive of Whole Foods, admitted shoppers had been let down by filling his shelves with fat-laden products Photo: PA

Mr Mackey admitted shoppers had been let down by filling his shelves with fat-laden products.
He said: "We sell a bunch of junk. We've decided if Whole Foods doesn't take a leadership role in educating people about a healthy diet, who the heck is going to do it?"

While his comments were intended to stir shops into action, they revived memories of the jewellery chain tycoon Gerald Ratner, who made one of the most famous gaffes in corporate history.
He saw his business empire collapse after claiming one of his products was "total crap".
Mr Mackey apologised for losing sight of the American-based company's health food roots and said all retailers had a responsibility to help tackle Britain's obesity crisis.
Staff at stores in Kensington, Camden and Stoke Newington will be trained to advise on healthy eating and be "bribed" to lose weight. Employees will be given bigger discounts off the store's products if they meet targets to lose weight, stop smoking or reduce their cholesterol or blood pressure.
Whole Foods opened in Kensington two years ago, promising to lead a healthy organic food revolution in London. Mr Mackey said he would be offering in-store nutritionists from now on instead of cakes and meringues.
His comments came after the Food Standards Agency said there was no evidence to suggest that organic produce was better for consumers and it had no extra health benefits.
Mr Mackey made his comments while launching the Whole Foods' "healthy eating" initiative, set to start in the autumn, will give the brand a higher profile in London that bosses hope will lure in more shoppers.
A spokeswoman for the British Nutrition Foundation said: "British retailers need to heed this message. There is too much promotion of biscuits and chocolate with special offers.
"There needs to be a better balance. They have a part to play in educating consumers."

WHY ORGANIC CONSUMERS & FAIR TRADE ADVOCATES ARE PRESSURING WHOLE FOODS & UNFI

"...Whole Foods has employed an expansion strategy that resembles Wal-Mart with its targeting of local & independent retailers with new store locations while steadily buying out competitors like Wild Oats... Whole Foods & UNFI's business model of centralized sourcing & prioritizing natural products over organic rewards large corporate farms & processors, to the detriment of local & regional small-scale organic farmers &..." brands.

http://organicconsumers.org/unfi.cfm


SAFEGUARD ORGANIC INTEGRITY

WHY ORGANIC CONSUMERS AND FAIR TRADE ADVOCATES ARE PRESSURING WHOLE FOODS
AND UNFI


Corporate Takeovers & Monopolistic Practices

The $25 Billion organic marketplace has enjoyed substantial growth for
over a decade, thanks to growing consumer consciousness and farmer
innovation. No longer a passing trend or simply a niche market, organic food
and farming are proving to be a viable alternative to the unhealthy,
unsustainable and unjust conventional food system. Unfortunately
unprecedented wholesale and retail control of the organic marketplace by
UNFI and Whole Foods, employing a business model of selling twice as much
so-called "natural" food as certified organic food, coupled with the
takeover of many organic companies by bottom line multinational food
corporations such as Dean Foods/Horizon
(http://organicconsumers.org/Organic/OrganicTop25Jul07.pdf), threatens the
growth of the organic movement.


Perpetrating "Natural" Fraud

Consumers are confused about the difference between conventional
products marketed as "natural," and those nutritionally and environmentally
superior products that are "certified organic." Retail stores like WFM and
wholesale distributors like UNFI have failed to educate their customers
about the qualitative difference between natural and organic. A troubling
trend in organics today is the calculated shift on the part of certain large
companies from certified organic ingredients and products to so-called
"natural" products. With the exception of the "natural" meat sector, where
there are limited voluntary guidelines, there is no definition of "natural."
In the majority of cases, "natural" products are greenwashed conventional
products, with "natural" label claims neither policed nor monitored. Whole
Foods and UNFI are maximizing their profits by selling quasi-natural
products at premium organic prices. Organic consumers are increasingly left
without certified organic choices while organic farmers continue to lose
market share to "natural" imposters. It's no wonder that less than 1% of
American farmland is certified organic.



