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Monday, March 29, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Thank you Governor Granholm
As our nation celebrated National Ag Week and Ag Day last week some interesting developments took place, particularly in the state of Michigan. If you missed it, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed a proclamation declaring National Ag Day as “Michigan Meat-out Day.” I fail to understand why so many of the elitists of this country want to apologize for the abundant food system we have created. Meat of all types contributes to a healthy lifestyle and the American consumer has access to meat items in the store at the most reasonable prices of any consumer worldwide.
At a time when so many people want to be “green” and efficient, we should be celebrating that we have a nutrient dense food substance such as meat. In fact, if you eat a 3 oz. serving of beef you get the most nutrient dense profile of any food substance. Calorie for calorie, nothing offers a greater balance and nutrient punch than meat. Vitamin B12, vitamin B6, zinc, iron and, of course, protein but I don’t want to forget the other nutrient that many Americans are short of today - healthy fats.
Americans are lacking most all of these ingredients, including good fats, in their diet. In fact, many in the scientific field are learning that every single one of those key nutrients mentioned above are also important for proper mental health. While often not discussed, depression continues to be a growing problem in the United States. Depression tends to occur even more often in more affluent families. Why?
I believe that affluent people are most often the individuals that reduce or eliminate meats and natural fats from their diet because they think that they are making a healthier choice while they fail to recognize the key nutrients that meat provides to human health.
A growing body of scientific evidence has shown that kids who do not eat meat often enough suffer in cognitive development and IQ scores. I point to the recent study from the University of North Carolina that suggests that all pregnant women should consume bacon and eggs every morning in order to improve the IQ of their unborn babies.
On one of my recent trips to California I learned that many farmers with grape vineyards are actually taking out acres of grapes and putting in olive trees. Olive oil is the new rage in health circles because it is the “heart healthy” fat thanks to the Omega 3 benefits. While I think olive oil is great and use it from time to time myself, the intramuscular fat from beef and the fat from bacon both contain the same exact monounsaturated fats found in olive oil. So if you really wanted to improve both your health and your intelligence you would fry your eggs in olive oil right next to the bacon every morning.
This should be a time in our culture that we truly celebrate the many benefits and opportunities for choice that we have as American consumers. No other country in the world has access to all of the nutritious foods that we do and we offer them so inexpensively. The fact that year after year we spend less that 10% of our disposable income on food is the primary reason that we take this bountiful food supply for granted. Not only is it inexpensive but the shelves are always full. Think about how panicked consumers are when they are stockpiling for an impending storm and they go the grocery store only to find that their neighbors have beat them to the punch. What if this were an every day occurrence and not just something that you might experience once in your lifetime? Most of us are so spoiled that we are disappointed if we go to the store and they don’t have our favorite style of bread or the milk we like best. So indeed, National Ag Day, a day set aside to bring a greater awareness to the importance of the efforts of farmers and ranchers toward human health, should come to the forefront. If it takes the ignorance of the Governor of Michigan to get it done and help it make a bigger splash in the media, perhaps that is even better. It seems that bacon and eggs may have been missing in the cognitive development of someone in the Great Lakes State!
As our nation celebrated National Ag Week and Ag Day last week some interesting developments took place, particularly in the state of Michigan. If you missed it, Governor Jennifer Granholm signed a proclamation declaring National Ag Day as “Michigan Meat-out Day.” I fail to understand why so many of the elitists of this country want to apologize for the abundant food system we have created. Meat of all types contributes to a healthy lifestyle and the American consumer has access to meat items in the store at the most reasonable prices of any consumer worldwide.
At a time when so many people want to be “green” and efficient, we should be celebrating that we have a nutrient dense food substance such as meat. In fact, if you eat a 3 oz. serving of beef you get the most nutrient dense profile of any food substance. Calorie for calorie, nothing offers a greater balance and nutrient punch than meat. Vitamin B12, vitamin B6, zinc, iron and, of course, protein but I don’t want to forget the other nutrient that many Americans are short of today - healthy fats.
