MESQUITEBEAN FLOUR IS GOOD FOR YOU
Mesquite bean flour is a traditional andnutritious sweetener used by the Tohono O'odham and other native peoplein the American Southwest and northwestern Mexico.
Greg Nolan, from Snowy Pines Reforestation,and I had the opportunity to visit with Aretta Hubbard of the San XavierCo-operative Farm on the San Xavier reservation outside of Tucson recently.Aretta is the sales manager for this Native American Co-op. When Greg andI knocked on the door of the mobile home that houses the farm's officewe felt pretty much at home after having escaped Tucson's strip malls.The dog resting under the steps didn't bark much and there was a pile ofcushaw squash on a trailer.
Aretta made us feel even more at home. Althoughwe came unannounced she put down what she was doing to answer our questionsabout the San Xavier Co-op. She told us it was a tribally charted organizationthat was dedicated to healthy farming practices. She said the co-op farmerswere growing traditional crops like 60 day corn, tepary beans and cow beansin a way that was friendly to the cultural values of the community andthe desert environment. Like I said, we felt at home.
Than she gave us some samples of Wihog Cu'i(mesquite flour) and Bahi Cu'i (roasted wheat flour). The mesquite flourhas a remarkably sweet and nutty flavor. I loved it. Aretta told us thatcooperative members gathered the mesquite beans by hand, in the desert,and then ground them for flour. It's used for a sugar substitute. Mesquiteas a non-sugar sweetener is a particularly important food for the TohonoO'odham because processed sugars have created such a terrible problem withdiabetes.
Greg and I bought a couple of eight ouncebags of mesquite flour and brought them home. I asked Jan if she'd bakesome of the short bread cookie that came on the recipes card Aretta gave.She did. They were delicious.
I'd like Whole Farm Co-op customers to trysome mesquite flour for two reasons:
*I think we should support efforts likethat of the San Xavier Co-op Farm.
*I think somebody in Minnesota besides Janand I should get to try those cookies.
If you're interested please contact me directly:Tim King,
timking7@rea-alp.com. I'll place a grouporder with Aretta and we'll send it to you via your next WFC shipment.
The cost for 8 ounces of mesquite flouris $9.25. If you'd like it in a decorated gift bag it' $9.75. Keep in mindit's expensive because the beans are collected by hand. Let me know ifyou're interested. |
| IBP, FARMLANDEXPORT BEEF CONTAINING ILLEGAL CARCINOGENIC HORMONE. Two of America's largest meat processors,IBP, Inc. and Farmland National Beef Packing Company, exported two shipmentsof beef to Switzerland last July that contained the growth hormone diethylstilbestrolor DES. The shipment, which was supposed to be entirely free of growthhormones, also contained the hormone melengestrol acetate. DES has beenillegal in the U.S. since 1979 when the Food and Drug Administration bannedit from food products because it is a carcinogen. Melengestrol acetateis illegal in Switzerland but not the U.S.
Although Switzerland is not in the EU theincident caused the European Union to consider placing an export ban onall fresh meat from the United States. The EU currently bans meats fromthe U.S. that contain growth hormones but meat from the United States isaccepted under a hormone free import program. The contaminated shipmentwas exported under that program.
An inspection team from the EU visited theUnited States in late January and early February. The team recommendedthat all imports of fresh meat from the U.S. be banned until the U.S. canadequately test for growth hormones. The team accused U.S. labs of beingunable to test for hormones and the USDA of falsely certifying hormonefree beef, pork and horse meat for export to the U.S. It also accused U.S.farmers of improperly using growth hormones.
An agreement between the USDA and EuropeanUnion agricultural regulators for the U.S. to use EU approved labs to testfor hormones has put a total import ban temporarily on hold.
The discovery of DES contaminated meat inthe export chain has raised fears that the hormone may also be in domesticallyconsumed meat. The USDA has not tested for it since 1991. The contaminatedmeat received by the Swiss had been eaten by the time the test resultsshowing DES were available.
The European Union has had financial sanctionslevied against it by the World Trade Organization for banning the importationof U.. meat with growth hormone residues in it.
This article is from the IATP Food Safety & Healthnewsletter - Vol. 5, Number 2 March 7, 2000. To subscribe, send email to:listserv@iatp.org.. In the body of the message type: food_safety. |
DO YOU TAKETHIS FARMER/CUSTOMER FOR BETTER OR WORSE Getting our food to your table is a complicatedmatter. Getting food from the farm to any body's table is complicated,for that matter. But the process of farm to fork, if you shop at Lundsor Cub, is pretty much invisible. The customers and producers of WholeFarm Co-op to have opened the farm to fork process to sunlight. We've workedclosely together to reinvent the entire process.
