Vertical farming in the big Apple

Is this how farms will look in the future?

Jeremy Cook
BBC News , New York


Professor Despommier lists many advantages of this revolutionary kind of agriculture. They include:

• Year round crop production in a controlled environment
• All produce would be organic as there would be no exposure to wild parasites and bugs
• Elimination of environmentally damaging agricultural runoff
• Food being produced locally to where it is consumed

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Eating Better Than Organic

Eating Better Than Organic
Friday, Mar. 02, 2007 By JOHN CLOUD

Organic apples in the produce section at a Whole Foods Market in Willowbrook, IL. on January 5th, 2006. Whole Foods Market along with other organic food distributors is trying to bring down the cost of organic foods to attract the family on a budget..


Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than "sprayed with pesticides that might kill you"). It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support--the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the apple's taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

In the end I bought both apples. (They were both good, although the California one had a mealy bit, possibly from its journey.) It's only recently that I had noticed more locally grown products in the supermarket, but when I got home I discovered that the organic-vs.-local debate has become one of the liveliest in the food world. Last year Wal-Mart began offering more organic products--those grown without pesticides, antibiotics, irradiation and so on--and the big company's expansion into a once alternative food culture has been a source of deep concern, and predictable backlash, among early organic adopters.

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, "local" is the new "organic," the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet. Many chefs, food writers and politically minded eaters are outraged that "Big Organic" firms now use the same industrial-size farming and long-distance-shipping methods as conventional agribusiness. "Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Nabhan predicted my apple problem when he vacillated over some organic pumpkin canned hundreds of miles from his Arizona home. "If you send it halfway around the world before it is eaten," he mused, "an organic food still may be 'good' for the consumer, but is it 'good' for the food system?"

I had never really thought about how my food purchases might affect "the food system." Even now I don't share the pessimism and asceticism of the local-eating set. In her 2001 memoir, This Organic Life, Columbia University nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow writes that her commitment to eating locally "is probably driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet." I don't have much relation to frugality, and, perhaps foolishly, I'm more optimistic than Gussow about our ability to develop alternative energy sources.

But I care deeply about how my food tastes, and it makes sense that a snow pea grown by a local farmer and never refrigerated will retain more of its delicate leguminous flavor than one shipped in a frigid plane from Guatemala. And I realized that if more consumers didn't become part of the local-food market, it could disappear and all our peas would be those tasteless little pods from far away.

Still, the fact that not all locally grown products are organic had me worried. Even if most Americans wanted to buy locally grown organics, they wouldn't be able to find many. In a few not-too-dry, not-too-wet, not-too-warm regions--central California is one--it is possible to find abundant organic produce grown locally. But if you live in a humid climate, say, the moisture that encourages bacteria and fungi means that growing without pesticides is much more risky, expensive and rare. Consequently, in the Hudson Valley of New York, near me, it's very difficult to find fruit that hasn't been sprayed with chemicals at least once. In other regions, like the upper Midwest, most big farms don't grow any vegetables for local markets, conventional or organic. Instead, they produce commodity crops like corn and soybeans for sale to food processors. At a large Hugo's grocery store in Jamestown, N.D., last summer, I noticed only one local product: flour, which is milled in-state from local wheat. But there were organic apples and oranges from out of state.

Farmers' markets often feature organic produce from nearby farms, but not everyone lives near a farmers' market--and most products at the markets aren't organic. "I've been to farmers' markets, and there's people hauling stuff from the truck that they got at a wholesaler," says Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards. Mendelson prefers the "gold standard" of locally grown organics, but he is rather frightening on the subject of nonorganic food, whatever its origin. When I asked him whether I should favor local products, he replied, "I don't know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?"

All of which further tangles my original question: The organic apple or the conventionally grown local one?

It turns out to be a frustratingly layered choice, one that implicates many other questions: What's the most efficient way to grow food for all? Should farms be big or small, family- or corporate-run? How do your choices affect the planet? What tastes better? And then there's that little matter of cancer.

Let's get that one out of the way at the start. If scientists could conclusively prove that agricultural chemicals are harmful, we would all go organic. But it's not clear, for instance, that the low levels of pesticide typically found on conventional produce cause cancer. The risks of long-term exposure to those residues are still undetermined.

