So You Say You Want a Food Revolution? Part Dos

It is ironic that my last post elicited so many enthusiastic responses from farmers and ranchers around the world but that many consumers/eaters thought my list of suggestions were either: 1) too difficult because they lack money, a car, time for cooking; or 2) they are doing the 'best' they can and that should be good enough for me (i.e. the perfect is the enemy of the good); or 3) we shouldn't be eating meat anyways, so my list of suggestions does not apply to a vegan world.  Farmers on the other hand were giving me virtual high fives, re-posting my article in their CSA newsletters or on their farm blogs.  Since we need farmers and ranchers to stick around to keep feeding people, maybe we should be more accommodating to their needs, perhaps, instead of dismissing them as inconvenient, trivial, or too costly.  Anyways, to address the issue of cost, I have assembled another list of things people can do to make our food system more sustainable and that require no exchange of currency at all, or some that are very budget-friendly.

Creating a more sustainable food system for free (or on a budget):

FREE

-Inform yourself about GMOs and fight their release into the environment. Do that by making phone calls to your elected officials, signing on-line  petitions, sending a hand-written letter, etc.

-Join your child's school PTA or Site Council to advocate for better school lunches and food gardens on school campuses.

-Volunteer at your local food bank- often you will get free food out of this in addition to being altruistic. (Note: I don't think emergency food is sustainable, however, we need a food safety net in our country)

-Advocate for a sane, legalized agricultural worker program in our country so we don't continue to perpetuate an illegal, exploited workforce. Also, advocate for a legalized farm apprenticeship program in each state, where often it is illegal to pay apprentices-in-training below minimum wage and deters US citizens from working in agriculture or learning how to run their own farming businesses.

-Help get a farmers market established in your community or volunteer with one that already exists. You can help them with marketing, making a website, physical set-up or take-down, recruiting farmers, board management, bookkeeping, etc. Bonus is you often make friends with the vendors and they give you nice deals on food.

BUDGET-FRIENDLY

-Plant a garden- in a bed, in a box, in a pot, even in a jar (think sprout garden). Got excess? Can it, freeze it, dry it, or give it away to your neighbors, your kids school, or your church/synagogue/mosque/grange/etc.

-Buy jamming or canning flats of produce at the farmers market (they usually appear when farmers have excess or slightly blemished product). They are often half the price, but you have to make some time to process them. Make that your Friday night fun- invite some friends over, turn on some good music, & process some berries!

-Fish or hunt if you are going to enjoy the privilege of eating meat, then dry, cure, freeze, or can the meat to store for the long-term. If you don't hunt or fish but have friends that do, offer to help them process and I bet you will get a little meat in exchange for your time.

-Don't buy chicken or turkey breasts & thighs. Much cheaper to buy the whole birds and make several meals out of it, including a rich stock with all the bones.

-Make your own yogurt. Simply start with a container of yogurt that has just a little left in the bottom (use a plain, whole milk, organic one if possible), add some whole milk to it (raw is best if you can find that) and then set in your oven overnight with simply the warmth of the pilot light on. If you have an electric oven, set is at 85 degrees overnight.

-Make your own queso blanco with simply whole milk and lemon juice- no rennet or starter is required. Good cheese is expensive, so try making some of the quick, soft cheeses on your own!

-If you live near any fishing ports/docks, go down and ask a fisherman/woman for their fresh fish scraps. Then take them home and immediately simmer them in water for your own rich fish stock.

-Eat lots of greens- they are cheap and available longer than most any other vegetable.

-Buy your beans, lentils, dried peas, rice, etc. in bulk. Way cheaper....

-Find a rice cooker at your local thrift store (there are often 5-10 of them lining the shelves). Make at least one pot of rice a week (brown, organic, US grown is preferable in my opinion) for an easy, cheap filler you can put in burritos, tacos, stir frys, or even for breakfast with some milk & honey.

-Join a CSA that has a sliding-scale price based on income level, graduated payment plans, or work options to lower your cost. Offer to be a CSA host site and you normally get a free share altogether, plus all the leftover boxes that shareholders forget to pick up!

-Help a farmer clean up at the end of the farmers market by loading up their boxes or sweeping their space- they will likely give you a free box of produce for this.  Better yet, offer to work a regular market shift and earn a little cash and a bunch of produce too!

-Pack your kids a healthy lunch instead of paying for the school lunch. Save money and save their health too.

-Eat less meat & consume smaller portion sizes, but pay more for the meat you eat (paying for better values, humane animal care, raised in your local vicinity, pasture-based, endangered breeds, etc.)! Or go vegetarian if that suits you.

How about you? Got any budget-friendly or free tips on how to make our food system more sustainable?

