But these are hard times for many farmers so there’s diligent alertness among farm groups about what they perceive as “negative” media-images of farmers.

Totally understandable. Every other segment of the US market does exactly the same, right?

But some high-level responses to this Chipotle ad from notable farm groups have been particularly prickly, even excessive, considering that the ad in question is just a cartoon with no voice over or even any dialogue.

What seems to have these groups up in arms is the ad’s implied “attack” on industrialized, commercial agriculture.

Ye Olde Factory Farm in the Chipotle Ad

In the ad, we see a hog farmer building up his operation into a cartoon version of a factory farm, where circular pigs are fed drugs from a big silo of what looks like head cold pills, and are then shipped off in semi trucks.

Tortured Farmer Dream-sequence

The farmer seems troubled by what his farm has become (why am I feeding giant head cold pills to PIGS?), and in a matter of 20 seconds reassembles his factory farm into a more idyllic operation and starts selling to Chipotle. Yay.

Now, to me, this ad seems so breezy and innocuous, it’s hard to see it as a “hit piece,” but that’s the reaction from ag quarters, as they hunkered down in Twitter, Facebook, and even the New York Times to return fire:

Indiana Farm Bureau’s The Hoosier Farmer: “Chipotle’s “Back to the Start” video is a gross mischaracterization…”

Texas Farm Bureau Talks (Texas Farm Bureau): “Through this video and other methods of advertising, [Chipotle is] making the case that modern production methods are cruel, destructive and unhealthy.”

(Watch the video for yourself and see if this interpretation rings true to you.)

Nebraska Farm Bureau’s Blog:  “What the activists who despise factory farms (their term) don’t know or fail to acknowledge is that modern day farm and ranch family operations are being asked to feed a world that will have 2 billion more people in the year 2040,  up from the current total of about 7 billion.”

And yesterday, a full week after the Chipotle ad’s appearance on the Grammy Awards…

Blake Hurst, President, Missouri Farm Bureau in a Sunday NYT op-ed (“Don’t Presume to Know a Pig’s Mind”): “Wealthy consumers will reward farmers who are able to pull off the Chipotle ad’s brand of combination farm/tourist attraction and are willing to trade efficient animal husbandry for political correctness.”

Ok, guys. Got it. The ad ticked you off because you feel like it attacked your industry and because you don’t see organic, sustainable, or “local” farming as a viable alternative to your operations.

But here’s what I want to know, and I hope there are some Farm Bureau reps out there willing to talk to me in the comments below.

Don’t the various state chapters of the Farm Bureaus represent any organic, small, sustainable farms? Do you really think of them as your enemy, because it sure seems like it. Here’s a bit more from the Nebraska Farm Bureau piece: “World hunger, lengthy food lines, high food prices and food safety issues would run amok throughout the world if the organic, small, sustainable and local food crowd is successful in implementing its agenda for everyone.”

So…a national restaurant chain “attacks” you so you attack fellow farmers, Nebraska Farm Bureau? Blake Hurst, do you really want  to call potential Farm Bureau sustainable farmers inefficient and politically correct? Their farms are “tourist attractions”? Strong stuff.  Take a look at Russ Kremer’s story — from your own state, Mr. Hurst. Is he a real farmer or not?

I really don’t understand the  hue and cry from these Farm Bureaus. I can see that Chipotle portrays mainstream ag as something that this restaurant wants to avoid. I do. I get that. But really, guys, take a deep cleansing breath and ask yourselves this, as a farming organization:

Don’t organic farming, eating local, sustainable food, and (gasp!) even Chipotle represent  opportunity for some of your own farmers?

But for you gamers who loved Farmville and who might be ready to take a bold step toward “reality,” for lack of a better word, get ready for a game (still in the works) called Pig Chase. From New Scientist:

The current concept, which is still in development, requires pigs and humans to team up in order to guide a ball of light to a target. While pigs interact with a huge touch-sensitive screen in their pen, their human counterpart uses an iPad. A translucent display on the tablet allows a player to see their porcine teammate as if it were on the other side of the screen. When finger and snout reach a triangle together, it triggers a colourful, sparkling display.

I’m sitting with fingers poised over the keyboard, trying to type something funny about this. But the game has me checkmated. It’s beyond ridicule. I’ve read this article three times now, but nearly every sentence completely disables my capacity for sarcasm. Like this one:

Current EU regulations mandate enrichment programs for pigs to combat aggression and boredom in the pen.

Um…

See what I mean??

