Sin maíz, no hay país.
Without corn, there is no country.
I don't know why, but I've been thinking about food lately. Not in the I-like-to-eat-it way (although I do), but in the "holy cow, now that gas is $4 a gallon how much is it going to cost" way.
I think I got started on this tangent because although I declared Springtime In Bellingham, I was wrong - it snowed twice more since then - and I think we are going to have a very short growing season this year.
Or it could be because I have been giving much thought to my families lately, both my blood family and my Bellingham family. They are both broods of bees, except my blood family is suffering Colony Collapse and my Bellingham family is vibrating in a winter cluster.
[A tangent - I am oversimplyfing Colony Collapse but I understand that the exact cause (perhaps it is a syndrome) is not yet completely understood. Could be disease, could be malnutrition, could be that bee farmers are maltreating their livestock by moving them more often than is healthy. A beehive is a type of family, each bee fulfilling a vital role to the survival of the hive. When the colony collapses, bees refuse to eat supplements of food, disappear, allow new brood to hatch before abandonment, leave few dead bees in their wake. That's my family, in a nutshell. My grandfather has begun to refuse food. The people my grandparents have been closest to all their lives now avoid contact with them. I have seen these things happen before, I know that it's not an unusual phenomenon, but I don't like it.
My Bellingham family seems to be in state of flux, which I think is a healthy thing. No one person remains at the nucleus of it, in that we vibrate together overwinter and take turns being in the center where the warmth is. We are together in this town, even if we only bump noses from time to time. I don't find that to be a bad thing.]
Ahem, but back to food. The news is hysterical with stories of rationing rice, flour, and oil. Well, the "rationing" as it were is not actually as pervasive or restrictive as the headlines would have you believe but it is there, nevertheless. I got curious about this last night and started a conversation with Michael about it, which, combined with some reading this morning, leads me to believe that this is a far more complicated "crisis" than can be encapsulated in a casual 10 minute break chat.
Here are some things I've read this morning that various sources claim to be "causes":
Financial - the value of a dollar is falling and inflation is rising, which means our food budget doesn't go as far as it once did, driving up the cost of staple foods.
Oil - with fuel prices at an all time high, the costs become enveloped in the price consumers pay at the checkstand. Ironically, the increase in mechanized farming in other countries also drives up the demand for oil, conributing to the effect in price.
Biofuel - okay, this one I found pretty dang interesting. Biofuel is crowding out acreage that formerly produced food, and Time Magazine tells me that every diversion in the supply chain creates an increase in price. In the US, soybean farmers are converting to corn for ethanol, which creates a chain reaction globally. This is especially prevalent in Brazil (remember the rainforest, folks?) where soybean farmers are encroaching into former cattle land, forcing the cattle ranchers to expand into the Amazon. Brazil is now 4th highest in carbon emissions. So while you drive your biodiesel VW around town and sip that soy milk cappuccino from a "bisphenol-a" reusable travel mug, you might pause for a millisecond to wonder where the soy came from!
Free Trade - in Mexico, NAFTA is being blamed for the displacement of farmers due to the import of corn, beans and milk from the US. Not only do Mexican farmers claim that the trade policy will destroy Mexican agriculture, but NAFTA is also being blamed for an increase in migration to the US, resulting in tortilla riots.
Climate Change - bad weather such as Australia's drought is touted as a symptom.
Change in Diets - the Chinese are eating 10 times more meat than they did 40 years ago, which is being blamed for a portion of the demand on the food supply.
Overpopulation - humans is hungry folks. I don't think we will extinct ourselves by tainting the environment, I think we will eat ourselves out of existence.
Articles like this annoy me though, mainly because of sentences like this: "'Sometimes I cry,' she said, when she passes items on store shelves she can no longer buy." Really? You actually cry when you can't afford highly processed convenience foods? Ok, so I'm making a big ass-u-me-umption there, for all I know she cries when she can't buy a package of steaks but I think the crying thing is pretty maudlin.
Good food can be cooked with low cost ingredients, but it takes time and skill. I mean, isn't that what the French are kinda famous for, making available foods delicious? I could be mistaken, but I tend to think that "seasonal cooking" is a fancy way of saying "whatchagot stew." In France, I guess they call that "coq au vin."
I wonder what the next 10, 20, 30 years will bring. I am young enough that I am pretty confident that I will live to see them. I wonder if we will return to canning and preserving at home, if we'll be buying shares of community livestock, if instead of planting indigenous species where we formerly mowed lawns, we'll have rows of cabbage and carrots. I mean hell, some of that is already starting. I trade coffee for eggs. Carol has a henhouse. Allie and a bunch of buddies are going in on a butchered lamb from a local farmer. I think we will be moving far, far away from filling our shopping carts with Velveeta Shells and Cheese and moving back to bags of flour and sacks of potatoes.
