The domestic marijuana market is slated to reach $35.8 billion this year, outpacing corn ($23bn) and soy ($17.6 bn) to become the country’s biggest cash crop, according to the Guardian. US Marijuana production has increased 10-fold since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 which resulted in tighter border controls.

We hear a lot these days about the hazards of industrial soy and corn, such as high input chemical fertilizers and genetically modified seeds, what are the pitfalls of increased marijuana farming?

While the article doesn’t state the relative acreage of pot to corn, or pot to soy, given what we’ve been paying our dealers in NYC (up to $560 per oz), it’s clear an acre of weed is worth a lot more than the same acre of feed - so we aren’t farming marijuana as intensely as we are other commodities. Also, pot farmers lack motivation to work that hard.

Salon strikes back at the anti-organic arguments of Nobelist Norman Borlaug and the recent Economist article on the organic revolution.

Quoting liberally from a paper by Berkeley biologist, Christos Vasilikiotis, the piece suggests that organic farming might be better able to feed the world.

Hunger is a problem of poverty, distribution, and access to food. The question then, is not “how to feed the world,” but rather, how can we develop sustainable farming methods that have the potential to help the world feed and sustain itself. Organic management practices promote soil health, water conservation and can reverse environmental degradation. The emphasis on small-scale family farms has the potential to revitalize rural areas and their economies. Counter to the widely held belief that industrial agriculture is more efficient and productive, small farms produce far more per acre than large farms. Industrial agriculture relies heavily on monocultures, the planting of a single crop throughout the farm, because they simplify management and allow the use of heavy machinery. Larger farms in the third world also tend to grow export luxury crops instead of providing staple foods to their growing population. Small farmers, especially in the Third World, have integrated farming systems where they plant a variety of crops maximizing the use of their land. They are also more likely to have livestock on their farm, which provides a variety of animal products to the local economy and manure for improving soil fertility. In such farms, though the yield per acre of a single crop might be lower than a large farm, total production per acre of all the crops and various animal products is much higher than large conventional farms … Conversion to small organic farms therefore would lead to sizeable increases of food production worldwide.

We love it when media sling organic tomatoes at each other’s heads.

The L.A. Times asks why we’re inclined to see the divine in a grilled cheese sandwich?

The word for it is “pareidolia” - perceiving patterns where none are intended.

“There’s a yearning out there for things spiritual; people have a great spiritual hunger,” quoth the pilgrim.

Though hardly a traditional Hanukkah activity, Martha Stewart teaches us how to make our own candles. No, really. Simply turn on your blow dryer, roll the wax around the wicking, and, um, 44 candles later you have something you can get for 89 cents at Fairway…only more Martha-y.

Eat healthy? Worry about your children’s lunches? Participate in a CSA?

ABC Television wants you to trade spouses. For $20,000, no less.

To Whom It May Concern:
I’m a Casting Producer with ABC Television and we’re looking to feature fabulous families who follow the raw foods diet - or a similar philosophy - on our upcoming show. I’d love to talk with families who are passionate about truly living and eating healthy. Has this diet enhanced your quality of life - or influenced your lifestyle and parenting style in other positive ways? Could another family learn a thing or two by experiencing your lifestyle? We want to hear from you!We’re currently casting for ABC’s hit family show, Wife Swap!

Read more »

Tuv Ha’Aretz gets a shoutout from the Chicago Tribune, “Organic kosher winning converts”.

Jews have a long tradition of thinking deeply about what the community should be eating, said Leah Koenig, coordinator of Tuv Ha’Aretz, an organization with sites on the East Coast, in Washington and Houston, which links synagogues and organic farms.

“In many ways, we’re expanding on the idea of keeping kosher,” she said. “Not by any means to replace it, but to think about what does it really mean for food to be fit in the 21st Century?”

It’s been a bad year for industrialized food, from bagged spinach to Taco Bell.