Excluding Small and Family Farms

Whole Foods and UNFI's business model of centralized sourcing and
prioritizing natural products over organic rewards large corporate farms and
processors, to the detriment of local and regional small-scale organic
farmers and brands. Organic farmers must "get big or get out" to be able to
compete and have free access to markets. Many industrial organic farms and
dairy operations reflect the same abuses and problems of the conventional
food system: extremely energy intensive, systematic abuse of workers,
reduced food quality, and damage to biodiversity. And of course so-called
"natural" products, since they are actually in most cases conventional
products in disguise, are being sold at lower prices than genuine organic
products--thereby retarding the growth of the organic sector.


Organic and Local Food?

In light of the food system's significant contribution to the climate
crisis and the deepening economic troubles facing local food economies, it
is more important than ever to prioritize locally produced organic food.
Though Whole Foods talks a lot about supporting local food and producers,
the fact is that the vast majority of their products are not local, and much
of what they sell is sourced from a small number of industrial organic
operations in California, often owned by the same conventional food
conglomerates responsible for destroying the world's food system.
Organic Monopoly and the "Whole Paycheck" Phenomena
UNFI has undermined the growth of the organic movement by implementing
an unfair tiered pricing system that gives Whole Foods deep discounts while
other grocers, coops and independent retailers pay significantly higher
prices, in effect subsidizing UNFI for its reduced profits at Whole Foods.
With UNFI as the largest organic (but of course their sales are mostly
so-called "natural" products) food wholesaler and Whole Foods as the largest
organic (like UNFI most of its sales are "natural") food retailer, organic
consumers are assured higher prices, lower quality and fewer choices.


Cancer in a Bottle?

In 2008, the Organic Consumers Association exposed a problem which
particularly threatenss women - a large number of leading conventional as
well as "natural" and "organic" brands of shampoos, lotions, cosmetics and
household cleaning products which contained the carcinogen 1,4-Dioxane.
Included in the list of products were several Whole Food's 365 brand
products and many products in the UNFI catalog. While several dozen
companies have committed to eliminating the 1,4-Dioxane, neither Whole
Foods, nor UNFI, have endorsed OCA's Coming Clean Campaign:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/bodycare/index.cfm
nor have they called on the USDA to crack down on blatant labeling fraud
in the organic personal care and cosmetics sector.


#7 Corporate Consolidation of Organics

In the last decade, the organic marketplace has experienced hyper
consolidation, with numerous small to medium-sized farmers, manufacturers
and retailers being taken over by larger, profit-hungry corporations. Whole
Foods has employed an expansion strategy that resembles Wal-Mart with its
targeting of local and independent retailers with new store locations while
steadily buying out competitors like Wild Oats. UNFI has also grown rapidly
over the last decade, in part by aggressively taking over other
distributors, regional wholesalers and manufacturers.


Organics for Elites?

The organic food and farming movements were born out of the desire to
provide healthy and safe food to all. Whole Foods' business model: selling
overpriced conventional foods as "natural," with organics in a subordinate
role, is a recipe for maximizing profits rather than maximizing the growth
of organic food and farming. Worse yet, Whole Food's high prices have not
translated into larger profits for family farms or small-scale
manufacturers. Likewise, UNFI's growing market share and near-monopoly of
the organic and "natural" market has reduced the options for consumers and
independent retailers alike, undermining the growth of consumer buying clubs and the lower-cost alternatives.


Anti-worker

UNFI and Whole Foods have a history of cutting workers' benefits. Both
have gone to extreme lengths to block their employees from choosing to
unionize. Whole Foods has long fought unionization of its retail locations,
largely ignored the demands of farm workers organizations, like the United
Farm Workers, and kept workers' wages consistently low by industry
standards. UNFI has repeatedly fought efforts by its employees to fight for
better pay, benefits and working conditions. Where workers have sucessfully
formed unions, UNFI has begun moving jobs to new, non-union locations.


WHY OCA BELIEVES THAT MOST "NATURAL" FOODS ARE A FRAUD
1. There is widespread use of GMO (genetically modified organisms) ingredients in so-called "natural" foods, including the "natural" brands that make up most of WFM and UNFI's sales.
2. So-called "natural" (non-organic) soy milk, including leading brands such as "Silk," are made with conventional soy lecithin, utilizing the hazardous chemical, hexane, as an extraction agent.
3. 90% or more of the vitamins and supplements now on the market labeled as "Whole Foods," "natural" or "food based" are spiked with synthetic chemicals.

