Tag: fruits

Healthy Employees, Lower Costs

  • The "Great Plate" - a 10-inch plate: half non-starchy vegetables, a quarter lean protein, a quarter starchy vegetable or whole grains (Photo courtesy of the University of Michigan)

Lots of companies are starting new programs
that teach their employees how to eat healthier.
Because healthier employees can save companies loads
of cash. Kyle Norris has more:

Transcript

Lots of companies are starting new programs
that teach their employees how to eat healthier.
Because healthier employees can save companies loads
of cash. Kyle Norris has more:

So, Stacy Witthoff is teaching people about healthy snacks.

“We have some 100 calorie packs. We have fresh fruit like bananas, peaches, pears,
apples, any kind of canned fruit is good too.”

Witthoff is a dietician with the Michigan Healthy Community – basically it’s a group that
does health education for University of Michigan employees.

The people at this expo are learning about how to eat healthier, and the idea is that they’ll
share this info with their co-workers.

Witthoff stands in front of a little booth and she’s all friendly. She snags people as they
walk by.

She’s just caught Jason Maynard. He’s a nursing administrator. And he goes to a lot of
meetings where there are a lot of snacks.

“So at meetings it’s probably donuts or bagels, cookies.”

But he thinks people would go for fresh fruit like raspberries or strawberries, if they were
offered.

Stacy Witthoff is promoting a guide that helps people make better food choices.

It’s called the Great Plate. It’s a picture of a plate that’s divided into different sections.

“Basically you take a 10-inch plate and half of it should be non-starchy vegetables, a
quarter of it lean protein, and a quarter of it starchy vegetable or whole grains. So it’s just
an easier way to eat healthy without having to think about portions.”

Ok let’s recap.

Divide your plate in-half and fill that half with non-starchy veggies – carrots, broccoli,
cauliflower, green beans, asparagus and peppers. And aim for a variety of colors.

Then divide the other half of the plate into quarters. Fill one-quarter with grains &
starchy veggies – that’s things like brown rice and whole-wheat pastas and whole-wheat
bread. And starchy veggies are things like potatoes, corn, peas, and squash.

Then the last quarter of the plate should have meats and proteins. Things like grilled
or baked chicken, fish, turkey, lean cuts of meat. And non-meat options like tofu, beans,
and eggs.

And the Great Plate says go for way smaller serving sizes.

The Great Plate encourages people to eat what they call “whole
foods.” That means eat the food in its raw form and not it’s processed equivalent. So
like eat the apple – as opposed to apple juice. Or as opposed to the apple-flavored gummi
worms, if you were someone like me.

Steve Aldana helps companies start employee healthcare programs. He says that
culturally we eat pretty bad stuff. And that we’re way stressed-out.

And all that can affect an employer’s pocketbook, for real.

“So 2 things: poor behaviors are leading to onset of chronic diseases. And those chronic
diseases are costing an inordinate amount in health care. And it’s that cost alone that’s
driving most companies to start to look very, very intently at worksite wellness
programs.”

Businesses are starting to see healthy employees as a smart investment. Companies like
Johnson & Johnson, IBM, and Dow Chemical have all taken note.

They hope programs like this one will help shave-off millions of dollars from their
employee health care costs.

And these programs can also help save money in the long run – by boosting employee
morale and leading to fewer employee absences.

For The Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Salads Causing Sickness

  • Vegetables in the produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of the USDA)

During the past 35 years, people have been getting
sick from contaminated produce more often. That’s according
to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

During the past 35 years, people have been getting
sick from contaminated produce more often. That’s according
to a recent study from the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Rebecca Williams reports:

After hundreds of people got sick from contaminated spinach and
lettuce, researchers started looking back at three decades of disease
cases. They found that people are getting sick from contaminated produce
more often. Bacteria such as E. coli and salmonella are often the cause.

Michael Lynch is one of the study’s authors. He says Americans are eating
more salads, but that doesn’t totally explain why there are more disease
outbreaks.

“We were a little surprised that that didn’t entirely explain the increase
but what else is contributing to that is not clear.”

Lynch says contamination can happen anywhere between the farm and your salad
plate. He says it’s important to thoroughly wash lettuce before eating it.
But he says that might not be enough to avoid getting sick.

