Food

Dreaming of biting into a garden-fresh cucumber sandwich this summer? Better order your seeds now.

A poor growing season last year and increased orders from Europe could make it difficult for home gardeners to get seeds for the most popular cucumber variety and some vegetables this spring. Farmers, who usually grow different varieties than home gardeners, aren’t likely to be affected.

Seeds for what’s known as open-pollinated cucumbers seem to be most scarce, but carrots, snap peas and onions also could be in short supply.

“I suspect there will be some seeds you just won’t be able to buy if you wait too long on it,” said Bill Hart, the wholesale manager in charge of seed purchasing at Chas. C. Hart Seed Company in Wethersfield, Conn. “The sugar snap peas we’re not able to get at all, and other companies that have it will sell out pretty quickly.”

The problem is primarily due to soggy weather last year that resulted in a disappointing seed crop. European seed growers also had a bad year, leading to a big increase in orders for American seeds.

Demand for seeds in the U.S. soared last year, as the poor economy and worries about chemical use and bacteria contamination prompted many people to establish gardens. Homegrown food seemed safer and more affordable. But some wonder if the wet weather that ruined gardens in many areas last summer will discourage first-time gardeners from planting again.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

Everywhere he steered his skiff last week, Pete Frezza saw dead fish.

From Ponce de Leon Bay on the Southwest Coast down across Florida Bay to Lower Matecumbe in the Florida Keys — day after day, dead fish. Floating in the marina at Flamingo in Everglades National Park alone he counted more than 400 snook and 400 tarpon.

“I was so shook up, I couldn’t sleep,” said Frezza, an ecologist for Audubon of Florida and an expert flats fisherman. “Millions and millions of pilchards, threadfin herring, mullet. Ladyfish took it really bad. Whitewater Bay is just a graveyard.”

Fish in every part of the state were hammered by this month’s record-setting cold snap. The toll in South Florida, a haven for warm-water species, was particularly extensive, too large to even venture a guess at numbers. And despite the subsequent warm-up, scientists warn that the big bad chill of 2010 will continue to claim victims for weeks.

“Based on what I saw in 1977 and 1989, there is a good chance we’ll have a second wave,” said William Loftus, a longtime aquatic ecologist for Everglades National Park.

During those last two major cold fronts, weakened survivors succumbed to infections from common bacteria, such as aeromonas, that they would normally ward off, he said.

“It’s a nasty-looking thing,” he said. “It’s a tissue eater. It creates open ulcers on the side of the fish.”

Source/Full Story: MiamiHerald.com

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Rain-fueled flooding in Argentina has killed at least two people and forced the evacuation of 3,000 residents, officials said Tuesday.

The city of San Antonio de Areco, in northern Buenos Aires Province, was hit particularly hard, with 90 blocks underwater, Gov. Daniel Scioli told the state-run Telam news agency. He said the flooding was unlike any he had seen, and it caught the area by surprise.

“The ambulance was underwater. So were the doctors’ cars,” Scioli said. “Water even reached the Guiraldes Museum, with its rich heritage.”

Alejandro Delgado Morales, director of press and information for Buenos Aires Province, told CNN there had been two deaths but could not provide further details.

San Antonio de Areco is about 120 kilometers (75 miles) northwest of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital.

Source/Full Story: CNN.com

Ok so I am paranoid, but that doesn’t mean that I’m wrong.  Think about this scenario, based on the highlighted text below:

The home gardener will be putting the entire food industry at risk by their alleged ignorance of things like late blight, and will therefore be need to be controlled and regulated by some government agency like the USDA, if they are not just banned outright from producing.  It could happen,..

Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.

"Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States," said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in Riverhead, New York.

She said the fungal disease, spread by spores carried in the air, has made its way into the garden centers of large retail chains in the Northeastern United States.

"Wal-mart, Home Depot, Sears, Kmart and Lowe’s are some of the stores the plants have been seen in," McGrath said in a telephone interview.

The disease, known officially as Phytophthora infestans, causes large mold-ringed olive-green or brown spots on plant leaves, blackened stems, and can quickly wipe out weeks of tender care in a home garden.

McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States. The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.

"What’s unique about it this year is we have never seen plants affected in garden centers being sold to home gardeners," she said.

This year’s cool, wet weather created perfect conditions for the disease. "Hopefully, it will turn sunny," McGrath said. "If we get into our real summer hot dry weather, this disease is going to slow way down."

FUNGICIDES WILL CONTROL BLIGHT

According to its website, the University Maryland’s Plant Diagnostic Lab got a suspect tomato sample as early as June 12, very early in the tomato growing season, which runs from April-September.

McGrath said the risk is that many gardeners will not recognize it, putting commercial farms and especially organic growers at risk.

"My concern is for growers. They are going to have to put a lot more time and effort in trying to control the disease. It’s going to be a very tough year," she said.

"This pathogen can move great distances in the air. It often does little jumps, but it can make some big leaps."

McGrath said the impact on the farmer will depend on how much the pathogen is spread. "Eastern New York is seeing a lot of disease," she said.

She said commercial farmers will be able to use fungicides containing chlorothalonil to control the blight.

And while some sprays have also been approved for organic use, many organic farmers do not use them, making it much harder to control.

"If they are not on top of this right from the very beginning, it can go very fast," she said.