Hillary Clinton Talks About Food by: Jill Richardson

"...Clinton's science advisor, Nina Federoff, came out the other day with a ridiculous pro-biotech statement that we don't ask doctors to use 19th century medicine and therefore we shouldn't tell farmers to do 19th century farming. This is a repetition of the silly idea that organic farming has not advanced in the last century. Obviously that's absurd (although I will say that if we had invested more in organic research, no doubt organics would be ahead of where they are today - but that's our fault, not the fault of organic farming!). The Union of Concerned Scientists posted a rebuttal to Federoff (and, thus, Clinton) this week..."

http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/1907/hillary-clinton-talks-about-food



Hillary Clinton Talks About Food
by: Jill Richardson
Mon Jun 15, 2009 at 06:00:00 AM PDT

"What does the State Department have to do with food?" a friend asked me yesterday, when I told him about Hillary Clinton's recent involvement with food issues. The State Department is the home of USAID - the U.S. Agency for International Development - and they are the ones charged with doling out food aid around the world. Thus, Secretary Clinton deals with food issues. The past year or two has been marked by food riots and major food shortages around the developing world. Numbers are thrown around about 800 million or even a billion hungry people in the world, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (i.e. India and neighboring countries). Hillary recently weighed in on world hunger over on Huffington Post. While fighting hunger is a noble cause and hardly controversial, Clinton outlined seven guiding principles and I take issue with some of them:

1. We will seek to increase agricultural productivity, by expanding access to quality seeds, fertilizers, irrigation tools, and the credit to purchase them and training to use them.

5. We will seek to increase trade so small-scale farmers can sell their crops far and wide.

Hillary's words are informed by the wrongheaded notions that hunger is a yield problem and that biotech and other Green Revolution technologies are the way to increase yield. She is further promoting the ideology of free trade, but from everything I've heard, the key to fighting hunger is food sovereignty - helping each country and region of the world feed itself. Poor nations become vulnerable to the whims of the global market if they grow cash crops like vanilla and coffee for the west instead of growing food for themselves. When you focus on feeding yourself instead of the world market, in the worst case scenario (if prices crash) you can eat your crop.
Clinton's science advisor, Nina Federoff, came out the other day with a ridiculous pro-biotech statement that we don't ask doctors to use 19th century medicine and therefore we shouldn't tell farmers to do 19th century farming. This is a repetition of the silly idea that organic farming has not advanced in the last century. Obviously that's absurd (although I will say that if we had invested more in organic research, no doubt organics would be ahead of where they are today - but that's our fault, not the fault of organic farming!). The Union of Concerned Scientists posted a rebuttal to Federoff (and, thus, Clinton) this week, saying:

Organic and similar methods rely on a sophisticated scientific understanding of how a farm operates within an ecosystem—indeed, how the farm itself is an ecosystem of interconnected plants, insects, and other animals. Organic farming systems incorporate techniques like long crop rotations to control pests and leguminous cover crops or manure to add nutrients and build soil. A recent summary of studies on farming systems around the world found that such systems are often nearly as productive as current industrial agriculture in developed countries, but importantly, much more so in developing countries. The study demonstrates that the green and animal manures employed in organic agriculture can produce enough fixed nitrogen to support high crop yields. Where additional synthetic inputs are needed, other low-external-input methods are producing high yields with much reduced environmental impact. These highly productive methods are needed to produce enough food without converting uncultivated land—such as forests that are important for biodiversity and slowing climate change—into crop fields. They build deep, rich soils that hold water, sequester carbon, and resist erosion. And they don’t poison the air, drinking water, and fisheries with excess fertilizers and toxic pesticides.
The Green Revolution "high yield" technologies should be referred to as "high input." You put a lot of things in - things that will run out some day like oil (and petroleum products like fertilizer), fertile topsoil, and water - and you produce a lot of food. But that only works until you run out of those inputs and then the game is up. Sustainable farming doesn't come with an end date when it won't be possible anymore. If we are going to truly help feed the world - not just this year but in all of the years to come - then that's what we need to focus on.