He says stronger controls are needed at every step to try to prevent
contamination.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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A Closer Look at Chinese Organics

  • Produce section of a supermarket in VA. (Photo by Ken Hammond, courtesy of USDA)

More companies are importing organic
products from China and other countries. But
contaminated pet food, tainted toothpaste,
and unauthorized antibiotics in fish have been
imported to the U.S. from China. Now, some people are
concerned about organic foods from China. Julie
Grant reports:

Transcript

More companies are importing organic
products from China and other countries. But
contaminated pet food, tainted toothpaste,
and unauthorized antibiotics in fish have been
imported to the U.S. from China. Now, some people are
concerned about organic foods from China. Julie
Grant reports:

When you see that round USDA organic seal on a carton of
milk, boxed foods, or bananas , it means that on some farm,
somewhere, something like this happened:

(farm inspection sound)

Inspector: “All righty. Anything under the box on the far
right.”

Farmer: “That’s the burnout. Which I haven’t used for 3 or 4
years.”

An inspector walks around looking at the greenhouse, the
barn and the fields, in the greenhouse, and in the barn. He
works for an agency that’s accredited by the USDA to certify
farms as organic. He’s making sure nothing is happening on
the farm that’s prohibited by the National Organic Standards.

But small farms like this one are no longer the norm in
organics. Organic products have become a big business all
around the world.

So people are wondering… who inspects those farms?

(store sound)

Sheila Rombach is a buyer for a small natural foods store.
Like a lot of people, she’s a little nervous about the safety of
food coming from China. Last year’s pet food scare and
poisonous toothpaste are still fresh in many people’s minds.

Rombach’s customers pay a premium for ‘organic’ foods.
She wonders how the USDA can certify that farms all the
way in China are following organic rules.

“I guess it crossed mind because of all the negative publicity
about things manufactured in China. I want to be sure that
the items grown under the organic label are truly organic.”

It’s such a concern that one large health food chain, Trader
Joe’s, is taking all Chinese imports off its shelves. Trader
Joe’s plans to have Chinese garlic, ginger, and all other
single-ingredient foods out of its 300 stores this spring.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture maintains if it says
organic, it’s truly organic. Barbara Robinson is chief
administrator of the USDA’s National Organic Program. She
says foreign products go through the same process as those
grown here.

“So, if the product is coming from India, or the product is
coming from Australia, and you want to market in the United States – then
you need a certifying agent who is accredited by us.”

Robinson says all certifying agents accredited by the USDA
should be enforcing the same organic rules. If a product has
that little round seal, Robinson says consumers can trust it
meets the U.S.’s National Organic Standards.

But enforcing the rules isn’t always that easy. The USDA is
having difficulty making sure those rules are consistently
applied on U.S. farms. So how can the agency be so
confident about farms in other countries?

One expert on Chinese agriculture and politics says that’s a
good question. Paul Thiers is a political science professor at
Washington State University who’s been visiting farms in
China since the early 1990s.

“There is some difficulty, I think, in expecting people from
outside of China to really get far enough in and understand
what’s going on in political and economic conditions of rural
China.”

Thiers says many Chinese farms are run by the local
government. Others are run by private managers with
peasant farmers working the land.

“In some places, peasant farmers who were purported to be
part of organic production, who were on land that was
certified, couldn’t tell me what organic was, had no
conception of different production standards. And all they
said was, ‘we just sell our product to the government’.”

Thiers says at that time, five or ten years ago, farmers were
probably using chemicals, even though they were selling
food labeled organic.

Thiers expects that China’s organic farming practices are
improving, though. He says people in Chinese cities are becoming
concerned about food safety and want to buy organics. But
the USDA has to rely on organic certifiers in China. And with
the rapid growth of organic farms, no one is sure they’re
actually meeting U.S. standards.

