You've heard of community supported agriculture (CSAs) and in a recent Envirovore post we told you about CSFs which are community supported fisheries. Now, more places are looking into RSAs—restaurant supported agriculture.

One great example is Chef David Swanson who owns Milwaukee's Braise Culinary School. Swanson started Braise RSA to help connect local growers in Wisconsin to restaurants around the state. Restaurants buy a share in the RSA and Swanson distributes—all of which frees up farmers to grow food.

As is the case with supported agriculture, growers get some of the money before the harvest season which means they can afford more easily their upfront costs. As it turns out, this often allows farmers to give restaurants deals because they have money upfront and because they have an invested buyer who's committed to them.

The RSA also has a system where if one farmer's crops are suffering, they can track down another farmer with the same crop to provide service to the restaurant.

Source: OnMilwaukee.com, Chicago Tribune

The number of farms in India is decreasing while the number of farmer suicides increases. Between 1997 and 2007 it's reported that 182,936 Indian farmers killed themselves over debt-related issues. The actual number is probably higher because women aren't considered farmers in this kind of data-collection (they rarely get land in their name) yet they often are primary farmers. So any women suicides are deemed “suicide” but not “farmer suicide.”

This is the largest sustained wave of suicides in historical record. The way the stats break down is that ever since 2001, a farmer has committed suicide every 30 minutes on average in India. Peasant farming debt has doubled since the first decade of neo-liberalism “economic reforms.”

The suicides are highest among cash crop farmers, especially those who grow vanilla, groundnut, sugarcane, coffee, pepper and cotton. Giant seed companies have displaced cheap hybrid seeds and traditional seeds. When these farmers switch to GM crops, the crops often get attacked by pests and also need double the water. Farmers have to invest in pesticides: something they were told would not be needed. Their crops often fail, and they find themselves in huge debt. Hunger among farmers is skyrocketing. Healthcare costs make it worse. Many farmers have to work on other people's farms to make a living. And as government subsidies keep Western farmers strong on the international market, the Indian farmers can't compete. Many of them kill themselves by drinking the pesticides they thought they wouldn't need.

In Ghana, there's also been a suicide wave, but here it's among small-scale tomato growers. The importation of tomato paste on the international market makes these farmers tomatoes difficult to sell because people are buying the paste instead of local tomatoes. Lack of refrigeration options leaves tomatoes to rot. And the farmers find themselves harassed by creditors at which point they see suicide as their final option.

Sources: Outlook India, Aftermath News, All Africa, Counterpunch

"Better Yo-Late than Yo-Never." That's what Stonyfield Farm's CEO is saying about Yoplait's announcement to go completely rBGH-free by August.

A subsidiary of General Mills, Yoplait is one of the largest dairy processors in the U.S. The Organic Consumers Association reports that Yoplait is calling itself the "first leading brand of yogurt to utilize milk that is 100% certified from cows not treated with rBST/rBGH."

Stonyfield might disagree with that statement, as it was the first major dairy company in the U.S. to pay milk suppliers not to use artificial hormones. Now the company touts the number three position in yogurt sales and is the top-seller of organic yogurt. In other words, the no-hormone trend is real and has paid off for companies that banned the controversial hormone early on in the debate. Since the engineered hormone hit the scene in 1994, dozens of major brands have joined the "rBGH-free" wagon, and last year, foreseeing a dry future for the milk hormone, Monsanto sold rBGH to a pharmaceutical company.

Consumer pressure no doubt had an impact on General Mills' recent decision. In 2007, Breast Cancer Action launched an online campaign asking consumers to "Tell Yoplait: Put a Lid on rBGH" (a "pinkwashing" of General Mills' pink lid campaign to raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure).

Sources: PR Newswire, Business Journal

We admit that leftover food scraps isn't the most sexy Envirovore topic. But, hey, think of it from a conservation perspective.

While some businesses have gotten creative with their food waste by turning it into another product, or at least compost, others, like this New York sushi restaurant is adding a bit extra to the tab. You know, as a reminder that wasting food isn't okay. Cutting food waste makes economical sense, it cuts costs. Simply put, less food waste means more money in someone's pocketbook.