Or this:

By working with farmers, the team was inspired when pigs were responsive to light dancing on a wall.

Or:

Previously, pigs have been trained to play simple video games using a joystick in an attempt to improve their living conditions.

I can’t go on. I have to pull out before I lose all my sarcasm forever.

Maybe a nice simple game of Farmville will help…

2012: The Year of the Dragon

2011 was a rough year for Your Humble Blogger El Dragón.

Posting has been sparse here, because Fair Food Fight had to be put on hold as sponsor and good pals at Equal Exchange had to reorganize priorities with coffee prices spiking. Also, life got more complicated for me personally when I was hit by a car in August, suffering a concussion. Subsequently, I had some mild memory and physical problems from which to recover, hampering job hunting, my energy for writing, et cetera.

So, yeah. 2011 sucked. Physically I’m feeling tons better, but when it all comes storming in like that, it’s pretty easy to take one’s eye off the glory, lose spirit for the fight, you know? “Getting back in the ring” has felt like a big step to take.

Anyway, out of the blue and on short notice this weekend, I was invited to speak at the TedxManhattan viewing party  in St. Paul. The TED presentation was called “Changing the Way We Eat,” and local livecast was organized by the fabulous Stephanie Meyer of MN Food Bloggers, and I was asked to sit on a panel moderated by local farming advocate Brett Olson of Renewing the Countryside, along with Debbie Morrison of Sapsucker Farm, chef Scott Pampuch, and Stephanie Meyer.

I was kind of nervous about it all. Between chronic back pain and slight memory problems during my recovery, I really haven’t been on top of food issues for a couple months now — or in the fight at all — so I was just a little unsure, hesitant. But whatever. Changing the Way We Eat? Despite all the challenges and changes in 2011, I’m always down for discussing that.

And this was a great place to do just that. The speakers out of TED’s Manhattan presentation were excellent. Urvashi Rangan of Food & Water Watch was particularly great (she managed what few people in the food movement can — actual humor!) Then Scott Pampuch, formerly of Corner Table and now executive chef at Minnesota Valley country Club, spoke and gave a great, down to earth speech about his progress as a buyer of food, chef, and activist. Scott’s a compadre and we’ve worked on several very successful initiatives together dating back 2007, so it makes sense that his speech would hit me. I think what spoke to me most was Scott’s steady, keep-moving-forward strategy. You don’t have to do everything at once to make solid changes in the food system. Just do what you can today. And then do some more tomorrow. Learn. Apply it and make it work. And if it doesn’t work, if you change, or have your mind changed? Great. Then respond and apply what you know now, but keep moving forward.

That’s really what I needed to hear.

I also needed to be around some real food fighters — you know, the irrationally motivated freaks who want to revolutionize the way we eat and farm and grocery shop in the face of insurmountable opposition. A pretty safe bet that this TED webcast would draw a crowd of food fighters, but I wasn’t totally confident because, well, I just haven’t been confident about much.

But when the panel got going, and the first audience-member question was asked (“Are there ways to get good food into low income ‘food deserts’?”), I responded, saying, “If we’re going to talk about food access, then, first, we gotta talk about price,” and half the audience started nodding YES, leaning forward in their chairs, and from the gripping topic of food pricing we went right into classism and the failings of capitalism, and I remember thinking, Wow, these people are eagerly willing to talk about revolution and food access on a subzero, polar-weathered, Saturday morning in Minnesota?

This is so totally my crowd…

Wonderful to see Susan Berkson, Dana Burtness (now of Laughing Loon Farm!), Meghan Likes of the National Cooperative Grocers Association, Tracy Morgan, Molly Hermann…and some 50 other “food fighters” too. Made me feel supported, well-allied, and inspired by people who were jazzed about their own food fights.

And I felt really stoked to blog again.

When I started writing here two years ago, I took the nomme de blogger “El Dragón” inspired by Bruce Lee (“Enter the Dragon”) and also because it’s my Chinese Year totem. As it happens, today is the first day of the Chinese New Year — the Year of the Dragon. A year of great fortune for us all, innovation, pursuit of mastery, and renewing passions — and a good day for a Dragon like me to get back in the ring.

So here’s to continuing the fight! I want to leave you with one of my favorite scenes from “Enter the Dragon,” and a lesson from the Master about passion, execution, and keeping your eyes on the glory.

watch?feature=player_embedded&v=sDW6vkuqGLg

From CBS News:

UConn officials conducted an internal review into the work of Dr. Dipak K. Das, director of the cardiovascular research center at the university, after the university received an anonymous tip.

