Once upon a time, the French bean provided many Kenyan farmers an income to support families and buy homes. But food markets are fickle. Last year 60% of Kenyan French bean crops didn't sell, and instead farmers had to feed them to their cows.

Several aspects to the French bean in Kenya make it a disaster.

A) Kenyan's don't eat the French beans so it only serves as an export crop.

B) Europeans do eat the beans but are no longer buying.

C) The French bean monoculture (the top vegetable export in Kenya), leaves little room for diversity and, therefore, little food security.

D) People like Stephen Mbithi, chief executive of the Fresh Produce Exporters Association of Kenya (FPEAK) continue to encourage food insecurity by saying crazy thing like this:

"Encouraging subsistence farming is another way of taking Kenyan farmers out of the international market chain and confining them to poverty. African countries will not become food secure by having enough food in their granary, but by having enough disposable income in their pockets to buy the food they need."

Perhaps if Kenyans diversify their export crops Mbithi has a point. But saying that growing your own food doesn't provide security is madness.

Some Kenyans have recently switched to crops like tomatoes, tea and maize--which they eat. Farmers saw their French bean money go down the tubes with fertilizers, pesticides, seeds and labor input costs—and then never selling the beans to recover costs. One idea: how about diversifying crops for export AND for subsistence farming?

Source: Agence France-Presse

Some folks in Wisconsin are rolling out a sweet initiative in a couple weeks. The "Wisconsin Eat Local Challenge" encourages state residents to sign a pledge to eat local food for 10 days, from September 5 - 14.

And it's not your everyday "eat local" week. Participants are asked to sign up and track their progress online, as well as complete a follow-up survey. The website gives tips on tracking down local food, provides a blog for dialogue, and lists other resources and events related to local food.

Wisconsinites have it made, really. I mean, with the plethora of local cheese and beer options, and the longish growing season for vegetables, too, choosing Wisconsin items in the grocery store and farmers market should elicit pure pleasure.

Source: Eat Local Wisconsin

Herbs and spices. What's the difference?

Well, I guess it depends on their use, according to a registered dietician who answers this and other questions about herbs and spices in a recent Washington Post article.

The author provides some brief answers to questions like "Does cinnamon help people with diabetes?" and "Will ginger settle a sick tummy?" Though she relies almost entirely on one source (the International Food Information Council), which sort of makes you wonder why you didn't just google search the answers yourself, it's nice to know that red hot chili peppers do more than make us sweat. They help us feel satisfied after eating.

If you're dying to learn more about your favorite herb or spice, we recommend our trusty friend, Wikipedia. It actually boasts an impressive alphabetized list of culinary herbs and spices. Your herb garden will certainly expand next year after perusing these pages.

Source: Washington Post

One of the barriers to the success of small farmers is a lack of processing equipment on or nearby the farm. Take a raspberry or strawberry producer. These harvests need to be sold or processed almost immediately because they're so perishable. And they can only harvest as much as they can store in refrigerators.

For small-scale producers who might not grow under contract or have the refrigeration space to store much of their harvest, a processing unit that allows them to quick-freeze crops provides another marketing opportunity.

And now Vermont producers have access to just that. The Vermont Agency of Agriculture is testing out a mobile freezing unit that allows farmers to provide more of their food throughout the year. USDA and the Vermont Department of Tourism funded the unit. Farmers can use it for free this year (they just have to provide the labor and a power source), but a private operator will probably take the reins starting next year.

While other states already have mobile processing units for poultry and other meats, this mobile freezing trailer is the first of its kind in the U.S. It can freeze berries and produce at a rate of 600 pounds a minute.

The opportunities for farmers are huge. Many farmers don't have access to this technology or have the refrigeration space to store as much of their harvest as they'd like. And, since a lot of extra berries and vegetables (that are perfectly edible) end up as livestock feed or waste, access to this processing unit means less waste on the farm. For consumers this means more local food year round.

Now this is pretty cool. One of the largest grocery chains east of the Mississippi is embracing local, organic food at a whole new level. Wegmans, which boasts 71 stores (mostly in New York state but also in Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and Virginia), has a 50-acre experimental organic farm from which it sources heirloom tomatoes, potatoes, and green beans.