The UCS piece continues, rebutting Federoff (and, thus, Clinton) by saying:

Federoff's view is at odds with the latest science, and represents a status quo kind of thinking. Today's dominant industrial U.S. agriculture relies on huge monocultures of a few major crops like corn and soybeans, and requires large inputs of fossil-fuel based synthetic chemicals to control pests and fertilize the crops. Such an agriculture churns out a lot of commodity crops (most of which are turned into meat and processed foods) while also contributing greatly to air and water pollution. Industrial agriculture is a major contributor of heat-trapping emissions and a major cause of so-called dead zones such as that in the Gulf of Mexico. And industrial agriculture is ultimately its own worst enemy, as it causes massive degradation of the very soil that is vital to farming itself. This kind of agriculture is unsustainable. We will need to move away from it towards the biologically-informed approaches that can both keep yields high while reducing environmental harm.
Although many critics see genetic engineering as a major factor in this debate, it is in fact only a minor appendage onto the industrial agriculture system-one that has done little to either increase its productivity or mitigate its environmental harm. Leaders who rely on industrial agriculture systems-with or without genetic engineering-are the ones truly stuck in the past. The challenges of the 21st century demand a fundamental rethink of agriculture that takes environmental harm into account. Promising methods and technologies like organic are in the vanguard of that effort. We cannot afford to move toward the future without such technologies.

So, Hillary, do what you can to help the world's hungry, but please, actually HELP them. Don't just deliver them up as a new market to American corporations that are peddling unsustainable technologies that will ultimately leave the world's hungry no better off than they are today.

The Most Important Issue of Our Time

http://www.foodincmovie.com/

You'll never look at dinner the same way!



How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets And serve to our families?

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that has been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of E. coli—the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising—and often shocking truths—about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.


Robert Kenner, producer/director:
Award-winning filmmaker Robert Kenner worked for over six years to bring Food, Inc. to the screen.


Eric Schlosser, co-producer:
Eric Schlosser is an investigative journalist, best-selling author, playwright and a correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly. He is considered a leading authority on the impacts of industrialized agriculture.

Featured in the film:

Michael Pollan:
Author of In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
Pollan is an award-winning journalist and world-renown food expert who has authored five books, including The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, which was used as reference material for this film.

Joel Salatin:
Owner/farmer of Polyface Farms in Virginia, who feeds his livestock grass, the way nature intended.

Gary Hirshberg:
Founder of Stonyfield, the third largest producer of yogurt in the U.S.

Barbara Kowalcyk:
After her 2 1/2 year old child Kevin died from E. coli, she has since become a food safety advocate, fighting to give the USDA the power to shut down plants that repeatedly produce contaminated meats.

Eat, Drink, Think, Change - NYT's KIM SEVERSON on "Food, Inc."

(FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES - Saturday, June 6, 2009 )
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/movies/07seve.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3

FILM
Eat, Drink, Think, Change

Is the food party over? Left, fans of Burger King in the new documentary “Food, Inc.”. The sumptuous banquet depicted in the 1987 film “Babette’s Feast”.

By KIM SEVERSON
Published: June 3, 2009

MOVIES about food used to make you want to eat.

Morgan Spurlock on the road to obesity in “ Super Size Me” (2004).
The decade that spanned the mid-1980s to mid-1990s was particularly fruitful. It took heroic resolve to walk out of the Japanese spaghetti western “Tampopo” and not head directly to a ramen bar.

Cooks spent entire months trying to recreate “Babette’s Feast” and dreamed of rolling out pasta with Stanley Tucci in “Big Night.”

By the time Ang Lee’s “Eat Drink Man Woman” came out in 1994, moviegoers had come to expect food films filled with glistening dumplings, magical dessert and technically perfect kitchen scenes.

But that was then, before Wal-Mart started selling organic food and Michelle Obama planted a vegetable garden on the White House lawn. Before E. coli was a constant in the food supply, before politicians tried to tax soda and before anyone gave much thought to the living conditions of chickens.

