By Tory Field and Beverly Bell

Part 18 of the Harvesting Justice series

“This is a muddler,” said Danielle, grinding mint into the bottom of a metal cup. With the straightforward demeanor of a good bartender, Danielle was explaining how to make a mojito. But this was not just a fancy drink demo. After the cocktail, she talked with the audience about her working life at an upscale steakhouse chain restaurant, including the steady sexual harassment and the uneasy feeling of being viewed by management as a number more than a person.

The two dozen folks listening to Danielle were part of a trial run “eat-up,” an event that some food movement organizers hope will soon crop up in homes, restaurants, and bars around the country. The events are part of a new push by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United (ROC), the Food Chain Workers Alliance, and others. (See our previous article for more about these organizations.) The goal is to bring awareness and action for workers’ rights, wages, and conditions into the heart of the food movement.

“We are trying to have workers become as trendy as local and organic has become in the industry,” Saru Jayaraman, co-director and co-founder of ROC, told us. “It’s going to take the three stakeholders – workers, good employers, and consumers – working together to actually change things. Any one of those things, if it’s missing, it’s not going to work. Which is why the consumer piece is so critical, and it’s been missing. We’ve actually organized the workers and we’ve organized the employers. We’ve never organized the consumers. There’s a diners’ club that’s basically a credit card, but there’s no organized voice of restaurant consumers demanding change.”

ROC’s efforts to change conditions in the restaurant industry include campaigns to get basic benefits such as paid sick days, and to increase the minimum wage for tipped workers. The group and their allies are gathering signatures and raising support for the Miller-Harkin Fair Minimum Wage Act. If passed, the law would increase the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 and the tipped minimum wage from $2.13 to 70% of the regular minimum wage.

ROC also aims to fundamentally shift the power structures that allow the inequities to exist in the first place. “In the long run, it’s really about having a powerful voice of restaurant workers that can counterbalance the power of the National Restaurant Association,” said Jayaraman. “Because these two issues, low wages and lack of paid sick days, are symptoms of the bigger problem of an imbalance of power between this huge powerful industry lobby and restaurant workers. The long-term vision is an industry where workers have an equal voice to employers, have dignity and respect on the job, and have the ability to move up to livable wage jobs regardless of the color of their skin or their gender.”

In order to shift this power, ROC says, consumers must join forces with workers. Throughout the country, ROC is helping restaurant diners understand the reality behind their meals. “Say you’re a waitress at an IHOP in Texas, and you’re working a graveyard shift,” Jayaraman said. “Maybe sometimes you get tips, maybe sometimes you don’t. Which means you may be earning $2.13 per hour, the federal minimum wage for tipped workers.

“That means maybe sometimes you can pay the rent, maybe sometimes you can’t. And 70% of the people earning this wage are women. They’re not these wealthy steakhouse servers you might think about in a large urban city. They’re women with children working at Denny’s, Applebee’s, Olive Garden. And a lot of times they struggle to put food on the table. The people who put food on our tables cannot afford to feed themselves.

“It’s super important for us to expand the definition of sustainability and sustainable food,” she said. “Sustainability has to include taking care of everybody who is a part of the food system, who picks, plants, processes, prepares it, and the people who consume it. We all need to be connected and understand our interconnectivity.”

Jayaraman has just published a book Behind the Kitchen Door, which follows the lives of more than a dozen restaurant workers. The book exposes conditions in the industry, such as the facts that 90% of restaurant workers don’t have paid sick leave, restaurant jobs make up seven of the 10 lowest paying occupations in the US, and restaurant workers are twice as likely as the rest of the workforce to be on food stamps.

Behind the Kitchen Door also exposes the racism and sexism pervasive in the industry. White workers are more likely to get the “good jobs” in the front of the house, making better tips or salaries, while workers of color have the lower-paying jobs in the kitchen. In many restaurants, there is a wage gap of nearly $4.00 between white workers and workers of color.

The eat-ups, together with other education and organizing tactics, are part of a larger project called the “Welcome Table,” an association of workers and consumers who are committed to food workers’ rights. The Welcome Table website is a multi-media hub with short films, a photo exhibit, books, news, and ways to take action. Soon the website will also be the place to go to learn about hosting eat-ups, with examples and resources to help with the planning.

“There are three things right now we are asking people to do,” Jayaraman said. “One is to buy Behind the Kitchen Door and help us get it out there as a national best seller. Two is to join the Welcome Table, because that is the place where we are gathering the people power, the numbers to show Congress that enough is enough. We need consumers to sign petitions, to say to Congress ‘we need to raise the wage.’

“And the third thing is to speak up every time people eat out. We created a diners’ guide and smart phone app. It wasn’t meant to tell people where to eat and where not to eat. It was actually meant to give people a tool that wherever they ate, whenever they ate, they could speak up at the end of their meal and say ‘loved the food, loved the service, but I see in this guide you don’t provide paid sick days,’ or ‘I see in this guide you don’t pay a livable wage and as a consumer I’d really like you to know that’s important to me and I’d like to see you do it.’”

To get involved, you can:

• Sign the petition in support of the Fair Minimum Wage Act;
• Buy Behind The Kitchen Door;
• Join the Welcome Table; and
• Get the Diners Guide App.

