It’s been mighty lonely here at the top of the food chain.

Julia Baum of the official title of Postdoctoral Associate for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at University of Santa Barbara. Your young nieces and nephews just call her a sharkologist.

sipped

tree research has some crazy statistics. The population of white tip sharks, was considered the most common large species on Earth until the year 1960 fell by 99 percent in the Gulf of Mexico (and that was before the oil spill). populations of smooth hammerhead and bull sharks off the east coast of the United States have also of 99 percent decreased. Considering all of the northwestern Atlantic shark species, tree found that most were healthy populations of 40 percent, were the least of 90 percent or more.

disappear

“Shark fishermen are like roving bandits, serially depleting populations said in every ocean, tree . There are currently no regulations shark fishing in the open ocean. This spring, missed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an opportunity that falls when it outright from even a minimum of protection to give scalloped hammerhead sharks, white tip sharks, sharks and dogfish sharks reverse herring.

Share on Facebook

Tweet This Post

farm succession Workshop – June 23-24, 2010 in Iowa NW (Sioux County Extension). Additional Information | Register Online International Farm Transition Network is its annual conference July 20 to 23 , 2010 in Ohio host. more Beginning Farmer Center and Leopold Center Enterprise Release Budget Committee – Popcorn, beekeeping, sheep, sorghum, corn, and more for farm families Investing Course helps farmers plan for a secure future . Sponsored by extension read more Managing Tough Times website
ISU Extension Web site with resources for families and households, Terms and municipalities, agriculture in today’s changing Business, Administration dairy Finance, and more. user Do you want to retire or start out in agriculture? On Farm Program New opportunities has for beginning farmers. Beginning Farmers

Editor’s Note: This is Part X of a series. If you haven’t already, be sure to catch Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI, Part VII, Part VIII, and Part IV!

All photographs copyright © Craig Mackintosh
My time in Chile was encouraging. It gives me some hope in mankind [...]

View full post on Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

So we’ve covered the how-tos of stocking your pantry before, but we liked this post on the same subject, from the blog Simple Bites. Sure, there’s a list of basics and a checklist for personalizing your pantry, but we dug this list of reminders as to why you should stock your pantry — besides the obvious reason of needing to eat, that is:

Stocking your pantry helps you steer clear of prepackaged and processed foods, makes it easy to come up with last-minute meals, saves you money by allowing you to stock when food items are on sale, keeps food on hand in case of an emergency (remember all those snow days last winter?), and helps maintain a healthy diet full of real foods.

from Sift

View full post on Sift

The following post was submitted by Joe Cloud, partner in T&E Meats, a small-scale locally focused slaughterhouse in Harrisonburg, Va. I wrote about T&E in the WaPo and invited Joe to post his thoughts on this blog. – SF

 By Joe Cloud

This is usually the slowest time of the year for butchering, but T&E Meats is booked months in advance, like the other small meat processing plants in Virginia. We’re working at almost full capacity to bring locally grown, pasture-raised, and humanely slaughtered quality meats to market. 

But, right now, our future is looking tenuous due to newly proposed regulations from the USDA.

Picture an hourglass and you’ll understand the local, sustainable meat crisis: there are plenty of willing consumers looking for humanely raised, quality local meats, and there are more and more farmers looking to “meat” that consumer demand (sorry – couldn’t help myself!), but the real bottle neck is processing capacity. Small, community-based meat processing plants have become an endangered species in America, done in by an ocean of super-cheap industrial meat and the challenges and costs of meeting one-size-fits-all regulations.

Although species go extinct on earth on a regular basis, every so often there is a major event that comes along and wipes out 40% or 50%. The same happens in the small business world. A few businesses fold every year due to retirement, poor management, and changes in the market, and that is quite normal. But then every so often a catastrophic event comes along that causes a wholesale wipeout.

In the small meat businesses in America, catastrophic events result from changes high up in the regulatory food chain that make it very difficult for small plants to adapt. The most recent extinction event occurred at the turn of the millennium when Small and Very Small USDA-inspected slaughter and processing plants were required to adopt the HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Plan) system. It has been estimated that over 20%, perhaps more, of existing small plants went out of business when HACCP was first instituted. Now, proposed changes to HACCP threaten to take down many of the remaining local plants, making the availability of healthy, local meats a rare commodity.

This is ironic given the USDA's new emphasis on promoting local food production. The department's Know Your Farmer Know Your Food Program web site says it wants to "foster the viability and growth of small and mid-size farms and ranches, and we want to create new opportunities for farmers and ranchers by promoting locally produced foods." But the newly proposed regulations from the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), the inspection arm of the USDA, will reduce local opportunities for ranchers, never mind create new ones.