Into this world comes “Food, Inc.,” a documentary on the state of the nation’s food system that opens in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco on Friday.

“Food, Inc.” is part of a new generation of food films that drip with politics, not sauces. It’s eat-your-peas cinema that could make viewers not want to eat anything at all.

“All we have are these little canisters of film, and we’re launching them at a fortress,” said Severine von Tscharner Fleming, a filmmaker and farmer who is finishing a documentary on the young agrarian movement called “The Greenhorns.”

In 2004 Morgan Spurlock took a mini-Michael Moore approach with “Super Size Me,” a documentary that showed what happens when a man eats nothing but fast food for a month. (His waistline ends up looking a little more like Mr. Moore’s, and his sex life takes a dive.)

There has even been a feature film. In 2006 the nonfiction book “Fast Food Nation” by Eric Schlosser became a narrative (starring Greg Kinnear) about the restaurant industry, obesity and meat-packing labor exploitation.

Mr. Schlosser is a producer of, and a character in, “Food, Inc.,” in which the director Robert Kenner takes a sprawling look at the perils of Big Food. The film is being promoted as an exposé of “the highly mechanized underbelly” of the seemingly benign food people eat every day.

“Food, Inc.” begins with images of a bright, bulging American supermarket, and then moves to the jammed chicken houses, grim meat-cutting rooms and chemical-laced cornfields where much of the American diet comes from. Along the way Mr. Kenner attempts to expose the hidden costs of a system in which fast-food hamburgers cost $1 and soda is cheaper than milk.

“The way we eat has changed more in the last 50 years than the previous 10,000,” Michael Pollan says as the film opens. Mr. Pollan, an author and occasional contributor to The New York Times Magazine, is the spiritual guide for the film and serves as its narrator. “A lot of it is hard to watch,” he conceded, “but I think people are ready to take a good, unflinching look at how their food is produced.”

Mr. Kenner, who has previously tackled subjects like war and endangered species in a series of television documentaries, didn’t know much about food when he embarked on “Food, Inc.” about six years ago. But after warnings from lawyers, stonewalling from food companies and months on the ground in farm fields, grocery stores and Congressional offices, he became a hard-core campaigner for better food.

“It’s almost like a horror film, like ‘Invasion of the Food Snatchers,’ ” Mr. Kenner said.

Much of the film takes direct aim at the usual suspects — big meat packing companies, Monsanto, the federal Agriculture Department. But Mr. Kenner also offers a sympathetic study of people whose lives have been hurt both from producing food on such a mass scale and eating the results.

“I think what’s important here was connecting all these little pieces,” he said. “Individually they didn’t seem so insidious.”

In a section that shows how modern, mass-produced chickens have been bred to grow to market size in half the time, a woman under contract with Perdue speaks out about the physical toll such rapid growth takes on the chickens and the stifling conditions in which they live.

She also explains the financial stranglehold large chicken companies have on growers. She ends up losing her contract because she refuses to enclose her chicken houses completely.

Viewers who haven’t thought much about how all that food in the grocery store got to be there will likely find it hard to toss a few packages of pork chops and some Froot Loops in the cart and call it a day. Some viewers will undoubtedly look away during the meat cutting and processing scenes. For parents the eye-averting moment will come during repeated slow-motion scenes of a 2-year-old’s last vacation. His mother, now a food-safety advocate, explains in a tearful voice-over the gruesome details of his death after he ate hamburger tainted with E. coli.

For people steeped in food politics the most revealing scenes are the least graphic. Monsanto goes after an elderly man whose life has been devoted to the practice of cleaning seeds so farmers can replant crops. The chemical company, which has patented herbicide-resistant soybeans and corn, says he is helping farmers plant Monsanto seeds illegally.

The man is forced in a deposition to expose longtime friends and clients who are suspected of using the seeds illegally. He eventually gives up the legal fight when he runs out of money. Monsanto recently posted a Web page (monsanto.com/foodinc) devoted to countering the film’s version of events.

Mr. Kenner also visits a poor family with a diabetic father. During their trip to a grocery store it’s easy to see why they pass on broccoli in favor of fast-food hamburgers, which fill bellies longer and cheaper.

