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The Power & Protocols to Police
Food Chain Radio Show #910 • February 23, 2013 • Sat 9AM Pacific

Michael Olson with David Runsten, Community Alliance with Family Farms

and Sandra Esking, Food Safety Campaign
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Can local farmers survive the FDA’s Food Safety police?

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Foodborne illnesses kill an estimated 3,000 people in the United States every year.
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In the last hours of 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act, which granted the Food and Drug Administration the power to police the nation’s food chain.  Instead of simply reacting to foodborne contaminations, the FDA, under former Monsanto executive Michael Taylor, will protect against them by policing the nation’s food chain.
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After two years of planning, the FDA has placed over 1,000 pages of new food safety rules and regulations into the public domain for discussion.  These rules and regulations were designed as a one-size-all for agriculture.  However, there are two sizes of agriculture:  an industrial- sized agriculture that produces food for distant markets, and a local-sized  agriculture that produces food for local markets.
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With 1,000 pages of new policing authority, the federal food police will have life and death power over all farmers.  This leads us to ask…
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Can local farmers survive the FDA’s Food Safety police?

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Forgetting The Past

Michael Olson hosts
David Buchanan, Author of Taste, Memory
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What happens to people if plants forget their past?
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Santayana was thinking of people when he remarked, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  But could not the same be said of plants?
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Plants earn their intelligence through experience.  When an environment heats up, plants that tolerate heat survive.  This toleration is then programmed into the plants’ genes and passed to future generations, which then remember how to tolerate heat.
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(People?  Not so smart!  It seems each of us must first burn our fingers before the intelligence of what is too hot is fixed into our minds.)
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The intelligence of plants is fine-tuned by their environment. Corn that grows and develops in response to the environment of the Urabamba Valley in Peru, for example, will have a different set of values than corn that grows and develops in response to the environment of Virginia’s Shenendoah Valley.  The Peruvian and Virginian may not even look alike when grown to maturity.
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The intelligence to grow and develop in response to a specific environment is the plant’s genetic heritage, and thus we often call plants that have this specific knowledge “heritage” plants.
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When we all lived on the land, heritage plants were very important because they enabled us to grow crops where we lived.  But we have since moved into town.  We now rely on the foods of industry to survive, and the plants of industry have a different kind of intelligence.  For example, many varieties of corn now have the intelligence to tolerate chemical herbicides that kill all the other plants around them.  As this intelligence makes it very easy to grow corn, the varieties are supplanting the heritage ones we once valued so highly.
This loss of genetic diversity leads us to ask…
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What will happen to people if plants forget their past?

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FOOD CHAIN NEWS TOPIC
A Federal Farm Fiasco
Food Chain Radio Show #908 • February 9, 2013 • Sat 9AM Pacific
Consultant Burleigh Leonard

Should the U.S. eliminate its Farm Bill?

It began as an effort to help farmers farm in hard times, but grew into an effort to help just about everyone do everything for everybody all the time.
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The federal government’s efforts to manage the nation’s food chain began with the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916, and was made permanent in a provision in the Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 that says, in effect, that if Congress does not pass a Farm Bill, the federal government will then have to provide financial support to farmers by artificially inflating the prices of the commodities farmers produce.
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Thus milk that now sells for $2.10 might have to be sold for $5.20!
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To avoid this onerous “permanent law,” the federal government dutifully passes a Farm Bill every five years, give or take.
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However, over the course of a century, the federal government’s Farm Bills have grown to include provisions, like Food Stamps, that are designed to help just about everyone up and down the food chain.
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As a consequence of its desire to help everybody, the federal government now finds itself well over $16 trillion in debt, and unable to agree on the provisions of a new Farm Bill.  This leads us to ask…
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Should the U.S. eliminate its Farm Bill?