The intent of HACCP is to prevent contamination of meat by harmful pathogens. It does so by instituting well-recognized, established processes and controls set by the USDA itself. At T&E, we have had a HACCP Plan in place since 1999, and it works. We undergo extensive E.Coli testing every year, and have never had a positive sample.

But on March 19, the FSIS published a Draft Guidance on HACCP System Validation, outlining new rules which would institute much more intensive testing of all meats, whether or not a problem has been identified. These requirements will cost small plants tens of thousands of dollars, perhaps even hundreds of thousands, every year — a financial burden appears great enough to force many to shutter.

Now, the reason these rules are being proposed is clear: millions of pounds of recalled hamburger, e. coli food poisoning incidents and distrust by consumers and foreign trading partners of U.S. produced meat. But these problems have arisen at plants that handle thousands of animals a day in extremely fast-moving production lines.

Small plants operate quite differently. At T&E, for example, we process around 20 animals a day. I know which farmer delivered each animal, often because that same farmer wants his butchered animal back so he can sell it. We're not mixing thousands of animals of unknown provenance into piles of hamburger meat and then sending it all around the country. 

Perhaps a large plant slaughtering 5,000 animals per day can afford its own lab and microbiology staff, and can pass the cost along to the consumer. And perhaps they should, given the recalls arising from these large-scale facilities. But most small plants can’t handle it.

The USDA needs to recognize that "One Size Fits All" inspection no longer works. The risks arising from mega agribusiness plants are far different from community-based plants and they should be regulated appropriately. This does not mean lowering the hurdles for small processors. Rather it means tailoring regulations to the scale and risks of an operation. That way we can provide what the consumer wants – safe AND local food, not just the shrink-wrapped anonymous meat in the supermarket.

The USDA is accepting comments on this matter until June 19th, 2010. The original deadline was April 19. You can learn more at the Association of American Meat Processors web site, or the Niche Meat Processors Assistance Network.

Please submit a comment if you care about community-based meat processing and humanely produced meats. Your comments really do matter. Submit your comments to the email address DraftValidationGuideComments@fsis.usda.gov or to the
Docket Clerk, USDA, FSIS, Room 2-2127, 5601 Sunnyside Avenue, Beltsville, MD 20705.

View full post on Chews Wise

Editor’s Note: This is Part VIII of a series. If you haven’t already, be sure to catch Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV, Part V, Part VI and Part VII.

Contemplating the past, present and future – and land redistribution – in the middle of nowhere somewhere in Chile.

All photos © copyright Craig Mackintosh

He stares back at us from the t-shirts of millions of youths worldwide. Che Guevara’s face has become one of the most recognisable counter-cultural and political symbols ever known. The history books tell us the man was famously sympathetic to the lot of the poor, and that his overriding passion was to fight against inequality, oppression, control. A noble aim. Che comes to my mind as I write this article from South America, because, in his rise to power, one of his driving ambitions, and which became one of his key responsibilities under Castro, was land redistribution – where he sought to break the stranglehold that was keeping the masses impoverished and robbing them of their potential. I bring this topic up, as, when I look at what’s happening in the world, and the radical changes needed to put us onto a sustainable path, the issue keeps coming back to my mind. These two words – land redistribution – strike fear into the hearts of the rich, and feelings of ambition and even violent revolution in those of the poor, yet, if we’re to stake a claim on the future, I feel we must, both rich and poor, come to terms with them.

Those studying how to address our precipitant trends – our dire soil erosion issues, our increasingly desperate water situation, and the complete vulnerability of our having made our entire large scale food system, from seed-sowing to consumption, completely dependent on waning supplies of fossil fuels – will recognise the need to harmonise our culture with the realities of biology, of soil science, and the urgent need to diversify and relocalise our food production, and, indeed, the production of everything we need for human habitation.

Forging a permanent culture, particularly in the era of energy descent we now find ourselves in, necessitates a rapid shift of food production to small scale biodiverse systems – polycultures. A logical flow should cause us to turn to face our current predicament – where millions of farmers over the last fifty years have succumbed to the onslaught of ‘get big or get out’ agricultural policies and have done just that; gotten out. Most of the agricultural land in the ‘developed’ world today is held, and abused, by Big Agri. Indeed, only a handful of companies control the land, seed, fertilisers, pesticides and even distribution and sale of much of what we eat. Unfortunately it is not well recognised that the same can be said for much of the best land in the South as well, which is also largely serving only the needs of the wealthy – inefficiently, as industrial agriculture is – to the detriment of locals who should have the rights to that land (example) but who are exporting their water and their best soils in the produce that feeds the North.