Which, by the way - apparently potatoes are the wave of the future.
I don't know why, but I've been thinking about food lately. Not in the I-like-to-eat-it way (although I do), but in the "holy cow, now that gas is $4 a gallon how much is it going to cost" way.
I think I got started on this tangent because although I declared Springtime In Bellingham, I was wrong - it snowed twice more since then - and I think we are going to have a very short growing season this year.
Or it could be because I have been giving much thought to my families lately, both my blood family and my Bellingham family. They are both broods of bees, except my blood family is suffering Colony Collapse and my Bellingham family is vibrating in a winter cluster.
[A tangent - I am oversimplyfing Colony Collapse but I understand that the exact cause (perhaps it is a syndrome) is not yet completely understood. Could be disease, could be malnutrition, could be that bee farmers are maltreating their livestock by moving them more often than is healthy. A beehive is a type of family, each bee fulfilling a vital role to the survival of the hive. When the colony collapses, bees refuse to eat supplements of food, disappear, allow new brood to hatch before abandonment, leave few dead bees in their wake. That's my family, in a nutshell. My grandfather has begun to refuse food. The people my grandparents have been closest to all their lives now avoid contact with them. I have seen these things happen before, I know that it's not an unusual phenomenon, but I don't like it.
My Bellingham family seems to be in state of flux, which I think is a healthy thing. No one person remains at the nucleus of it, in that we vibrate together overwinter and take turns being in the center where the warmth is. We are together in this town, even if we only bump noses from time to time. I don't find that to be a bad thing.]
Ahem, but back to food. The news is hysterical with stories of rationing rice, flour, and oil. Well, the "rationing" as it were is not actually as pervasive or restrictive as the headlines would have you believe but it is there, nevertheless. I got curious about this last night and started a conversation with Michael about it, which, combined with some reading this morning, leads me to believe that this is a far more complicated "crisis" than can be encapsulated in a casual 10 minute break chat.
Here are some things I've read this morning that various sources claim to be "causes":
Financial - the value of a dollar is falling and inflation is rising, which means our food budget doesn't go as far as it once did, driving up the cost of staple foods.
Oil - with fuel prices at an all time high, the costs become enveloped in the price consumers pay at the checkstand. Ironically, the increase in mechanized farming in other countries also drives up the demand for oil, conributing to the effect in price.
Biofuel - okay, this one I found pretty dang interesting. Biofuel is crowding out acreage that formerly produced food, and Time Magazine tells me that every diversion in the supply chain creates an increase in price. In the US, soybean farmers are converting to corn for ethanol, which creates a chain reaction globally. This is especially prevalent in Brazil (remember the rainforest, folks?) where soybean farmers are encroaching into former cattle land, forcing the cattle ranchers to expand into the Amazon. Brazil is now 4th highest in carbon emissions. So while you drive your biodiesel VW around town and sip that soy milk cappuccino from a "bisphenol-a" reusable travel mug, you might pause for a millisecond to wonder where the soy came from!
Free Trade - in Mexico, NAFTA is being blamed for the displacement of farmers due to the import of corn, beans and milk from the US. Not only do Mexican farmers claim that the trade policy will destroy Mexican agriculture, but NAFTA is also being blamed for an increase in migration to the US, resulting in tortilla riots.
Climate Change - bad weather such as Australia's drought is touted as a symptom.
Change in Diets - the Chinese are eating 10 times more meat than they did 40 years ago, which is being blamed for a portion of the demand on the food supply.
Overpopulation - humans is hungry folks. I don't think we will extinct ourselves by tainting the environment, I think we will eat ourselves out of existence.
Articles like this annoy me though, mainly because of sentences like this: "'Sometimes I cry,' she said, when she passes items on store shelves she can no longer buy." Really? You actually cry when you can't afford highly processed convenience foods? Ok, so I'm making a big ass-u-me-umption there, for all I know she cries when she can't buy a package of steaks but I think the crying thing is pretty maudlin.
Good food can be cooked with low cost ingredients, but it takes time and skill. I mean, isn't that what the French are kinda famous for, making available foods delicious? I could be mistaken, but I tend to think that "seasonal cooking" is a fancy way of saying "whatchagot stew." In France, I guess they call that "coq au vin."
I wonder what the next 10, 20, 30 years will bring. I am young enough that I am pretty confident that I will live to see them. I wonder if we will return to canning and preserving at home, if we'll be buying shares of community livestock, if instead of planting indigenous species where we formerly mowed lawns, we'll have rows of cabbage and carrots. I mean hell, some of that is already starting. I trade coffee for eggs. Carol has a henhouse. Allie and a bunch of buddies are going in on a butchered lamb from a local farmer. I think we will be moving far, far away from filling our shopping carts with Velveeta Shells and Cheese and moving back to bags of flour and sacks of potatoes.
Which, by the way - apparently potatoes are the wave of the future.