Download the Harvesting Justice pdf here, and find action items, resources, and a popular education curriculum on the Harvesting Justice website. Harvesting Justice was created for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, check out their work here.

Read more from Other Worlds here, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part.  Please credit any text or original research you use to Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.

Image credit: Andrew Stawarz via photopin cc

In celebration of its relaunch, Greenhome.com, the original online ecostore, is sharing stories of some of its customers, and their motivations for buying green. 

Her name is Cynthia Neftin, and she is the owner of Oxnard, California-based Café Nefola, whose motto is “healthy, local, fresh and natural.” An additional tag line – “from fat to fit, this is it” – leaves returning customers and new visitors in no doubt as to the restaurant’s orientation.

If you need to mend your ways – and who in Oxnard, the franchise capital of California, doesn’t? – you will appreciate Café Nefola’s menu, which focuses on comestibles that are so good for you, you might literally start to vibrate when you close the door behind you.

When did Cynthia get her green on? After several false starts, as a manicurist and then a caterer, she moved to Oxnard, which was largely rural, and realized she wanted to own a restaurant. Or something.

The first restaurant was an ice cream franchise. The relationship didn’t last, but Cynthia was still stuck for the lease, so she looked around – at a rural village that was still in the formative stages – and made a vertical leap, right into a rural mindset that was already acquainted with local, fresh, and natural.

“I had everything right here, at the tips of my fingers, and it naturally got me to where I am now.”

Now is a completely 21^st century realization that things have to change, whether it’s eating or manufacturing products. Cynthia quickly found her go-to green source with Greenhome.com, which has an entire subsection devoted to green food service supplies like compostable smoothie cups and bagasse takeout containers. There is no other way to make things work. And it works for Cynthia on a very personal level as well.

“Having this restaurant, being green, changes the way I think when I’m out and about. It also changes the way I think about other peoples’ businesses. Personally, I’m hoping I can teach other people a little bit of awareness: that’s my personal ideal. And judging by the way the business is slowly improving, I’m sure I get through to some.”

Adding a caveat, she admits she doesn’t always see who she has gotten through to, or how it has affected them, but she is trying to become more aware of that, too, and capitalize on teaching tools she doesn’t always realize she has.

Part of her green is local sourcing. This means arugula and spinach greens, but not water chestnuts or bean sprouts. Many of her customers don’t mind the fact that some things which aren’t locally grown don’t appear on the menu. Others do. To please both factions, Cynthia occasionally brings in some non-local items like Valencia oranges from Florida to rival the region’s navel oranges. But she makes such concessions knowing that, in time, her desired clientele will accept the idea of fresh and local, which is how I started and how I want to be.”

The biggest problem in running a fresh, local, “green” restaurant – double focus on the green (as a meme and as the color of healthy vegetables) – is getting what she needs when she needs it.

“But even in that area, I’ve noticed that store owners are becoming more receptive to the green theme and more responsive in stocking environmentally-friendly products. For example, one local store is beginning to carry compostable products. Not recyclable, but compostable!”

The difference?

“About 25 years! Recyclable means it can be repurposed, but uses energy to become so. If not recycled, it persists in a landfill for a quarter century. Compostable, on the other hand has a waste stream lifecycle of about 30 to 90 days.

“In other words, people think recyclable is going to save us. It is not. A good example would be plastic bags in a supermarket, which are no longer supplied (in California, at least). I think people are going to notice that, learn more about it, and ultimately realize that we (humans) don’t have a choice.”

Cynthia must be doing something right! Even her growing group of vegan advocates hasn’t outed her for her food choices, food service items, or her food ideology. And professional that she is, she never ‘settles’ for second-best.

“And they’re a tough group. They really care about the green food philosophy, and about their bodies.”

The future for Café Nefola is a move in about two weeks, to what Cynthia calls a “better location”. Is there one? After all, the restaurant is relocating from a front-row view of the Channel Islands Harbor.

“It’s closer in, and I’m hoping to get a couple of bicycles out front to encourage bike commuting instead of driving. The café is also going to get into the delivery business.

On a final note, Cynthia shared with me one of her ‘greener’ ventures. The company is LifeSource. With one water filtration unit at her restaurant and another at her home, she is probably as much an expert as company salespersons, assuming there are any.

According to Cynthia, not only is it the best-tasting water she has ever had, but when used to wash produce it makes fruits and vegetables last longer without any chemicals.

“I wash my lettuce, and it lasts a week to a week and a half.”

Try that with your city water, or even your shallow urban well water. LifeSource water systems are also easily movable, in case you decide to head for a better climate. Better than Southern California. You’ve got to be joking, dude!

Written by Jeanne Roberts

Image credit: thebittenword.com via photopin cc

Harvesting greens at Next Barn Over Farm in Hadley, Massachusetts. CSA members visit the farm weekly from June to October to pick up their share of the harvest. Photo: Tory Field.

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell

Part 17 of the Harvesting Justice series

“People are realizing that we can’t rely on the industrial food system much longer. The awakening that’s happening is our greatest opportunity,” says New Mexican farmer and activist Miguel Santistevan. This awakening has sparked the revival of local, sustainable food systems.