Thiers says there is one consolation. At least organic farms
are inspected by someone. Conventional farms don’t get
those kinds of visits from inspectors.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Farmers Work to Conserve Water

Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become
more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business.
Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think
about water constantly:

Transcript

Some experts say water will be the “oil” of the next generation. As it become
more scarce, prices are going to go up. For farmers, that’s serious business.
Kyle Norris recently spent time with several farmers who say they think
about water constantly:


Anne Elder and Paul Bantle are farmers, and they’re pretty hard-core about
water. They keep a hollowed-out rock — it’s like a natural bowl — next to
the barn, and every morning they fill it with fresh water for the farm’s
smaller animals:


“And this amazing thing the cat comes and drinks, the chipmunks come and
drink, the birds come and drink and the bees all drink from the same stone.”


These folks consider water to be a valuable resource. They use it to grow a
variety of fruits and vegetables on their eleven and a half acres. The farm is
a biodynamic farm. Which means it’s organic, but it kind of goes a few steps
further. Anne Elder says biodynamic farming emphasizes healthy soil, and
how to make soil benefit the most from water:


“Healthy soil means it’s alive, it’s active, it’s not compressed but fluffy. It
will have a lot organic matter which will make it more sponge-like rather
than compacted hard tight soil. So when it does rain or when moisture does come,
fluffy soil can take that in and it can just drain through and the roots can
absorb it.”


They till an organic compost into the soil. It’s made of manure, vegetable
matter, hay, and straw. And as biodynamic farmers, they spread herbal teas
on their fields. They do this to feed the plants, and to fight-off problems like
fungus. Their farm is in southeastern Michigan and they get plenty of rain
storms. Paul Bantle says they try to take as much advantage from the rain as
possible:


“Rainwater is way better than any kind of water you’re going to pull from
earth. Irrigation water is cold when it comes from 65 feet down, it’s cold.
Whereas rainwater is warm, in the summer, obviously. And in the late spring
and early fall.”


The thing about cold water is that it shocks plants that have been sitting in
the warm sun all day. And that’s no good. When they need to water the
fields, they pump water from a 65-foot well.


Bantle says he thinks long and hard before using this water for irrigation. He
doesn’t want to dig down further to tap deeper aquifers, even if that means
that the crops will go through a hard time:


“It’s an issue. I mean it’s a huge problem. So definitely I try to be very
conservative about pulling water for irrigation.”


Basically, there are two main irrigation techniques typically used in farming. The first is
drip or trickle irrigation, and this is what Bantle and Elder use. It’s a slow,
easy method that takes time for the water to soak deep into the soil. It’s kind
of like a light, slow rain.


The other technique is overhead irrigation. Picture your garden hose on
spray, with overhead irrigation the water sprays all over. The downside is
that it wastes water because it evaporates and runs-off from the fields.


Lyndon Kelley is an irrigation educator with Michigan State University and
Perdue Extensions. He says drip irrigation is like a mini-van and overhead
irrigation is like a school bus:


“It’s sort of like are you going to take three or four kids to the baseball game
after school each day, well then you’re going to take the mini-van. But if
you’re going to take fifty kids to the baseball game after school every day
then you’re going to want a school bus.”


So, drip is typically used on smaller operations and overhead is usually
used on the larger ones. But Kelley says drip irrigation can be used on larger
farms. It depends on how the roots of the plant take-in water. Grape
vineyards, tomato plants, and some other vegetables respond well to drip
irrigation.


The farm that Anne Elder and Paul Bantle run is a relatively small operation.
They pay a lot of attention to their crops and they water them accordingly,
and all that effort takes a thought and labor:


“It’s almost like a holding-back mentality. How can I let these plants do
what they need to do, until which time the rains will come.”


Farmers are going to have to reevaluate the ways in which they use
water. Some scientists believe climate change will make some places much
drier, and a growing population is already putting heavier demands on the
existing water sources.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Ethanol Puts Strain on Immigrant Farming

  • Jenny Chang at a farmers' market with her produce. (Photo by Joel Grostephan)

Demand for corn-based ethanol is growing and that’s made farmland more valuable. This
year, American farmers planted 14 million acres more corn than they did last year. Some
small immigrant farmers believe that’s why they’re having a hard time finding land to rent
to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Joel Grostephan reports:

Transcript

Demand for corn-based ethanol is growing and that’s made farmland more valuable. This
year, American farmers planted 14 million acres more corn than they did last year. Some
small immigrant farmers believe that’s why they’re having a hard time finding land to rent
to grow fresh fruits and vegetables. Joel Grostephan reports:


Jenny Chang doesn’t want to change the government’s policy on ethanol subsidies. She
just wants some good land to raise her vegetables that she sells at the farmer’s market.
When planting time came around this year, she was still looking for a plot to rent. Chang is
Hmong and she came from Laos more than 20 years ago with few job skills. For
the last 7 years, she’s made part of her income from farming on land she rents. In the
past, finding land to rent wasn’t that hard. But, Chang says through her daughter who
interprets for her, this year was different:


“She said that this year, we couldn’t find land, that’s why we got stuck with this bad area.
She’s really sad.”