Americans are lacking most all of these ingredients, including good fats, in their diet. In fact, many in the scientific field are learning that every single one of those key nutrients mentioned above are also important for proper mental health. While often not discussed, depression continues to be a growing problem in the United States. Depression tends to occur even more often in more affluent families. Why?
I believe that affluent people are most often the individuals that reduce or eliminate meats and natural fats from their diet because they think that they are making a healthier choice while they fail to recognize the key nutrients that meat provides to human health.
A growing body of scientific evidence has shown that kids who do not eat meat often enough suffer in cognitive development and IQ scores. I point to the recent study from the University of North Carolina that suggests that all pregnant women should consume bacon and eggs every morning in order to improve the IQ of their unborn babies.
On one of my recent trips to California I learned that many farmers with grape vineyards are actually taking out acres of grapes and putting in olive trees. Olive oil is the new rage in health circles because it is the “heart healthy” fat thanks to the Omega 3 benefits. While I think olive oil is great and use it from time to time myself, the intramuscular fat from beef and the fat from bacon both contain the same exact monounsaturated fats found in olive oil. So if you really wanted to improve both your health and your intelligence you would fry your eggs in olive oil right next to the bacon every morning.
This should be a time in our culture that we truly celebrate the many benefits and opportunities for choice that we have as American consumers. No other country in the world has access to all of the nutritious foods that we do and we offer them so inexpensively. The fact that year after year we spend less that 10% of our disposable income on food is the primary reason that we take this bountiful food supply for granted. Not only is it inexpensive but the shelves are always full. Think about how panicked consumers are when they are stockpiling for an impending storm and they go the grocery store only to find that their neighbors have beat them to the punch. What if this were an every day occurrence and not just something that you might experience once in your lifetime? Most of us are so spoiled that we are disappointed if we go to the store and they don’t have our favorite style of bread or the milk we like best. So indeed, National Ag Day, a day set aside to bring a greater awareness to the importance of the efforts of farmers and ranchers toward human health, should come to the forefront. If it takes the ignorance of the Governor of Michigan to get it done and help it make a bigger splash in the media, perhaps that is even better. It seems that bacon and eggs may have been missing in the cognitive development of someone in the Great Lakes State!
Friday, March 12, 2010
My email Oprah today Friday March 12, 2010
I want to be on your show finally telling the real story about the American food system. I am a sixth generation United States Rancher from Central NE and struggle with the fact that you have constantly presented the "elitist" view of food production.
This is not just the “Pollan, self-promoting, I want to be a millionaire” booking selling tour. The Obama administration has begun a series of meetings around the country to plant the seed that our system of providing low cost, highly nutritious, safe, domestically grown food for people is wrong.
You need to do your viewers a favor and have someone explain why the U.S. food system has become the premier in the world. Honestly as the world population grows to 9 billion by 2050 it is a matter of humanity that this information gets out. Please give me the chance to make that happen on your show.
Trent Loos
Post your note by linking here
I want to be on your show finally telling the real story about the American food system. I am a sixth generation United States Rancher from Central NE and struggle with the fact that you have constantly presented the "elitist" view of food production.
This is not just the “Pollan, self-promoting, I want to be a millionaire” booking selling tour. The Obama administration has begun a series of meetings around the country to plant the seed that our system of providing low cost, highly nutritious, safe, domestically grown food for people is wrong.
You need to do your viewers a favor and have someone explain why the U.S. food system has become the premier in the world. Honestly as the world population grows to 9 billion by 2050 it is a matter of humanity that this information gets out. Please give me the chance to make that happen on your show.
Trent Loos
Post your note by linking here
I tried to tell them
"Take a look at them. They're all nice guys, but they'll finish last. Nice guys. Finish last " Baseball manager Leo Durocher, 1939.