Since we're amateurs sometimes the processis pretty; sometimes it's not. For instance, I continue to be amazed atthe amount of volunteer effort customers expend in creating the new system.An example of that was the elegant brunch that the congregation at FirstCongregational Church in Minneapolis put on recently. The brunch featuredWFC products. Each table had place setting that included a descriptionof what people were eating and how they could get more of it through ourco-op. Our friends, the good people at First Congregational church tookour food, from the earth of our farms, and turned it into a kind of sacrament.Not bad for amateurs.
Another example: We've been bringing youmaple syrup in plastic containers for two years. One of our most loyalcustomer-partners asked why we couldn't get maple syrup in glass containers.Glass, she said, was easier to recycle. So we found maple syrup in glasscontainers. Customers now have the choice between glass and plastic. I'mpretty pleased we could do that.
Sometimes our amateurishness is embarrassing,to say the least. For a long time I told customers that none of our sausageproducts had MSG in them. But why, some customers asked, did the labelssay that they did contain MSG? I had my usual quick answer: Our butcheris using up his old labels. He's removed the MSG but has to use up hisold labels, I said.
I had the information from a reliable sourcein our co-op. He had it from a reliable source. Then a few months ago wediscovered what we had been saying about MSG was almost true. All of oursausage, except the Country Style, was without MSG. Country Style was beingmade with MSG while we were telling you it wasn't. We are amateurs. MeaCulpa!
The point: We, customers and producers,are in this farm to fork thing together. We'll stumble and bruise ourselvesand then stand up and do good work together. Please, customer-partners,hang with us, keep asking hard questions and we'll work this out together.
The word amateur, by the way, is closelyrelated to the Spanish verb 'amor' which means to love. |
SLASHAND BURN MINNESOTA STYLE The agriculture that's been done in mostof Minnesota for the last 120 years appears to be having the same effecta slash and burn agriculture in the tropics.
"We'll know sustainable agriculture whenwe see it," the Land Stewardship Project's Dana Jackson used to say. She'dsay that when a meeting was stretching too long, egos were puffing up andtempers were shortening and somebody would demand a definition of sustainableagriculture.
I always assumed that what Ms. Jackson meantwas that there was a lot of work to do, we pretty much know what needsto be done and so let's quit ya-yaaing and get on with it.
I also am pretty certain that Dana accepts,and perhaps uses, the conventional definition for sustainable agriculture.
That definition is that a farming systemis sustainable if 1) it preserves or enhances the environment 2) it workseconomically for the farmer and the community 3) it enhances the sociallife of the farmer and the community.
You can measure point two easily. Numberthree isn't too tough to measure either. Simply ask, was there time fora vacation this year; or was there time for 4-H or church work after thefarm work was done?
The environmental question is stickier.
In the mid-90s I traveled the state on behalfof a fine organization called the Sustainable Farming Association. I drovesome 50,000 miles and had the opportunity to visit with some of Minnesota'sfinest and most creative farmers. Some of them called themselves sustainablefarmers. Others, being generous, said the same of their neighbors or friends.
Since all of us wanted that to be true Inever asked, "How do you know? How do you know what you're doing in yourfarm's environment will leave it farmable 200 years from now?"
My sense now is that most of us who saidwe were doing sustainable agriculture in the 90s were doing something betweenwishful thinking and very shaking long range forecasting. It was the bestwe knew how to do.
In 1995, Dave Huggins, a soil scientistwith the University of Minnesota's Lamberton Research Station, and ThomasHansmeyer, a graduate student in soils, set out to establish numericalenvironmental measures of sustainability for farmers and researchers touse.
They started the ball rolling in that nobleobjective but didn't quite get there. What they did clearly establish,however, is both profound and chilling.
Their research made it clear that farmingpractices on Southwestern Minnesota soils are not sustainable. If theirnumbers are right those soils will not be farmable less than 200 yearsfrom now.
Huggins and Hansmeyer studied the soilson six southwestern Minnesota farms. They looked at Clarion, Nicolett andWebster soils for twelve different indicators. Included among those indicatorswere the topsoil depth, soil structure and color, microbial biomass andbulk density.
The three soil types were also examined,using the same indicators, at the Schaeffer Prairie. Schaeffer Prairie,managed by the Nature Conservancy, is the only location where the Clarion,Nicollet and Webster soil series has not ever seen the plows sharp edge.VAmong what the two scientists found was: V*Topsoil on the Clarion soilswas, on average, 33% less on the farms than on the native prairie.
*Topsoil on the Nicolett soils was 26% lesson the farms.
*About 20% of the missing top soil fromthe Nicolett and Clarion soils was found deposited in the lowland Webstersoils. The rest, presumably was either enroute or had arrived at the MinnesotaRiver.
Huggins and Hansmeyer also found that 37%of the organic matter had disappeared from the Clarion soils. That losson those upland soils suggests that, in 200 years, they'll be as farmableas the neighborhood gravel pit is today.
Huggins and Hansmeyer write that large scaletop soil loss is irreplaceable during any period meaningful to human lifetimes.Large scale organic matter replacement can be accomplished at about thesame glacial pace.
