The Secret Life of Peas

Check it out! The common pea is capable of processing, remembering and sharing information with its neighbors. Michael Marder, for the New York Times Opinionater, reports:

"...a team of scientists from the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University in Israel published the results of its peer-reviewed research, revealing that a pea plant subjected to drought conditions communicated its stress to other such plants, with which it shared its soil. In other words, through the roots, it relayed to its neighbors the biochemical message about the onset of drought, prompting them to react as though they, too, were in a similar predicament."

Any scientists/geneticists out there know if these findings have anything to do with how or why Mendel was able to study and and demonstrate inheritance through peas? Were those peas co-evolving with us and telling each other that being relevant in modern scientific experiments would foster future generations of intelligent peas that could one day outsmart their human predators? Nah... probably not... but it certainly doesn't surprise me that they grow and work together. 

Read Marder's full article "If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?" examining the ethics of eating such intelligent life forms here. 

New to the Farmers Market Scene?

Great Huffington Post by Darya Pino about the top ten mistakes made by farmers market newbies. Find the details here and subheads below.

1.) Arriving too late
2.) Forgetting to bring your own bag
3.) Buying staples instead of being adventurous
4.) Not asking questions
5.) Forgetting cash
6.) Focusing on fruit
7.) Forgetting meat and dairy
8.) Bringing pets
9.) Trying to negotiate
10.) Not shopping around

Peak Farmers Market Season Has Begun

Don't miss out on the scrumdiddlyumptious seasonal produce coming to a freeway underpass or parking lot near you. The Washington Post has updated their interactive farmers market locator so you needn't travel far for fresh, local produce. And as always, we here at JustSaying love a reason to post Barbara Kingsolver's Vegetannual, "an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest."

More Market Photos

The adorable child (who will likely captivate readers more than even the most controversial topics discussed here on JustSaying) is my niece, Charlotte Anne. She too was produced locally.

Elmer's Farmers Market

Found an incredible farmers' market on the way home from vacay in Delaware. It's called Elmer's, located somewhere on Route 404, and it's so excellent I have to share some photos. Enjoy!

Safeway to support local farmers

Yesterday, Safeway Inc. announced plans to launch a campaign significantly increasing its focus on locally grown produce. The company claims that shoppers will find "more local produce per item at its stores than at a typical farmers market." The campaign includes an initiative to promote local growers with reference maps showing locations of key farmers.

Farmers Market Locator

Following in the footsteps of their fabulous Gardening Calendar, The Washington Post put up a great interactive pinpointing local farmers markets. You can even browse by day. How great is that?!

New Farmers' Market: Downtown Baltimore

Every Tuesday between now and October, from 10:30am to 2:30pm, local farmers will be selling fresh veggies, fruit, cheese, eggs and more along the Paca Street sidewalk in the park in front of the University of Maryland Medical Center. This is great news for the many employees at the center and for residents in the area who otherwise would have to make the trip across town on Sunday mornings before noon. Bay & Environment blogger for The Baltimore Sun, Tim Wheeler, reports:

The medical center, University of Maryland Baltimore and the local community have teamed up to bring fresh, locally grown food to the workers, patients, visitors and residents of that busy corner of downtown. Local food reduces the energy and air pollution caused by long-distance transportation, according to advocates, and the types of food offered are generally pretty healthy.

Winter Farmers' Market: Annapolis

2nd and 4th Sundays, 12:30 - 2:30pm

January 11th - April 26th at Westfield Annapolis

Located on the first level of the Nordstrom garage off the Bestgate Road Main Entrance

(Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation, Maryland Department of Agriculture; Westfield Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, MD.)

How did I not know about Ableman??

A friend of mine mentioned Michael Ableman in an email so I promptly googled him and came across something he wrote regarding E. Coli tainted spinach back in 2006. We seem to see through the same eyes. From Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food:

Not long ago lettuce came only in heads and spinach in bunches. For a salad, someone else might do the growing, but you still did the trimming and washing. You had some control -- and responsibility -- over the process. Now salad comes prewashed and bagged. You just pour it on a plate, dress it, put it in your mouth and chew.

This convenience adds risk. You give one more job over to someone somewhere else, trusting that they are concerned as much about product quality and your health as about the bottom line on the quarterly report.

But the business of food is now big business, and it might be making us sick. Witness the spinach tainted with E. coli bacteria that is blamed for more than 180 people infected in 26 states and Ontario, Canada, including one death.

The first mixed salad greens and loose spinach were from small, local growers who hand-cut the young greens and rushed them to market, organ-transplant style. Now we have a multimillion-dollar salad industry that consolidates raw ingredients from many big producers and has little control over growing methods. Washing salad ingredients on this scale requires facilities more like municipal swimming pools or public bathhouses than where our food should come from. And if you remember sixth-grade biology, you know that stuffing fresh, green leaves into sealed plastic bags is a great way to breed bacteria.

The spinach scare has prompted cries for better regulation and inspection. But the drama over one microorganism distracts us from something much bigger: a vast industrial food system built on cheap, empty calories -- from government-subsidized corn, for example -- that feed epidemic levels of obesity and diabetes. Sometimes it seems a system more interested in finding ways to pump more high-fructose corn syrup into kids' breakfast cereals than in providing fresh, whole foods to nourish their growing bodies. Click here to continue reading.