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FOOD CHAIN NEWS TOPIC:  Nano Nano NanoFood

Michael Olson hosts
Journalist Heather Miller
••••
Are nanofoods safe to eat?
Nanoparticles are so small they live by their own laws.
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A million nanoparticles might be placed on the period at the end of this sentence.  This means nanoparticles are too big to be governed by the rules of quantum mechanics, and too small to be governed by the rules of classical physics, and so the particles can enable us to do things that other particles can’t, like resist heat, kill germs, and confer strength without adding weight.
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Because they can do things that other particles can’t, nanoparticles are rapidly finding their way into our food chain.  The American Chemical Society Journal claims nanoparticles are now used in 89 popular foods, including M&Ms and Mentos, Dentyne and Trident gums, Nestle coffee creamers, Pop-Tarts, Kool-Aid, Jell-O, and Betty Crocker cake frostings.
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Though we are now eating freely of miraculous nanoparticles, we simply do not know much about them.  We find it difficult to detect nanoparticles in our food; do not have protocols for judging their effects on our body; and do not have the tools necessary to track them.  This leads us to ask...
•••••••
Are nanofoods safe to eat?

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The Lone Wolf of California
Food Chain Radio Show #906 • January 26, 2013 • Sat 9AM Pacific
Michael Olson hosts
Karen Kovacs, California Department of Fish & Wildlife
••••
What is the lone wolf of California dreaming?
After being collared and released into the wilds of northeast Oregon, wolf OR-7 took off on the run for northern California to become the first wild wolf to inhabit the Golden State in 65 years.
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OR-7′s epic 3,000 mile run through Oregon and northern California has been made famous, in part, by an ardent press and a public that follows his wonderings via websites and Twitter feeds.  An Oregon environmental organization even sponsored a kids art and naming contest in which OR-7 was given the user-friendly moniker of “Journey.”
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However, not everyone in California, nor the West, is happy at seeing a wolf show up. Some, notably cattle and sheep ranchers, see the wolf as a direct threat to their livelihoods.  Thus the epic run of California’s Lone Wolf leads us to ask …
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Why did we release wild wolves into the American West?  How do we mediate the conflict between those who want the wolves to run free and those who do not?  And about that OR-7 …
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What is the lone wolf of California dreaming?

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Who Should Determine The Value of Food?

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It does not take much imagination to look back to the dawn of human-kind to see that food was our first money.  I want that stone axe you made and will pay for it with this venison I killed.  Deal?
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Though we now live in the most modern of times, when the electronic gadgets of science fiction have become more familiar to us than ears of garden-fresh sweet corn, food is still real money.
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We sometimes lose track of real money, and come to think the paper certificates governments print by the trillions is real money.  But unless those government certificates are guaranteed by something real, like gold or food, they are not real money, they are simply government certificates.
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Sometimes governments get carried away with their ability to print certificates.  When that happens, the ability of those certificates to buy real things, like food, is diminished in direct proportion to the speed at which governments print their certificates.  As printng certificates is very easy for governments to do, sometimes they simply print too many, and things get out of hand…
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In 1923, one loaf of bread cost 200,000,000,000 German Marks.

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Now, that 1923 loaf of bread was not worth any more, or less, than a 2013 loaf of bread.  What is different is the value of the German Mark.
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That food is real and government certificates may not be real, is a major problem for governments that like to print certificates by the trillions.  This problem leads us to ask…
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Who should determine the value of food?

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Can We Shop Our Way Back to a Strong Local Economy?

WEEKLY NEWS TOPIC
Busting Out Big – Think Local First

Michael Olson hosts
Stacey Mitchell, Institute for Self Reliance
••••
Can we shop our way back to a strong local economy?
Since 1994, the number of farmers markets in the U.S. has increased from 1,744 to 7,864, and more than 1,000 local grocers have opened their doors in neighborhoods throughout the land.
•••
The United States is truly beginning to think local first when buying its food.
•••
But so much for thinking big about buying small.  U.S. business continues to grow big… bigger… biggest:  Five U.S. banks now hold 56% of all the money.  One grocer now sells 25% of all the food. One website now sells 33% of everything sold online.
•••••••••
Big business is getting bigger, small business is getting smaller.  What happens when medium-sized business becomes, as the saying goes, “roadkill?”  How then will big business continue to increase its market share, if not by taking the share held by small business?  And by individuals?
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Will big business make it impossible for individuals to grow food for their  communities, and themselves, in order to continue expanding its market share?

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This thought­, and the fact the citizens across the land are now being prosecuted for growing their own food on their own property, lead us to ask…
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Can we shop our way back to a strong economy?

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The Elite Meat

Michael Olson hosts
Custom Butcher Rian Rinn
&
EcoFarm Board Member Thomas Wittman
••••
Can we bring our food animals home?
A few decades ago, we lived with the animals we ate.  Many can still remember those days.  I do.  As a young boy growing up on the grandparent’s farm near Belfry, Montana, I helped feed, nurture, kill and butcher the animals we ate.
•••
Tending to the animals was just part of the job of growing up on a working farm, and on the farm, every person, and every animal, had a job.  There were no pets on the farm.
•••
We have since moved off the farm and into big cities. The animals we live with are now pets, and often given full-citizenship in the family, with rights to eat at the dinner table, watch TV on the couch, and sleep on the bed.
•••••••••
The animals we eat now live behind the high walls of distant factories, where they cannot be seen, heard, smelled or touched.  When word gets out, often via purloined video, of how our food animals are treated, we city people shudder in horror.  How can they be so mean to animals?
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But truth be told, those factories treat our food animals about as humanely as possible, given the exingencies of raising thousands of them in tightly packed containers.  It simply can’t get much better for our food animals, unless we bring them home, and so we ask…

•••••••
Can we bring our food animals home?

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Hand in Hand with Enviros and Ranchers

Food Chain Radio Show #802 • December 22, 2012
Michael Olson hosts Sierra Foothills Conservancy
&
Sierra Lands Beef
••••
Can environmentalists and ranchers work together to make money and preserve the land?
•
As the Hatfields and McCoys of the American West, environmentalists and ranchers are seldom seen walking the same side of the street.
•••
In fact, environmentalists and ranchers are traditional enemies because each side champions a different use for the land. Environmentalists want to preserve the land in its natural state; ranchers want to use the land to earn a living. There has not been much room in the middle for “just getting along,” and so the two communities have not been just getting along.
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Since the environmental community is backed by the city, with all its votes and dollars, it has been able to purchase large parcels of ranchlands throughout the West and set them aside as conservancies. But a funny thing happened on the way to preserving all that land: invasive species of plants moved in and took over the landscape.
•••••••••
As the environmental community pondered what to do with all the weeds it was now conserving, someone put forth the idea of bringing back the ranchers and their animals to graze away the weeds. This suggestion leads us to ask…
•••••••••


•••••••
Can environmentalists and ranchers work together to make money and preserve the environment?

Stream Live from our website:
Download from our website: Download this Podcast here

Hand in Hand with Enviros & Ranchers
Can environmentalists and ranchers work together to make money and preserve the land?
•
As the Hatfields and McCoys of the American West, environmentalists and ranchers are seldom seen walking the same side of the street.
•••
In fact, environmentalists and ranchers are traditional enemies because each side champions a different use for the land. Environmentalists want to preserve the land in its natural state; ranchers want to use the land to earn a living. There has not been much room in the middle for “just getting along,” and so the two communities have not been just getting along.
•••
Since the environmental community is backed by the city, with all its votes and dollars, it has been able to purchase large parcels of ranchlands throughout the West and set them aside as conservancies. But a funny thing happened on the way to preserving all that land: invasive species of plants moved in and took over the landscape.
•••••••••
As the environmental community pondered what to do with all the weeds it was now conserving, someone put forth the idea of bringing back the ranchers and their animals to graze away the weeds. This suggestion leads us to ask…
•••••••••
Can environmentalists and ranchers work together to make money and preserve the environment?