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By F. Bailey Norwood and Jayson L. Lusk

 
After fighting each other for over a decade, the egg industry and the largest animal advocacy organization came to an agreement, one which will increase the welfare of egg-laying hens but also increase egg prices.  The United Egg Producers, under persistent pressure from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), has agreed to transition hens out of battery cages and into enriched colony cages.  The HSUS certainly believes the higher welfare standards are worth the increase in egg prices, but do consumers agree?  My research says that when consumers are informed about the issue, yes, they applaud the move—even when they know higher egg prices will follow.

Most consumers do not wish to see farm animals crammed into small cages, but if they take the time to discover the source of their pork and eggs, these cramped animal cages are what they will see.  Chickens raised for egg production are placed in groups of 4-6 birds and raised their entire lives inside a cage so small that they cannot turn around without bumping into another chicken.  Spreading their wings is out of the question.  Sows (female hogs used for breeding) are confined even tighter, spending most of their lives in a stall so small the sow cannot even turn around.  There are more farm animal welfare issues than just space allotments.  Both layers and sows desire to forage for food, scratch or dig, socialize, and find comfortable places to rest.  All of these “behavioral” needs are neglected in the typical egg and pork production facility.  By transitioning from battery cages to enriched colony cages, the egg industry goes a long way towards meeting these space and behavioral needs.

Why are animal cages used in the first place, when the average person finds them disturbing?  In the competitive marketplace for food, farmers must employ confined production facilities to keep their costs low, because consumers generally emphasize low prices over animal welfare at the grocery store.  Yet, at the same time, consumers who purchase food from so-called “factory farms” donate money to the HSUS, who uses some of this money to ban the same animal cages used to produce most eggs and pork.  In surveys, referendums, and economic research, consumers consistently support the banning of the same cramped animal cages used to produce the food they purchase.

One reason the farm animal welfare debate cannot be quickly resolved is that consumers have difficulty resolving the issue for themselves.  They want livestock to be treated kindly, but they also want low food prices, and it is difficult to reconcile the tradeoff between animal well-being and food prices in the grocery store and/or in referendums.  For these reasons, the farm animal welfare debate is a messy, contradictory debate—the trademark of a democratic process.

Although consumer attitudes can be elusive to identify, research has revealed a few facts.  The most important fact to stem from consumer research is that, when consumers are informed about how layers and sows are raised, they consistently state they are willing to pay the higher food prices that would result from better animal care.  This does not imply that regular grocery store shoppers will reflect this level of concern in their willingness-to-pay for food, because the regular grocery store shopper is uninformed. 

However, the farm animal welfare debate is largely a policy debate.  Should we ban colony cages for layers?  Should we ban gestation stalls for sows?  It would seem prudent to base policy on the opinions of informed consumers, as opposed to uninformed consumers.  When employing this prudent procedure, there is little doubt that the ban on cramped animal cages occurring in the European Union and US states is justifi

The Good Garden by Katie Smith Milway, illustrated by Sylvie Daigneault

The author of One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference continues to explore the impact of education and funding on poor communities.  Here, she has written a book about a farming family in Honduras who learn techniques that allow them to grow enough food to feed themselves and earn enough money to secure a positive future for the family.  Maria Luz and her family have run out of food so her father must head out of town to find enough work to pay for the seed to plant next year because they will have to consume what they would have saved.  He leaves Maria Luz in charge of the garden while he is gone.  At school, she learns about compost, terrace gardening, and other ways to keep the soil fertile.  When her father returns, he is surprised by her success.  He and Maria Luz work with her teacher to avoid selling their produce to the local coyote and instead sell it themselves at a market and purchase seeds themselves.  Through one man’s efforts to educate, an entire village is transformed.