At its most basic, sustainability connotes a system capable of continuing indefinitely without compromising future life. Sustainability is also sometimes described as a three-legged stool: in order to be balanced, it must sit equally on sturdy legs of economics, environment, and equity. A food system contributes to community sustainability if it is economically viable for small farmers; nourishing of the earth and elements; and socially equitable for all involved, including farm and food workers and consumers.
Examples in the movement to create local, sustainable food systems are virtually endless. Here are just a few:

Community gardens are sprouting up everywhere, with an estimated 18,000 in the US and Canada. In most cases, members rent a small plot for a modest fee. These patchwork-quilt gardens, primarily in urban areas, provide a local food source, build community relationships, beautify the neighborhood, and give more people the opportunity to eat homegrown food.

Educational gardening projects give children and teens the opportunity to get their hands dirty and learn about growing food. In East Oakland, California, youth with Oakland Food Connection grew over 3,000 pounds of produce in school-based gardens in one year. Now they’re branching out to create value-added products, like sauerkraut and jelly, and to run a catering business. On the other side of the country, in Orange, Massachusetts, Seeds of Solidarity works with rural and working-class youth to tend gardens at schools, a homeless shelter, and an elder care facility.

Deborah Habib, director of Seeds of Solidarity, said, “Every person is capable of helping to feed their community. To me, it’s really about reclaiming the heart-hands-land connection, so we can each participate, not only as consumers, but by cultivating the earth and cultivating foods.”

Farmers are growing food for public institutions like schools, universities, hospitals, and prisons. In one instance, the Berkeley Unified School District did away with its tater tots and canned peaches through a policy of increasing the amount of local, organic food it purchases. “We’ve gone from 95 percent processed foods to 95 percent made from scratch,” said chef Ann Cooper. To help allay the higher food costs associated with this program, the school system has gotten bulk discounts from farmers and processors, sources a significant amount of fresh produce from school-sponsored gardens, and uses federal reimbursements from the USDA as well as sales to students. There are now farm-to-school programs involving 12,429 schools in 50 states.

Real Food Challenge is working to shift $1 billion worth of college and university food purchases towards local, sustainable, and fair sources, and away from industrial agriculture. The nationwide project supports student organizers as they develop campus wide campaigns to get their schools to commit to purchasing 20% “real food” by 2020. They host leadership trainings and events, provide materials and other organizing support, and have developed a Real Food Calculator to help track institutional food purchasing. They define real food as “food which truly nourishes producers, consumers, communities and the earth. It is a food system – from seed to plate – that fundamentally respects human dignity and health, animal welfare, social justice and environmental sustainability.”

A sad joke goes “If your illness doesn’t kill you in the hospital, the food will.” Fletcher Allen Health Care in Vermont and Cancer Treatment Centers of America in Illinois and Oklahoma are just a few of the hospitals around the country that are part of a growing network of farm-to-hospital programs. Four hundred and forty-four hospitals in the US have signed a pledge, organized by the group Health Care without Harm, to offer more fruits and vegetables, as well as locally grown, fair-trade, and pesticide- and hormone free food. Some hospitals also host on-site farmers’ markets, plant gardens, and compost food scraps.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) creates a direct partnership between a farm and members of the community. Members pay farmers at the beginning of the season, providing them with cash needed to purchase seeds and equipment. In return, each week they receive a share of the harvest, whatever is growing at the time. Members commit to sharing both the benefits and risks of each season. If there is a bumper crop of watermelon, everyone enjoys the abundance. If disease wipes out the tomatoes, share members ride that out as well. This commitment from members gives farmers more protection from both the whims of nature and price fluctuations of the market. By cutting out the middle-people, members have a more direct relationship with where their food comes from and receive a better price for local food.

Started in Japan, CSAs are catching on all over the US and the world. Since its introduction in the US in the l980s, the model has expanded to over 12,500 farms. In some rural areas, members pick up their share at the farm itself, while in cities, farmers drop off boxes of produce at distribution sites. The CSA model is now being used not only for vegetables but also for many other goods like grains, meat, dairy, fish, medicinal herbs, pies, and spun wool.

Farmers’ markets are also experiencing a meteoric rise. Between 1994 and 2011, farmers’ markets registered with the US Department of Agriculture increased 400 percent. They now number over 7,800. Markets are also vibrant community gathering spots, places to meet, play, connect, and unwind. Food from a farmers’ market or CSA typically travels between 10 and 100 miles, unlike the long distances traveled by their grocery store counterparts.

Farmers are continuing the time-honored practice of banding together through marketing cooperatives. Selling everything from cheese to cantaloupe, co-ops give small producers more bargaining power in the marketplace. They allow producers to pay discounted prices by buying in bulk; lower their transportation and distribution costs by sharing resources such as delivery trucks; earn a higher profit by eliminating some of the middlepeople; and access federal tax deductions. In 2008, the USDA reported that there were over 2,200 farmer, ranch, and fishery co-ops in the US, with a combined business volume of $213.4 billion. One small-scale example is Moo Milk in Maine. In 2010, 10 organic dairy farmers who had been dropped by the giant corporation Hood created the co-op, through which farmers now keep up to 90% of the profits.

Download the Harvesting Justice pdf here, and find action items, resources, and a popular education curriculum on the Harvesting Justice website. Harvesting Justice was created for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, check out their work here.

Read more from Other Worlds here, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter!

Copyleft Other Worlds. You may reprint this article in whole or in part.  Please credit any text or original research you use to Tory Field and Beverly Bell, Other Worlds.