Comments

[Rebecca T. of Honestmeat]

Oh Dana- you have a lot to learn about the world. The American diet and insatiable desire for meat is destroying the world, to be sure. There is not enough arable ground on this planet for us to eat grain-fed meat three times a day. And there is not enough land on the planet for us to eat 100% grass-fed meats 3 times a day either, unless you think the developing world should all raise animals for Americans to devour.

[Dana]

I don't see why people keep saying to eat less meat. If I had to cut anything out of my diet I would cut out the seeds. One of the pieces of advice I hear most often to be frugal with food is to cut it with grains and beans, as you've mentioned here. But you don't need either in your diet. It's just a load of extra starch that does nothing for you. On top of that, the stuff is usually quite old by the time you buy it, and has either gone rancid or lost nutritional value or both. Even more so if you got it from the bulk bin. The stuff is constantly exposed to light and air. If you buy the grain already ground, that's even more true--ground seeds go rancid faster than intact ones.

On top of all this, people don't know how to properly prepare seed foods anymore. In an evolutionary sense, seeds don't "want" to be eaten--they won't grow into plants if they are. So they have all sorts of nasty little chemical defenses that over time damage human health. Most people in the developed world, especially in the U.S., do not know you're supposed to soak grains and beans before you cook them. Soaking in acidic water works even better, and even fewer know how to do that. So they're reducing their mineral intake because these poorly processed seeds chelate the minerals before the body can absorb them. (I mentioned phytic acid to my little girl's dad one day and this veteran of AP chemistry's eyes lit up. "Oh, that's a FABULOUS chelating agent!" Gee, just what I want in my body.)

One thing I've found as I've made various forays into lower-carb eating is that if I get my carbs low enough I'm not as hungry. The bonus being that I get more nutrients from meat than I would from grain. That would be even more true if I consumed more bone broth and organ meats. Just the fat alone is nourishing in a way that "6-11 servings of whole grains a day" can't possibly touch.

People donate grain and bean foods to food banks before they donate meat, even canned meat. It's a crying shame.

[Jenna]

Wow, I am SO SICK of that no money or time for cooking excuse.

I cook most of our meals, and I'll give you a very expensive example for us: Lamb chops from the farmers market, organic, pastured, free-range, served with organic green beans and organic roasted red potatoes covered in a local spice mix. Grand total for two? $16. Two meals at In N Out or McDonald's costs almost as much. Chipotle costs a little more. Which would I rather have? hmmm....

Oh, but the *time*! It took so LONG to do! Yeah, it took forever. I tossed the cut potatoes with oil and spices and threw them in the oven, then sat on my ass and surfed the web for 30 minutes. Then, heated the pan for the chops, salted and seared them. While the searing happened, I chopped a couple of mushrooms for the pan, and threw them in. I tossed the chops in the broiler and snapped the beans and steamed them while stove-finishing the potatoes. It took me 20 minutes of work, and 30 minutes on my ass.

If I want to do about 30 minutes of work, and about $10, then I can make chiles rellenos for us, and have leftovers for another night that just get tossed in the oven to warm through. In about 15 minutes with $5, I can generate a burger and veggies dinner. Yes, free-range grassfed organic, and I know my farmer's names. Steve and Debbie. Their daughter Felicity helps at the booth at the farmer's market, too.

I cannot agree more with the need for basic cooking skills. They can be got for free off the web with practice, or by asking an older lady really nicely - offer to do dished or something.

I'm so sad how many people refuse to take their lives into their own hands, and pay more for other people to do a poor job caring for them. No one cares more about you than you. Picking up a frying pan won't kill you, and may actually save you money, make your life better, and make you healthier.

[alan]

At this point I'm embarrassed posting an answer on someone elses blog, but it is a conversation I need to have. Life got in the way of blogging, but I will post about revolutionary food and all the (in my blog I'd say 'bullshit') that's out there. Tomorrow Joel Salatin and I will bash heads. He's smart, but not a god...

[Rachel Kasa]

I have an idea: how about living simply by living rural? Many people complain that food, rent and living costs are too expensive yet less than 50 miles will bring them to a rural community where rents for whole houses on land are $300, food costs much less and the extras like street sweeping tickets don't exist. Where I live, I can maintain a garden 9 months out of the year, keep chickens and sheep and forage in nearby orchards and wild lands for: almonds, walnuts, peaches, pomegranates, figs, blackberries,wild greens, grapes, oranges. And by asking a farmer, I can access many more types of vegetables straight from the field. People say: "but there are no jobs out there and people are rednecks!" Rednecks generally mind their own business and make better neighbors in my mind than urban people who have never used a shovel, throw their trash on the ground and raise their children on fast food.