The author here has taken her subject very seriously, as is appropriate.  The text is lengthy for a picture book, but helps explain the impact of food insecurity around the world.  While this is not a picture book to add to a story time, it will be of value for elementary children who are learning about the world, gardening and food.  It is a book that teaches and informs.  Smith Milway’s text does not shy away from the control of the coyote, the fear of starvation, or the loss of families who leave to live elsewhere.  Her words convey it all with a seriousness and gentleness that is lovely to read.

Daigneault’s illustrations seem to glow with an inner sun.  Her use of colors is dynamic at times and subtle at others.  In all of her pictures, there are flowing lines that help depict the beauty of the Honduran landscape.  The illustrations help bring the text to life, making the book even more appealing.

An important book for children to better understand the world they live in, this book is informative and radiant.  Appropriate for ages 6-9.

Reviewed from copy received from Kids Can Press.

You can visit The Good Garden website at: http://www.thegoodgarden.org/ where you can learn, play or help make a difference.

And check out the book trailer:

Also reviewed by:

• Earth Times
• Jean Little Library

Up We Grow! A Year in the Life of a Small, Local Farm by Deborah Hodge, photographs by Brian Harris

This book shows the beauty and work of running a small farm.  The book moves from season to season, highlighting the work being done at that time.  In spring, seeds are sown, plants are transplanted, compost is spread.  In summer the animals and plants are growing bigger.  The flowers are blooming, bees are buzzing, crops are being harvested, and they have a farm celebration.  In fall, it’s harvest time for crops and for honey.  The farmers markets are active and the farmers are saving seeds to use next year.  In winter, it is slower.  The farmers repair their equipment, feed their animals, and grow plants in the greenhouse.  This book offers lots of information in friendly green boxes that specifically talk about sustainable practices.  It is a gentle way to introduce organic farming to young readers.

Hodge’s text is refreshingly light in tone, often asking readers to talk about their own experiences.  Her use of text in boxes for the more dense, factual portions works very well, making the book flexible for different ages and audiences.  Harris’ photographs really capture the fresh air and sunshine of a farm.  From friendly animals to deep rich soil, his photos are interesting and vibrant.

A book that will have everyone wanting to munch some farm-fresh veggies and visit a friendly goat or two, it is a warm invitation to investigate small farms in your area or at least spend some time at a farmer’s market this fall.  Appropriate for ages 4-6.

Reviewed from copy received from Kids Can Press.

When I agreed to review this book I wasn’t sure what to expect, but after a few pages, I found the old-style charm to be delightful, not to mention educational.

The first printing of Minnie Rose’s Recipe for Raising Chickens hit the selves in April of 1975 and sold 21,000 copies. Now in it’s 3’rd Edition, this book still holds the quaint and old-fashioned feel of the late, Minnie Rose Lovgreen.

Even if you have no intention of ever raising chickens, Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s Recipe for Raising Chickens is a fun and interesting lesson in all things chicken. For example, did you know chickens “talk” to their unborn chicks? Or that mother hen will pluck out all her breast feathers to keep her babies warm? Chickens really are wonderful mothers!

Recipe for Raising Chickens is a must have for anyone just beginning or even all ready in the midst of trying to raise chickens. Minnie Rose’s old-time approach to raising and caring for chickens is wonderfully informative and just plain fun to read – it even has some simple illustrations that only add to its unique quality.

Minnie Rose Lovgreen’s Recipe for Raising Chickens is available on Amazon.com

About the Author

Minnie Rose was born in 1888 in Norfolk County England. She was the eight of nineteen children – all of them worked the 200 acres her father farmed.

In 1912, she and her brother decided to go to Canada and booked passage on the Titanic. But she grew restless when the ship wasn’t ready to sail, hopped on another boat and arrived safely in Montreal.

Minnie Rose moved to Bainbridge Island, near Seattle, in 1920 where she married Danish-born Leo Lovgreen, had a family, and raised lots of chickens on what grew to become a thriving 170 acre dairy farm for 30 years.

Lauren Appelwick, Publicity

Robert Paarlberg, author of  Food Politics: What Everyone Needs to Know, is a leading authority on food policy, and one of the most prominent scholars writing on agricultural issues today. He is B.F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College and Associate at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University. He was invited to testify in front of the House Committee on Agriculture on May 13th, and shared his thoughts with us here last week. Now, after presenting his testimony on obesity, Paarlberg reflects on the experience.  You can read an excerpt from his book here.

Picking up the story, recall that I was invited to testify before the House Agriculture Committee on May 13, to share my views on new farm legislation for 2012. I was expecting a frosty reception, since I have expressed some disparaging views of farm subsidies, and also of the House and Senate agriculture committees, in my newest book. Yet the hearing took a surprising turn. The Committee wasn’t that interested in my views on farm subsidies (they have well established views of their own). Instead they wanted to talk about obesity.

In both my written testimony and in my oral statement I bravely repeated my view that farm bills were too wasteful of taxpayer money, thanks in part to the “logroll” tactics used by the House Agriculture committee. When I was asked by a senior member what I thought the chances were that this tactic could work again in 2012, I said “100 percent.” He said he “took it as a personal compliment” that I had noticed and remarked on the success of this strategy.

What got the committee’s attention, however, was my warning that drafting another business-as-usual farm bill in 2012 was going to be more difficult, because of a strengthening belief that the farm subsidies are contributing to our nation’s obesity crisis by making unhealthy foods too cheap. The committee knew, and I confirmed in my testimony, that this is in fact an unfounded charge. When the farm bill places restrictions on sugar imports to protect the income of American sugar growers it actually make all sweetened products – from candy to ice cream – artificially expensive rather than cheap. And when Congress enacts subsidies and mandates to divert 30 percent of our corn crop to the making of ethanol for auto fuel, it is making both corn and other animal feeds – and hence all meat products – artificially expensive as well. Nor is it true that corn-based sweeteners are more obesity-inducing than natural sugar. Nor is it true that the price of junk food has fallen in America while the price of healthy foods (fruits and vegetables) has remained high. All of these misconceptions about farm programs are explained in Chapter Eight of my Oxford book, my chapter on “The Politics of Obesity.”

Yet the House Agriculture Committee also knew, and I confirmed, that over the past several years a number of highly influential non-scholarly books such as Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma, plus vari

Feeding the Sheep by Leda Schubert, illustrated by Andrea U’Ren

Follow the process from sheep to sweater through the eyes of a young girl.  The book starts with feeding the sheep corn and hay on a wintry day.  Then it moves on to shearing, washing the wool, drying the wool, carding it, spinning the yarn, dyeing the yarn, and then knitting it.  Each step is done by the little girl’s mother to the refrain of “What are you doing?” The book uses gentle rhymes and repetition to show the steps as well as detailed illustrations where the young girl gets involved too.

This book is ideal for toddlers and preschoolers who will enjoy realizing where their sweaters come from.  The style of writing is approachable and gentle.  Nicely the book comes full circle back to the feeding of sheep, making the point that the cycle of sheep to sweater continues.  U’Ren’s illustrations are filled with homey touches and small details, yet they will work well with a group.  A wonderful touch is the changing of the seasons throughout the book, often glimpsed only out of the window.  This again underlines the cyclical nature of farming.

Short sentences with plenty of rhythm and repetition, make this a friendly choice.  It is also a joy to read aloud.  Appropriate for ages 2-4.

Reviewed from library copy.

Oh, Crumps! by Lee Bock, illustrated by Morgan Midgett

Farmer Felandro is so very tired.  He has a lot to do tomorrow: milk the cows, fix the fence, mow the hay and climb the silo.  And morning comes so early.  As he is falling asleep, he hears the goats Maahing outside.  Oh crumps!  So he puts on his boots and heads out to put them in their pen.  Back in bed, he goes through his list of chores for tomorrow mixing his words up, and then hears the dogs barking.  On go the boots, out to the barn, gets the dogs settled, back in bed, list of chores, and another animals makes noise outside.  This happens again and again, until finally it is dawn and the day has begun.

