Review: The Urban Farm Handbook

I find it a little ironic that I did not read this until AFTER I’d moved to the country… But you need not live in an urban area for the Urban Farm Handbook to be useful to you. I admit that I did find myself briefly missing Berkeley’s lovely year-round growing season and generous sunshine as I read about the author’s endeavors in the Pacific Northwest, but then I remembered the price of real estate in the Bay Area and how I never could fully adjust to the reality of earthquakes and the feeling (mostly) passed.

Land grabs: a global epidemic

I have spent the past two years investigating the global epidemic of land grabs for a book. Saudi sheikhs, private equity whizz-kids, Indian entrepreneurs and Chinese billionaires all believe, with financier George Soros, that “farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time.”

It is a rerun of the enclosure of common lands in Europe centuries ago – but taking place at breakneck speed and with the fences being erected mostly by foreign investors.

The Prince of Pickles: Sandor Katz on The Art of Fermentation

My first copy of Wild Fermentation, by author and fermentation extraordinaire Sandor Katz, was purchased after a friend had spoken about it as if it were a sacred text. Indeed, mine quickly got doused by brine as I put up beans and kraut, or splashed with dollops yogurt and other experimentations like honey wine. Now, Katz has released his most comprehensive fermentation tome to date, The Art of Fermentation. All of the traditional ferments, including vegetables, meat and dairy, are included. But also, Katz digs in with ideas from around the world. Fermented acorns? check. Forget Kombucha, have you tried Mauby? Or growing your own mold culture for tempeh? Its all there.

I got the privilege of learning more about the book and Katz’ perspective on fermentation as a radical practice in this recent interview.

Today’s Farmer: Nine Hours Daily On A Computer

I promised not to use his name because I wanted him to speak freely which is not easy to do these days when society is in such conflict. He is a fortyish farmer, articulate, engaging, a delight to talk to…The first time I met him, several years go, I remembered him saying that a farmer needed to spend two hours a day on the computer, hedging and marketing his grain.

Watching the sweet corn grow

Just in time for summer grilling season, Brentwood sweet corn from G & S Farms returns to the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market this week. Although the United States leads the world in corn production, growing about 80 million acres (roughly as much land as New Mexico), only a tiny fraction of that corn is the summer treat you know and love.

Why chefs matter to farmers

It’s Tuesday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and sales have been slow, but Poli Yerena of Yerena Farms is content with his business for the day. He stands amid waist-high stacks of organic berries that are all sold and accounted for, purchased by local chefs. “At least every week I have a new chef coming to buy strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, so I am happy,” he says. “Over the last eight years, we’ve been supplying to chefs. We know each other and there’s a good relationship.”

Food & agriculture – June 14

-The future of ‘famine foods,’ unconventional edibles in the garden
-New report highlights absurdity of G20 stance on biofuels and food prices
-Super farms are needed in UK, says leader of National Farmers Union
-Retailers display appetite for tackling food waste
-How to Start an Urban Farm in a Post-Industrial City
-Graying farmers force Japan to rethink food system
-To Truly Fix Food System, the Farm Bill Should Restore Fair Markets

Can garden farming be too successful?

One of my favorite books is the classic “Farmers of Forty Centuries” by F.H. King, written in 1911. It details the way food was produced in much of Asia for something like four thousand years and still is in many places there. It was, according to King who traveled the area at that time, an amazing kind of small scale agriculture that, without chemical fertilizer or power machinery of any kind was producing more food per acre at the beginning of the 20th century than farming in America then or now. The way the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese returned all organic wastes, including human manure, to the soil was an absolutely triumphant model of sustainable farming.

Food & agriculture – June 12

– Why our food is making us fat
– Greece’s ‘potato movement’ grows in power
– Australia’s two biggest supermarket chains are reshaping the nation’s agriculture
– Food, Farmers and a Free Trade Agreement (New Zealand)