Politics of Food Blogged
Having tried my hand at the conference-reporting lark, I have enormous respect for people like Robert Hijmans, who did us proud with his series on Harlan II, and, now, Elanor over at The Ethicurean. She (?) has been at a conference on the Politics of Food held at North Carolina State University. From what looks like a groaning table of dishes, Elanor picked on a panel on the Food Crisis, and manages to be impressed, to gush, and to be self-aware all at the same time. To whit:
It was one “a-ha†moment after another. Even the ag economist’s graphs gave me a rush. (Please don’t tell anyone that I said that, though — it’s embarrassing.)
As is customary here, I’m not going to steal Elanor’s thunder by summarizing what she has to say. Just that I found the report exciting and stimulating, and the policy shifts she mentioned made an awful lot of sense to me too. Not to mention some of the figures about investment in agriculture and growth in GDP; those are definitely going to come in handy, and soon.
Money quote:
News coverage of the food crisis has focused on the global poor as consumers whose lives are thrown out of whack by rising prices. The obvious solution, as they frame it, is to do anything necessary to make food prices low again. But in many cases, the poor are actually farmers or workers in the ag supply chain — or they used to be. If they were farmers still, they’d be making pretty good money right now. Ugarte was asking a profound question: Is the food crisis really about prices? Or is it, at its core, about policy and ownership?
Answers on a postcard, please.
Nibbles: Hops, Green Revolution, Leeks, Hemp, Ethical eating, Cuba, Farmers’ markets
- Brewers vertically integrate themselves. Like Snoopy Miller.
- They met, we ate.
- Roman garden recreated in Wales, complete with leeks.
- “There are around 45,000 different uses for hemp.”
- Drawing the ecotarian line.
- Cuban urban agriculture sprouts anew after Ike.
- List of farmers markets in the US. Luigi asks: where’s the GoogleMaps mashup?
French man saves seeds in India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pQBfwF0TVQ
I found this in a post at the Permaculture Research Institute, USA. The video is rather good, I reckon, although there were a couple of parts where I disagreed with the subtitling. More worrying, I think, is the sub-text. Do the Indians need a foreigner to teach them to save seeds? To get them access to traditional varieties from all over, that they can then trial in their own systems. Why no mention of the fact that what Stephan Fayon is doing in India, he could not do legally in France? Kokopelli India is an offshoot of Kokopelli Seed Foundation, which is a US vehicle to support the aims of Association Kokopelli in France. Amazingly, Association Kokopelli has had nothing new to say about its euros 35,000 fine for “unfair trading” since the fine was levied. It’s all very odd.
Harlan II – Field trip
Robert Hijmans puts his money where his mouth is.
I took the train to Berkeley, less than two hours from Davis towards San Francisco. I checked in at the French hotel and dined in the restaurant across the street. We are talking about Alice Waters’ place, Chez Panisse a restaurant well known to the readers of this blog and in-flight magazines.
There is the formal restaurant downstairs (fully booked) and the café upstairs (a late table was available). I had wine made of Zinfandel grapes. ((Quintessential Napa, only recently discovered to be the Croatian variety “Crljenak Kasteljanski” — or so I learned at Harlan II.))
I took the US$29 fixed menu. It had a garden lettuce salad, spaghetti alla Norma with eggplant, tomato, basil, and ricotta salata, and a Concord grape sherbet with roasted Thompson seedless grapes and langues de chat. ((Sic. Why the mix of English, Italian and French?))
These were the variety names on today’s menu: Concord grape, Thompson seedless grapes, and Little Gems lettuce.
And these were the farm names on the menu: Cannard Farm ((As in: “Cannard Farm rocket with shaved zucchini, pine nuts, and pecorino, $9.00”)), Andante Dairy, Soul Food Farm, Marin Sun Farm, Lagier Ranches, and Frog Hollow Farm.
Terroir trumps agrobiodiversity at Alice’s place.
It is a good restaurant. It is very French. The waiter spoke of terroir as if his name were Claude Duchateu. It is very cheap for a famous restaurant. It has a local twist to it. The food is good. But is mainstream now. The menu in the Davis Best Western Palm Court was not that different.
I suppose it is fair what everybody says, that Alice created some sort of revolution. From the wasteland of the American diner to Good Food. Just like her neighbor Alfred Peet transformed mainstream American coffee from diluted sewage to the best coffee anywhere save (perhaps) Italy. But that is ancient history.
But, just for your information, Chez Panisse is passé now. Go look somewhere else. I have heard of an underground restaurant movement in New York.
Chez Panisse is sold out every night, I think. Alice can experiment. But she does not. She chooses the middle of the road. Their produce comes from “farms, ranches, and fisheries guided by principles of sustainability” but the majority of entrees (main dishes) are a fish or meat dish.
Chuck out the meat. Serve different varieties of other veggies than tomatoes (even the Andronico’s supermarket across the street sells heirlooms). Use something locally evolved rather than merely locally grown. The native Californians used hundreds of edible plants. ((Full disclosure: After being captured and given the opportunity, Ishi, the last ‘wild’ Californian Indian, quickly switched to a doughnut diet.)) But no miner’s lettuce or acorns on the menu of the Queen of Slow Food. Come on, Alice, surprise me!
P.S. That pasta was really good though. I will go back tomorrow to further investigate the case.