With corn selling for double what it did last year, land values are going up. That means
rent is going up. And the 300 Hmong farmers in this area are having a hard time finding
land they can afford.


Kent Olson is an economics professor at the University of Minnesota. He says he thinks
land scarcity is due to higher demand for ethanol:


“Your ethanol may have started the ball rolling, and created higher prices for corn, which
pushed corn onto other land from other crops but that’s pushed soybean prices up. So we
are seeing higher rent from a couple different directions.”


In theory, ethanol from corn is supposed to be good for the environment. It burns cleaner
and means less reliance on foreign oil.


But… conventional corn farmers rely on fossil fuel-based fertilizers and chemical
pesticides. By the time their diesel-powered tractors plant the corn, combines harvest it,
trucks transport it and ethanol distillery plants cook it, the energy gain from corn ethanol
is marginal.


The Hmong farm differently. Most don’t use fossil fuel-based fertilizers or pesticides.
Instead, they do a lot of hand weeding, and put in long days. Jenny Chang fertilizes her
tomatoes with chicken manure. Chang’s daughter, who is also named Jenny Chang, says
many older Hmong farmers are suspicious of chemicals:


“They like gardening the way they used to back in old Laos. They don’t really know what
insecticides and pesticides are, or how to use it so that’s why they just don’t use it. And a lot of
people are afraid of cancer, so they just like to grow things organically because they eat it
themselves.”


And researchers say growing food this way seems more environmentally friendly than
growing corn for ethanol.


Bill Moseley is a professor at Macalester College in St. Paul. He studies the
environmental effects of agriculture:


“Conventional corn production is displacing, in this particular case, a form of
agriculture that is more environmentally sound in terms of it’s using fewer fossil
fuel imports, and it’s producing crops for the local market, it’s particularly ironic in
this instance.”


Government officials don’t think increased corn production for ethanol is the problem.
Perry Aasness works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. When he learned the Hmong farmers were having a hard time finding land to rent, his
agency helped them. But Aasness believes corn production for ethanol is NOT the cause
of the land shortage:


“Well, at least in Minnesota I think it’s very, very minimal. I think the real issue that I
have seen in Minnesota is that the Hmong farmers, the Hmong community is primarily
based in the Twin Cities metro area. They have to go further out to get land — a lot
of it I think is just due to urban sprawl.”


For many people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, the Hmong are the face of agriculture
at farmers markets. But since no government agency keeps track of their numbers, it’s
hard to know if their tradition of raising crops on small plots of rented land is going well,
or if ethanol and high corn prices are actually putting their small businesses in danger of.


For the Environment report, I’m Joel Grostephan.

Related Links

Epa Phasing Out Common Food Pesticide

Over the next six years, the Environmental Protection Agency is phasing out the remaining uses of an insecticide used on foods. Lester Graham reports, some environmentalists say it should be banned immediately:

Transcript

Over the next six years, the Environmental Protection Agency is phasing out the remaining uses of an insecticide used on foods. Lester Graham reports, some environmentalists say it should be banned immediately:


The insecticide azinphos-methyl, or AZM, is still used on some vegetables, nuts, and fruits. The chemical can cause short term harm to farm workers and their families who live near orchards. Over-exposure can cause nausea, vomiting, and in severe cases convulsions, coma, and death. Low-level long-term exposure can cause memory loss and other affects on the brain.


Shelley Davis is with the group Farmworker Justice.


“There are plenty of adequate, safer alternatives for pest control on the market already. Growers do not need to use AZM. This is the time the EPA should show leadership and should say ‘Let’s switch to safer alternatives.'”