The question of how to rapidly, but peacefully, transition society back to small scale farming systems should be on everyone’s mind, and should be pressed upon politicians at every turn. But, we should be aware that carving up land is never an easy ask. Historically, land redistribution almost never came without bloodshed. Land reforms, whether in the form of a centralised government-enforced collectivisation program or government-enforced redistribution, or whether by bloody grass-roots uprisings, are arguably the biggest cause of radicalisation, revolution and violent unrest within regional social contexts. The reason for this is simple – they are based on the most pressing of human needs: food and water.

But, worse, and this is central thought to this article: despite all the upheaval and unrest, usually these ‘reforms’, by whatever method, fail miserably.

Often, for example, the peasant class who might benefit from land redistribution look upon the situation as a way to ‘get even’ or to take back wealth from their ‘oppressors’. It becomes a class war, rather than a conscious, sober-minded and objective effort to rebuild society for the betterment of all.

Conversely, it is entirely difficult for those with large land titles to objectively appreciate the demands and needs of the landless – particularly when profits are still being made and an entire economy is based on the current paradigm. Just as medieval feudal lords fought to retain their hold on power, our contemporary corporate feudal lords will be just as unwilling to relinquish it.

And, often land reforms come to nothing because of a lack of skills, equipment or capital. People receive land, or take it by force, but then end up failing to accomplish anything with it simply due to their own inability to do so. Or, the rapid change brought about by redistribution rudely interrupts market mechanisms in place, and people fail to build a viable new system to replace it from one day to the next. This inability to plan, to strategically and objectively implement – to transition – has been the cause of some of the world’s worst famines and social implosions.

Why do I talk about these things in the context of this particular series? Well, the community development here at El Manzano is, I believe, better appreciated in the light of its historical context – and from it we may draw some lessons for the social adjustments we need to work towards and press for.

El Manzano history in a nutshell

In 1931, an ex-navy man by the name of Sydney Raby-Matthews (the great great grandfather of Grifen and Javiera’s son Anaru) bought 600 hectares of land right here in El Manzano, converting it to dairy pasture and installing electricity, fencing and roads. In the 1970s his son Lionel took over and continued with the same. El Manzano was highly self-sufficient in food, water, etc. and became a bustling little village with a much greater population than we see today.

This was the time of the Marxist politician Salvador Allende – one of whose defining acts was to expropriate lands from wealthy land holders for redistribution. The abject failure of this move set the stage for the U.S./CIA-backed military coup by Augusto Pinochet, whose regime, despite being highly repressive, happened to favour neo-liberal capitalism during the cold war years and thus endeared it to the U.S., who were, by the way, only too happy to assist him and other South American leaders in a rather muddied and murderous history.

Grifen Hope explains what happened here at El Manzano:

As the story goes, armed young men with training in Cuba came to El Manzano and rallied the villagers to take the land. They held the family at gunpoint for a few weeks in the house. They destroyed buildings and ate all the cows or herded them off. When the siege was over the leaders took everything of value – the machinery, tools and animals, etc., and left the campansinos the land. With nothing to work it they abandoned and sold it. People left and migrated to the cities of Concepcion and Santiago to find work.

Pinochet offered the land back to Lionel but he refused all but 120 hectares.

In 2004 the municipal government zoned El Manzano urban and shared the land with remaining families, giving them all a small plot. They have since constructed half of the promised homes, installed a pump, electrics and septic tank. Half the villagers remain in shacks. Around this time Maureen, the daughter of Lionel received the land and began to repair it. With her husband, Victor, CEO of a mining company, she planted 80 hectares of forest, re-employed seven of the villagers and began to live on the farm again. Her three children, Javiera (now my wife), Jorge and Jose, all with a passion for the farm and a desire to live here, trained as agricultural engineers and rallied to keep the farm in family hands and make it turn a buck.

Heavy influenced by Miguel Alteiri and Agroecology they began a process of transforming the farm to organic and started working with the village to improve quality of life.

Javiera, in a quest for knowledge that saw her visiting several countries, ultimately took a Permaculture Design Certificate course in New Zealand in 2006. One of her instructors, Grifen, quoted above, an accomplished kiwi permaculture practitioner and teacher, took an interest in both Javiera and El Manzano – resulting in Grifen leaving his country, culture and language behind to start anew in a strange land.

