Curious Creature

Good news. The plan to dump more chemicals into Lake Michigan via the BP refinery in Whiting, IN has been put on hold pending more investigation. More here.

Best quote:

BP officials told Illinois lawmakers after a Tuesday meeting at the Capitol that they would meet with them again in September after reviewing their expansion plan further for possible ways for dealing with environmental concerns.

That is exactly what should be happening. Look further into it to see how it can be made cleaner. I don’t give a damn if it falls within the EPA guidelines.

Well, after a disappointing week last week I had some really great finds this week. But first of all, wow! What a selection! I guess it shouldn’t be too shocking to find out that in the middle of summer there is not going to be a dearth of options at a farmers market. The fact though that I’ve actively been paying attention to what is available basically from the beginning of this particular market really makes clear the point made over at More Deliberate Every Day of micro-seasons.

Micro-seasons? Sure. We have the big four but each of those (and most obviously I think Spring and Summer) splits up into smaller seasons where different types of foods come and go. Spring for instance starts off with things like the first kinds of lettuce that are only available for a short time (or things like ramps for that matter). Then we move into the short strawberry/rhubarb season. Summer is no different. Right now we are getting the first apples, good corn, etc. I think you get the idea.

So what is available now and what did I get? I will not keep you in suspense any longer

The Take

• From my friends at Nichols Farm
  • German Butterball Potatoes
  • Green Beans
  • Wax Beans
  • Apples
    • Duchess
    • Mantet
    • Pristine
  • Tropea Onions
• From Hillside Orchards in Berrien Springs, MI
  • Organic Arctic Glo Nectarines
• From Klug Orchards in Berrien Center, MI
  • Purple Sugar Plums

The Tropea onions are supposed to be good grilled but unfortunately I have to wait until this weekend to try them (along with the always-fantastic grilled corn). I did have the opportunity to have some of the plums which were very good and the nectarines which were just absolutely fantastic. I knew I was in for a treat with those just from the smell but biting in to them was just an explosion of flavor. They were at the perfect ripeness. Wow! (Mom also got some….you’re welcome Mom).

My drinking water, and the drinking water of the majority of the people in the Chicago metro area, comes from Lake Michigan and this report leaves me absolutely furious.

Thankfully folks from both sides of the legislative aisles are against this and already doing something about it.

Wow. This week turned out to be kind of a bummer. I bought a quart of golden raspberries from a booth that turned out to be moldy.

I had my eye on a nice looking pint container of the same berries. I was approached by one of the people working the booth and they told me that the quart was only $1 more. The ones on top looked OK so I thought it made more sense to get the bigger size for only $1 more. I got the berries home and went to wash them and found out the ones down below were full of mold. Needless to say I was pretty ticked off and those folks will hear from me next week.

Other than that the take this week was:

• 5 ears of corn for $2 picked the night before. They looked fantastic.
• 2 State Fair apples which also looked fantastic.

Those items came from the nice folks at Nichols Farm.

Those items

After my post about Whole Foods and the fact that they provide plastic bags as an option at checkout I sent this email to them (here is the contact page):

I’m wondering why you are offering plastic bags as an option at checkout? Given the environmental impact of plastic bags I would think that Whole Foods would remove them from stores as an option. Paper, while not ideal, certainly is a better option than plastics. If you are going to keep offering plastic bags then why aren’t you using the corn-based biodegradable bags instead? Thanks, Jason

A couple of days later I received a very nice reply from Rachael Gruver. Here is the reply in full:

Hello Jason,

Thank you for contacting Whole Foods Market with your concerns. At Whole Foods Market, caring for our communities and our environment is a core value and something we take very seriously. We offer reusable bags for sale in our stores and give at least a five cent bag refund for each bag our shoppers bring back and reuse for their groceries – whether the bag is from Whole Foods Market or not — to encourage our shoppers to bring back bags for reuse.

All of our regions require their front end team members to attend bag training. In our training we not only focus on bagging items securely, but also on bagging in the most environmentally friendly manner. Some examples of bagging tips addressed in training include, packing full bags, asking shoppers whether their household and body care items can be placed in the same bag as their food, asking before double bagging, etc.

We are also looking into sourcing biodegradable bags and bags made from higher post consumer recycled content. Biodegradable shopping bags are generally made from GMO corn. It’s unfortunate that these bags are presented as an environmentally sensitive or sustainable alternative to plastic, as they are generally made with non-organic, genetically engineered corn. In addition, many of the bags available at this time are not sturdy or cost effective. We are confident that with increased consumer awareness and demand, we will be able to purchase bags that are more environmentally friendly and that meet our standards for price and quality.

Thank you for your comments and your commitment to being green.

Best regards,

Rachael

Rachael Gruver | Global Customer Information Specialist | Whole Foods Market | 550 Bowie Street | Austin, Texas 78703

I suppose it comes down to three things:

1. Cost
2. Bag Strength
3. use of non-organic and/or GM corn

I can see how issues one and two would need to be addressed. Point three I am just not sure where I stand. Not having done (and not able to do…at least at the moment) the full “cradle-to-grave” analysis of petroleum-based plastic bags vs. the newer corn-based bags I can’t really agree with their point yet I also can’t really disagree.

In the end however she didn’t answer my initial question which was: why are you offering plastic bags at all? Certainly the most environmentally-friendly option to them (as well as cost-effective) is to not even have plastic bags be available.

Illinois has a new rebate available for $1000 for buying a hybrid vehicle via the Green Rewards program.

The best part of the news clip I read was this:

Giannoulias, a first-term treasurer, will travel the state in his own Ford Escape hybrid to promote the initiative.

Isn’t that like putting lipstick on a pig?