The insecticide won’t be completely phased out until late in 2012. Apples, blueberries, parsley, cherries and pears will be the last foods still treated with AZM.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Upgrading Tired Hospital Food

  • Two gourmet chefs managing the kitchen at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth are adding organic vegetables to the menu. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that’s making efforts to spice up their menu:

Transcript

Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s
Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that making efforts to spice
up their menu:


(Sound of elevator)


St. Luke’s is the smaller of Duluth’s two hospitals. Their motto could be
“we try harder.” Several years ago, the hospital put two chefs in charge
of the housekeeping, laundry, and food.


In the kitchen, there’s the usual industrial stoves and dishwashers, and a
long assembly line where workers fill the trays for patients, based on
what they’ve ordered.


“The patient fills out the menu, I’ll have this entrée and that salad and this
beverage; then as the tray moves down the conveyor belt, they look at the
menu and put on the appropriate products.”


Mark Branovan was a gourmet chef at restaurants in California’s wine
country. In that part of the world, they take their fresh fruits and
vegetables very seriously.


“We did very little of our produce buying from the big distributors; we
had local guys that would grow lettuce for us, and herbs for us, and tomatoes…
anything we wanted. So that just kind of rolled over for us into, if
we can do it for a restaurant, why can’t we do it for a hospital?”


It’s harder to do in this part of the country, where you can grow lettuce
for about half the year and you’re lucky to get a tomato at all. But
Branovan and his colleague, LeeAnn Tomczyk, decided not to let that
stop them.


Tomczyk was a chef in a trendy restaurant in Wisconsin before she took
the job at the hospital. She says when she first came here, she was
appalled at some of the things on the menu.


“YOu know the patient was able to pick a jell-o salad and a piece of cake.
Well, to me jell-o is a dessert but to them it was their salad and that
was their vegetable, and that wasn’t right.”


Tomczyk and Branovan started to add more fruits and vegetables,
including organic items, to the menu, but they learned to pick their
battles.


“When I tried to change some of the casserole dishes, and some of the
traditional northern Minnesota fare, I was met with some serious
resistance from our customers and our patients who said, ‘Yeah, we have
tater tot hot dish on our menu because we like it.'”


One of the first items to change was the milk. Now the hospital serves
hormone-free milk to patients in the rooms and workers in the cafeteria.
Tomczyk says she’s convinced hormone-free milk and organic food are
healthier. She says an organization devoted to helping people heal, like a
hospital, needs to think about healing in broad terms, even globally. She
says buying local food avoids long-distance transportation, with its heavy
reliance on polluting fossil fuels.


“And the introduction of pesticides and herbicides, and that getting into
our water systems, it’s that whole cycle, and we’re using more and more
these days, and I think it’s just got out of hand.”


The hospital is also committed to reducing waste. It freezes unused
portions and gives them to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. It sends
its food waste to the city compost pile.


St. Luke’s is a member of a hospital buying group that negotiates prices
with big producers like Pillsbury. Each hospital is supposed to buy a
certain percentage of its food through the buying group. When Branovan
and Tomczyk asked the distributor for hormone-free milk, the distributor
didn’t carry it.


“We had to actually get a waiver that says they will allow us to buy off-
contract.”


Branovan got a similar waiver to buy organic fresh fruit, and greens for
the cafeteria salad bar. He hopes to add more organic and locally-grown
foods.


Branovan says St. Luke’s is the first hospital in the region to ask the
buying group to supply hormone-free milk and organic vegetables, but
hospitals and schools on the west coast and east coast are doing it on a larger
scale.


James Pond is editor of Food Service Director, a trade magazine.
He says the movement will grow.


“The pricing advantages will in some ways level out, where if it becomes
important enough to the clientele, the food service operators will respond
by providing products in this manner.”


Some hospitals organize a farmer’s market to serve their workers, as a
way to introduce them to organic and local foods. Then they add those
foods to the cafeteria and patient meals. At St. Luke’s, they feature
organic food at company parties.