Eric Schlosser, of Fast Food Nation fame, says in a NYT Op-Ed that no food can be 100 percent safe all of the time, but in a less industrialized food economy, local producers and butchers can only harm a few people within their reach. In our vast corporate food chain, odds are good that bugs and nasties will be spread far and wide, 5000 people die each year in the US because of something they ate.

The pro-business policies of George Bush have made the situation worse, politicizing our watchdog agencies.

Since 2000, the fast-food and meatpacking industries have given about four-fifths of their political donations to Republican candidates for national office. In return, these industries have effectively been given control of the agencies created to regulate them.

The current chief of staff at the Agriculture Department used to be the beef industry’s chief lobbyist. The person who headed the Food and Drug Administration until recently used to be an executive at the National Food Processors Association.

Food safety inspections have dropped to 3,400 a year, from 35,000 in the 70s. But even without Bush, the oversight structure is badly misaligned.

The F.D.A. is responsible for the safety of eggs still in their shells; the Agriculture Department is responsible once the shells are broken. If a packaged ham sandwich has two pieces of bread, the F.D.A. is in charge of inspecting it — one piece of bread, and Agriculture is in charge. A sandwich-making factory regulated by the Agriculture Department will be inspected every day, while one inspected by the F.D.A. is likely to be inspected every five years.

Neither agency has the power to recall contaminated food (with the exception of tainted infant formula) or to fine companies for food-safety lapses. And when the cause of an outbreak is unknown, it’s unclear which agency should lead the investigation.

Democrats, Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois, have proposed a Safe Food act to combat our government bungling.

The bill has been in committee since 2004.

The Economist lays out the complexities of today’s local and organic questions.

If your organic January tomato was flown in from Chile, is it better for the environment, emissionswise, than a local hothouse version?

If organic farming produces lower yields, then there’s more land under cultivation - and, perhaps, less for the rainforest?

Do “fair-trade” practices upset the signals of an efficient market, are they a subsidy to farmers that disincentivizes diversification and quality, does the fair trade subsidy prevent adoption of more profitable crops and methods?

Argued in typical Economist fashion: a) set up a straw man, knock the man down b) and on the otherhand, maybe the straw man was right after all, with caveats — the piece still deserves a read for doing a better job than most of establishing the parameters of the debate.

Rabbi: People are parve. Breast milk is parve. When you accidentally cut your finger while you’re cooking, it doesn’t make the dish fleishig. We’re parve.

Me: What about chicken? Why isn’t chicken parve?

Rabbi: Because it’s more like meat than it is like fish.

Me: When was the last time you milked a chicken?

A conference about Jews and food might cause some to think of people trading chicken soup and brisket recipes. But this was a different kind of conference, and a different group of Jews.

Organic, sustainable and compost were the buzzwords, with most participants saying they wouldn’t eat chicken soup unless it was made with ethically-raised, free-range chickens. And brisket? Only if the cows were grass-fed, leaving kosher consumers with few options.

Hazon convened this group of 150 people, chefs and farmers, CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) members, educators and food enthusiasts to talk about how the every-day decision of what to eat is loaded with numerous consequences, and how eating organically is not only the health-conscious choice, but the environmentally-sound one as well.

Hazon first made a name for itself with its environmental bike rides, both in the United States and Israel. While the rides have grown in scope, it is now changing the way Jews think about food. With Tuv Ha’aretz, it’s CSA program, it has numerous synagogues in cities across the country supporting CSAs, where synagogue members buy shares in a farm, and receive a box of organic produce each week, with the synagogue as the pick-up point.

Tuv Ha’Aretz is expanding to include more cities next year, and this conference was at first meant to be a leadership retreat for those involved. But interest quickly grew beyond that.

The Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Conn. was the setting, where a group of 20-somethings live off the land in community each summer, growing their own organic vegetables, collecting eggs, and milking goats. The Adamah-niks, as they are called, were a significant presence, offering fermentation tips and drumming whenever given the chance.

At one workshop a child obesity expert offered startling statistics about this epidemic, while at another, people practiced eating as a meditation, noticing the texture of a carrot slice, the crunch of a potato chip, the juiciness of a grape. A panel of Jewish farmers spoke about how they are bringing the Torah to life every day, as the Bible is a largely agricultural story, and a chef and cookbook author spoke about how disposable chopsticks are depleting the rainforests, telling participants that the simple act of refusing them at restaurants is one small way to make a difference.

Rabbi Natan Margalit made the point that a Jews’ notion of kashrut should be expanded to consider the entire journey the food on one’s plate has made. If one cannot feel good about the way in which it was raised, and grown, then what does it mean to bless it?

To Blog or Not To Blog (on Shabbat) - that is the question.

The traditional halachic answer would have been “of course not” - end of subject.

The pluralist answer would be “why not?” - different Jewish people observe (and don’t observe) shabbat in myriad different ways. If someone wants to blog as part of their celebration of shabbat - or because they don’t keep shabbat at all, then why on earth not?

Here’s a third view. We respect tradition - but we’re not _not_ blogging because of a traditional understanding of shabbat. And we do respect the myriad ways that Jews keep or don’t keep shabbat.

But here’s the scoop - we’re not gonna blog on shabbat - but from a different place.

Not because we believe in a traditional sense that it’s against halacha.
But because in a postmodern sense, we still see the Jewish people as being against paganism; and the paganism of this generation isn’t  Wiccans and  witches, it’s the world of 24/7. It’s bad for the world, and it’s bad for people - and as Jews, we’re the people who introduced into human history the idea of shabbat, and the related ideas of shmitta and yovel. Resting reminds us that we inherit this earth, we don’t own it. Resting is good for us, good for our families, good for our communities.

So we respect the ways that you keep or don’t keep shabbat. We actively defend your right to fly to Vegas and buy a bacon breakfast - on Shabbat. But we nevertheless, for ourselves, aren’t blogging on Shabbat, because we choose to rest and celebrate - and we invite you to consider doing likewise. Including switching off that fine computer you’re using right now…

Shabbat shalom - and chanukah sameach. May this year’s candles see miracles and happiness for all…

:-)

The Jew !

Children at Latkes to Lattes conference kneading challah dough.

Children and parents at the cob-fed oven at Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center.

More to follow!

I had an amazing morning. Here was just the first little bit:

I went for a walk with Marco and Talia (aged 3) to find the goats and the hens. The goats are just roaming around, doing hen-like things, and looking pretty happy. The difference between how they live and the pictures one sees of hens in cages is pretty dramatic. Last year some of the Adamahniks gave me eggs from here - they were like eggs I’d never eaten before; kind of like the eggs that Michael Pollan describes in Omnivore’s Dilemma — dark and rich and strong. The eggs of happy hens.

So then we wanted to find the goats; and en route bumped into Eitan, Freedman’s very own Jewish goat herd. Standing there with a big shovel, a load of old food, and four big bins of compost. Here’s the conversation, roughly:

Marco (who’s a Wall St guy — and an interesting one): You’re composting that?

Eitan: yeah. I let the hens eat the leftover food from Freedman for about a day, but then I compost it, because you don’t wanna let mold grow on it, or too much bacteria — the hen feces is good for compost, but not good for the hens to eat.

Marco: Yeah. And great compost.

Eitan: Yeah — do you compost?

Marco: Yeah — we have a place at the beach and we compost and grow stuff — asparagus, tomatoes, cucumbers.

Eitan: What kind of cucumbers?

Marco: The Amira ones, the little Israeli ones.

Eitan: Oh yeah, Persian, they’re really great.What do you use for mulch?

Marco: We harvest seaweed, at the seashore…

Eitan: That’s really cool

Marco: …And we have great raised beds; a few years ago this guy from the circus gave us some tiger feces, it was really good

Eitan: Wow, that’s really cool — carnivore feces just has totally different bacteria. Great compost…

And I’m stood there and I’m thinking: I’m an urban Jew. I’ve never grown a cucumber. I don’t know what an amira cucumber is — and maybe I’ve eaten one, and maybe not. And I’ve never composted. And tiger feces — and it’s relative merits in composting — who knew??

And how cool for Talia and her sisters to grow up like this.

And then a different question: Eitan makes goat cheese. It’s great cheese - I’ve eaten it. But it’s not being served at this conference. How come — because it’s not hechshered.

Has to have a hechsher, otherwise we can’t serve it. So it’s not kosher, right?
Wrong! Ridiculously wrong!!

Eitan’s cheese is the most kosher cheese you could meet in the whole world.
The goat is called Zilpah! She’s milked by a Jewish guy — called Eitan. He makes cheese, very simply. Kosher rennet — hechshered kosher rennet. And gives it to me, who eats it. I know the goat, and the guy who made the cheese, and what went in it - how often is that true of the cheese you eat?

And then I went to a great session Arlin Wasserman did — “What’s In A Symbol?” - all about this stuff. The kosher market in the US is now $140 billion a year — hot dogs alone, $30bn. People choose it, according to his data, 35% on taste, 16% because they like the guidelines, 5% because it’s safe or healthier, 8% because they’re observant, 4% because they can’t get halal, and 8% because they’re veggie or for other reasons.

Well: I want the market to be $140,000,001,000 — because I think we should buy $1,000 of Eitan’s cheese this year — at least — and I want someone to be able to certify in a really simple way that it’s kosher…

– The Jew

What is it to be a Jew these days, and not have a little guilt, or a little dilemma, or a little identity crisis? We have an amazing 3000 year old history. We live in all places of the world. We’re strugling with a tradition that is at times grounding, liberating, shackling, horribly out of date, incredibly meaningful and powerful. Writing as The Jew on this blog, is essentially a conversation between tradition and post-modernity.

So — let me tell you about dinner. This evening we ate amazing food — starting off with pumpkin snacks, grown here by the Adamahniks; and lasagne and kale and salad for dinner — and writing it simply doesn’t let you know how great it was. And then bensching — introduced by Rabbi Beccy Joseph, and Tali Weinberg, the farm manager here at Freedman. How often do you get to bless the food you’ve eaten with a rabbi and a farmer — and Beccy introduced bensching, but Tali actually led it. An amazing sense of kavannah, of shleimut, of coming home.

There are three interwoven conversations — at least three! — that thread through this conference, and this blog. One is “the wandering Jew” — all the countries we’ve traveled through, all the foods, all the traditions. Different recipes for charoset — from Yemen, Egypt, Venice - America today. All the history, all the recipe books. Bagels, chopped liver.

The second is the land of Israel. That we arose as an indiginous people, in relation to land and place — and food. The sheva minim — the seven indiginous species that grow in Israel; named in the Torah — and in May this year a bunch of Jews (and Palestinians and Jordanians, both Moslem and Christian) cycled from Jerusalem to Ashkelon — and in that one day, we passed all seven species growing. What’s our relationship to Israel — especially if we don’t live there?

And the third is the contemporary conversation about where food comes from, and local food, and eating sustainably. Omnivore’s Dilemma; Fast Food Nation; Wendell Berry; Chez Panisse.

And here’s where The Jew is at: how do these three conversations fit together? How do they shed light on each other? What happens if eating local is a key value - how then do you eat traditional Jewish food? Or vice versa?

What if you eat kosher meat — and it’s a value to eat grass-feed beef, like at Polyface Farm? I know of two couples who in the last year switched from eating kosher meat, even if not organic, to organic meat, even if not kosher? (We’ll introduce them to Simon Feil, who’s here, who wants to create grass-fed kosher organic beef).

For more questions, about why this night, and this Jew, are different… stay tuned.