So was he talking about baseball players or the individuals in modern agriculture? I advocate that it applies today as it did in 1939. Michael Pollan is touring the country speaking in at least three Land Grant Institutions about how everything we have accomplished in the past fifty years was wrong. If someone opposes him and wants to tell the real story, there is a level of fear about looking too radical. Then of course there is his appearance recently on Oprah’s TV show. Are we going to roll over and give back everything we have worked so hard to create?
This is not just the “Pollan, self-promoting, I want to be a millionaire” booking selling tour. The Obama administration has begun a series of meetings around the country to plant the seed that our system of providing low cost, highly nutritious, safe, domestically grown food for people is wrong. This is coming at the same time that Land Grant Institutions around the country are announcing entire cuts to their Ag programs. A perfect example would be the University of Nevada-Reno. Another great example is Michigan State University where the Governor Jennifer Granholm has already indicated that she would like to do the same thing.
Why can’t we simply stand up and say, “If you want sustainable agriculture, we have sustainable agriculture and it started in our nation’s research centers.”
I reference a recent analysis out of Washington State University which found that buying 1 dozen eggs that has been transported several hundred miles to a grocery store in a tractor-trailer is a more fuel-efficient, eco-friendly option than purchasing 1 dozen eggs at a farmers market, which uses 4.5 times more fuel, or at a local farm, which would require 17.2 times more fuel.
In the comparison, total mileage in this example came to about 807 miles for the grocery store eggs, 93.2 miles for the farmers market example and 27.34 miles in the local farm example. The tractor-trailer transported 23,400 dozen eggs. The farmer’s market calculation was based on 1,074 eggs in a pickup truck and the local farm calculation was based on a consumer picking up one carton of eggs in a single trip. Not surprisingly, the study found the greatest fuel usage resulted from the consumer's car.
John Murlis, chief scientific adviser to the Carbon Neutral Co., recently expressed concern in The New Yorker about how, in our collective rush to make choices that display personal virtue, we may be losing sight of the larger problem. Murlis discusses how labeling food with carbon footprint data does not tell whole story. Organic potatoes bought from a nearby farm shows that half the emissions - and half the footprint – of those potatoes could come from the energy used to cook them. If you leave the lid off, boil them at a high heat and then mash your potatoes, from a carbon standpoint, Murlis says you might as well drive to McDonald's and spend your money buying an order of French fries.
Washington State also has shown that greenhouse gas emissions per gallon of milk produced using modern agricultural practices are 63% lower than those of the 1940s. In 2007, the U.S. dairy industry produced 8.3 billion more gallons of milk than in 1944, but due to improved productivity, the carbon footprint of the entire dairy farm industry dropped 41% during the same time period.
In the case of grass-fed beef the amount of time required to get an animal to harvest is doubled therefore energy use and greenhouse gas emissions per pound of beef are increased three-fold. In total, finishing only 9.8 million cattle on pasture, instead of in a feedlot, would require an extra 60 million acres of land.
Speaking of more land, my favorite study comes from the University of California-Davis by Steve Sexton. He has had a paper published discussing the real cost of local food production but refers to it as “pseudo-locavorism.” His research suggests that it will require more than 214 million additional acres in farm production to sustain this practice, an area twice the size of California.
The transition means 40 million additional acres will be required in California, 34 million in Texas and 26 million in Florida. The additional acreage and loss of efficiencies are calculated by Sexton to demand significant energy-intensive inputs that will likely overwhelm any carbon-emissions reductions coming from decreased transportation and monocropping. Don Curlee of the University of California-Berkeley, the very same institution where Pollan teaches journalism, is now studying Sexton’s work.
So my point is that if you appear to be a radical because you choose the truth behind the science and encourage sustainably produced food to feed an ever-growing population, so be it. We cannot continue to let a guy who is an author and a journalism professor, not a scientist or a farmer, continue to increase his carbon footprint by jet-setting around the country tearing down the Land Grant system and reverting technology in food production back to the stone ages. I would guess Leo Durocher is turning over in his grave now saying, “I tried to tell them.” If we don’t want to finish last, it times to turn up the heat!