If you have any doubt, check out a campaign in the UK called "Love Food, Hate Waste," a resource for why cutting food waste matters, what top chefs do with leftovers, and how to save time and money with cooking.

To remind you, we waste a ton of food in this country. EPA estimates that 12% of municipal solid waste (30 million tons) is food scraps. This is enough to feed the entire population of Canada, according to Bob Lilienfeld, co-author of Use Less Stuff, who also provides 10 easy ways to be cognitive of our food waste and how to reduce it after the jump. Think of the landfills, your pocketbook, and the people who don't have the choice, and eat up.

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Public Radio's Living on Earth recently tackled the controversial topic of "Golden Rice," a genetically engineered variety that produces Vitamin A. Questions remain as to whether it's culturally appropriate to give yellow (versus white) rice to the targeted populations and if the rice even provides enough Vitamin A. While Syngenta says it will give the rice away for free, it's keeping its patents.

In other rice news, Greenpeace is calling for measures to protect Thailand's rice supply from GMO contamination to avoid a repeat of the expensive U.S. rice contamination event in 2006. This follows an announcement that Thailand won a Guinness World Record for exporting the most rice in 2007.

South Korea says it won't import transgenic corn this year, partly because its citizens shun GMOs. And The Korea Times reports that civic groups are calling for tougher rules on labeling guidelines for transgenic material in food.

The Native Hawaiian Caucus is pushing a bill that seeks to prohibit the development, testing, and release (including planting and importation) of genetically engineered taro. In September 2008, Hawaii County moved to ban transgenic taro and coffee.

Hungary is defying the European Commission's call to lift bans on GMOs. The country says it will keep a ban on GE corn imports and plantings in place.

And, conversely, a farmer has defied Wales' ban on GMO crops after planting transgenic corn last year. He explains why he did it here.

Pakistan has chosen to embrace GMOs by signing a $1 billion agreement with Monsanto for its Bt cotton. In response, Pakistan's Department of Environmental Sciences has initiated a project to study the environmental impacts of GMOs.

Italy's Agricultural Minister says GE crops aren't the solution to the hunger crisis. Italy will host the first summit of agriculture ministers from G-8 countries in April.

Top chefs are calling on Obama to strengthen U.S. food policy and some are asking that GMO ingredients be labeled. Now that's change we can believe in.

For over fifty years, the fruit fly and other produce pests have been controlled with not only pesticides, but sterile males. The sterile male thing works like this: Males of the pest species are irradiated in a laboratory and released, in hopes that they will be sexy enough to outcompete fertile males, rendering female fruit fly eggs infertile, and breaking the cycle of outbreak.

Unsurprisingly, irradiated flies aren't so good at anything, including being sexy and outcompeting healthy fruit flies. In fact, scientists have to release 100 sterile males for every 1 wild, virile male in order to make an impact on fruit fly populations.

But German scientists have found a way to control a male's sterility without irradiation - by engineering fruit fly genomes to direct embryonic suicide. Apparently, the Medfly (we're assuming a big fat patent here) is 10 times "sexier" than an irradiated male to female fruit flies.

Of course, research into more efficient non-toxic pest control methods is great, but genetic engineering even of this sort still begs discussion of the ethics of ownership of life, as well as ecological discussions of snowballing impacts of genetically engineered organisms being released into the wild.

Via Science

In the late 1940s, producers discovered that chickens fed the pharmaceutical byproducts of the antibiotic tetracycline grew faster than other chickens. Since then, producers have rampantly mass-medicated livestock to allow for overcrowding and to increase growth rates. Over 25 million pounds of antibiotics are used in livestock production in the United States annually.

Of course, we've been ingesting some of those antibiotics too, by drinking and eating the milk and meat from these animals. What we didn't realize is that we may have also been ingesting those antibiotics in our vegetables.

A new University of Minnesota study shows that vegetable crops fertilized with manure from medicated animals absorb the antibiotics right along with the nutrients. In the leaves of green onion, cabbage, and corn crops treated with manure, the livestock antibiotics chlortetracycline and sulfamethazine appeared.

The antibiotics appeared at far less than prescription dosages, and the heavy processing of some vegetables (like corn) may break down some of the antibiotics, but in unprocessed vegetables antibiotics are likely to appear on the dinner table. Constant exposure to antibiotics leads to antibiotic resistance in humans and in bacteria.