Source/Full Story: Yahoo! News

 THE CAGE METHOD

Grow a few potato plants, each or in their own wooden box, crib, barrel or wire cage. The container should be about 18×18 inches at the base, about 24-30 inches tall, and able to be gradually filled with soft soil or mulch as the vines grow. Set each container atop a well-prepared fertile soil. Plant one strong seed piece and cover lightly with 4 inches of soil. As the vines grow, gradually fill the container with mellow compost, mulch or soil, but always make sure you don’t cover more than one-third of the vine’s new growth. With some varieties, the underground stolons which produce potato tubers keep on forming new ones for some time. In containers the yield may be increased 200-3000 percent compared with open-field culture. This is a great way to grow a lot of potatoes in a very limited space. We recommend doing this with Yellow Finn, Indian Pit, Red Pontiac, or the fingerling types. Watering requirements will be greater however, so check the cages or containers frequently in warm weather.

Source/Full Story: Irish Eyes Garden Seeds

- Source / Full Story: Official Food, Inc. Movie Site – Hungry For Change?

Sightings of dead fish again are being reported by citizens as well as biologists of the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and the Department of Environmental Quality. The number of rivers the reports have come from is small, but "significant numbers of fish with lesions" have been noted, according to the game and fisheries agency.

The discovery of dead or suffering fish mirrors those of past years, but scientists recently found a link between aeromonas salmonicida – a bacterium found in diseased river fish – and lesions and/or deaths of experimentally infected laboratory fish.

The source of the bacterium and how it is transmitted are keeping the state biologists busy. This has been an ongoing riddle, and no one has been able to pinpoint the source of the problem. Most of the affected fish thus far have been smallmouth bass and sunfish, and with warming water temperatures the fish kills are not likely to disappear.

The North Fork of the Shenandoah River in Shenandoah County (from the New Market area downstream to beyond Woodstock) again is one of the troubled waterways; so is the upper portion of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River in Rockingham County (primarily upstream of Elkton). Add also the lower sections of the North, Middle and South rivers in Augusta and Rockingham counties and the upper James River near Buchanan in Botetourt County.

The public is asked to report the location of sick and dying fish by calling the DEQ’s Harrisonburg office at 540/574-7800 or by making a toll-free call if you’re in Virginia at 800/5925482. Reports can also be made by e-mail; send them to fishreports@deq.virginia.gov.

Source/Full Story: Washington Times

This is certainly not the future of food for my house.  There is more to gardening and food production than just the end result of consumption.  I can see that these plant factories are an interesting experiment in food production for the masses, I just don’t wish to be considered part of the mass.

They look more like the brightly lit shelves of a chemists shop than the rows of a vegetable garden.

But according to their creators, these perfect looking vegetables could be the future of food.

In a perfectly controlled and totally sterile environment – uncontaminated by dirt, insects or fresh air – Japanese scientists are developing a new way of growing vegetables.

Food of the future? Lettuces are grown in a sterile environment at Ozu Corporation’s plant factory in Japan – without being exposed to the air outside

Called plant factories, these anonymous looking warehouses have sprung up across the country and can churn out immaculate looking lettuces and green leaves 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Source/Full Story: Mail Online

A collapse in milk prices has wiped away the profits of dairy farmers, driving many out of business while forcing others to slaughter their herds or dump milk on the ground in protest. But nine months after prices began tumbling on the farm, consumers aren’t seeing the full benefits of the crash at the checkout counter.

The average price for a gallon of milk at grocery stores last month is down just 19 percent from its peak of $3.83 in July. Farmers, on the other hand, got $1.04 a gallon in April — 35 percent less than they were paid last fall. This winter, wholesale prices were down as much as 45 percent.

Price disparities are a fact of life both for farmers and anyone who shops at a supermarket, but the nature of milk — how it’s stored, priced and sold around the world — makes the gap all the more dramatic. In fact, the price that farmers get has been wildly volatile for years, creating a succession of booms and busts felt from pastures to the grocery store.

With each turn, proposals are floated to end the pricing seesaw, which at one extreme squeezes the profits of farmers and the other squeezes dairy processors. Any fix that boosts the price of milk runs the risk of bumping up how much consumers pay, too.

Today, frustrations are spilling over as the price crash creates widely divergent fortunes within the milk industry, boosting profits for the middlemen like dairy processors while pushing farmers to the edge of bankruptcy.

Darrell Kraus, a dairyman in Barnhart, spends almost as much today on hay and other supplies for his herd of 160 cows as he did a year ago, but he’s getting paid less for a gallon of milk than his father in the 1970s. He blames middlemen who buy the milk from the dairies, process it and sell it to grocery stores at higher prices.

“Somebody’s getting a cut of this, but it’s not the dairy farmer,” he said. “It’s sad, but they’re going to see a lot of dairy farms go out of business.”

At a grocery store in Fayetteville, Ark., Katherine Thacker noticed how milk prices were slowly falling — but not as drastically as last year’s price hikes. She was surprised to learn that the lower wholesale milk prices were being absorbed by dairy processors.

“That’s kind of criminal, isn’t it?” she said.

Milk processors and supermarkets see it differently.

Source/Full Story:: Yahoo! News

Today, the American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) called on "Physicians to educate their patients, the medical community, and the public to avoid GM (genetically modified) foods when possible and provide educational materials concerning GM foods and health risks."[i]  They called for a moratorium on GM foods, long-term independent studies, and labeling.

AAEM’s position paper stated, "Several animal studies indicate serious health risks associated with GM food," including infertility, immune problems, accelerated aging, insulin regulation, and changes in major organs and the gastrointestinal system. They conclude, "There is more than a casual association between GM foods and adverse health effects. There is causation," as defined by recognized scientific criteria. "The strength of association and consistency between GM foods and disease is confirmed in several animal studies."

Source/Full Story: opednews.com