Sorry Snapple/Soda Drinkers

I agree that these ads are sorta gross... but they're effective, don't you think? (Read about the "controversy" here)

Local Food Hub

This is exactly the kind of grassroots motion we need in the local food movement: Proper distribution of local produce on a larger supply-meets-demand-in-a-timely-and-efficient-and affordable-fashion scale. The Washington Post reports:

"The Local Food Hub's director, Kate Collier, hadn't intended to get into the wholesale produce business. She and her husband, Eric Gertner, own a gourmet food store, Feast, in Charlottesville. Feast sells jams, chutneys, meats, cheeses and produce; the produce has the lowest profit margins.

In April 2008, Collier made a presentation to a panel convened by local food advocates that outlined how a new distribution system could support small farmers and improve access to their products. "I told them, 'This is where I see the holes are,' " she said. "Everybody jumped on the idea. They said if there was one phone number to call, they'd do it."

Last fall, Collier began to put a plan into action. She raised $305,000 from local foundations and individuals and established a nonprofit group. She leased a 3,100-square-foot warehouse. She bought a refrigerated truck for deliveries and purchased $3 million in liability insurance, a requirement to sell to large institutions. She also hired a staff of five to market the new organization, manage the warehouse and educate the community about the benefits of local food..."

"...The Obama administration has plans to help. The Department of Agriculture is required to put at least 5 percent of its business and industry budget into developing local production. "That's the floor," Vilsack said. "What we're looking at is how can we more effectively use [those funds] to create a whole new way of thinking about the rural economy. Be assured it's one of our priorities."

Collier projects that the Hub could turn a profit with revenue of $1.5 million annually. If all goes well, that could happen in six to eight years. In the meantime, small farmers are taking advantage of the opportunity to find broad and steady markets for their products.

"It's nice to know you don't need to have 200 acres," Down Branch Farm's Proutt said. "You can still make it work.""

Global Releaf

My mom introduced me to Pearlstone Jewelry and their "Plant a Tree" partnership with AmericanForests.org and I'm lovin' it.

The bracelets are handmade with natural stones, reclaimed bone, crystal, glass and the official charm in Woodstock, NY and a tree is planted for every purchase. Since 2007 they have planted more than 9,000 trees.

Learn more and help the organization reach 10,000 by 2010 here.

Balance?

Another endangered amphibian

Now this awesome little fellow is on the verge of extinction too. Population has declined six-fold in the last ten years. In fact: Recent surveys suggest that only "between 700 and 1,200 Mexican Axolotl Salamanders survive in six reduced and scattered areas within the Xochimilco area of the Mexican Central Valley."

Commonly know as the "Peter Pan" of animals, the Mexican Axolotl is a favorite of scientists and pet-lovers because of their ability to regenerate body parts and their perma-larval, underwater lifestyle. But it appears that while a few human being nurture the little guys, the rest of us humans have passively harmed their habitat. Dr Luis Zambrano and colleagues at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, based in Mexico City report in the journal Biological Conservation:

"... As [Mexico] City has increased in size, it has dramatically reduced the axolotl's natural habitat.

...The salamander now exists in just six isolated parts of the water system, often near to some of the few remaining natural springs supplying clear, fresh water.

...Most recent work shows that the reduction in water quality is one of the main factors driving the axolotl to extinction in the wild. Another is the presence of large numbers of introduced carp and tilapia fish, which both compete ecologically with axolotls for food and resource, and also eat axolotl eggs."

Read more here.

mental_floss

If you aren't already reading Mental Floss Magazine, it's time to pick it up. Find a copy at your local Whole Foods, mag stand, or subscribe here. I'm serious. If you don't, you'll have to wait a pretty long time to read Maggie Koerth-Baker's findings about the origins of those noble, inbred lab mice and their first breeders that have been and continue to be paramount in furthering our scientific understanding of cancer, Parkinson's disease, and pretty much anything else you can think of - because that article is not available online without a subscription.

Another article from the most recent issue needs reading: Tree Bark Eating for Beginners, by David Clark:

For the choicest strips of bark, be sure to go for the nutritious, tender inner layer known as the cambium. (Eating the outer bark would be no more pleasant than chomping into your bookshelf.) If some resin or gum oozes out as you pry off the main course, be sure to lap it up for quick energy. Here are a few fun ways to serve tree bark:

Raw. Shred finely and chew thoroughly.

Slice it into strips and boil it to make a rustic pasta. Top with sap, dandelion greens, or insect parts (see entry #2). Alternatively, you can add the noodles to a stew.

Dry and grind into flour. The ground bark is pretty versatile and can be mixed with water into a breakfast gruel, baked into bread, added to soup for extra body, or even guzzled straight like a Pixy Stick.

Reading the morning news...