Using manure instead of fossil-fuel based fertilizers is common for organic producers, and manure is used to fertilize over 9 million acres of agricultural land in the United States. The study pointed out that manure management is key to keeping antibiotics out of vegetable crops - composting the manure at high temperatures broke almost all of them down.

Via Scientific American

This just in: The Washington Post reports that Peanut Corporation of America, the company responsible for a salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 500 people in 43 states, discovered salmonella in internal tests a dozen times in 2007 and 2008 but sold their products anyway.

Ouch.

But this hurts, too: "Companies are not required to disclose their internal tests to either the FDA or state regulators, so health officals did not know of the problem."

Still, FDA officials say that "it appears" Peanut Corp. violated federal law.

The death toll associated with the salmonella contamination has grown to seven. At least one lawsuit has been filed.

The source of the contamination is still unknown, though there's a history of unsanitary conditions at this Georgia plant. The average plant is inspected once every 10 years, but even those inspected more frequently, like this one, prove unsafe when regulations aren't enforced.

It was after the contamination event involving ConAgra's Peter Pan brand that food safety experts found salmonella could "exist in a dormant state in peanut butter and then reproduce when ingested by humans."

FDA has a history of not enforcing regulations and performing enough inspections. Will the new administration heed the call for improvements in the face of avoidable deaths?

Source: Washington Post

Dairy cows treated with kindness produce more milk. Sound like new age silliness? Not according to the UK's Newcastle University School of Agriculture, Food and Rural Development who recently published their findings in the journal Anthrozoos.

Farmers who name their dairy cows, treat them as individuals and care for them like pets showed an increase of 500 pints per year or 3.4%. The study looked at 516 farms half of which named the cows and paid care and attention to their personalities.

These farmers say that cows do have separate personalities with a range of emotions and should be cared for accordingly--especially for all the milk they give. One farmer said she calls her cows “the ladies.”

BBC News, LiveScience

The EPA has published results from a nationwide survey of sewage treatment plants, important data regarding the safety of our food supply since wastewater byproducts end up in our farm fields.

These byproducts, or "biosolids," are residue from wastewater plants, and include everything from nitrogen and phosphorous (common fertilizers) to toxic metals and pharmaceuticals, like antibiotics and zinc. More than half of the approximately 7 million metric tons of biosolids produced each year end up on farm fields as fertilizer. Government agencies have allowed this practice despite not knowing what constitutes sewage sludge and how it might impact humans, livestock, and the environment.

Some important findings from the study, which surveyed 74 large treatment plants, include:

• Nearly all of the 11 flame retardants in the study were present in every sample.
• All of the samples contained the same 27 metals, and zinc, molybdenum, and nickel exceeded standards.
• Twelve of the 72 pharmaceuticals were ubiquitous.
• Two antibiotics, triclocarban (added to antimicrobial soaps) and ciprofloxacin (one of the most potent antibiotics available), showed up more often than others in samples. Triclocarban was found at 440 parts per million -- almost 10 times higher than other reports have indicated.

An EPA official says that "it's not appropriate at this point to speculate on signifciance of the results." The agency will likely complete risk assessments on 10 of the chemicals in the study.

There are plenty of reasons to believe that these findings are more than significant, including a federal court decision last spring that ordered USDA to compensate a farmer for the death of hundreds of cows. The livestock died from slewage sludge poisoning.

Source: Science

New England's largest dairy cooperative, Agri-Mark, has officially banned rBGH from its products. The decision follows demands by consumers, largely of its popular brand, Cabot, and is in line with those of other leading dairy companies and grocery chains that have come to reject the controversial growth hormone.

Agri-Mark boasts about 1,300 members and operates the major manufacturing plants in the region. One plant in New York will continue to accept milk from cows injected with rBGH, though there's not much incentive to continue using the synthetic hormone -- farmers have to pay extra to ship their milk to this plant.

If you ever doubt that consumer requests are heard or think our choices don't impact production practices, take this quote by Agri-Mark's senior vice president to heart:

Cabot sales were at risk, and we were going to lose markets if we continued to accept milk from rbST-treated cows...Agri-Mark waited as long as it could to close the door on rbST, but the pressures coming back from consumers and retailers forced the cooperative to protect its Cabot brand.