Investing in a future for all

Seeing great potential right here in El Manzano, Chile, the combined drive of Javiera and Grifen helped move the family’s plans ahead apace. Together they are seeing the kind of community development I’m endeavouring to share with you all. This development goes well beyond the kind of thinking that normally categorises land-holding elite. As well as seeking to transition the farm to sustainable systems and increasing diversity, some of the ‘oddities’ include:

• Encouraging and facilitating participatory decision-making for the community.
• A half/half system, where the farm supplies land, seeds, fertiliser (compost) and tools, and the villagers supply the labour. Come harvest time the villagers get half the produce. No money changes hands, no taxman, and fresh nutrient-dense food goes to families who do not possess sufficient land, and for very little input in time.
• Victor Carrion, the very supportive patriarch in this picture, is subsiding the farm with capital as it makes its transition.
• Maureen Raby, matriarch, is working with the family to bring to fruition long-studied plans to change the pattern of land ownership in the village. Legalities have yet to be finalised, but portions of land will be leased for token sums for long term use (100 years) by the community – for community facilities and common spaces (more details on this in a subsequent post). Rather than give land allotments to people outright – people who are not yet capable of making the most of it, or who are not fully aware of the crises we face and the need to maximise potential (and who may otherwise sell it or simply try to work independently of the community) – the plan will instead provide strong transition elements that incentise community development for a win-win-win scenario with promise.
• There are several transition initiatives underway (example from just my brief stay here). In fact, El Manzano is the only official transition community in Latin America.
• Assisting in times of difficulty – example.
• Five of the family members are working together as sustainability professionals to develop natural capital in the land, provide employment for villagers, and build an education centre that will increase capacity for the excellent instructional programs run here (Permaculture Design Certificate courses, full Permaculture Diplomas and even Bachelors and Masters degrees via Gaia University).

This scenario is very interesting to me. South America is well known for its massive land aggregation by the wealthy. Here many people are either Dueños (owners) or Campansinos (peasant farmers). Landlords or peasants. The family could easily just defend their ‘rights’ as land barons – and live for their own gain – but, instead, see their energies targeting the needs and development of the community around them. We see a determined effort to not only keep El Manzano alive, but to see it develop along wholly sustainable lines – to create a community that works in mutually beneficial ways, just like the symbiosis and synergism found amongst elements in a permaculture garden. And, more, the ambition is that this community will set an example to the rest of the region, country, continent and world for how people can work to create harmony and all the other elements that, in total, represent true wealth – fertile soils, clean water, sensible housing, and positive social interaction and interdependencies.

For even greater context – although the children of the community here go to school, many of the parents are illiterate. As such, it is harder for these people to progress their skills for land or any other kind of development. The family’s work to educate the community, and to educate in historically appropriate ways to build resilience (given our energy-challenged future) is thus a significant, positive intervention from people with the means to do so. In the context of peak oil and the inevitable social upheaval that will come with it, such community investment ultimately leads to self-preservation as well.

I said above that land redistribution rarely occurs without bloodshed. One exception that comes to mind – an alternative, if you will, to Che Guevara’s armed approach – is Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan movement. Vinoba Bhave was a disciple of Gandhi, and is often regarded as his spiritual successor. The Bhoodan movement was his effort to peacefully redistribute land – he walked from place to place asking the wealthy to voluntarily donate a portion of their land holdings to him, which he then passed on to the poor. In total some 5 million acres of land were redistributed, entirely peacefully, by these means.

But, it needs to be understood that, whether delivered voluntarily or by force of arms, distributing land to our current generation would, for the most part, end in catastrophe either way. Today, with an alarming proportion of mankind a few decades removed from life on the land, we’re now far more adept with our Xboxes and Chevrolets than we are with plants, life cycles and hand tools. With all of our technological smarts, we’re barely more capable at living off the land now as adults than we were the day our umbilicals were severed.

As much as many of us loathe the system we’re held captive in, the reality is if it were pulled down tomorrow, most of us would perish. This, again, screams of the need for transition – for investment in knowledge and commitment to training; for investment in community building.

In this sense, I wonder if there isn’t a place for feudalism, of an ethically motivated kind, where well positioned individuals and corporations – rather than defend their castle walls so they can cling to riches they can’t eat and hoarding their wealth for descendents who can’t possibly defend them from starving masses – consider the real needs of the future and start to use their means and potential to invest in natural capital and the knowledge needed to create and preserve it.