On second thought, let’s let that wine breathe for a second before we gulp it down, shall we? I mean, how bad could it be?

The officials found 145 cases of fabricated or false data and notified 11 journals – including the Journal of Cellular & Molecular Medicine and Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry – of its review, the university said in a written statement.

Doh.

Sucks to be Dr. Das, but one has to admire UConn’s perspicacity, because they didn’t stop at simply whistle-blowing.

“We have a responsibility to correct the scientific record and inform peer researchers across the country,” Philip Austin, interim vice president for health affairs, said in the statement.

As a result of UConn’s three-year investigation that culminated in a 60,000 page report on the allegations, UConn has declined $890,000 in research grants and cut off external funding to the lab.

Food science needs good science so cheers to that, UConn.

But it’s important to note that Das is just one researcher. A wide swath of research behind the crucial compound in question (resveratrol) has been established beyond Dr. Das’s work.

“There is a comprehensive body of literature in mouse and rats indicating that resveratrol is effective in preventing numerous diseases in those animals, including type II diabetes, neurodegeneration, fatty liver, and inflammation,” [Dr. David Sinclair, a resveratrol researcher at the Harvard Medical School, told CBS News in an email]. “These results would not be in question, even if some of his work is retracted.”

Nevertheless, things don’t look good for Dr. Das.

Dismissal proceedings have also been launched against Das, who has been employed by the Health Center since 1984 and was granted tenure in 1993.

Our advice, Dr. Das? Drown your sorrows.

Red red wine

Goes to my head

Makes me forget…

Feliz Navidad, luchadores!

Wrestling Mask? Yes.

Steroids? Injected…

Boots? Standing tall on the throats of tyranny.

Mic? Lowering to the announcer [MIC CHECK!]…

Fair Food Fight is back and the ring is open…~CLANG!~

Why don we now our caped apparel?

Because it’s the holiday season of eating and eating and eating, so the glorious food fight is ON, Fair Food Fighters! The forces of corporate America are planning on buying you out this Christmas season, so it’s time for us to step forward, throw down, and muscle up to food-corporatists on behalf of small farmers, sustainably organic apple pie, and true roots-movement democracy.

Yes! El Dragón needs your help. Everywhere I look, I see bargain-basement, big-box grocery specials, race-to-the-bottom give-away pricing which ultimately hurts farm workers, ready-made meals and horrid eggnog — Smithfield  death-pigs passed off as “Christmas Tradition” (Paula Dean is a shill for the biggest producer of pork in this part of the solar system, you know).

So YOU need to take the Fair Food Fight Oath. We ALL need to drive home the message of openness, fair pricing for a fairer food system, multicultural diversity in our farm world, and the power of democratic/cooperative control of capital in our economy.Yee haw!

Ready? Let’s do it! Raise your right, lycra-gloved fist and repeat after me…

“I [state your Fair Food Fight fighting nickname - leave a comment below, if you need one]….do hereby promise to fight the fair food fight by:

* BUYING SOME SMALL-FARMER FAIR TRADE STUFF THIS SEASON!

* PROMOTING DEMOCRACY THROUGH CO-OPERATION, ESPECIALLY WORKER-CO-OPS WHEN POSSIBLE!

* FIGHT FOR A FARM BILL THAT HELPS SMALL FARMERS AND NOT JUST BIG AG!

* NOT BEING A TOTAL DOUCHEBAG!

* SUPPORTING FARMERS THAT SUPPORT #OCCUPY WALL STREET!

* DRINKING ODIN’S ORANGE JULIUSES!

So say we all.”

CONGRATULATIONS.

You are now officially a Fair Food Fighter: Go forth and konk some heads together on behalf of the small farmers who grow your food!

Anthony Bourdain, Fair Food Fighter

The Anthony Bourdain vs Paula Deen “food fight” has gotten so loud and fun that even the normally staid NYT wants to join the fray (which means the fight’s probably about over, too). Columnist Frank Bruni wades in on the Opinionator page, and brings his readers up to speed on the spat:

Anthony Bourdain, the part-time chef and full-time celebrity, has a tongue on him. It’s the sharpest knife in his set. He has used it to carve up vegans, whom he called the “Hezbollah-like splinter faction” of vegetarians, and the culinary moralist Alice Waters, whose rigidity is “very Khmer Rouge.”