For the GLRC, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Preschoolers’ Diets Laden With Sugar

  • A new study indicates preschoolers are eating more fruits and veggies... but often, they're also consuming too many calories by drinking lots of juice. (Photo by Tommy Johansen)

Preschool kids are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were twenty years ago, according to a new study of preschoolers’ diets. But they’re also eating more calories and more sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

Preschool kids are eating more fruits and vegetables than they were twenty years ago,
according to a new study of preschoolers’ diets. But they’re also eating more calories and
more sugar. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tracy Samilton reports:


Penn State University researcher Sibylle Kranz says years of public health messages about
the benefits of fruits and vegetables appear to have paid off. She says preschool children
are indeed eating significantly more fruits, vegetables and grains than they were in 1977
when her study began.


But they’re also eating about 200 more calories a day, and a lot of those calories are
coming in the form of juice. Kranz says health officials may need to tweak their message
so parents know just how much juice a day is okay for their two to five year olds.


“Children should not consume more than six ounces of fruit juice – and this is, we’re
talking about 100% fruit juice.”


Kranz says kids who drink more than six ounces of juice a day could run the risk of
becoming overweight. And she says the juice is probably replacing more nutritious foods
like milk.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tracy Samilton.

Related Links

Buying Organic: Grocery Stores or Local Farm-Raised?

It can be tough deciding whether to buy organic foods at the market. Organic produce often costs more, sometimes doesn’t look as nice, and can compete with locally-produced products that might be raised organically but don’t carry the government’s certification. As part of an ongoing series “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant looks at what you’re getting when you buy the organic label:

Transcript

It can be tough deciding whether to buy organic foods at the market. Organic produce often costs more, sometimes doesn’t look as nice, and can compete with locally-produced products that might be raised organically but don’t carry the government’s certification. As part of an ongoing series called “Your Choice, Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant looks at what you’re getting when you buy the organic label:


(sound of supermarket)


Elizabeth Culotta is shopping around the natural and organic food section of the Acme Supermarket in Kent, Ohio. She’s glad there are now standardized stickers on the fruits and vegetables that say “USDA Organic” because it makes it easier to judge what’s grown without pesticides.


EC: “It matters to me, because I feel like organic produce is grown in a way that is better for the global environment. So it matters to me in a global sense. I’m not actually a person who that is worried about the health aspects of pesticides.”


JG: “If the prices were comparable, would you buy organic over conventional?”


EC: “Sure. Sure. Definitely. If you look at these organic cherry tomatoes, they look great. But they’re $3.99 a pint.”

JG: “Let’s go look at the conventional.”

EC: “Here’s some grape tomatoes. A little different. And they are… $1.49 for a pint. So that is less than half the price.”


One reason organics cost more is the price farms pay for USDA certification. It’s an involved process…


(farm sound)


Mick Luber inspects farms for the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association. His group is approved by the USDA to certify farms as organic. This morning he’s visiting Larry Luschek’s farm in Ohio. Until a couple of years ago, cabbage, collards, or other produce claiming to be “organic” could be certified by any number of organizations. But, now the USDA has established guidelines everyone must follow. Luber says that actually hasn’t changed his inspections much.


(sound in fields)


Out in the fields… he sticks a metal probe in the ground and pulls out a soil sample… the soil structure looks right.


ML: “See that little white stuff there? That’s bacteria in the soil. It means the soil is alive. And you also look for earthworm activity.”


JG: “What would any of that mean for certification?”


ML: “Means soil is alive. That’s what the whole organic thing is about is alive soil. You’re not just using NPNK to produce your plants. You’re using the soil as a living organism.”


JG: “NPNK is?”


ML: “Nitrogen-potassium-phosphorous. A living soil is a living soil, it actually produces a lot of those things itself…”


In addition to the soil, Luber checks the equipment for oil leakage, the barrels used to clean produce, and everything else he can think of to bring back to an inspection committee.”


(kitchen sound)


He sits at Larry Luschek’s kitchen table for more than an hour, asking where Larry buys his seeds and checking his receipts. There’s a lot of paperwork involved in getting the USDA’s organic certification.


Not everybody thinks it’s worth the hassle.


(market sound)


At the North Union Farmers’ Market in Cleveland, Mark Welton and his teenage daughter are selling rhubarb. Welton owns a three-acre farm…


MW: “We do everything organically with no herbicides, pesticides, lot of composting, cover cropping, crop rotation. You know, things like that.”