Imagine if the more privileged amongst us gave up the easter island attitude – vying to beat the other guy to take down the very last stand of trees – and instead put their means and energies into rebuilding the future, and in doing so creating sustainability and peace? Imagine land holders in every region coming to terms with reality, and beginning to work with the people around them? Imagine how fast the world could change for the better!

We share this planet with 6.8 billion people – more than half of whom are packed into urban centres. Re-educating the masses in sustainable and highly productive land management, and getting them onto plots they are incentivised to steward, has got to become a priority. I don’t know about you, but I shudder when I consider the alternatives.

Che Guevara took up the struggle by force of arms, and died at the hands of C.I.A.-backed Bolivian forces – summarily executed without trial. Today, I would propose, he has become the symbol for what is now a purely conceptual and impotent struggle against oppression and inequality. His face is meant to represent hope for the underdog, and be a warning to the leaders of unbridled capitalism – yet it has become little more than a logo, a brand name to be exploited by capitalism itself; a feel good but ineffectual abstraction to give a little identity to young capitalist drones.

But, as the world’s population rises, and resources deplete, and competition grows, the prospect of renewed and increasing calls for revolution seems likely. Desperate times lead to desperate measures. But, I like to dream of another kind of revolution – one based on foresight, on objectivity, on cooperation and on education. This kind of revolution needs to happen worldwide, but, at the very least, I think I can see these concepts coming to life here at El Manzano.

Stay tuned for Part IX….

Please consider contributing to this worthy cause – you can do so via donation links on this page!

View full post on Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

Warned off of the advertised chocolate making tours posted around town, we asked Eric, our host at the veg-owned Cashew Hill Jungle Lodge in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, for an alternative. On a small piece of paper he sketched out a rough map and sent us to to see how an indigenous Bribri family a few kilometers down the road make chocolate.

Securing the hoods of our coats against steady rain, my friends and I headed for town in search of someone willing to drive us out to the chocolate house. It had been raining for a week. The roads, which rank as moderately treacherous at their best, had turned into sinking muddy minefields of holes full of calf-deep water, a fact we knew well having walked ourselves into Puerto Viejo several nights ago from the lonely Bar Pen where our bus had stopped, unable to take us any further. Walking down to the swollen sea, crashing gray against the beach that had been reduced to a slick wet strip of dark sand between road and water, we roused some reluctant attention from a group of men sitting under a porch awning near the deserted bus stop. “¿Taxi?”

“Si. Hola señor. ¿Sabe donde está la casa del cacao cerca de Bribri?“

He did, más o menos as it turned out, but we were off, piling into his old brown car and bouncing down the road as Afro-Caribbean ballads trickled through the fuzzy radio. Receiving some unwelcome spinal adjustments, we ricocheted around the car as it traversed the temporary bridge that stood in for the one which had been washed out in the rains, muddy water splashed up around us as our pirate taxi continued to carefully pick out a path on the pitted road. But as we pressed on down the road, it seemed that the rain was breaking. Watercolor pale brushes of blue were bleeding out of the gray sky. We smiled at each other and experimentally shook off our raincoats. Things were looking up, we were on our way to learn about chocolate.

Expertly negotiating a left hand turn as the sun boldly broke out of a clump of gray clouds, we jangled down a few more kilometers of road to find ourselves exiting the car at a small dirt driveway leading down to Cacao House on the edge of the Talamanca Jungle. Taking the driver’s cell number and promising to call him if we needed a hair-rising ride back into town, but silently praying that the weather would hold and a walk back into Puerto Viejo would seem like an adventure, we clamored down hill to be greeted by the family and taken around to explore their cacao operation.

Their home was set in front of a hillside dense with cacao trees. All around us, the family pointed to the cacao fruit ripening. Here a bright yellow fruit, there a knobbled green one, softly purple striped fruit rubbed against ripened orange ones. On the hillside, monkeys and birds rustled. The owner shooed them from afar and gently cursed the monas who were always stealing her cacao.

When people express surprise that I, as a vegan, eat chocolate (I guess because chocolate seems inextricably connected to milk or cream for many), I always explain that chocolate is made primarily from a fruit. It comes as a surprise to many, but even knowing as I do about the cacao pods and their translucent fleshy seeds which can be transformed into sublime confections, it is amazing to hold a cacao fruit in your hand and realize that it is the building block of all those dark bars of chocolate.