"Take a look at them. They're all nice guys, but they'll finish last. Nice guys. Finish last " Baseball manager Leo Durocher, 1939.
So was he talking about baseball players or the individuals in modern agriculture? I advocate that it applies today as it did in 1939. Michael Pollan is touring the country speaking in at least three Land Grant Institutions about how everything we have accomplished in the past fifty years was wrong. If someone opposes him and wants to tell the real story, there is a level of fear about looking too radical. Then of course there is his appearance recently on Oprah’s TV show. Are we going to roll over and give back everything we have worked so hard to create?
This is not just the “Pollan, self-promoting, I want to be a millionaire” booking selling tour. The Obama administration has begun a series of meetings around the country to plant the seed that our system of providing low cost, highly nutritious, safe, domestically grown food for people is wrong. This is coming at the same time that Land Grant Institutions around the country are announcing entire cuts to their Ag programs. A perfect example would be the University of Nevada-Reno. Another great example is Michigan State University where the Governor Jennifer Granholm has already indicated that she would like to do the same thing.
Why can’t we simply stand up and say, “If you want sustainable agriculture, we have sustainable agriculture and it started in our nation’s research centers.”
I reference a recent analysis out of Washington State University which found that buying 1 dozen eggs that has been transported several hundred miles to a grocery store in a tractor-trailer is a more fuel-efficient, eco-friendly option than purchasing 1 dozen eggs at a farmers market, which uses 4.5 times more fuel, or at a local farm, which would require 17.2 times more fuel.
In the comparison, total mileage in this example came to about 807 miles for the grocery store eggs, 93.2 miles for the farmers market example and 27.34 miles in the local farm example. The tractor-trailer transported 23,400 dozen eggs. The farmer’s market calculation was based on 1,074 eggs in a pickup truck and the local farm calculation was based on a consumer picking up one carton of eggs in a single trip. Not surprisingly, the study found the greatest fuel usage resulted from the consumer's car.
John Murlis, chief scientific adviser to the Carbon Neutral Co., recently expressed concern in The New Yorker about how, in our collective rush to make choices that display personal virtue, we may be losing sight of the larger problem. Murlis discusses how labeling food with carbon footprint data does not tell whole story. Organic potatoes bought from a nearby farm shows that half the emissions - and half the footprint – of those potatoes could come from the energy used to cook them. If you leave the lid off, boil them at a high heat and then mash your potatoes, from a carbon standpoint, Murlis says you might as well drive to McDonald's and spend your money buying an order of French fries.
Washington State also has shown that greenhouse gas emissions per gallon of milk produced using modern agricultural practices are 63% lower than those of the 1940s. In 2007, the U.S. dairy industry produced 8.3 billion more gallons of milk than in 1944, but due to improved productivity, the carbon footprint of the entire dairy farm industry dropped 41% during the same time period.
In the case of grass-fed beef the amount of time required to get an animal to harvest is doubled therefore energy use and greenhouse gas emissions per pound of beef are increased three-fold. In total, finishing only 9.8 million cattle on pasture, instead of in a feedlot, would require an extra 60 million acres of land.
Speaking of more land, my favorite study comes from the University of California-Davis by Steve Sexton. He has had a paper published discussing the real cost of local food production but refers to it as “pseudo-locavorism.” His research suggests that it will require more than 214 million additional acres in farm production to sustain this practice, an area twice the size of California.
The transition means 40 million additional acres will be required in California, 34 million in Texas and 26 million in Florida. The additional acreage and loss of efficiencies are calculated by Sexton to demand significant energy-intensive inputs that will likely overwhelm any carbon-emissions reductions coming from decreased transportation and monocropping. Don Curlee of the University of California-Berkeley, the very same institution where Pollan teaches journalism, is now studying Sexton’s work.