Welton used to certify his farm organic. But he stopped once the USDA national standards went into effect.


MW: “I just didn’t feel I needed to keep it going anymore. And it was getting expensive. It was getting expensive to stay certified. I said, I haven’t changed my practices, I’ve been doing it twenty years that way. I just felt now was the time just to say… okay, I’m done.”


Welton says people at the market know him and trust that he’s not using chemical-laden seeds or spraying things like NPNK on his fields. He says they can visit his farm if they want to check for themselves.


Farmer Bruce Cormack thinks that’s a lot more important than the USDA organic label. He wonders if huge organic farms on the west coast are really
earth friendly…


BW: “I mean, I think the organic certification is supposed to be, as far as environment, less impact and better for everybody but when you have 800 horsepower tractors and shipping 4,000 miles it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t see how that is not impacting the environment.”


Shoppers at the farmers’ market know they’re paying more than the average price for produce. They don’t seem to mind because it’s fresh and locally grown. But not everyone has the time to get to the farmers’ market, let alone drive out to the farm to make sure it’s organic.


(supermarket sound)


Back at the supermarket, Elizabeth Culotta is glad the federal government has standardized what it means to be an organic farm…


EC: “Yes. I mean I think that makes it simpler for someone like me to go into a grocery store and if I can find something that says organic, then I can probably be pretty sure that that’s probably going to meet what I want. As opposed to having to parse the label and trying to figure out from the ads who is exactly doing what.”


The USDA organic label does let people know how the food was grown and processed. It does not tell them whether it’s good for the planet. That’s something shoppers still have to figure out for themselves.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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“24 Carrot” Farmers

According to the USDA, the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has increased nearly 80 percent in the past decade, with roughly 3,100 in operation. Like many other Midwesterners, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King buys much of her warm-weather produce from local growers. But King thinks those farmers grow something else that might be just as important as food:

Transcript

According to the USDA, the number of farmers’ markets in the United States has
increased nearly 80 percent in the past decade, with roughly 3,100 in operation. Like
many other Midwesterners, Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Julia King buys
much of her warm-weather produce from local growers. But King thinks those farmers
grow something else that might be just as important as food…


Not long ago, my ten-year-old daughter gathered her allowance, dropped her coins into a
see-through, polka-dot plastic purse and journeyed with me to our local farmers’ market.
Inside the old warehouse-turned-emporium, we strolled up and down the aisles. She
sniffed bars of soap and fragrant candles, poked bags of cheese bread and gazed at
almond croissants. But it was a large butternut squash that finally caught her eye.


She smiled and pointed at the unusual treasure. The farmer behind the counter called out
a price and I watched from a distance as she dug into her little plastic purse, pulling out a
quarter here, a dime there. As she calculated the numbers, her smile faded; she was fifty
cents shy of the total.


“Oh, you go ahead and take it anyway,” he told her. “It’s a little bit old, really.”


She paused, uncertain. I stepped into view and offered a dollar to the farmer, but he
stood his ground. He wanted to sell the squash to my daughter for the price she could
afford. He said it was a fair exchange. We thanked him repeatedly and my daughter took
the big pear-shaped vegetable in her arms like it was a baby doll.


It was not the first time one of the market’s farmers had put kindness before cash. Shop
there long enough and someone is bound to say, “Oh, take two, they’re small” or “This
one’s a little bruised; I’ll throw it in for free.”


These aren’t “blue light specials” or “supersaver sales;” they’re gifts from people who
never tire of the magic that springs from the earth. In a year of Saturdays, I’ve been
invited to marvel at the shape of a carrot, to behold the size of a potato, to delight in the
beauty of a snapdragon.


In a nation of box stores and billionaire wannabes, a nation where “excess” is master, the
men and women who labor in the soil offer a glimpse of something different. It’s a
commerce measured not only by what they gain, but also by what they give.


John Greenleaf Whittier put it best in his poem, “Song of Harvest”:


Give fools their gold, and knaves their power;
Let fortune’s bubbles rise and fall;
Who sows a field, or trains a flower,
Or plants a tree, is more than all.


HOST TAG: Julia King lives and writes in Goshen, Indiana. She comes to us by way of
the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.

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