The latest to be slashed: Paula Deen. For the uninitiated, she’s the deep-fried doyenne of a fatty, buttery subgenre of putatively Southern cooking. And Bourdain, in an interview with TV Guide published last week, branded her an outright menace to America, scolding her for “telling an already obese nation that it’s O.K. to eat food that is killing us.”

Bruni adds, with an almost New Yorker sniff of disdain:

To this he added a gratuitous schoolyard-crass putdown of Deen cuisine.

No! A crass putdown? Oh, dear. Were there fisticuffs?? My fainting couch, Jeeves…

Now, look. I like Anthony Bourdain, but…well…there is no “but.”

I really like Anthony Bourdain. He’s my kind of food snob, a no-sacred-cows man using his spotlight to launch handfuls of mashed potatoes at fellow, ridiculous “food celebrities.” He throws pies at organic/local queen Alice Waters and regularly dunks Andrew Zimmern’s head in his own freak-cuisine. If that’s “snobbery,” play through, my good fellow.

So for Bourdain, home-cookin’ queen Paula Deen is a just another juicy target. And he’s justified. She does promote food that’s horribly unhealthy, and Bourdain linked to such a recipe on Twitter to prove it: The Lady’s Brunch Burger (seriously: read it and weep).  Defending Deen at all is the wrong strategy here, Mr. Bruni.

But let’s take his argument as face value. The problem with Bruni’s op-ed piece isn’t that he creates a false equivalence between Bourdain and Deen cuisine. It’s that he lamely tries to hit the class struggle angle, saying that their spat “exposes class tensions in the food world that sadly mirror those in society at large.” To wit:

You can almost imagine Bourdain and Deen as political candidates, a blue-state paternalist squaring off against a red-state populist over correct living versus liberty in all its artery-clogging, self-destructive glory.

And just like the tame-stream media that you represent in your own dimly argued yet apt analogy, Mr. Bruni, you fail to identify who’s really got a stake in this fight.

Unlike Bruni, Anthony Bourdain knows who’s in the ring with him. As Bourdain said in his TV Guide interview that started the brawl:

The worst, most dangerous person to America is clearly Paula Deen. She revels in unholy connections with evil corporations…

Way too breezy, Mr. Bourdain. And too bad. You might have really knocked Deen back in her corner if you’d thrown that punch at her head. Like so:

“Paula Deen is dangerous because she’s a shill for Smithfield Foods, the largest producer of pork in America, owning factory farms jam-packed with a hundred thousand pigs in each.”

Think I go too far? No, a Smithfield shill is exactly what Paula Deen is. And shilling for a company like that is a bad, bad choice.

So when Bruni says, “Put aside her one-with-the-masses pose, ludicrous in light of the millions she has made from television shows, cookbooks, cookware, mattresses and more,” he’s missing the target as badly as Bourdain did — and giving Deen an INCREDIBLE pass.  Put aside her connection to Big Ag? To the factory farm corporation? You’re going to allow  Paula Deen her absurd disguise as Aunt Bea and still call Bourdain a paternal elitist?

If anyone wants to scrap about class in the food system, I’m game, but we start by asking, “Who profits from cheap food? And can we trust those people to tell us what’s good for us?”

Get Rich Quick with Farming

This one goes out to all my farmer friends out there, slaving away in the lucrative August heat…just remember what you’re in it for, amigos.

“Farming” sketch from the UK’s Mitchell and Webb Situation.

The [Wisconsin] Department of Natural Resources is considering whether to issue a water quality permit for a proposed CAFO [confined animal feedlot operation] with 4,300 cows in Adams County.

One detail in Toner’s piece especially caught my eye.

Bill Harke insists the proposed 4,300-cow dairy in Richfield would use techniques that reduce odor and protect natural resources. Harke is spokesman for Milk Source Holdings, the group applying for the water quality permit. Milk Source already operates three CAFOs in the state, together milking nearly 18,000 cows.

And I thought to myself, hmmm, where I have heard the name MilkSource before…? Oh right, they own and operate the Rosendale Dairy, which last year became the largest CAFO in Wisconsin.

So far so good, for Rosendale, which is a relief (Rosendale has only been dinged once for a non-compliance, according to the DNR). But as I pointed out in the above piece, the manure management plan looks frightening to me, particularly because of the karst topography on which the dairy sits (a landform where the where table rises very close to the thin top soil, making it vulnerable to CAFO pollution). Not much margin for error, there.