Even if conventional foods don't turn out to be as dangerous as organic advocates claim, several recent studies have suggested that organic foods contain higher levels of vitamins than their conventionally grown counterparts. In a paper published in October in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a team from the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that organically grown tomatoes have significantly more vitamin C than conventional tomatoes. Even so, the same study shows no significant differences between conventional and organic bell peppers.
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2007 Sustainable Ag Conference

The Well-being of Rural Kansas: Healthy People, Healthy Environment and Healthy Economics” is the theme for the 2007 Sustainable Agriculture Conference scheduled for February 16 and 17 at the K-State Alumni Center in Manhattan, Kansas...


Plenary session presenters and topics include:

* Jimmy Daukas, American Farmland Trust – “A New Vision for U.S. Farm Policy that Promotes Healthy People, Healthy Environment, and Healthy Rural Economies”

* Mark Muller, Institute for Agriculture and Trace Policy – “Paths to a Healthy Environment: Linking Human Health and Nutrition with Environmental Policy”

* Rich Pirog, Leopold Center, Iowa State University – “Paths to Healthy People and Local Economies: Bringing Local Foods to Rural America”

* Patty Cantrell, Michigan Land Use Institute – “Bringing Local Foods to Public Schools and Other Institutions”

* Ginette Ishimatsu, University of Denver – “The Zen of Food”


The two-day conference will feature additional presentations by leading experts on local food systems and their role in sustaining family farms. Individuals and non-profit groups are also invited to participate in the educational poster display during the conference.

Detailed conference information—including location, accommodations, poster/display guidelines, and poster and conference registration—are available on the Sustainable Agriculture Conference website.

Register by February 2 to receive the early registration rates of $80 for both days or $40 for single-day registration. After February 2, a $10 late fee will apply.

The conference is sponsored by the Kansas Center for Sustainable Agriculture and Alternative Crops, K-State Research and Extension, and the Kansas Rural Center, with financial support from KDHE/EPA 319 Program and USDA/Risk Management Agency.


Debbie Hagenmaier
Program Coordinator
Division of Continuing Education
256 College Court Building
Manhattan, KS 66506-6001
Phone: 785-532-2560
Fax: 785-532-3779
debbieh@ksu.edu
http://www.dce.ksu.edu.

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Organic Farmer Jon Tester Elected to United States Senate

Jon Tester, an organic farmer and leader in the organic movement since 1987, has been elected as a U.S. Senator from the state of Montana. A third generation farmer from Big Sandy, Montana, he has been farming organically for nearly twenty years.

In 2005, Tester and his wife Sharla were named outstanding agricultural
leaders by the College of Agriculture at Montana State University.
Their T-Bone Farms is a diversified organic operation
with 1400 acres (567 hectares).

The stated goals of their operation are:
To produce high quality food; To use environmentally sound farming practices ;To improve soil health on their farm; andTo keep the farm in their family.Their crops this year included hard red wheat, hard white wheat, kamut, lentils, and purple barley. Tester is a strong believer in green manures, a type of cover crop grown to be plowed under and
incorporated into the soil, adding natural sources of nitrogen and
phosphorous, not to mention improving and protecting the soil.

Tester has been a leader in the organic movement for more than a decade. He
served as the national treasurer for the Organic Crop Improvement
Association International, and helped to develop the Montana Organic
Certification program.

Bob Quinn, an organic farmer and President of Kamut International, said "We
all started in organic farming nearly 20 years ago in north-central
Montana, and since that time Jon Tester has been a great supporter of
sustainable and Organic Agriculture - not only on his farm, but also
while he was serving at the Montana State Senate. I'm sure he'll be
a strong voice for sustainable and Organic Agriculture in the U.S. Senate
as well, as someone who has learned it by experience." He added "We are
extremely happy as an organic community" that Tester has been elected
to the U.S. Senate. They have been neighbors and friends for 30 years.

According to Thomas B. Harding, former IFOAM President, colleague of Jon Tester and Director of Agrisystems International, "Jon Tester, now U.S. Senator Elect Jon Tester, is an extraordinary man - one who walks his talk, an excellent organic farmer, dedicated to the family farmer, the farm community and to Organic Agriculture in general. He sees the big picture and he will make a very great difference to all of us as he meets his

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