Inside the banana leaf-lined workshop, we were treated to a view of the whole process of transforming the cacao fruit into chocolate. Though the Bribri people traditionally used cacao more for more medicinal applications than enjoyment, they did, and do, consume some mind-altering delicious hot chocolate made simply with cacao paste, raw cane sugar and water. Some, like the family we visited, do now produce chocolate “bars” for sale outside their community. These tiny bars, made with ingredients harvested around their land, like nutmeg, coconut, ginger and mint, are what we got to see being made.

First, the cacao fruit is cracked open with a machete. The little white fleshy bits inside look like big white nibs of corn or hominy, but are softer and squishy. They have an indescribable flavor that reminds me of Southeast Asian fruits like lychees or rambutans and possess, actually, a similar texture.

Thees fleshy fruit bits are removed, leaving the big broad cacao beans behind.

A low fire is then prepared to gently toast the beans. The heat is monitored and kept under even control with the aid of a big banana leaf fan.

With careful and constant stirring, the beans are toasted over the flame. As the beans are toasted, a pure, earthy scent of unsweetened chocolate begins to trickle out as the oils warm and the beans begin to crackle.

After allowing the toasted beans to cool, they are crushed with a heavy wooden rolling pin. As the beans were being crushed and cracked, I began too frantically compose my Spanish, knowing that the first thing which came to mind, quiero, meaning I want, was not the most polite declaration. But I did want. These were the freshest cacao nibs I was likely to ever have in my life and the scent of warm, toasty pure chocolate was killing me. Fortunately, we were soon offered a taste and like a small and greedy child, I elbowed my friends out of the way to get first grab.

Sated with my handful of nibs, I chewed the deliciously crunchy bits of cacao, marveling at the supremely satisfying nutty-chocolate flavor, and watched as the husks of the beans were picked away. The final step in the process was then to grind the nibs into a cacao liqueur and mix it with cane sugar and additional ingredients for flavor to produce the most intriguing, rustic and compellingly fresh chocolate I have ever had.

The texture of the chocolate was worlds apart from the smooth bars that shine and snap with a satisfyingly clean sound, but we were a world apart, so that seemed as it should be. Pleasantly gritty with raw cane sugar and roughly conched nibs, this chocolate crumbled onto the tongue and then melted unevenly in waves of flavor, the chocolate, the jungle earth, the sweetness of the sugar crystals, the toothsome spice of freshly rough-grated nutmeg, it all rolled in a pleasant jangle across our tongues and made our eyes sparkle. Wow, we said. Holy crap, that’s amazing. And it was. Not just for the flavors, intense and fresh and so close to the place from which all the ingredients had grown, but for the knowledge of each step that had gone into making the delicate little bits of chocolate that melted in our mouths.

The sun had truly and wildly broken out by the time we emerged from tasting and talking and exploring the chocolate workshop. Giddy on sugar and an indescribable feeling of something like blessing at being able to understand how much bounty and possibility there is in transforming elements of the natural world through completely gentle and respectful means, we tromped through muddy roads for kilometers talking chocolate, talking chickens, talking everything that we passed, worrying about the flood lines on houses, wondering at how vulnerable we are in a world that for all we know about it still holds us at its mercies, until we reached the black sands and sea again. Instinctively, we ran for it, crashing into warm water to wash away the grit and grime.

Just as there is nothing like the experience of eating chocolate made right in front of you, there is nothing like running fully clothed into the ocean, just for the joy of it.

Our next sunny morning in Puerto Viejo, we sought out the highly recommended Caribeans, an open-air cafe and coffee roaster. Luck was with us as well as the sun because Paul, the founder, was there to talk to us about Caribeans business practices, give us samples of their homemade macadamia nut butter and make up a cocoa nib granola with soymilk and slices of local bananas.

Caribeans uniquely does not own the farms from which their coffee and cacao beans come from. Rather, they continually negotiate with the growers for their products. Paul explained how, just as it was important to him that he have a relationship with the growers, it was important to have a relationship with his customers, which is why their products are pretty much only available at that little spot on the beach in Puerto Viejo.

I left Caribeans with several bags of espresso and a big bar of their baker’s chocolate.

…Some of which went into these completely Costa Rican chocolate cupcakes with whipped espresso ganache frosting, which we later enjoyed back home, reminiscing about our time in Puerto Viejo.