Nonetheless, Family Farm Defenders and a Coloma, Wisconsin resident, have filed a lawsuit to stop the state of Wisconsin’s go-ahead for the Richfield dairy. They’re asking for a review of the DNR’s approval of the building plans for the farm. According to a Family Farm Defenders statement:

“[Our] legal filing questions the factual accuracy surrounding the factory farm’s bid to locate in central Wisconsin, taking issue with the impact that 5,000 cows and their manure will have on water and air quality for residents of nearby towns in the area that has been known as a tourist magnet recognized for clean waters and quality fishing.”

Interestingly, some of the other opposition to the Richfield CAFO is coming from sports fishermen and conservationists, who say the proposed CAFO is dangerous to Wisconsin trout streams. As Alistair Stewart of Trout Unlimited posted on Classic Fly Rod’s forum:

Recently I learned of the proposed Richfield CAFO, in Wisconsin’s Adams County, on the eastern edge of the Central Sand Plains Ecoregion, immediately adjacent to the Central Sand Hills Ecoregion. The potential environmental degradations caused by such a large facility in areas recognized for their environmental significance and sensitivity concern me greatly. The planned water resource impacts alone are staggering and frightening.

It’s the “water resource impact” that seems to be the biggest threat. MilkSource says it will use 54 million gallons a year. But an article in the Stevens Point Journal says that amount may be grossly underestimated:

The crop farm previously on the land [where the proposed dairy will be built] drew on average about 37 million gallons of water a year, said Rachel Grieve, a DNR hydrogeologist. However, the crop farm drew the water in about four months for irrigating crops, while Richfield Dairy would draw it over the entire year.

In other words, Stewart could be right. The dairy’s actual water usage could potentially be three times greater than the previous farm, threatening the viability of trout streams — and local tourism.

Not only is the Minnesota ag behemoth in the news for failing to recall bad turkey a good 4 months after salmonella illnesses began, Cargill is also tied to a massive hog die-off at CAFO in Missouri.

Thousands of hogs died at a concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO) during last month’s crippling heat wave, one of the nation’s biggest hog producers and state regulators have revealed.

The Miller farm near Knox City lost about 2,500 hogs it was raising for Cargill when power went out in the hog barn on July 20, said Mike Martin, Cargill’s director of communications.

Martin went on to call the deaths “pretty unfortunate.”

Both cases are tragic examples of an overly concentrated food supply with Cargill at the center of the concentration.

Here’s what really happened. From LA Weekly:

[A]gents from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the California Franchise Tax Board, the California Department of Food and Agriculture and all kinds of police descended on the Venice shop Rawesome to make arrests (video via Venice311).

Was it a showy arrest? A violent abuse of power? Not really. Watch the video. Bored cops muttering, “Step back.”

Not much to see here, but I think it’s important to mention a couple things on behalf of small farmers, co-op groceries, and consumers who rely on raw milk sales in California.

First, this raid was not an “unjustified crackdown on unpasteurized milk.”

Why? Because, unlike Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and roughly half the other states in the US, in California, selling raw milk is LEGAL. Furthermore, California’s law is exactly the law that states like mine (Minnesota) should adopt. Here, no retail sales are allowed. There, stores can sell raw milk if they have a license to do so. That way, food safety standards can be controlled, product can be traced more easily if something goes wrong, and small dairies can have access to a potentially lucrative niche market.

So keep in mind: The reason the multi-agency raid went down was this: Rawesome was selling raw milk WITHOUT a license. In fact, this is their second set of arrests. Rawesome was raided back on June 10, 2010, for retailing raw food without a license, but continued to break the law.

As for California dairy farmers, there are plenty who produce and sell raw milk legally. But the owner of Healthy Family Farms, who supplied Rawesome with raw milk, has operated “since 2007 without the required licensing for milk production, prosecutors allege.” Meanwhile, farms like Claraville and Organic Pastures play by the rules.

And so do grocery co-ops. P6-member Davis Food Co-op in Davis, CA, sells raw milk every single day of the week. Doug Walters of Davis Food Co-op (DFC) assures P6, “Yes, we are engaged in a legal activity. We sell [raw milk] because our customers want it.” He mentioned Claraville and Organic Pastures as the two raw cow milk brands that DFC sells, and he points them out to customers frequently, “because they have protocols in their operations to protect the safety of their milk.”

So this raid isn’t a crackdown on raw foods. Davis Food Co-op, Mollie Stone’s and New Leaf Market all must have licenses to sell raw milk in California — and they pay a tax on their sales, too (hence the presence of agents from the California Franchise Tax board at the Rawesome raid).

Photo courtesy Stefan Kühn (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons