Corporate consolidation and power in the food system: An interview with Dr. Mary Hendrickson

Posted by Alison Nihart  |  June 21, 2013

Mary Hendrickson is Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology at the University of Missouri. Her research focuses on local food systems and consolidation in the industrial food system. She will speak at the UVM Food Systems Summit on June 27. In anticipation, we spoke with her about why these issues are important for farmers and eaters alike.

University of Vermont: Your research has investigated the role of corporate consolidation in the agri-food industry. Why is this issue important?

Mary Hendrickson: My work has always focused on the structure of relationships in the food system, and how local food systems can be a response to the power issues that emerge in the more globalized and consolidated industrial food system. It can feel very disempowering to only look at the issues of industry concentration. So it’s important to look at what the solutions might be. Continue reading →

Posted in Economic, Environmental, Health, Social | 12 Comments

Meet Teresa Mares – a scholar on migrant farm worker food access and speaker at the UVM Food Systems Summit

Posted by Guest Author  |  June 20, 2013

By Jessie Mazar

Jessie Mazar is a 2013 graduate of the UVM Global Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences. During her time at UVM, she had the opportunity to work closely with Teresa Mares, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at UVM. Teresa will speak at the UVM Food Systems Summit on June 27. In anticipation, we asked Jessie to share something about her experience working with Teresa.

Teresa Mares

We are driving on roads lined with cornfields, the smell of manure, and dead ends, scanning every small town for an open creemee shop. This is Franklin County, steeped in agricultural heritage in the northwest corner of Vermont, bordering Canada. In a somewhat ironic twist to our search for creemees, Teresa Mares and I are here on part of a food access project, called Huertas, which works with Latino/a migrant farm workers who live and work on isolated dairy farms. These folks, who work on average 10 hours/day, 6 days/week, exist invisibly in Vermont’s working agricultural landscape. Because of this dynamic, it is hard to know exactly, but there are an estimated 1500 Latino/a farm workers fueling the dairy industry of Vermont. While Vermont policies provide some protections for migrant farm workers relative to other states, we still share a border with Canada—“La otra frontera” or “The Other Border” as Teresa has called it, which is patrolled by federal immigration enforcement. Continue reading →

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Gary Nabhan on Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land

Posted by Guest Author  |  June 13, 2013

This interview was originally published on June 12, 2013, by Chelsea Green Publishers. 

Gary NabhanGary Nabhan is an internationally-celebrated nature writer, food and farming activist, and proponent of conserving the links between biodiversity and cultural diversity. Gary will speak at the upcoming UVM Food Systems Summit on June 27. He recently spoke with Chelsea Green about the relevance of his new book on agriculture and climate change, Growing Food in a Hotter, Drier Land.

Chelsea Green: What does global climate change have to do with America’s failure to produce more food than its people consume for the third straight year?

Gary Nabhan: For starters, over 2,200 counties declared national drought disaster areas in 2012, four times more than in 2011. Farmers applied for $13 billion dollars of federal insurance due to crop failures and reduced yields, more than twice the running average per year. Increasingly unprecedented climatic disruption is affecting farmers, ranchers, foragers and fishers more than ever before, and yet big agriculture’s lobbyists like the American Farm Bureau Federation deny that we’re entering a “new normal.” Sadly, that disadvantages its own rank and file members by not developing programs that prevent crop failure, as if crop insurance for more failed farms will be sufficient. Continue reading →

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Smell Blind: The Asparagus ‘Bouquet’ Phenomenon, Or Why Your Pee Smells Funny (and Why You May Not Smell it)

Posted by Cynthia Belliveau  |  June 11, 2013

Cynthia Belliveau is dean of Continuing Education (CE) and Distance Learning and faculty in Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Vermont. In June, CE will host the second annual Food Systems Summit, which includes a public conference on June 27.

asparagusFor most people, the fresh, strong, grassy flavor of asparagus symbolizes the onset of spring. True enough, but if you also don’t also associate asaparagus with the strongest urine smell on earth, your olfactory sense must be on the fritz. What happens in digestion that this delicious, elegant vegetable can make you want to spray air freshener immediately upon leaving the seat?

According to the 1975 study by chemist Robert H. White at the University of California at San Diego, this “asparagus urine phenomena” is caused from s-methyl thioesters – or in quasi-layperson’s terms, odor-causing compounds.

“It” smells like grassy sulfur within 10 minutes after consumption. For those of you who eat asparagus and haven’t experienced this “bouquet,” here’s why: Recent research studies show that although everyone produces the smelly compound in their urine, only 22 percent can smell it. This is because only 22 percent of us have the genetic trait, or the one-single gene within a 50-gene cluster of olfactory receptors, that can pick up the odiferous tones of these delicate spears. The rest of the population – and lucky for them – are smell blind.

So for the 78 percent who can’t smell it and of the 22 percent who don’t care, here is one of my favorite asparagus recipes. It’s a classic. While you are at the market shopping for asparagus, remember that thin is not better. In fact, those thin spears are young and stringy while the thick ones are older and far more succulent. If you are in Burlington, Vermont, go to the Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings and head right for Jane Pomykala’s stall for the most delicious, thick asparagus you’ve ever tasted (she also sells at City Market).

Jane has “old” beds as she calls them that have produced for decades and are at the peak of perfection.

Now, back to the recipe. Asparagus likes to be paired with starches, like pasta, or rice, or potatoes. Starch is the perfect complement base for the stronger tones of asparagus. A bit of salty meat and a dash of cream all tossed with linguine and cheese make for a mouth-watering spring treat.

Asparagus with Prosciutto and Linguine

(Serves Four)

Preparation time – 15 minutes

Ingredients

  • 1 pound of linguine
  • 1 pound of thick local asparagus (cut bottom end off is it feels tough), cut into 2 inch pieces, separating the spear tops.
  • 1/8 pound thinly sliced prosciutto (or ham), finely chopped
  • 1 tablespoon of butter
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Liberal amounts of black pepper
  • 1 cup heavy cream or light cream for thinner consistency
  • 1 cup grated Parmesan cheese (best if you grate it yourself)

Instructions

  1. Boil water for pasta. When water comes to a boil, add the asparagus, bottom pieces first and cook for three minutes and then add the rest and cook for another three minutes. Test as you go to determine the consistency you like.
  2. With a slotted spoon, take the asparagus out and set aside. Return the greenish asparagus water (full of vitamins) to a boil and add linguine. Stir the pasta around with a fork. Remember, pasta likes to “swim,” so make sure your pot is big enough for it to do so!
  3. While your pasta is cooking, sauté the ham in the butter and oil until crisp on medium heat. Stir in stock, salt and pepper (always taste as you go) and cook, uncovered for 10 minutes or until somewhat thickened. Test to see if your pasta is done. Drain and set aside. Once the sauce has thickened, add the cream to heat only.
  4. In a bowl, add the pasta and asparagus, and toss with sauce and 1/3 cup of Parmesan (leave the rest for the table). Taste for salt. You can always add more cream if you want more sauce.
  5. Serve immediately with a salad of spring greens.

Bon appetit (and let me know if you smell the difference later)!

I eat this versatile dish for lunch, for dinner with a green salad, and as a side dish with roasted meat. It’s ideal picnic fare, too, since it will keep at room temperature for several hours with no ill effects, which is what you want in a fresh summer dish.

Posted in Health | 1 Comment

It’s Hard to Eat Good Food

Posted by Guest Author  |  June 6, 2013

By Beth Dixon

Beth Dixon is a Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh. She visited UVM recently for a faculty workshop on the ethics of eating. We invited her to share some of her thoughts on the complex issue of food justice.

In The American Way of Eating, Tracie McMillan concludes her year of investigative reporting with this remark, “Food is not a luxury lifestyle product. It is a social good.” If food is a social good, then we should ask how to make nutritious food available to all people irrespective of their social and political location. Perhaps one way to make progress in this area of social justice is to identify the various ways in which food choices are constrained by structural inequities that create obstacles to being adequately nourished.

For example, how hard is it to follow the “eater’s manifesto” described by Pollan’s very inspiring book, In Defense of Food? This depends on who you are and the constraints on food choices created by your particular circumstances. The kinds of circumstances that constrain the freedom to eat nutritious food include: lack of money, lack of time, no transportation, no accessible place to shop, diminished physical mobility, or ineffectual public policy at the local, state, federal, or global levels that restricts access to food.

Food pantry recipients will have a hard time following Pollan’s advice to, “Pay more, eat less.” Those living in low income urban areas where there are “grocery gaps” may have trouble finding a place where food is sold that is not also a fuel stop for cars. Seniors who use a walker may not avail themselves of the local farmers’ markets even when there is public transportation that connects living and shopping areas. Some seniors also may find it difficult to follow Pollan’s suggestion not to eat alone. And those who work two or three jobs for minimum wage will not have the energy or time to “cook, and plant a garden.”

In many settings, the key to create easier access to nutritious food for people whose choices are constrained in these ways is social and political change. But local, state, federal and global policy and regulations involving food are subject to a variety of interest groups. These social and political conditions are not under the control of particular individuals who lack political power and influence.

Let’s explore Pollan’s suggestions through the lens of some food justice stories that highlight some of these constraints:


(1) “Cook and, if you can, plant a garden”

  • Watch The Garden, a documentary film produced by Scott Hamilton Kennedy.
  • Watch Ron Finley, a guerrilla gardener in South Central L. A.

 

(2) “Pay more, eat less”

 


(3) “Don’t get your fuel from the same place your car does”

 


(4) “Try not to eat alone”

  • Consider those in senior living facilities
  •  

 

If we can identify the faces of those who are not free to choose nutritious food, we are one step closer to identifying why this is so; and one step closer to proposing solutions to correct for inequality of access to fresh, nutritious food.

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