Mr. Coffee Meet Mr. Mushroom

Apparently these guys have been getting a lot of press ever since they started their company, but it's a refreshing and heartening story. They've managed to create a whole business out of trash as they say.

'The two speak in terms of value, the value in things that otherwise go to waste. In Back To The Roots’ warehouse, even the racks where they store their mushroom kits come from somebody else’s waste. Diverting all that has built the business. Says Arora with the pride of a true scavenger, “Our whole company is literally built on trash.” '

Basically, they get paid to take used coffee grounds away from cafes, use the coffee grounds to grow mushrooms which they then sell to high-end supermarkets or to make DIY mushroom growing kits they sell to bored or green-thumbed homeowners, and then make the now twice-used coffee grounds into a high quality fertilizer mixed with fungus roots. They're expecting $5 million in sales this coming year, just a few years into the business.

That's what I call a pretty decent idea - although it's not a new one. Industrial eco-systems have been explored and used all over the world. This is just a rather innovative urban one, based on our changing middle-class trends of proliferating cafes, eating local, and eating gourmet. At it's heart though, it's moving from "managing" waste to thinking about waste as "resources." If only more people could do this.

As one of the founders says: “This whole country revolves around use and just throwing things away,” Arora adds. “Everything’s just one-time use. That’s not going to last. It’s not sustainable.”

He's both wrong and he's right. It's not just "this whole country" (America) that revolves around a disposable culture... it's essentially the whole world now. And it is most certainly not sustainable.

Read a full article about Back to the Roots here.

Farming goes Sci-Fi

"The perfect crop field could be inside a windowless building with meticulously controlled light, temperature, humidity, air quality and nutrition. It could be in a New York high-rise, a Siberian bunker, or a sprawling complex in the Saudi desert."

Researchers in the Netherlands are working on perfecting completely artificial growing techniques in buildings that have essentially no contact with natural environments. They use LED lighting with specific UV frequencies and timed to optimal growth periods tailored to individual plant types to boost growth. These buildings take the greenhouse concept (where food is grown in environments that it normally would not, with the help of protection from a building) to whole new heights where sunlight (and the energy that plants waste to combat the destructive, non productive wavelengths there of) is out. 

It's sci-fi farming for the moon folks!

Yet the researchers say yields are up, resource usage and water waste is down, locations are flexible, and that this is the future of food - grown locally in high-rises and warehouses, year round, with near infinite options. Read the entire article here on NPR, and then decide for yourself: is going organic in probably the most unnatural way you can think of good for food, for us, and for the planet?

Good news on the food front...

A recent article in the new journal "Solutions" talks about a growing trend at Farmer's Markets to accept food stamps - making it more affordable and practical for impoverished people to access healthy and fresh foods.

This is undoubtedly good news (and really, a moral imperative when you think about it.) However, it does not address the issue of a growing co-opting of all of these new healthier food trends by embedded industrial agricultural interests. Reports are out now that many of the Farmer's Markets that we hold dear and believe are helping both our own health and the health of the planet are actually run by large industrial entities that sell you the same food that you could get at your local big-box supermarket. Don't be fooled - not all Farmer's Markets are created equal.

So, what can you do to make sure you're getting the local, holistically farmed foods that you want? Talk to the farmers, do your homework, and gosh-darn-it, get out there and visit some farms too. You might actually enjoy it.

Is the honeymoon over with organics?

"For those farmers, the promises of going organic — a steady paycheck and salvation for small family farms — have collapsed in the last six months. As the trend toward organic food consumption slows after years of explosive growth, no sector is in direr shape than the $1.3 billion organic milk industry. Farmers nationwide have been told to cut milk production by as much as 20 percent, and many are talking of shutting down.

“I probably wouldn’t have gone organic if I knew it would end this way,” said Mr. Preston, 53."

This is an excerpt from an article from the New York Times. It seems that the honeymoon with organics might be over, at least from the supplier side. It seems that demand is down and thus markets and distributors are scaling back on orders, leaving farmers - many of them who have just converted to producing organic - are left holding full cans of milk. While this article focuses on dairy, you can see how this situation could be reproduced throughout the agro-business industry with any products that use the organic label to sell their products at a premium. In economic downturns, it seems that all of the customers on the margins - the "organic is nice to have but not a way of life customers," likely a very large market and what has supported the rapid growth of organic farms in the past five years or so - well, in downturns, they seem to go away.

Thus, unfortunately, many small producers - many of the ones who saw organic production as the way to save their farms - are taking a boot in the butt for their decision to go green. Likewise, the credit crunch cannot help these cash-flow strapped small businesses. The article talks about a few ways that farmers are trying to address this issue, but outside of selling at losses or a rampant upswing in demand, it seems like some of these farms will be doomed.

One thing we all can do (if we have the luxury of having extra disposable income) is make sure that we all go out and support organic farms by buying the products. I think we can also help by going out there and buying local and supporting any local farmers who show up with organic products at farmer's markets. Grow that market and perhaps farmers can sell at lower prices, direct to the consumers, and still break even.

Finally, another, slightly unrelated thought. One of the big concerns with organic growing has always been how organic production will be able to satisfy worldwide food needs. While there is plenty of support for the notion that organic production done right can actually increase yields... let's not deal with that here. Instead, it seems the problem right now is not enough demand and wildly enthusiastic production. Perhaps as we begin to re-engage organic production around the world, we can use this as a lesson - we don't want farmers to attach ideas of bankruptcy and hardship with organic, but we also don't want to set small farmers on a path to destruction either. We have to grow the organic market, make organic more price competitive with non-organic products, and ensure that supply does not outstrip demand by too much.

Or is there another way?

Full Article from the NY Times Here

Our food industry

I wanted to share an informative and fairly objective piece in the most recent issue of National Geographic that talks about our food, where it comes from, and how it relates to population. The author does a good job of navigating the complexities, presenting the challenges, reintroducing the idea of Malthusian limits, and sharing the case for agroecology/sustainable agriculture. It's really a very good introduction to the issues involved in (and the results of) our current food production system and enormous population. I highly urge everyone to read it. And on top of it all, it's available free, online, from National Geographic.

"The End of Plenty" by Joel K. Bourne Jr.
From the story:
"It is the simplest, most natural of acts, akin to breathing and walking upright. We sit down at the dinner table, pick up a fork, and take a juicy bite, obliv ious to the double helping of global ramifications on our plate. Our beef comes from Iowa, fed by Nebraska corn. Our grapes come from Chile, our bananas from Honduras, our olive oil from Sicily, our apple juice—not from Washington State but all the way from China. Modern society has relieved us of the burden of growing, harvesting, even preparing our daily bread, in exchange for the burden of simply paying for it. Only when prices rise do we take notice. And the consequences of our inattention are profound."

"Local Food to the Rescue" @ Stanford 2/19

In The Omnivore's Dilemma, Michael Pollan spends a significant amount of time with a Joel Salatin from Polyface Farm, a sustainable farmer who goes "beyond organic". The insights provided through Pollan working on Salatin's farm (and in contrast visiting with large industrial organic farms who seem "green" in name only) are one of the more interesting dynamics in Pollan's well-written and now famous book about food production, food systems, and what we should eat.

Part of The Ethics of Food & The Environment series at Stanford, Joel Salatin will be giving a talk about local food systems.

Event info for 2/19 talk by Joel Salatin: http://ethicsinsociety.stanford.edu/ethics-events/events/view/440/?date=2009-02-19

The Omnivore's Dilemma: http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php