Now, of course, it is not always possible to enjoy chocolate straight from the source like this, but there are some nicely ethical options easily available in the States. From my own backyard, Taza, produces some similarly rustic stoneground chocolate on reconditioned Mexican chocolate equipment in Somerville, MA. Their beans are grown with a social and environmental consciousness and they are purchased under direct trade criteria and their website contains transparent information about their principals and practices. You can even learn about how your particular bar was made, who made it, who grew the beans and when it was produced by entering the batch number from the back of your bar.

Another non-organic, but social and environmentally engaged chocolate that I like is Vintage Plantations. Plantations works to develop and implement sustainable cultivation methods for cacao that protect the rain forest and appropriately compensate growers. They are also involved in the Rainforest Alliance, a conservation agency that is not as cool as Rainforest Action Network, but is at least in the good fight.

Olive Oil Orange Cake with Dagoba Organic Cocoa Nibs

A new and really interesting chocolate maker from San Francisco, TCHO , makes a socially responsible vegan chocolate that is incredibly good. TCHO uses TCHOSource to “enable farmers to become premium producers and create…relationship[s] of mutual self-interest that [go] beyond Fair Trade.” If you can, try their “chocolatey” flavor and revel in it.

Divine Chocolate gets double stars for offering organic and fair trade chocolate from the Kuapa Kokoo cooperative in Ghana who co-own the company. Divine offers many non-vegan chocolates, but do provide very clear labeling and make a truly great mint chocolate bar. Also organic and fairtrade with many vegan options for their chocolate is another neighbor of mine, Equal Exchange. For bulk purchasing chocolate, cocoa powder and cocoa butter (which I use to make white chocolate), I use Sweet Earth Organics. They certify their chocolates as vegan, fair trade and organic, which is, you know, sweet.

Before I sign off, let me assure you there is more chocolate to come, including the chocolate dipped caramels I’ve promised, as well as a video on making dark chocolate olive oil truffles, just in time for Valentine’s Day! Thank you so much for the overwhelming response to my previous chocolate post. I’ve received a great deal of email on chocolates and chocolate making and I’ll definitely get to it all, apologies if you are waiting. In in the meantime, I hope this will help answer many of the frequently asked questions on my chocolate sources.

View full post on The Conscious Kitchen

CNN’s Ed Henry is both dinner host and reporter, on a day when President Obama speaks out about roll of press
On Saturday, President Obama spent a good bit of time being Media Critic in Chief, and discussing the role of the press in democracy, and the need for separating opinion from fact, in a new-media environment in which information travels at lightening speed. The President’s remarks came just as First Lady Michelle Obama made a little bit of media history, when she sent her very first Tweet as First Lady, from the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, an event that’s sometimes criticized for blurring the line between reporters and their subjects.

Mrs. Obama’s Tweet was courtesy of a reporter who she was very close to on Saturday–CNN’s Ed Henry, who joined her at the head table at the dinner. Henry had a bit of a blurry role at the dinner: He was simultaneously reporting it–with live-Tweets all night–and hosting it, as Secretary of the organization. A somewhat legendary Tweeter, Henry (@edhenrycnn ) got photos of the event that no one else did, and was sharing insider infro with the world all night.

The annual dinner, held at the Washington Hilton, is DC’s glitziest affair, and this year was attended by about 2,700 journalists, Hollywood celebs, and politicos. The WHCA was originally created to safeguard reporters’ access to the White House, but the dinner–and the weekend surrounding it, which is filled with all kinds of pre- and post-parties–can’t help but fudge the line between reporters and their subjects, because everyone’s mingling together. The blurring is the topic of critical conversation in town every year, but only one major media entity routinely sits the dinner out–the New York Times. And Henry himself does double duty as reporter and celeb; he’s now highly recognizable as CNN’s main White House correspondent, sending daily reports from the North Lawn, and traveling with the President when he goes abroad–and even when the First Couple vacations. (Above: Mrs. Obama and the President at the dinner)

Of course Mrs. Obama’s Tweet was with the blessing of Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who was also seated at the head table. Gibbs is in charge of approving things like FLOTUS Tweets, and Henry noted Gibbs’ blessing for the First Lady’s virgin Twitter outing, in a separate Tweet. From his seat at the head table, Henry also tweeted a photo of comic Jay Leno getting ready to take to the podium and perform, and later, also on Twitter, criticized Leno’s less-than comic stylings. Before dinner started, Henry got some good shots of the President and First Lady during a VIP cocktail reception, too. (Above: A Henry photo during dinner; comic Chevy Chase leans in to talk to the President)

Henry got better access than the President’s pool
At a time when the press corps has been regularly criticizing the White House for lack of access, Henry enjoyed far more access to the President and Mrs. Obama on Saturday than the president’s own dedicated press pool for the evening. In an e-mail sent by the White House press office to all reporters who cover the White House, the pooler noted this during the dinner.