So my point is that if you appear to be a radical because you choose the truth behind the science and encourage sustainably produced food to feed an ever-growing population, so be it. We cannot continue to let a guy who is an author and a journalism professor, not a scientist or a farmer, continue to increase his carbon footprint by jet-setting around the country tearing down the Land Grant system and reverting technology in food production back to the stone ages. I would guess Leo Durocher is turning over in his grave now saying, “I tried to tell them.” If we don’t want to finish last, it times to turn up the heat!
Friday, March 05, 2010
Monday, March 01, 2010
Jim Haslam joins me on the radio today to discuss the lessons learned from mistake made with HSUS. Thanks Jim for doing the right thing.
Click here to listen
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Today my hat is off to Jim Haslam owner of Pilot Travel Centers. The minute he learned who HSUS truly was he said lets get this fixed. It is important we "communicate" with folks and not go around pointing fingers until they have the chance to do the right thing. Personally I will be fueling up at Pilot Travel Center every time I get the chance. Also my thanks to Chuck and Fred Bosselman for creating the opportunity for me to visit directly with the owner himself. No "Silver Bullet" but one day one person at a time we are making a difference. Don't let up now. Trent Loos
Link to story at Feedstuffs
Monday, February 22, 2010
Obama administration details Healthy Food Financing Initiative
The Obama administration is triple teaming the problem of food deserts in America’s urban core and rural regions with a planned $400 million Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services and Treasury Department are poised to play a role in providing resources for new outlets for fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy food to America’s underserved populations.
The initiative was announced in Philadelphia Feb. 19 by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and First Lady Michelle Obama.
The Healthy Food Financing Initiative seeks to eliminate food deserts — urban areas more than a mile from a supermarket — in the U.S. within seven years, according to a news release from the USDA. The goal for the $400 million for fiscal year 2011 is to expand healthy options in as many as one-fifth of the areas in need, the release said. The money will be used to provide financial and technical assistance to expand healthy food options, including tax credits, below-market rate loans, loan guarantees and grants to attract private sector capital.
Through a new tool, called the Food Environment Atlas the USDA has determined that 23.5 million people live in low-income areas that are more than a mile from a supermarket.
Question for the day. If you live within a mile of the grocery store would you buy morefuits and veggies?
The Obama administration is triple teaming the problem of food deserts in America’s urban core and rural regions with a planned $400 million Healthy Food Financing Initiative.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services and Treasury Department are poised to play a role in providing resources for new outlets for fresh fruits and vegetables and other healthy food to America’s underserved populations.
The initiative was announced in Philadelphia Feb. 19 by Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and First Lady Michelle Obama.
The Healthy Food Financing Initiative seeks to eliminate food deserts — urban areas more than a mile from a supermarket — in the U.S. within seven years, according to a news release from the USDA. The goal for the $400 million for fiscal year 2011 is to expand healthy options in as many as one-fifth of the areas in need, the release said. The money will be used to provide financial and technical assistance to expand healthy food options, including tax credits, below-market rate loans, loan guarantees and grants to attract private sector capital.
Through a new tool, called the Food Environment Atlas the USDA has determined that 23.5 million people live in low-income areas that are more than a mile from a supermarket.
Question for the day. If you live within a mile of the grocery store would you buy morefuits and veggies?
Sunday, February 21, 2010
RockyMountainJoe I spotted Trent Loos at LAX as I dashed to to the gate for my flight back to Denver. The hat probably caught my eye first, but the way he was focused on his machine, and his arm in a sling made for a great portrait.
He was editing an episode of his podcast, 'Loos Tales'. From his website: "Loos Tales is dedicated to e...xploring the interesting people and places of Rural America. It is the creation of Trent Loos, a sixth generation United States farmer with a passion for the rural lifestyle." Check it out:
http://www.loostales.com/
(And he had hurt is arm in a recent rodeo and expects a full recovery.)
Check out Rocky Mountain Joe.....Thanks Joe
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As a 6 th generation United States farmer, I have had my fill of people talking about “humanely raised meat” when they don’t have a clue... -
One huge step backwards for mankind Amazingly, we as individuals within an extremely informed society know more about less than ever before....