So some new suggested reading (for myself and others):

Fields of Plenty: A Farmer's Journey in Search of Real Food and the People Who Grow It by Michael Ableman

On Good Land: The Autobiography of an Urban Farm by Michael Ableman

From the Good Earth: A Celebration of Growing Food Around the World by Michael Ableman

A few Michael Ableman articles that appeared in the LA Times

Must Read Michael Pollan

Can't even begin to express how grateful I am for Michael Pollan and essays/articles like this one that appeared in last week's NY Times magazine. Pollan's letter to the President-Elect focuses on the major issue underlying health care, energy Independence and climate change: the food issue.

Any attempts I would make to paraphrase Pollan's article won't do his points justice - so I urge you to read the article. I can attempt to summarize by saying: Pollan examines the past, present and possible future food system as well as the political relationship between food and just about every other sector of our world in such as way as to remind us that food is the core of our existence and well-being. It is essentially a condensed version of his latest book but with a stronger and bigger message regarding what to do next. In Defense of Food educated and empowered the individual. This piece picks up where the book left off and addresses the system from the top down by way of some brilliant, if a *tad ambitious, proposals:


I. Resolarizing the American Farm

II. Reregionalizing the Food System

III. Rebuilding America’s Food Culture

A few excerpts from the article:

"...Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them..."

"We need to wean the American food system off its heavy 20th-century diet of fossil fuel and put it back on a diet of contemporary sunshine."

"First, your administration’s food policy must strive to provide a healthful diet for all our people; this means focusing on the quality and diversity (and not merely the quantity) of the calories that American agriculture produces and American eaters consume. Second, your policies should aim to improve the resilience, safety and security of our food supply. Among other things, this means promoting regional food economies both in America and around the world. And lastly, your policies need to reconceive agriculture as part of the solution to environmental problems like climate change."

"Today most federal messages about food, from nutrition labeling to the food pyramid, are negotiated with the food industry. The surgeon general should take over from the Department of Agriculture the job of communicating with Americans about their diet. That way we might begin to construct a less equivocal and more effective public-health message about nutrition. Indeed, there is no reason that public-health campaigns about the dangers of obesity and Type 2 diabetes shouldn’t be as tough and as effective as public-health campaigns about the dangers of smoking. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in three American children born in 2000 will develop Type 2 diabetes. The public needs to know and see precisely what that sentence means: blindness; amputation; early death. All of which can be avoided by a change in diet and lifestyle. A public-health crisis of this magnitude calls for a blunt public-health message, even at the expense of offending the food industry. Judging by the success of recent antismoking campaigns, the savings to the health care system could be substantial."

*tad ambitious = Pollan's suggestion to "tear out five prime south-facing acres of the White House lawn and plant in their place an organic fruit and vegetable garden."

Learning from the "vegetannual"

As you know, I've been enjoying Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this late summer/early fall and the further I get into the family's journey of through a year of eating only local, sustainable food, I'm having a harder and harder time shopping in a conventional grocer. Just yesterday I ran into the local supermarket for some TP and paper towels and thought, "Hmm... I am out of apples... I'm sure they've got some fairly local ones..." Not quite. The apples I found in the organic section... ugh... I couldn't bring myself to purchase them. Why, you ask? Because they were from New Zealand. New Zealand! Really?

Granted, I know Australia and New Zealand are leaders in the organic and biodynamic farming fields, I was just surprised (yet again) that so many of these supermarket chains continue to ship in these varieties bred to survive travel and provide little in terms of taste and nutrients when there are certainly plenty more local resources.

So... as I looked around and saw asparagus, spinach, pineapples, lettuce, sugar cane and every other product of a plant you can imagine I was reminded of "The Vegetannual" that Kingsolver uses as a guide to lead those of us who are, eh hem, agriculturally-challenged, through the growing season. So many of us have grown so used to picking up a bunch of bananas at the grocer we don't even consider the fact that they have traveled far and wide so that consumers worldwide can enjoy some tasty potassium anytime they please. It's rather greedy of us to expect to have this vast selection year-round, don't you think?

So I departed the shop with my paper goods and drove over to this wonderful stand at the intersection of Route 99 and Bethany Lane, where I found some delicious peaches that offer a unique pinch of pucker with their sweetness. Perhaps I have persuaded you to visit a local farmers market and stick to what is in season right now? Here's what you can expect to find:

Sweet corn
Cucumbers
Garlic
Onions
Herbs
Peppers
Potatoes
Summer squashes
Tomatoes
Cherry tomatoes
Eggplant
Melons
Watermelons
Apples
Peaches
Raspberries
Blackberries
Pears

This is a great time of year for shopping your local farmers market. Admit it, that is a pretty tasty selection listed above!

Farmers' markets in and around Baltimore

The Baltimore Sun put up a great interactive map of local farmers' markets. Check it out here

(Photo from The Sun by Algerina Perna / May 4, 2008)