“Food, Inc.” has the endorsement of all kinds of people in what some call “the good food movement.” Alice Waters is a champion, and so is Martha Stewart. She has been arranging screenings for her staff and tweeting about the film: “See the film then tell me organic is too expensive for you and your family. It is so upsetting that good food is hard to find.”

A screening that Mr. Pollan described as uncomfortable was even arranged for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

Much of the buzz has been ginned up by an impressive full-court media campaign, which is spinning the movie as hard as a food company promoting a new product.

To coincide with the opening the lids of millions of containers of Stonyfield Farm yogurt have been turned into “Food, Inc.” ads, thanks in large part to the company’s chairman, Gary Hirshberg. One segment of the film is dedicated to his efforts to produce organic food on a mass scale.

The documentary even has its own companion book, which is more than 300 pages long and filled with essays about global warming, hunger and pesticides along with tips on how to talk to a farmer and improve school lunch.

Because “Food, Inc.” was produced by Participant Media (among others), the company that backed “An Inconvenient Truth,” comparisons are inevitable. But there’s a big difference. After watching Al Gore explain the horrors of climate change, moviegoers can turn off a few lights, think about a Prius and call it a day. People who leave “Food, Inc.” still have to eat.

And the filmmakers know that. At the end of the film a series of suggestions run across the screen. Plant a garden. Cook a meal for the family. Contact Congress.

“I want people to feel like they can do something,” said Naomi Starkman, a Northern California media consultant and aspiring farmer who helped create the messages. “You make a choice three times a day on what you want to eat. That is power.”

American Farmer Suicides

(FROM La Vida Locavore)
http://www.lavidalocavore.org/diary/1829/american-farmer-suicides

American Farmer Suicides
by: Jill Richardson
Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 15:17:40 PM PDT

We've talked at length about Indian farmer suicides, but now things are so bad (particularly in dairy) that it's happening here at home. Not on the same scale as in India, but the very fact that farmers are killing themselves is cause for concern. I first heard of this a week or so ago, but the family involved in that first farmer suicide wasn't talking to the media so I had nothing report. Now (thankfully) a few major publications have covered the topic.
According to the Denver Post fourteen Colorado farmers and ranchers killed themselves in 2008 - double the number of farmer suicides in 2004. And a national crisis hotline network for agricultural workers saw a 20% spike in calls this May compared with May 2008. As noted above, the problem is particularly severe in dairy:

"The increase in calls really started with the change in dairy prices, as they fell last fall," said Mike Rosmann, a clinical psychologist and farmer who heads the Iowa-based Sowing the Seeds of Hope help line serving farmers in seven Midwestern states. "We're starting to see the stress mount. It's a nationwide problem."
The article goes on to say that rural Americans have less access to health insurance and counseling services than those who live in cities. The LA Times also covered the issue, as California is now the nation's #1 dairy state and two CA dairy farmers have killed themselves in the past six months:

Through much of last year, the average milk price hovered around $17 per 100 pounds -- although consumers purchase milk by the gallon, the industry measures by pounds. The bottom fell out of the market when the economy tanked last fall. Prices now hover around $10, according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Farmers generally need at least $16, and often more, per 100 pounds to break even, depending on their debt, feed requirements and other factors.
Unfortunately, the Times does not adequately cover the cause of the dairy crisis, which it attributes to a simple matter of oversupply. I recommend reading the statement by Iowa dairy farmer Francis Thicke for a deeper understanding of factors contributing to the crisis.


American Farmer Suicides | 1 comments
Yet another reason (0.00 / 0)
these giants have to be broken up.
These two industry giants, Dean Foods and DFA, work together and have marketing agreements for purchase of raw milk from farmers (DFA) and processing and wholesaling of dairy products (Dean) all across the U.S.
Another reason we're in the mess we're in now. "Too Big To Fail" got us in the financial mess and these monopolies are devastating our agriculture.

It's long past time for the Justice Department to get their Antitrust units up to full speed.

"Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds."
by: Anonymous Bosch @ Fri Jun 05, 2009 at 21:45:39 PM CDT
American Farmer Suicides | 1 comments

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