Source: Vermont Public Radio, Lancaster Farming

Greek farmers have blockaded several major highways with tractors and aren't showing signs of letting up. They're protesting weak government support and asking for more assistance at a time when farmers can't make a living. Their demands include higher subsidies, pension payments and lower fuel taxes.

Across the globe farmers are struggling to keep their operations afloat, including the British organic livestock producers we told you about earlier this month. We only have to look at farms next door to see volatile commodity markets taking their toll. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported yesterday that rapidly falling dairy prices will lead to dairy farms shutting their doors. And U.S. corn producers face tumbling export markets as other countries raise more of their own corn.

Farmer protests -- and these economic hardships -- aren't new. This story reminded me of a North Carolina farmer who in 2004 drove his tractor into a Washington, DC, pond to protest the government's cuts in subsidies to tobacco farmers. Just last year, Mexican farmers protested their government's decision to eliminate trade barriers for U.S. corn, saying it would put them out of business and steer people north; Peruvian farmers stopped traffic and held other protests against the Peru Free Trade Agreement; and Indian farmers held demonstrations against GMOs.

Source: Washington Post, USA Today

The New York Times says a new start-up company, Foodzie, provides "a similar experience to a farmers market" by creating an online marketplace for small, artisan food producers.

It's a stretch to compare surfing on the Internet to a leisurely stroll through a local market, picking up ripe tomatoes and making cordial conversation with a farmer. We wouldn't call it an online farmers market, but we do like the idea of an online marketplace that supports artisan food producers and growers.

Foodzie is the "gourment version of Etsy," which, if you don't know, is an online marketplace for handmade goods (really cool stuff). Etsy has been very successful, selling nearly $13 million worth of products in December alone.

How do these businesses work? Well, Foodzie allows vendors to post their goods for free, but it takes a 20% cut of each sale. This might seem high, but in the food business, it's not. (Remember when we told you that the producer's share of a sale is typically small compared to the middlemen?)

Foodzie will probably excite people who don't have a farmers market nearby or other retailers that sell artisan food. Though this model doesn't always meet the definition of local food, it may be just what some entrepreneurs need to keep small businesses going and meet a growing demand for handmade food products.

The site is still growing -- it's only been live since December -- but the staff and their investors are pretty confidant that it will be successful.

Don't miss the cheese page. It's especially enticing. And also the Foodzie blog, which currently has pictures of Obama and Biden cookies and promises more coverage of the Fancy Food Show.

Source: New York Times

USDA may soon approve a transgenic corn variety meant for ethanol production and not food. If you want to weigh in, today is the deadline for submitting public comments (scroll to the bottom for the link).

We recommend you ask USDA to perform an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) so the agency can fully examine the environmental, economic and human health concerns related to the commercialization of the nation's first industrial corn variety.

For starters, history has shown us that it's hard, if not impossible, to segregate different grain varieties in the production and distribution chain. Varieties unintended for the human food supply inevitably get there as evidenced with rice and corn.

Ethanol has its own debate, but that aside, USDA shouldn't release this variety until its deemed safe in cases of accidental consumption, especially allergenicity concerns, since a new form of alpha amylase (an enzyme) that hasn't been proven safe through independent testing would be introduced. The agency continues to rely on the biotech industry's own data, a voluntary approach that has left environmental and economic devastation in the wake of weak regulations.

Biotech News in Review after the jump.

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Thousands of mutant bass larvae on a fish hatchery in Australia were born with two heads and died within 48 hours.

The hatchery on the Noosa River has been experiencing more and more mutant fish, at a rate which appears to coincide with the expansion of a nearby macadamia nut farm. That farm uses pesticides—carbendazim and endosulfan—which are banned in many countries, and is now completely bordering the hatchery.

The fish were tested and no virus or bacteria were detected leading specialists to believe that it's likely the fish were affected by toxic contamination in low levels over time. The Queensland state government claims that the macadamia farmers are using the pesticides according to the instructions, which may exempt the farmers from fault but doesn't exactly change the situation at hand.

Meanwhile, horses chickens and sheep at the hatchery have also experienced higher birth defects in the past two years. The local fisheries department is looking into the matter.

Source: Sydney AFP via Yahoo! News