“We are in the servant’s section next to the stage and have no blackberry access – so don’t expect real-time updates, I’m afraid,” was included in a pool e mail. There weren’t real time updates, except for Henry’s Tweets, and he wasn’t on official pool duty. Plenty of other non-pool reporters who were guests at the dinner were Tweeting all night too, as were celebs and regular old citizens, but Henry was right next to the President and First Lady, so his are now historic. Especially because he got Mrs. Obama’s first “official” Tweet.

Media Critic in Chief
The evening-long “Henry Project” was especially interesting, given President Obama’s day of being Media Critic in Chief.

In the morning, when speaking to a crowd estimated by the White House to be about 92,000 strong at the commencement ceremony at the University of Michigan, President Obama discussed the role of a responsible media in democracy, noting that blogs and social media and the instantaneous transmission of information can lead to a confusion between opinion and fact. He urged a higher degree of responsibility, observing that a volatile media environment is making people reluctant to enter public service, as well as poisoning the well of public debate. It’s a theme the President–and Gibbs–have embroidered on frequently in public remarks. On April 18, Gibbs suggested (among other things) during an appearance on CNN that reporters stop using unnamed sources when doing White House reporting. And he spoke about press relations with the White House, too, noting reporters’ discontent. (Above: Henry tweeted this photo of the President and First Lady with actor Alec Baldwin, taken during the VIP reception)

In his remarks during the WHCA dinner, the President returned to the subject of the media vs. democracy, and took comedic pot shots at the press, noting how various outlets had covered his activities.

“A few weeks ago I was able to throw out the first pitch at the Nationals game,” President Obama said. “And I don’t know if you saw it, but I threw it a little high and a little outside. This is how FOX News covered it: “President panders to extreme left-wing of batter box.” On the other hand, MSNBC had a different take — “President pitches no-hitter.” And then CNN went a different way altogether — [a video was shown about the volcano eruption in Iceland] — I guess that’s why they’re the most trusted name in news.”

The President spent a lot of time taking fun jabs at Politico’s coverage of his administration, too, in a less than flattering light (for Politico), but he closed by noting that dinner attendees were both “seasoned veterans who have been on the political beat for decades,” while others “began their careers as bloggers not long ago,” the President suggested (hoped?) that “every single reporter in this room believes deeply in the enterprise of journalism.”

“Every one of you, even the most cynical among you, understands and cherishes the function of a free press in the preservation of our system of government and our way of life,” President Obama said.

President Obama also noted his own popularity on Twitter and Facebook, and joked that Sarah Palin refers to these as “the socialized media.” The President and Mrs. Obama, of course, were all over Twitter and Facebook last night. On Twitter, the WHCA dinner had its own hashtags, #nerdprom and #whcd, as well as numerous media outlets live blogging; Politico, C-SPAN, and AOL’s Politics Daily, among others, had dedicated livestreams. (Above: President Obama during his dinner remarks; Gibbs is at right in glasses)

Twitterbama
The President sent his own “first Tweet” as President on January 18, when visiting the DC Red Cross headquarters for Haiti relief–and like Mrs. Obama on Saturday, he also did it on someone else’s machine. Gibbs joined Twitter in mid February (@presssec), and he’s become pretty active on it, though not as active as Henry, who doesn’t miss an opportunity to Tweet. Gibbs didn’t Tweet from dinner last night, however. Mrs. Obama does not yet have her own Twitter, but can it be far off? Sarah Brown, wife of Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is an active Tweeter, and she’s posted many behind-the-scenes pics of Mrs. Obama, during times when the two First Ladies were together.

View full post on Obama Foodorama

by Juliana Birnbaum Fox, fellow collaborator with Craig Mackintosh on the Sustainable (R)evolution Book Project.
Editor’s Note: This is Part IV of a series. Click to read Part I, Part II and Part III.

Our daughters in the dipping
pool outside our casita

Life here at Tacotal ecovillage—also affectionately [...]

View full post on Permaculture Research Institute of Australia

It would be a wise policy to protect the Gulf, to nurture the health of its ecosytems, to leave it at least as productive as we found it for the next generations. As climate change proceeds apace and population grows, sources of cheap, low-input, top-quality food will be increasingly precious.

Click here to read this article

View full post on Organic Consumers Association News Headlines