I do a twice-monthly shopping trip to Whole Foods to pick up the items that I can’t get at any of my local stores (local meaning in my village or the next village over). Given all of the hoopla over plastic bags and Whole Foods being the preeminent natural foods grocer I’m surprised that they haven’t taken a stand on plastic bags and banned them from the store.

“Paper or plastic?” is the question I always get from the checkout person there. At the larger grocery stores in my area I don’t even get that question. They automatically give plastic. If you ask for paper bags they have to pull them out from behind the register and the paper bags don’t even have handles. The local small, upscale chain only gives paper…I don’t event think plastic is an option there.

Now in my mind paper certainly is a better option of the two simply because I think people are more likely to either reuse or recycle them. We reuse the paper and plastic bags we have here. I want to try the cloth bags but they simply won’t be a completely viable option until I can accumulate enough for the weekly shopping.

Back to Whole Foods.

The How Green Are We? webpage on the Whole Foods corporate site doesn’t have any mention of plastic bags. They do give you some money back for reusing bags (Paper or plastic. $0.10 per? I don’t know for sure) but should they be offering plastic at all? I did find this post at The Inoculated Mind that asks why isn’t Whole Foods using the new biodegradable corn-based plastic bags and finds that the answer is that those bags are made from genetically-modified corn. Now, I understand the stance that Whole Foods has about GE crops but in this case which is worse? The GE crop-based bags that biodegrade or the oil-based bags that don’t? (Of course the one question I don’t know the answer to is do these corn-based bags even biodegrade at all in a landfill? “Regular” plastic bags certainly won’t in those conditions).

If Whole Foods isn’t going to offer the plant-based alternative bag then they shouldn’t be offering the oil-based one either. “Paper or plastic?” shouldn’t even be a question being asked at Whole Foods.

Because of my chosen insurance carrier I am required to pay membership dues for the Lake County Farm Bureau. As a member of the Farm Bureau I receive a copy of their monthly newsletter, Diversified Farmer. In the July 2007 episode they have a section titled “Addressing Misconceptions About Agriculture”. This section is reprints from a guide from the American Farm Bureau of the same name.

The subtitle of the July 2007 reprint in the Lake County Farm Bureau is “The only sustainable form of food production is organic”. I will get into the content of the article in a future posting but I have to say as someone supports the organic food industry with my food dollars I was incensed over the ridiculous misinformation in the article.

I’ve read a lot over the years about organic and sustainable agriculture and never have I heard any of the “facts” quoted in this piece so I decided to start digging a bit more into this and the first page I came to had this quote:

Other misconceptions have been created and fostered by groups with an anti-agriculture or anti-animal agriculture agenda. In medical terms, while people today would never consider reverting back to the practice of blood letting instead of using modern medicines to cure a disease, they would like our food production system to resemble the idyllic, romanticized rural lifestyle of the 19th century.

At the same time, people want to spend less for food, have it ready-to-eat, fresh year round and not involve any chemicals. That is an impossible order to fill, but the public is so disconnected from their food source they do not realize it would be impossible to produce today’s quality and quantity of food using 19th century methods.

Those two paragraphs contain several preposterous ideas that have to be responded to here.

They would like our food production system to resemble the idyllic, romanticized rural lifestyle of the 19th century.

I have yet to read any source that claims anyone wants a return to the rural lifestyle of the 19th century and to claim that sustainable agriculture would require such an event is ridiculous.I will get back to these points later because its important to note that the author is equating quality of food with the modern monoculture farming practice.

The second paragraph certainly gets one thing right: a great portion of the public is disconnected from their food sources. That disconnection both from the farming methods themselves as well as the subsidy systems in place in the United States, thanks to the Farm Bill, is what drives the desire for lower-cost food.

Many people simply don’t know that the “cheaper food” is heavily subsidized by the federal government thanks to their taxes. So the “savings” really is really false and hidden from the everyday view of the consumer.The author thinks however that the disconnect has something to do with the consumer not knowing that “it would be impossible to produce today’s quality and quantity of food using 19th century methods.”. The consumer does know this and fortunately 19th-century methods have nothing to do with the quality/quantity of food that comes out of the organic food industry.

It is interesting to see agribusiness responding in such a fashion to the huge growth of the organic food industry as well as the spectacular growth being seen in the number of farmer’s markets but of course it’s not surprising. It is good to see they’re afraid of the better-informed consumer.

Every Tuesday in Chicago at Federal Plaza (Adams/Dearborn) there is a farmers market that has lots of different booths with everything from produce (usually Illinois/Indiana/Michigan represented) to coffee to cheese to flowers to….the typical farmers market. Since I work so close to this location going there during the summer is my weekly ritual and this week there was all sorts of stuff available. I bought:

• Apples: Quinte (2) from Nichols Farm
• Blue Raspberries (1 pint)
• 3 ears of sweet corn from a farm in Indiana.
• Wax beans from a farm in Indiana

9 weeks into it there is plenty available. Week 8 brought the one supply of golden raspberries and the end of the strawberries. The several weeks before that lots of different berries were available including strawberries, raspberries as well as sweet/tart cherries. I purchased two quarts of cherries (Morello and Montmorency) for freezing to make pie later in the season. Except for the first few weeks several types of vegetables have been available such as onions, lettuce, etc.

I bought what will probably be my last bag of my favorite blend of coffee from Intelligentsia Coffee today. Intelly has always been big on Direct Trade which is a great thing and now they are going completely Direct Trade which is also great but they’re removing blends and my favorite blend is going away. It would be nice to have a new blend using Direct Trade beans but maybe that isn’t possible at this moment. I’ll savor my last bag.

Berkeley I wish I woulda known ya sooner!