They did find that indicators such as soilstructure and microbial activity, although depleted on many of the farmsoils, can and have been improved through conservation tillage and certaintypes of crop rotations.
But it's hard to increase microbial activityin a gravel pit.
It's likely, that if top soil and organicmatter loss continue on the scale measured by Huggins and Hansmeyer, farmerswill begin to abandon the unproductive fields of southwestern Minnesota,in three to five generations. Like Dana Jackson says, "we'll know it whenwe see it." |
FAIR TRADEOR FOUL You may have been buying the fair trade coffeethat Whole Farm Co-operative sells. The farmers that grow that coffee area lot like the farmers in Whole Farm Co-op. They've banded together toform a co-operative. Their co-op gives them the ability to by pass a numberof steps in the marketing chain. They can keep control of their coffeebeans almost until they reach your coffee cup. A difference between thecoffee co-ops such as Oaxaca based UCIRI, one of the co-ops that suppliesus with coffee, and WFC is that UCIRI buys the coffee beans from its farmermembers. WFC generally doesn't buy farm products. We usually sell themand then pay the farmer.
Another difference between the coffee co-opsand WFC is that when the coffee growers begin a season they sign a contractwith the co-op. That contract guarantees them a livable price for theircoffee beans. The contract is based on the co-ops negotiations with itsmajor customers. A farmers price will not go below the contract floor butit can go above it depending on market conditions and the quality of thecoffee beans.
Fair trade doesn't stop with with a contractfor price. The Mut Vitz co-op in Chiapas, suppliers of Cloud Forest coffee,conducts technical training for its farmer-members. The training helpsthe farmers process the green coffee beans so that they are of the highestquality. High quality beans can obtain a premium price.
The UCIRI co-op, which supplies medium roastPeace coffee, plows any profit that it has into the community in the formof social services such as health care. La Selva, a co-op in southern Chiapasthat used to supply us, was using profits to build a clinic and to assistwomen in starting up non-coffee related enterprises. It's important tonote that the people in Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Guatemala who live in coffeecountry are among the world's most impoverished.
Fair trade contracts give farmers a legup so they can take the building of their communities into their own hands.
Responsible fair trade agreements - tradethat nurtures the communities of the producer and the customer - are theexception however. Global trade and local trade must eventually all beconducted on a fair trade basis. Failing that, we will all pay the pricein unexpected ways.
The NAFTA agreement between Mexico, Canadaand the U.S. recently brought about the closing of a small sugar mill insouthern Chiapas. It couldn't compete with the internationally set sugarprices. It was to old and inefficient. This year no one in the region willgrow sugar because they will have no processor. They can't grow corn. Thattoo, effected by international price setting, is no longer profitable.The options for farmers in this area are: 1) Leave the farm for the city.But there's no work there. 2) Take up arms with the Zapatistas. That'sa dead end avenue. 3) Put you 14 year old daughter into prostitution. 4)Have one of the family members make the long journey to the US. Maybe workcan be found and money sent home.
Fair trade contracts that would re-establishthe sugar industry in the region would, ultimately, be cheaper and moremoral not just for the local community but for all of us who pay the moraland economic price of sugar. Or any other globally traded product.Note: If you're interested in visiting Chiapas and thehighland producing coffee country in the northeastern part of the statecontact Cloudforest at Cloudforest@hwpics.com. They have a number of tripsplanned throughout the year. |
| WEARY OF CAFFEINE? Try this truly American drink as a coffeesubstitute. One cup boiling water. One table spoon cocoa powder. One eighthteaspoon smoking hot chili pepper. It's like a liquid mole. Very stimulating! |
WFC LAUNCHESWEB SITE, PONDERS MAIL ORDER & MILK BOTTLING VENTURE WFC Launches Web Site, Ponders Mail Order &Milk Bottling Venture With the help of John Weber, of Long Prairie, we'veput up a web site at the following address http://www.alexweb.net/wholefarmcoop.Since web sites can speak for themselves I won't dwell on it. But the sitedoes contain descriptions of many of our producer members and their farms.These were painstakingly written by Kristen Corselius during the summerand fall of 1999. You'll also find a pretty current catalogue of products,back issues of the Kitchen Sink and an evolving capacity to order on-line.
Dawn Nye and I hope to have a mail ordercatalogue in place at the web site in a month or two. It will feature non-perishablefoods like wild rice, jams, maple syrup, nutritious chocolate covered espressobeans, cocoa, soaps and candles, coffee, Sweet Tree Farms gift packs, shitakemushroom soups and others good stuff. We'd be glad to mail these thingsout to you or your friends now. But we hope to formalize our mail orderefforts more in the near future.
We are currently exploring a 'Grazer's Milk'bottling venture with Pride of Mainstreet dairy in Sauk Center. Let DawnNye know if you might like milk from WFC farmers. |
| LETTERSTO THE EDITOR We don't have any yet but are hoping you'llsend some. |