Monday mornings always have us asking catastrophe questions: what happens if the Farm Bill doesn’t pass? What will happen when the superweeds take over? Are GMOs going to give us all cancer?
If you’re looking for some lunchtime reading, here are two stories that present a top-to-bottom approach to the issues facing farmers and the food community right now: Tom Philpott considers why organically managed soils stand up better to the extreme weather conditions produced by climate change than their conventional counterparts, and The New York Times gives us a look at who decides what gets labeled as Certified Organic. Both serve as a good reminder of all that goes into what ends up in supermarkets and on the table— and that the process is rarely a simple one.
Bringing Barbecue to Manhattan
Mark Maynard-Parisi on opening Blue Smoke with Danny Meyer. In just a few short weeks the YSFP will bring barbecue back to the Elm City with our Fifth Annual Last Day of Classes Jack Hitt Pig Roast, which happens April 20th from 1:00-5:00 pm.
Walmart's environmental initiatives in China have been heralded—most recently by Orville Schell in The Atlantic—as a key force in spurring other corporations to embrace sound environmental practices. My reporting—more than a year of research that took me from Arkansas to China—suggests a more complex, less flattering story: Walmart has made laudable though modest progress on many of its goals. But with the global economic slowdown tugging at the company's profit margins, people involved with the environmental campaign say the momentum seems to be stalling or vanishing entirely.
Whatever your stance on WalMart’s efforts to green its products, stores and, by extension, reputation, this piece on whether or not they’re accomplishing those goals in the first place is a must-read. Especially since, as Kroll puts it:
“In the past, Walmart’s outsize carbon footprint had made the company a favorite target of environmentalists. But in 2009, as hope for a congressional cap-and-trade deal evaporated and the Copenhagen climate talks ended in a stalemate, they [the National Resources Defense Council and Environmental Defense Fund] began to see Walmart in a different light: If they could make the world’s largest retailer greener, other businesses might follow suit. EDF had opened its own office near Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, embedding its employees in the “belly of the beast,” as one staffer put it. “Even though they’re a party of last resort, they’re our only hope at the moment,” said Linda Greer, an NRDC scientist who works with Walmart. “They have the potential to change the world.”
Anyone hoping to do well in the grocery business would be advised to take notice of Mogannam’s actions during his ten-minute morning tour of his store. The secrets are there in his hands-on grooming of the deli case, in his ditching the low-performing olive bar for more profitable stock and tasting the produce before it goes on the shelf, and in the dinner he cooks for his staff. That relentless editing and a razor-sharp focus on hospitality account for much of Bi-Rite’s extraordinary success—making it one of the most-watched markets in the country.
A great read on what makes a successful grocery store, and how that store can become a community anchor and crucial support for small-scale food producers across the system.
How could Robert and Fred — who produce so much more milk than their dad — end up making less money?
A fantastic NYT piece on the complicated economics of modern dairy farming— and a primer for understanding why things like this are happening all too frequently.
The Land That Keeps on Giving
They’re on a real food-related roll: this morning the New York Times profiles farmer Eliot Coleman, who helped with the initial designs for the Yale Farm and spoke at a YSFP sponsored master’s tea last fall.
The New York Times’ Room for Debate takes up the question of the Farm Bill this morning, asking seven experts to weigh in on what the bill does right and what needs to be expanded, reduced or jettisoned entirely in the 2012 update.
Michael Pollan names Josh Viertel one of the world's 7 most powerful foodies
Josh was one of the YSFP’s founding directors, and is currently the president of Slow Food USA; he spoke as part of our Chewing the Fat series earlier this year.