"How could we ask our growers to go off in this direction [organic] without us knowing how to do it?" Danny Wegman asked.

Wegman says its stores supply local food from more than 800 suppliers, but not many of them grow organically. He hopes some of his suppliers will transition at least part of their land to organic since this is the fastest growing segment of the U.S. food industry (though, he admits it's slowed a bit with the economic downturn).

But the farm has other missions aside from providing organic food to surrounding communities. It will serve as an educational center for its employees and suppliers, as well as kids, to learn about the source of "real food."

The farm may still be in a "blueprint stage," but it has big plans. New beehives have been added to boost honey production; fruit trees and asparagus were recently planted for future harvests; chickens will forage in harvested fields to help control weeds and pests; a new pond will irrigate fields; and greenhouses may be added in the future to extend the growing season.

Source: Rochester Democrat & Chronicle

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that some questionable treatment of animals in agriculture, like docking tails, cannot be considered "humane" simply because they are common practices. The unanimous decision will require more humane treatment of animals and sets legal precedent to end abuses on factory farms in other states.

While a clear victory for the plaintiffs, which included a coalition of farm, animal, and food safety advocacy groups, there was disappointment that the Court didn't strike down regulations that allow the confinement of breeding pigs in gestation crates and calves in veal crates, in addition to the transport of downed cattle.

Still, the ruling comes at an important time for animal welfare proponents. In 2008, we've seen investigations ramped up to gauge the problem of downed cattle entering the food supply; the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production released a report in April that called for a phasing out of many factory farm practices, including tail docking and gestation crates; and California voters have the opportunity in November to vote on an anti-confinement initiative that would outlaw gestation crates for breeding pigs, veal crates for calves, and battery cages for egg-laying hens. (Florida, Oregon, Arizona, and Colorado have already banned gestation crates.)

We can already see those cattle tails wagging.

Source: Market Watch

Photo: Amanda Jones

You've probably noticed that grocery store shelves typically carry just a couple varieties of your favorite fruits and vegetables: a red and green apple, red-leaf lettuce and romaine. The FAO estimates that in the last century we've lost 75 percent of our genetic diversity in agricultural crops. For example, farmers grew more than 7,000 varieties of apples in the 1800s, yet by the end of the 1900s, only 300 had survived extinction. Threats to our plant gene banks is terrifying in the face of unpredictable changes in our climate and other environmental factors.

That's why news from USDA's Agricultural Research Service that usable DNA can be taken from seeds no longer viable is pretty exciting.

Since seeds lose viability in storage, samples are usually thrown out if they can't germinate. This new research provides hope that even non-viable seeds are valuable sources of genetic information. Scientists were even successful in extracting usable DNA from seeds more than 100 years old, seeds that had been stored in an attic since the Civil War.

Seed saving is an important activity that doesn't have to be left to the seed banks. Some communities and organizations are working hard to preserve this fundamental resource.

Source: ARS

Reducing our meat in-take, especially grain-fed livestock, is an easy way to reduce our carbon footprint. Not only do livestock emit vast amounts of methane, an important greenhouse gas, in some countries, deforestation of land for grazing releases a huge amount of carbon into the atmosphere. And then there's the energy (and resulting emissions) used to produce the grain fed to livestock as well as to transport meat products (refrigerated trucks, for example).

But not all digestion systems are created equal. That's why we're seeing alternatives to heavy emitters, such as beef cattle, being promoted in various food circles -- like kangaroo meat. An Australian scientist says that switching from beef to kangaroo burgers can "significantly help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."

Apparently kangaroos don't produce much methane compared to other animals because of differences in micro-organisms in their digestive tracts. While there's a much greater volume of carbon dioxide emitted in the U.S. than methane, methane is actually about 25 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

They say if you like venison, you'll probably like kangaroo.

Regardless, it seems envirovores who eat meat should add another criterion to how they choose their food: the potency of an animal's bodily gases.

Source: BBC