By Janet Larsen and J. Matthew Roney

The world quietly reached a milestone in the evolution of the human diet in 2011. For the first time in modern history, world farmed fish production topped beef production. The gap widened in 2012, with output from fish farming—also called aquaculture—reaching a record 66 million tons, compared with production of beef at 63 million tons. And 2013 may well be the first year that people eat more fish raised on farms than caught in the wild. More than just a crossing of lines, these trends illustrate the latest stage in a historic shift in food production—a shift that at its core is a story of natural limits.

As the global demand for animal protein grew more than fivefold over the second half of the twentieth century, humans began to press against the productivity constraints of the world’s rangelands and oceans. Annual beef production climbed from 19 million tons in 1950 to more than 50 million tons in the late 1980s. Over the same period, the wild fish catch ballooned from 17 million tons to close to 90 million tons. But since the late 1980s, the growth in beef production has slowed, and the reported wild fish catch has remained essentially flat. (See data.)

The bottom line is that getting much more food from natural systems may not be possible. Much of the world’s grassland is stocked at or beyond capacity, and most of the world’s fisheries are fished to their limits or already crashing. Overstocked rangelands become obvious as the loss of protective vegetation leads to soil degradation, which at its worst can cause punishing dust and sand storms. Overexploited fisheries are less readily visible, but fishing patterns over time reveal that more effort is required to achieve the same size catch as in years past. Boats are using more fuel and travelling to more remote and deeper waters to bring in their haul. Fishers are pulling up smaller fish, and populations of some of the most popular food fish have collapsed.

A Historic Shift in Eating Animal Protein

Historically, people’s taste in eating animal protein was largely shaped by where they lived. In places with extensive grasslands, like in the United States, Brazil, Argentina, and Australia, people gravitated toward grazing livestock. Along coasts and on islands, as in Japan, wild fish tended to be the protein staple. Today, with little room for expanding the output from rangelands and the seas, producing more beef and fish for a growing and increasingly affluent world population has meant relying on feedlots for fattening cattle and on ponds, nets, and pens for growing fish.

While open waters and grasslands can be self-sustaining if managed carefully, raising fish and livestock in concentrated operations requires inputs. Grain and soybeans have been inserted into the protein production food chain. Cattle consume 7 pounds of grain or more to produce an additional pound of beef. This is twice as high as the grain rations for pigs, and over three times those of poultry. Fish are far more efficient, typically taking less than 2 pounds of feed to add another pound of weight. Pork and poultry are the most widely eaten forms of animal protein worldwide, but farmed fish output is increasing the fastest. Average annual growth rates over the last five years have mirrored the relative efficiency of feed use, with the global production of farmed fish growing by nearly 6 percent a year, poultry by 4 percent, and pork by 1.7 percent—fast outpacing beef, which barely increased at all.

As grain and soybean prices have risen well above historical levels in recent years, the cost of producing grain-eating livestock has also gone up. Higher prices have nudged consumers away from the least-efficient feeders. This means more farmed fish and less beef. In the United States, where the amount of meat in peoples’ diets has been falling since 2004, average consumption of beef per person has dropped by more than 13 percent and that of chicken by 5 percent. U.S. fish consumption has also dropped, but just by 2 percent.

Beyond economic considerations, health and environmental concerns are also leading many people in industrial countries to reduce their beef intake. Meanwhile, fish are touted as healthy alternatives (save for the largest types, which have accumulated mercury from environmental pollution). Diets heavy in red meat have been associated with a higher risk for heart disease and colon cancer, among other ailments. Beef production has garnered a negative reputation for having a large carbon footprint and for destroying habitat, notably in the Brazilian Amazon. And excess nitrogen fertilizer applied to the fields of feed corn grown to satisfy the world’s livestock runs off into streams and rivers, sometimes flowing to coastal waters where it creates large algal blooms and low-oxygen “dead zones” where fish cannot survive.

A Historic Shift in the Practice of Aquaculture

A fish farm in China

While it is only recently that the limitations of natural systems have emerged on a global scale, the practice of aquaculture dates back millennia. China, which accounts for 62 percent of the world’s farmed fish, has long cultivated different types of carp that eat different things—phytoplankton, zooplankton,  grass, or detritus—together in a mini ecosystem. Today carp and their relatives are still the mainstay of Chinese aquaculture, making up nearly half the country’s output. Filter-feeding mollusks, like clams and oysters, account for close to a third. Carp, catfish, and other species are also grown in Chinese rice paddies, where their waste can fertilize the grain crop. This is also practiced in Indonesia, Thailand, and Egypt. (Other top aquacultural producers include India, Viet Nam, and Bangladesh.)

Unfortunately, not all aquaculture works this way. Some of the farmed fish that are quickly gaining popularity, like salmon and shrimp, are carnivorous species that eat fishmeal or fish oil produced from forage fish from the wild. Yet most forage fish stocks (think anchovies, herrings, and sardines), which typically make up about a third of the world oceanic fish catch, are dangerously overharvested. Fish farmers are working to reduce the amount of fish meal and oil in their rations, but in the rush to meet ever-expanding world demand, the share of farmed fish being fed has increased because they can reach market size quickly. Norway, the world’s top farmed salmon producer, now imports more fish oil than any other country. China, the world’s leading shrimp producer, takes in some 30 percent of the fishmeal traded each year.

As cattle ranches have displaced biologically rich rainforests, fish farms have displaced mangrove forests that provide important fish nursery habitats and protect coasts during storms. Worldwide, aquaculture is thought to be responsible for more than half of all mangrove loss, mostly for shrimp farming. In the Philippines, some two thirds of the country’s mangroves—over 100,000 hectares—have been removed for shrimp farming over the last 40 years.

Another problem with intensive confined animal feeding operations of all kinds, whether for farmed fish or for cattle, is not what gets extracted from the environment but what gets put in it. On a small-scale farm with livestock, animal waste can be used to fertilize crops. But putting large numbers of animals together transforms waste from an asset into a liability. Along with the vast quantities of waste, the antibiotic and parasite-killing chemicals used to deal with the unwanted disease and infestations that can spread easily in crowded conditions also can end up in surrounding ecosystems. The overuse of antibiotics in livestock operations can lead to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, threatening both human and animal health. In the United States, for instance, 80 percent of antibiotics use is in agriculture—and often not for treating sick animals but for promoting rapid weight gain.

Thus the solutions to our collision with the limitations of the natural systems that have long provided food have created their own host of problems. On a per person basis, beef consumption—now averaging less than 20 pounds (8.9 kilograms) each year globally—is unlikely to rebound to the 24 pounds eaten in the 1970s. But annual world fish consumption per person of 42 pounds—up from 25 pounds in the 1970s—is set to keep rising. With the additional fish coming from farms rather than the seas, the urgency of making aquaculture sustainable is clear. On the fish feed front, fishmeal producers are incorporating more seafood scraps into their products; today roughly a third of fishmeal is made up of food fish trimmings and other by-products. And some fish farmers are substituting livestock and poultry processing wastes and plant-based feeds for fishmeal and oil, which does not sound particularly appetizing, but does reduce pressure on wild stocks. From a sustainability standpoint, however, it would be preferable to shift the balance back in favor of farmed fish raised without feeds based on food grains, oilseeds, and protein from other animals.

Our global population of 7 billion people, growing by nearly 80 million per year, cannot escape the limits of nature. To live within Earth’s natural boundaries requires rethinking meat and fish production practices to respect ecology. Most important, it means reducing demand by slowing population growth and, for those of us already living high on the food chain, eating less meat, milk, eggs, and fish.

Copyright © 2013 Earth Policy Institute

Image credit: LeeLeFever via photopin cc; WorldFish via photopin cc

You care about the environment, you shop at farmers markets regularly, and you’ve even invested in low-flow toilets for every bathroom in your home. There’s more you can do, though… if you’re willing to get a little weird.

Natural Lawn Care

If you have a lot of land, forget the lawnmower and wild animal traps. Save yourself time by buying a few goats to maintain your property! That’s what Google did to take care of the overgrown lawn near their Mountain View, California location and it worked like a charm. Goats have an amazing appetite for just about any plant material, and it’s a truly natural way for landowners to take care of their curb appeal.

What You Eat and Where You Go

Some of the most sustainable food isn’t found at Whole Foods. Snails are delicious, local and there are plenty of them to be found. Foragers love them and they’re pretty easy to prepare. They’re also high in protein, low in fat and can be added to everything from salads to pizza.

What goes in must come out, but you can join the Pee Outside Movement to save money on flushing the toilet. When it comes to number one, more people are heading outside to avoid those costly flushes. It’s a return to the basics, especially for men, who find it a particularly easy switch to make.

Clothes Aren’t Just for Looks

There are numerous brands and lines touting green clothes, but why not take it a step further? A solar-powered USB bikini soaks up the sun’s rays and lets you power everything from your iPad to your smartphone. It’s made with organic cotton and is the perfect accoutrement to your beach trip.

Getting Frisky

For those who want to spice up their sex life but stay green while doing it, there’s an abundance of new green toys on the market. Earth Erotics is one such company that offers items with no PVC or any other materials that might harm the environment. Created by a woman who received her degree in Environmental Law, she wanted to bring attention to the fact that millions of people use toys each year and manufacturers were missing out on an opportunity to be eco-friendly.

Beyond the Grave

At the opposite end of the spectrum, the average funeral is another event that is less than environmentally friendly. Enter the Green Burial Council, where dry ice or refrigeration is used to preserve the body, which is placed in a wooden casket. The body is buried with the purpose of feeding aboveground plants and animals and you can even choose a green cemetery burial. Even better, a green funeral costs about 33 percent of a traditional one.

These are just a few of the quirky ways you can go green. Try one or try them all. From an all-natural air filter to a toilet-free home, everyone’s jumping on the green bandwagon.

Michelle is a blogger and freelancer. She’s written about almost every topic under the sun, and loves constantly learning about new subjects and industries while she’s writing. Whenever she’s able to step away from her computer she enjoys spending time outdoors with her dogs.

Image credit: james_clear via photopin cc

Cool off this summer with a batch of all-natural, homemade fruit and herb infused water. There’s no need for pricey equipment or shopping lists, only your favorite produce, water and a container. A reusable water bottle, Mason jar or pitcher will work just fine!

Since over half of your body is made up of water and fruits and herbs are filled with essential minerals, vitamins and antioxidants, you’ll be getting a double bonus as you combine some of Nature’s most versatile ingredients into one refreshing drink. Your body will thank you from the inside out with glowing, radiant skin, more energy and endless other health benefits. Say goodbye to artificial sweeteners and sugary mixes and try some fruit and herb infused water today!

Five Easy Steps to Preparing Naturally Flavored Water

1. Fill Your Container with Water: Many of us are fortunate to have access to clean drinking water from our tap, so there’s no need to buy bottled water and further contribute to the ever growing landfills and rising amounts of oil used for production and transportation.
2. Add Rinsed and Chopped Produce and Herbs: Rinse off any leftover dirt or residue from your fruit and herbs, then slice and/or chop the produce before adding it to your water. Fresh or frozen ingredients will flavor your water, but try to use fresh and organic whenever you can.
3. Don’t be afraid to try different flavor combinations. Some of my favorite drinks have been discovered through a process of trial and error. For instance, mix an assortment of berries for a naturally sweet drink or pair oranges and cilantro, also known as coriander, together for a tangy twist. Keep reading for more tips and flavor suggestions to find the perfect blend just for you!
4. Leave it Alone: It’s very important to leave your container sealed and in a place where it won’t be bothered for at least 2 to 3 hours. The longer your produce stays in the water, the more flavoring will be infused into it. It’s your choice to have your drink chilled or at room temperature, but I haven’t noticed a difference in the infusions when leaving my water in either place.
5. Drink up: Liven up your plain ole tap water with subtle hints of flavor from this season’s tastiest fruits and herbs, and you’re sure to save money and stay hydrated all Summer long.

Tips and Flavor Suggestions:

• Reuse your produce whenever you can, but use your own discretion to decide when your fruit is showing signs of spoiling. Oftentimes it becomes extremely mushy and breaks into pieces when it’s time to disregard. If you think your fruit is good to go for another drink, refill your container for another tasty concoction.
• Try straining your water with a cheese cloth or a coffee filter before consuming it if you’d prefer not having excess seeds, pulp and/or herbs in your drinks.
• Replace tap water with sparkling water or club soda to make a fruit spritzer as a great complement to your picnics and cookouts.
• Those over the legal drinking age may consider swapping water for their favorite adult spirits to make grown-up cocktails.
• Some common recipes pair strawberries and mint together for a daiquiri-inspired drink, and lemon, cucumber and basil combos are more refreshing and lavender and orange is more calming.

What are your favorite flavor combinations? Do you have any tips for preparing infused water at home? Leave me a note in the comment section. Happy Summer!

Image credit: I Believe I Can Fry via photopin cc

An environmental protest song always involves a musician that looks something like that guy above… right? OK, there’s some truth to that – Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” certainly came straight out of the folkie-hippie tradition – but there are other classics of the subgenre that aren’t even close – Marvin Gay’s “Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology),” for instance. Ultimately, a song has to speak to an audience likely to act on its message, and that means choosing a musical style that will reach that audience. The singer-songwriter thing works for some… but I’d guess a lot of young people today – the audience most likely to act on such a message – would just as soon roll their eyes at our troubadour friend and his dog.

So, when John Dares (aka Univer Soul) and the folks at Boylan Studios in New York decided to record a song protesting President Obama’s potential approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, they put the acoustic guitars and harmonicas aside, and fired up the mixing board. “Habeas Corpus / Home at Bay” combines dance beats with rap/hip-hop, and just plain visual silliness. A new remix incorporates the talents of Grammy-winner Jason Goldstein… check it out:

Now, those of you who know me know that this isn’t my favorite style of music, and I freely admit I had to read along with the lyrics to understand any of the rapping. But Univer Soul and crew are donating all digital sales proceeds to a number of environmental organizations that I respect, and I greatly admire that! I’m also impressed with the list of celebrities that have already promoted the song through their own social media channels. So, it’s definitely worth a listen or two… and, at only 99 cents, it’s an easy way to kick a little change towards an important issue.

If you’re more into the dance/hip-hop scene, share your evaluation of the song… and definitely let us know if you decide to buy it.

Image credit: Franco Folini via photopin cc

By Janet Larsen

Half the world’s pigs—more than 470 million of them—live in China, but even that may not be enough to satisfy the growing Chinese appetite for meat. While meat consumption in the United States has fallen more than 5 percent since peaking in 2007, Chinese meat consumption has leapt 18 percent, from 64 million to 78 million (metric) tons—twice as much as in the United States. Pork is by far China’s favorite protein, which helps to explain the late-May announced acquisition of U.S. meat giant Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s leading pork producer, by the Chinese company Shuanghui International, owner of China’s largest meat processor. China already buys more than 60 percent of the world’s soybean exports to feed to its own livestock and has been a net importer of pork for the last five years. Now the move for Chinese companies is to purchase both foreign agricultural land and food-producing companies outright.

People in China ate 53 million tons of pork in 2012—six times as much as in the United States. On a per person basis, consumption in China first eclipsed that in the United States in 1997, and it has never looked back. Now the average Chinese eats 86 pounds (39 kilograms) of pig meat each year, compared with 59 pounds in the United States. As demand rises, pork is starting to shift from household- or farm-scale production into larger factory-like operations. Overcrowding in these facilities has been blamed for pollution and the spread of disease, as well as for the recent dumping of thousands of dead pigs into a river flowing into Shanghai.