This book has a very nice mix of humor and traditional feel.  Bock has created a story with a natural rhythm that will have young listeners feeling immediately at home.  Yet he also has created a very nice running gag as the farmer mixes up the words on his list of chores, leading to him thinking about fixing the cow and milking the fence!  Midgett’s illustrations merrily follow these words, so that we can see the farmer sitting with a bucket milking the spotted fence.  Her art will project well to a group of students with its thick lines and deep colors.

Highly recommended as an addition to farming story times or as a great bedtime choice, this book comes in both English and bilingual (English/Spanish) version.  Appropriate for ages 3-6.

Reviewed from ARC received from publisher.

What’s Coming for Christmas? by Kate Banks, illustrated by Georg Hallensleben

Something was coming, but what could it be?  Images of a farm family on the wintry days before a holiday are filled with snow, icicles, sleds and snowmen.  The home is filled with cinnamon, wrapping paper, and pine.  Even the animals out in the fields know that something is coming.  With lots of foreshadowing and wonderful suspense, this book has a great twist in the end that will delight everyone.

Christmas books can often leave one feeling jaded and distant from the holidays.  Santa in a swimsuit, elves bowling, and the emphasis on piles and piles of presents.  This book does a great job of being about the season itself with its scents, sounds, tastes and activities.  Banks starts each page with a refrain: “Something is coming.”  From there she uses poetry to take readers on a holiday visit to the farm with all of its wonders.  Hallensleben’s illustrations are done in lush, thick colors that reflect the warmth, spice and chill of the season. 

The best holiday book I have seen this year.  Find a spot for it on library shelves and share it for holiday story times.  Appropriate for ages 3-7.

Reviewed from library copy.

Front and Center by Catherine Murdock

Released October 19, 2009.

In this third and final book in the Dairy Queen series, DJ has returned home after caring for her injured brother Will.  Now she is back in the high school mix of homework, basketball and plenty of pressure.  Pressure from her coach to turn into a better leader and start to speak out more on court.  Pressure from the bag of offers her father has kept, filled with coaches that she is going to have to call.  Pressure from a new boyfriend and lingering thoughts of Brian.  Pressure from her brother Will to do it all perfectly and to do it now.  Luckily DJ has basketball and workouts to keep her mind from spiraling completely out of control.  But she has some big decisions to make and soon.

DJ is such a wonderful character that I am sad to see this will be her final book.  She is genuine, funny and reminds me vividly of all of the Wisconsin farm girls I knew growing up.  Murdock has created a character who is above all real, filled with doubts, and exceptional.  Even reading this as an adult, it brought up all of the tough decisions I have had to make about school and work, along with their accompanying not-good-enough feelings.  Murdock has written a book about struggling with self-doubt and the future without becoming whiny in any way. 

Murdock also excels at the characters of DJ’s family, giving them each their own motivations, logical growth of their characters, and sudden understanding.  It is a pleasure to see a series where an entire family changes together, growing stronger and more important to one another.

Highly recommended for anyone who has read the first two.  This final book is just as good as the others in the series, if not better.  I’d recommend seeking this series out and enjoying all three books right in a row if you haven’t read them yet.  A great end to a marvelous series!  Appropriate for ages 13-16.

Reviewed from ARC provided by publisher.

Also reviewed at Librarilly Blonde, Abby (the) Librarian, Feed Your Imagination, and Jen Robinson’s Book Page.

Medieval farmers knew a thing or two. They had to - their lives depended on it. They knew that it's easy to exhaust a patch of ground by trying to get the same things to grow in it, time after time - that the crops will become weedy and weak after a few years. And they knew that it takes more time to grown something than the time between planting the seed and reaping the harvest. So they rotated things (you must remember crop rotation from primary school history lessons): first rye or winter wheat, then beans or peas (putting nitrogen back into the soil), then leaving the land fallow - growing nothing particular, letting the soil have a rest.