I know many people that already commute an hour to work from their suburb. Change that hour trek home to a rural community on less traveled highways and come home to peace and quiet, good food, and less stress.

[Kathy Vimont]

Rebecca, thank you for saying it so well. We farmers appreciate it.

For information on a group, that's actually doing something about our lack of food and jobs, please check out www.thewellfedneighbor.com. You'll be hearing about it. We are returning local food production to SW Missouri and then the rest of the country, which will produce food security (since there isn't a county that can feed itself) and jobs. We can have a vibrant sustainable food system once again. They have a 20-year timetable and it's going along right on schedule. Glad to be a part of it.

Kathy at Pasture Nectar Farm
Mount Vernon, Missouri

[Nicholas Kehrlein]

LEARN BASIC COOKING SKILLS! It seems obvious but it's so important. I have a hard time eating in restaurants at all any more since I can just go home and make something better for a lot less money. I used to cook professionally and you learn pretty quickly that there are really only a few basic skills that can be applied universally, then you can experiment with what is fresh and available! Learning the basics opens up tremendous possibilities to eat well and cheaply. We make some amazing meals at my house with stuff just laying around or perhaps a volunteer butternut squash from the garden. Get a decent knife and keep it sharp. Learn to dice an onion properly. Put the oil in the pan AFTER it's hot. Cooking for yourself is really the ONLY sustainable way to feed yourself and your friends/family and chicks totally dig it.

[Danielle]

Excellent list, and in my view, you've covered a broad range of steps that we all can take to make the difference. As a food blogger, I'm all too aware of the importance of using my blog as a platform to to add more transparency to the food system and promote awareness about the importance of supporting small-scale, organic farms. Which is why I'm in the process of re-launching it to have a bigger focus on the farmers that I support at my Farmers Market (in Mountain View), talk about their husbandry/farming methods and where consumers can find their products. In time, I plan to grow this to include other markets in the Bay Area - we always hear of the big name, CSA farms, it's time to highlight the smaller ones too!

[Tom]

As a part time farmer, raising all natural grass fed beef, natural pork and goat. Fresh eggs and a big garden, I have to say that the prices we charge are comparable if not cheaper than the supermarket. We do not do this to get rich (name a farmer who is!) but to use the land we are blessed with, honor the animals who feed us and give back to our neighbors and friends. We feed our pigs leftover veggies from a local farm who maintain 3 farm stands, we get on average 7-10 5 gallon buckets of veggies every night, some are clearly past their prime, but some are store quality that get thrown in the bin. If we all created relationships with our local producers we could eat for almost nothing some nights... we have become too sedentary and isolated. Get out there and Eat, Drink and be Local.

Tom
Wriggins Hilltop Farm
Nobleboro Maine

[Sara]

It's also easy to look other places for food options. A tree sitting in someones yard, dropping fruit that obviously no one is picking...knock on their door and ask if you can grab some (if you preserve it, take them some and start a relationship maybe). I've also found a few folks who grow too much for themselves and will share for a very good price! Sometimes they just set it out for people, keep your eyes open. A lot of other edible things exist around us, look into foraging and try it out.

[FMs Saved Me]

I love that you mentioned simply eating less of higher quality foods. I started doing this about 7 weeks ago. When I began eating mainly from farmer's markets (including pastured meat) my food bill increased. About 7 weeks ago I started reducing how much food I ate because I was overeating anyway. Since then my food bill has drastically decreased and I've lost 15 pounds!

People ask me, "should you be eating that?" I cook with REAL milk, REAL butter, leaf lard, etc. (all local). But then turn around and ask me, "how are you losing weight?" It makes me chuckle because I'm thinking well, probably because I'm eating the very things you're saying I shouldn't be eating, just less of it! I no longer eat the fake stuff sold in the grocery stores (low-fat, processed, etc.). I'm eating REAL FOOD again and I'm finally losing weight and actually loving the food I am so blessed to be able to eat.

Just remember to eat less and your food bill will not change. If you're anything like me you may be overeating anyway. I love the taste of food again.... without any added expense!

[nike shox saya]

Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to damned, and no body to be kicked? (Edward Thurlow, British Lawyer)

[alan]

Two things to add to this BRILLIANT list. 1. READ the Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith. For all the vegetarians and vegans out there, it will make you think (she was one of you for 20 years...) and for all the rest of us, there are some truths about food we need to grapple with. 2. Nature is sustainable, we moved away from the natural system about 10,000 years ago. figure out how eveything else functions (there are a few rules, blogging about them tomorrow...) and you will have the foundation of a new culture.