Food and Faith

Food & Family

My younger daughter, a sophomore in college, is spending the last days of her Spring Break with me in Northern California. While in route from her friend’s home in Reno, she starts texting me with requests: vanilla flavored coffee creamer, a favorite beverage, and calzone for dinner. 

I first encountered calzone while on a charted sailboat in the Puget Sound. Long before either daughter’s arrival into this world, their father and I had booked a vacation with our best friends that involved a sailing ship, a crew, and the San Juan Islands. Also beer. The crew was a husband and wife team that was an extraordinary combination of opposites. He loved the ocean and the sailing. She loved the farm and animal tending. They took turns living in each other’s world. In the warm season they offered themselves and their boat out as a charter. In the rainy Pacific Northwest winters, they tended the farm. He piloted the boat and she pulled the most extraordinary meals out of kitchen that was two feet by two feet at best. This was 1982 and she used the Moosewood Cookbook.

One of the first things I did when I got back to shore was to find a copy of that cookbook. 

the world according to monsanto

This morning, I'm adding this late-breaking news from Germany...

Germany bans Monsanto's GM maize

Germany is to ban the cultivation of genetically modified (GM) maize - the only GM crop widely grown in Europe.The decision, announced on Tuesday by German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, is a blow to the US biotech firm Monsanto, which markets the maize.

Monsanto's variety, called MON 810, is resistant to the corn borer, a moth larva which eats the stem. MON 810 is controversial in the EU. Several countries have banned it, defying the European Commission.

Ms Aigner, a member of the conservative Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU), said she had concluded that "there is a justifiable reason to believe that... MON 810 presents a danger to the environment".The variety has been allowed in Germany since 2005. Ms Aigner said the decision to ban it now, based on new data, was purely scientific, not political. She also said it was a specific case, and not a fundamental decision against all GM crops.

In March EU governments resisted European Commission pressure to get bans on MON 810 lifted. The commission wanted Austria and Hungary to allow cultivation of MON 810. The variety is also banned in France and Greece. The UK was among a handful of countries that supported the commission's position, the AFP news agency reports.

Germany was planning to sow MON 810 on just 3,600 hectares (8,892 acres) for this summer's harvest, mostly in its eastern states. Opponents of GM crops say more scientific data is needed, arguing that their long-term genetic impact on humans and wildlife could be harmful.The biotech industry says the crops are as safe as traditional varieties, and that they would provide plentiful, cheaper food.

Story from BBC NEWS:http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/7998181.stm

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The church may have much to say on this issue of genetic engineering, something that has traditionally been in God's portfolio. 

I trust you'll find this series of videos on Monsanto enlightening...  

There is interest among our partners about Monsanto, especially in India where there has been enthusiastic resistance against their efforts to grow transgenic crops. Chetna is one such group, which is part of Joining Hands. 

Enjoy the film...

Of Aging Mothers, Health Care, and the Making of Soup

About two weeks ago my brother called to tell me that my mother was in the Emergency room and he was on his way there. I am the sibling that lives hundreds of miles away from home and he is the one who lives just on the other side of the city from Mom.  My mother had called for an ambulance because she was in great pain. She was sent home with some painkillers but no diagnosis. Five days later, I flew up to spend the weekend with her in her apartment at the assisted living facility she moved herself into several years ago.

Mom was spending most of her time asleep except for the brief hour or so every six hours when the pain meds kicked in. I arrived on the same day as her diagnosis - a collapsed vertebrae that screamed bloody murder every time she needed to turn her body.  We had a diagnosis but not a treatment plan. The MRI doctor didn’t call until after 5 on a Friday evening. We’d have to wait until Monday morning when mom’s internist opened up his office again. 

On her own, Mom was okay in her apartment. The upside of the high rent she had been paying meant she had a call button necklace she could press whenever she needed assistance to get out of bed and visit the bathroom. She could order food in from the dining hall downstairs. I was there because I could be. I was there because I wanted to give my brother, who had been very intensely involved, a break. I was there because I wanted to be there, watching over her. One of the qualities in her I observed that weekend was her ability to persevere, to just put her head down and get through the situation. My mother was born in 1933, when the Great Depression and clearly taken hold but before the basic safety nets had been put into place. Her father was killed by a drunk driver when my mother was six months old. For the first three years of her life, my mother was moved from family member to family member until she was adopted by friends of friends at the age of three years. There wasn’t a lot of milk in her diet. Her bones are now crumbling into bits and pieces within her. 

tent cities sprout up

Shanty town: The tent city is already home to dozens of people, many left without jobs because of the credit crunch

No, that isn't Peru or South Africa. It's Sacramento, California.

With America's economy in freefall and its housing market in crisis, California's state capital has become home to a tented city for the dispossessed. Read the story in UK's MailOnline sent this morning by Luis in Puerto Rico.

The prospects for developing countries and the billions of poor around the world are even worse. The United Nations predicts the food crisis will continue. Despite a drop in prices since last year, they are still higher than they were. Plus, the lower prices mean fewer crops being planted so prices will inevitably climb. One estimate says $700 billion is needed by developing countries to avoid collapse.

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On a topic closer to home, honey bees need your help! But you can think about it as helping yourself.

Every third bite of food we take is produced with honey bee help. They pollinate a third of our food, but bee colonies are collapsing, and their populations are plummeting because of parasites and pesticide exposures.

Take Action Now! Tell the EPA to protect honey bees from a toxic pesticide.

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Past posts from Food and Faith Blog that covered this sticky issue:

• Bee deaths linked to Bayer pesticides
• Today? A buffet

one great hour of sharing video

They did a nice job on the One Great Hour of Sharing video. May it generate much food for all!

sushinomics

Anyone like sushi as much as me?

Unfortunately, the demand for this luxury is pushing fishers to ever farther and deeper oceans. Smaller-scale fishers are just out of luck.

These charts from Foreign Policy tell the story.

Secretary of Agriculture

Food Democracy Now! has prepared a petition listing names for Barack Obama's selection of the next Secretary of Agriculture. See and sign it here.