Writing is not so very different from farming, I find. A third of the time creativity can flourish, producing a nice crop of useful words around a rich central idea. A third of the time, research and editing, admin and other writing, blogging, writing proposals, meeting publishers - preparing the ground. A third of the time, I need to let the soil of the imagination replenish itself. This is the time for noodling around. It looks to other (non-writing) people remarkably like being lazy. Writers know, though, that the hours spent sitting in the sun reading novels, dawdling through the papers, picking out random books in libraries and bookshops, watching worms in the garden, taking walks, baking cakes, growing beans.... are all necessary ways of preparing the ground for the next crop of ideas. Without the fallow times, the harvest will become poorer, year on year. So I'm not sitting on the balcony in the sun because I'm lazy, I'm doing it because I have to.

I am happily getting into a ritual of biweekly visits to the public library with my daughters. While they are off perusing the picture book shelves, I head on over to fiction to find some more tweeny titles. Hummingbird, by Kimberly Green Angle ended up in my pile this week.

March Anne lives on her family's watermelon farm with her dad, brother Kevin and Grenna. March Anne's mom died when she was quite young, so Grenna has been like a mom to her ever since. Daily pieces of March Anne's life are taken up soaking in Grenna's advice and particular sayings.

Then right in the middle of the watermelon harvest, Grenna collapses in the field. March Anne knows that her life is about to change forever. Even though Grenna comes home, the doctor's words of "irreparable damage" stay with her.

March Anne tries to keep on. She has her friends Meg and Laverne, of course, and there is the daily grind of school to follow. Her Daddy tells her that cooking is now up to her, and with disastrous results, March Anne is feeling a bit more useless than she would like.

Hummingbird is a slow, simmering family story. To be honest, the pace at first made me consider putting this one aside, but I am glad that I kept on. The characters are refreshingly honest and humble, and when the inevitable happens at the end, tears are sure to come. Give this to thoughtful readers who like quiet stories.

Yesterday we posted part two in our dialogue between Robert Paarlberg (who recently published Starved For Science) and Pamela Ronald (author of Tomorrow’s Table). These two experts have been debating all week how to best ensure a safe food supply with the least amount of damage to the environment. This is the third and final part of the series, so be sure to read parts one and two first.

Robert Paarlberg is the Betty F. Johnson Professor of Political Science at Wellesley College. His most recent book is Starved For Science: How Biotechnology is Being Kept Out of Africa(Harvard University Press), explains why poor African farmers are denied access to productive technologies, particularly genetically engineered seeds with improved resistance to insects and drought.

Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis. Her laboratory has genetically engineered rice for resistance to diseases and flooding. She is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her most recent book, written with Raoul W. Adamchak, is Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, genetics, and the Future of Food, which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner.

Dear Pam,

Thanks for your last note. I like your final observation:

“So what I advocate is intensive farming using the most ecologically responsible approaches. In our view this would include many organic production practices and GE crops.”

I am attracted, as you are, to a number of organic production practices. What I find less attractive are the strict prohibitions in organic farming against some practices, such as the prohibition against all synthetic fertilizer use, or against all synthetic pesticide use. In many cases it will make ecological sense to restore soil nutrients by using a combination of both compost and synthetic nitrogen, yet the rules of organic certification make this impossible. It makes ecological sense, in many cases, to adopt an integrated pest management strategy, eliminating the routine use of synthetic insecticides yet keeping the chemical option available for the occasional circumstance when pest damage crosses a certain threshold. Yet once again the rules of organic certification make this practice impossible, since no use of synthetics is permitted.

I have another question about the rules of organic certification, which say it is perfectly all right to use “natural” poisons to kill insect pests. What is it that allows us to assume naturally occurring insecticidal substances are good, while those fabricated by people are always bad? This rule seems to derive, a bit too much, from the pre-scientific views held by the mystics and romantics who originated “biodynamic” and organic farming a century or more ago.