Chinese chicken production and processing have also consolidated, as sadly seen in the recent fire at a large poultry plant in northeastern China that reportedly killed at least 120 people. China’s chicken intake just recently caught up with that in the United States, with 13 million tons eaten in each country. It took China just 25 years to make the consumption leap achieved by the United States over a half-century.

Chicken is America’s meat of choice, and U.S. individual diets are four times heavier with poultry than Chinese diets are. However, as fast-food restaurants in China multiply, chicken consumption is rising. If the Chinese ate as much chicken per person as Americans do, their flocks would need to quadruple—as would the grain and soybeans used in the feed rations.

As for beef, grazing land limitations and higher costs have made this meat far less popular in China than in the United States, with 5.6 million tons consumed in 2012, or 9 pounds per person. The average American, in stark contrast, ate 82 pounds of beef that year. Total beef consumption in both countries appears to have peaked.

The Chinese eat nearly as much mutton and goat (close to 7 pounds per person annually) as they do beef, while those meats barely register in U.S. diets. New steakhouses are trying to lure affluent Chinese toward red meat, but they are unlikely to reach the masses. If the Chinese ate as much beef as Americans do today, they would need 50 million tons of it, 90 percent of current world consumption.

With the average income in China poised to reach U.S. levels as early as 2035, heavier beef consumption theoretically could become economically feasible. Ecologically, though, it may never be possible. Grasslands are unable to sustain herds much larger than the existing ones, as evidenced by the vast dust bowl forming in northern China, largely from overgrazing by sheep and goats. Thus, getting more beef would mean intensive use of feedlots. But cattle take more grain and soybean meal per pound than all other livestock and poultry. In recent years China has imported some grain, though imports still make up a small share of its total supply. China’s soy production, however, has barely budged since 1995, while soy use (mostly for feed rations) has shot up fivefold. Imports have made up the difference. (See data.)

Hogs put on about twice as much weight as cattle per pound of feed, and chickens grow even faster. Smithfield Foods in the United States has become remarkably “efficient” at fattening hogs en masse; such expertise is a big attraction for China. Yet even though the United States has a better reputation on food safety than China, U.S. factory farms have their problems as well in terms of the contamination of meat and the massive quantities of waste generated by large groups of animals. The widespread use of antibiotics in U.S. industrial meat production has been linked to growing bacterial resistance to antibiotic treatment. And one feed additive still used in the United States to help pigs gain lean weight—ractopamine—has been banned in China because of feared negative health effects. According to reporting by Reuters, Smithfield began limiting the use of ractopamine on some, but not all, of its animals last year, with an eye on the Chinese market.

Given the existing land degradation and pollution that are making it harder for China to produce more—and safer—food, it is not difficult to see why foreign acquisition of both land and food producers is becoming increasingly attractive. Yet just as the American diet has been shown to be a dangerous export—accompanied by spreading obesity, heart disease, and other so-called diseases of affluence—ramping up American-style factory meat production is not without risk.

For more information, see “Meat Consumption in China Now Double That in the United States,” by Janet Larsen, and the latest book from Earth Policy Institute, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, by Lester R. Brown.

Copyright © 2013 Earth Policy Institute

Image credit: Green Fire Productions via photopin cc

When someone says “I/we built this house” these days, they generally mean “I/we hired the contractor who hired other people that did all of the actual work.” In some cases, the owners may have gotten their hands dirty with some relatively unskilled tasks. But literally building their own house? And doing so from materials that they went out and harvested? Nobody does that anymore… right?

Well, maybe not. While most of us don’t believe we have the time or energy to build a house by hand, there is a growing community of people dedicated to the art of crafting a house: that is, harvesting materials and fashioning them with hand tools into the elements of a building. And Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage in Northeastern Missouri (where – disclosure – I’m a member of the board of directors) is quickly becoming a hub for all things natural building related. Last Summer,  DR member ziggy (who also used to write for us) and his partner April put together a two-week timber framing workshop with expert Tom Cundiff. It proved so popular that they’re doing it again this Summer… and early registration (which will save you some money) is now open.

What will you learn at this year’s event? According to the description,

Students will spend 10 full days at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage learning the historic craft of timber frame construction using mortise and tenon joinery. Unique to this course is the opportunity to work with round wood material and layout techniques, with a smaller dose of square (milled) timber as well. We’ll cover how to use a variety of natural timbers in combination with one another, and different layout techniques that accompany each material. Material selection, scribe rule and square rule, assembly, and rigging and raising techniques are just a taste of the material we will cover in this detailed, hands-on course. Not only that, we’ll experience and learn some of the fundamental connections between building structure, design, and sustainable lifestyle alternatives.

You’ll get lots of hands-on experience, plus evening lectures. And, of course, you’ll get to experience community at a thriving ecovillage.

Sound like something you might want to do? Get all the details at ziggy’s site… and let us know if you do decide to attend.

Image credit: The Year of Mud

By Tory Field and Beverly Bell

Part 16 of the Harvesting Justice series

“At one point ‘agriculture’ was about the culture of food. Losing that culture, in favor of an American cultural monocrop, joined with an agricultural monocrop, puts us in a perilous state…” says food and Native activist Winona LaDuke.[i]

Her lament is an agribusiness executive’s dream. The CEO of the H.J. Heinz Company said, “Once television is there, people, whatever shade, culture, or origin, want roughly the same things.”[ii] The same things are based on the same technology, same media sources, same global economy, and same food.