Whenever I recommend Thomas L. Friedman's The Lexus and The Olive Tree, I struggle to articulate his take on globalization - perhaps because it takes reading the whole book to gain that greater understanding I so wish I could hand to people. Thankfully, my man wrote another typically insightful Op-Ed for today's NY Times. From Jao Flats, Botswana, Friedman connects the dots with 54 year old director of sustainability for Wilderness Safaris, Map Ives:

We’re trying to deal with a whole array of integrated problems — climate change, energy, biodiversity loss, poverty alleviation and the need to grow enough food to feed the planet — separately. The poverty fighters resent the climate-change folks; climate folks hold summits without reference to biodiversity; the food advocates resist the biodiversity protectors.

They all need to go on safari together.

“We need to stop thinking about these issues in isolation — each with its own champion, constituency and agenda — and deal with them in an integrated way, the way they actually occur on the ground,” argued Glenn Prickett, senior vice president with Conservation International. “We tend to think about climate change as just an energy issue, but it’s also about land use: one-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from tropical deforestation and agriculture. So we need to preserve forests and other ecosystems to solve climate change, not only to save species.”

But we also need to double food production to feed a growing population. “So we’ll need to do that without clearing more forests and draining more wetlands, which means farmers will need new technologies and practices to grow more food on the same land they use today — with less water,” he added. “Healthy forests, wetlands and grasslands not only preserve biodiversity and store carbon, they also help buffer the impacts of climate change. So our success in tackling climate change, poverty, food security and biodiversity loss will depend on finding integrated solutions from the land.”

This passage does not include Ives most fascinating - and so widely overlooked - observations on nature so find the entire op-ed here.

Save the Rain Forest

Paying landowners to protect the rain forests isn't a new idea. It's also not guaranteed to be as successful as we may hope because, unfortunately, local and global economic forces driving deforestation are often far more lucrative. The NY Times reports on recent efforts in Brazil:

Deforestation, a critical contributor to climate change, effectively accounts for 20 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions and 70 percent of the emissions in Brazil. Halting new deforestation, experts say, is as powerful a way to combat warming as closing the world’s coal plants.

But until now, there has been no financial reward for keeping forest standing. Which is why a growing number of scientists, politicians and environmentalists argue that cash payments — like that offered to Mr. Marcolini — are the only way to end tropical forest destruction and provide a game-changing strategy in efforts to limit global warming.

Unlike high-tech solutions like capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide or making “green” fuel from algae, preserving a forest yields a strikingly simple environmental payback: a landowner reduces his property’s emissions to zero.

Are you ready for some mind-blowing statistics? (Keep in mind, the Amazon accounts for about 17% of the world's forested area and deforestation and forest degradation make make up the second largest overall contributor to global warming) At the current deforestation rate, the Amazon is losing nearly 5 million acres per year. Since 1970, about 230,000 square miles have been lost. It is predicted that at the current rate, the Amazon will be cut in half by 2030. Do you know what the land sans trees is being used for? Cattle. In 2004, Brazil surpassed the United States as the largest meat exporter and has maintained approximately a 25% market share since.

I'm just saying... Who knows if paying the land owners will help. I bet a decreasing demand for meat would though. Bottom line: Saving the rain forest (or rainforest - it was one word in 1989) is one of our biggest challenges.

I couldn't resist...

Lovin' Nat Geo Right Now (as always)

Not only is the National Geographic Society sharing 150 vintage prints from their archives at an exhibition at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea beginning September 17th (read all about that awesomeness here), their newest issue features an article that truly brightened my day upon discovery. I'll give you a hint: Michael Pollan.

Okay, I'll give you more than a hint. It's about Orchids and it's fascinating. MP's "The Botany of Desire" changed my outlook on life and nature. His insight, study and consideration of the co-evolution between plants and animals captivates me. If you haven't read the aforementioned book, which examines the relationship human beings have had and continue to have with the cultivation of apples, tulips, potatoes and marijuana, think of this article as an introduction to this arena of Pollan's writing. Here's the teaser:

Love and Lies: How do you spread your genes around when you're stuck in one place? By tricking animals, including us, into falling in love.

By Michael Pollan

Photograph by Christian Ziegler

We animals don't give plants nearly enough credit. When we want to dismiss a fellow human as ineffectual or superfluous, we call him a "potted plant." A "vegetable" is how we refer to a person reduced to utter helplessness, having lost most of the essential tools for getting along in life. Yet plants get along in life just fine, thank you, and did so for millions of years before we came along. True, they lack such abilities as locomotion, the command of tools and fire, the miracles of consciousness and language. To animals like ourselves, these are the tools for living we deem the most "advanced," which is not at all surprising, since they have been the shining destinations of our evolutionary journey thus far. But the next time you're tempted to celebrate human consciousness as the pinnacle of evolution, stop to consider where you got that idea. Human consciousness. Not exactly an objective source.

You know you want to read on. And see Christian Ziegler's amazing photographs. Find the full article here.