But perhaps I am missing something here.

Thanks,
Rob

The organic certification system provides guidelines for a biologically-based agricultural. One of the points of our book is that a truly sustainable agriculture will need to integrate many of these organic, scientifically-based principles. Yet it will also need to integrate new crop varieties, including those GE crops that satisfy principles of sustainable production. As you point out, different locations, crops and farmers will need to employ different approaches to achieve this vision. As Mike Madison, a fellow farmer, neighbor and writer says, “In dealing with nature, to be authoritarian is almost always a mistake. In the long run, things work out better if the farmer learns to tolerate complexity and ambiguity . . . Having the right tools helps”

Unfortunately such a sustainable system, although increasingly used around the world, has not yet been clearly defined. We begin that dialog in our book and appreciate your valuable contributions.

All the best
Pam

Yes, I appreciate the dialog we have begun, and look forward to staying in touch. The point made by Mike Madison is solid. It was Rachel Carson who taught us best not to be either authoritarian or arrogant when working with biological systems, as we still know only a small amount about how they work, and especially how they work with each other. Whenever we introduce agricultural cropping systems into the natural environment we risk doing harm as well as good.

I have just been asked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN to prepare a background paper that tries to imagine how the world can double its food production by the year 2050 (as will be necessary, given projected population and income growth in the developing world between now and then) without doing unwanted harm to the natural environment. A tall order, I think you would agree. I will have your nice book, Tomorrow’s Table, open on my desk when I get started on this task. Your willingness to integrate multiple approaches - from organic to GMO - into the design of sustainable farming systems is a persuasive approach to me. Thank you for opening so many minds with this inclusive approach.

Rob Paarlberg

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Pamela C. Ronald is a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis and the co-author with her husband Raoul Adamchak of Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food which argues that a judicious blend of two important strands of agriculture–genetic engineering and organic farming–is key to helping feed the world’s growing population in an ecologically balanced manner. In the post below Ronald responds to an editorial by Paul Krugman.

“Most Americans take food for granted”, reports the New York Times in an editorial last week. I would add that we also take abundant water, vast expanses of wilderness and clean air for granted. The price of oil, global warming and skyrocketing food prices are changing the way we think about land. It is about time. Have we forgotten that land and its resources are precious? Have we forgotten how to be good stewards?

In an editorial this week in the NYT, Paul Krugman places part of the blame on biofuels: “We need to push back against biofuels that turns out to have been a terrible mistake.” But this conclusion is premature and overly simplistic.

Whether biofuels offer carbon savings depends on how they are produced. If we destroy rainforests and grasslands to plant food crop–based biofuels, then Kurgman is right. This is a bad idea. Such an approach would release 17 to 420 times more CO2 than the annual greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions that these biofuels would provide by displacing fossil fuels. (Fargione et al, science 2008).

In contrast, biofuels made from waste biomass or from biomass grown on degraded and abandoned agricultural lands planted with perennials (so called cellulosic biomass) incurs little or no carbon debt and can offer immediate and sustained GHG advantages. Research on cellulosic biofuels have only just begun and there are tremendous opportunities. For example, plant biologists are working towards developing new and more productive non-food crops that can be grown on marginal lands. If we triple the yield of biomass we can use 1/3 less land. If we use the most ecologically responsible farming practices available (e.g. organic farming) to produce this new crop biomass, we can reduce the environmental impacts.

Nathanael Greene in an interview with Ira Flatow on Science Friday today said we need new innovations and we need to use them smartly. That is what should be done.

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my true love gave to me, eight maids a-milking There probably aren't any dairies nowadays that use milk maids exclusively -- that would no doubt fall afoul of federal legislation -- but a surprising number in North America have begun again to offer milk in glass bottles as well as home delivery. One such outfit is the Dewitt family's Dutchmen Dairy in Sicamous, BC, whose