Together with the loss of cultural diversity, the growth of industrial agriculture has led to an enormous depletion in biodiversity. Throughout history, humans have cultivated about 7,000 species of plants. In the last century, three-quarters of the genetic diversity of agricultural crops have been lost. Thirty crops now provide 95% of our food needs, with rice, wheat, maize, and potato alone providing 60%. Eighty-five percent of the apple varieties that once existed in the US have been lost. Vast fields of genetically identical crops are much more susceptible to pests, necessitating increased pesticide use. The lack of diversity also endangers the food supply, as an influx of pests or disease can wipe out enormous quantities of crops in one fell swoop.

Native peoples’ efforts to protect their crop varieties and agricultural heritage in the US go back 500 years to when the Spanish conquistadors arrived. Today, Native communities throughout the US are reclaiming and reviving land, water, seeds, and traditional food and farming practices, thereby putting the culture back in agriculture and agriculture back in local hands.

One such initiative is the White Earth Land Recovery Project in Minnesota, which is recovering healthy stewardship of local tribes’ original land base. They are harvesting and selling traditional foods such as wild rice, planting gardens and raising greenhouses, and growing food for farm-to-school and feeding-our-elders programs. They are reintroducing native sturgeon to local waters as well as working to stop pesticide spraying at nearby industrial farms. They are also strengthening relationships with food sovereignty projects around the country. Winona LaDuke, the founding director of the project, told us, “My father used to say, ‘I don’t want to hear your philosophy if you can’t grow corn’… I now grow corn.”

Another revival effort involves buffalo herds. In the 1800s, European-American settlers drove wild buffalo close to extinction, decimating a source of survival for many Native communities. Just one example of the resurgence is the Lakota Buffalo Caretakers Cooperative, a cooperative of small-family buffalo caretakers, on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. The cooperative sees its work as threefold, to “restore the buffalo, restore the native ecology on Pine Ridge, and help renew the sacred connection between the Lakota people and the buffalo nation.” At the national level, the Inter-Tribal Bison Cooperative is a network of 56 tribal bison programs from around the country with a collective herd of over 15,000.

In New Mexico, Native communities are organizing a wealth of initiatives. Around the state, they have started educational and production farms, youth-elder farming exchanges, buffalo revitalization programs, seed-saving initiatives, herb-based diabetes treatment programs, a credit union that invests in green and sustainable projects, and more. Schools like the Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute, the Institute of American Indian Arts, and the Santa Fe Indian School – along with grammar schools, high schools, and non-profit programs – have developed agricultural education programs. The Traditional Native American Farmers’ Association helps farmers get back onto the land, hosts workshops on seed saving and agricultural techniques, and has a youth program.

The annual Sustainable Food and Seed Sovereignty Symposium at the Tesuque [Indian] Pueblo in northern New Mexico brings together farmers, herbalists, natural dyers, healers, cooks, seed savers, educators, water protectors, and community organizers. From the 2006 symposium came the Declaration of Seed Sovereignty, which denounced genetically engineered seeds and corporate ownership of Native seeds and crops as “a continuation of genocide upon indigenous people and as malicious and sacrilegious acts toward our ancestry, culture, and future generations.”

In addition to the symposium, the Tesuque Pueblo also hosts Tesuque Natural Farms, which grows vegetables, herbs, grains, fruit trees, and cover crops, including varieties long lost to the region. The project is building a Native seed library. The overarching goal is to make the Pueblo autonomous in both food and seeds. Emigdio Ballon, Quechua farmer and geneticist at Tesuque Natural Farm, said, “The only way we can get our autonomy is when we have the resources in our own hands, when we don’t have to buy from seed companies.”

The farm provides fresh foods to the senior center, sells at the farmers’ markets, and trains residents to begin farming themselves. The farm also grows medicinal herbs to treat HIV, diabetes, and cancer, and makes biofertilizer from plants. The preschoolers at the Head Start program garden; grammar school students are beginning to, as well.

People from across the nation come to Tesuque Natural Farms to study agricultural production and to take workshops on pruning, beekeeping, poultry, soil fertility, composting, and other topics. Soon the farm hopes to create a research and education center, where people can come for three to six months.

Nayeli Guzman, a Mexica woman who worked at the farm, said, “What we’re doing is very simple. These ideas are not an alternative for us, they’re just a way of life… We need to all work together as land-based people.

“Creator is not exclusive, so there’s no reason we should be,” she said. “They tell us, ‘The more biodiversity you have, the richer your soil is going to be.’ It’s like that with people. The more different kinds of people you have, the more able we’re going to be to survive. We can’t compartmentalize ourselves. That’s what industrial agriculture does.”

[i] Winona LaDuke in “One Thing to Do About Food: A Forum,” Alice Waters, ed., The Nation, September 11, 2006, 18.

[ii] Sharon Beder, Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism (Devon: Green Books, 2002), 184.

Download the Harvesting Justice pdf here, and find action items, resources, and a popular education curriculum on the Harvesting Justice website. Harvesting Justice was created for the US Food Sovereignty Alliance, check out their work here.

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