Apparently produce in the U.S. not only tastes worse than it did in your grandparents' days, it also contains fewer nutrients — at least according to Donald R. Davis, a former research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. Davis claims the average vegetable found in today's supermarket is anywhere from 5% to 40% lower in minerals (including magnesium, iron, calcium and zinc) than those harvested just 50 years ago.

Eating Your Veggies: Not As Good For You? M.J. Stephey, Time

The root of the problem is that vegetables take their nourishment - the same nourishment that we consume from the soil. If we degrade the soil, we eat that. When I attended PASA it was all about soil improvement. Growing plants that fix nitrogen, add carbon - no to pesticides, herbicides and petrochemical fertilizers. But those were sustainable farmers and most of what is in groceries and certainly school lunches comes to us from Big Ag. Company's like Monsanto, Cargill and ADM have spent years and earned billions destroying our soils.

Corporate farms utilized fertilizers devoid of most of the essential minerals needed by plant foods and crop rotation began to disappear. As a result, soils became more and more depleted, while at the same time they became more contaminated with herbicides and insecticides.

Many pesticides contain mercury and fluoride. With each year's application, soil contents of these contaminants increased. Crops grown in these soils were not only devoid of major nutrients, but also contained high levels of fluoride and other toxic metals.

There's a global financial crisis and it didn't become like this in the past year. This degradation has been going great guns for some time now. Likewise the food crisis has been building since the era of cheap fossil fuel and we've signed on (knowingly or unknowingly) to eat that fossil fuel.It's a Ponzi Scheme and at this point there are no more investors to pay out - the soil has been robbed of it's vital role in our nutrition. When we say take back the land it is serious. Banks and petrochemical corporations are gonna need to pay back eventually. We're gonna have to take back the land and nurture it one parcel at a time, the soil will have to be replenished and allowed to produce nourishment again. It's a big job. I hope we're beginning soon.

What are we doing with all that kitchen waste? Don't relegate those microbes to the prison of a landfill when they could be put to work on some city lot or rural farmland. We're gonna need a lotta lotta compost and organic matter and we may have it, but we're "throwing it away" - imprisoning it in landfills. (so much that we really ought to be harvesting methane from existing landfills)

Dear NPI (who is reimagining Cleveland) - Can you take some of your millions and make a composting plan for organic matter in our region? You can have the land in a bank, but it will be useless unless you find a way to increase its value. We need to remediate and cap and compost. Maybe schools and cafeterias in government buildings and restaurants and individuals can rearrange their thinking about the importance of what we're wasting - what could be a microbial boon to our soils.

It seems to me that we have forgotten about cycles - the water cycle and the biocycle. Let's get back in "the loop".

This was in my inbox:

Help Send a Message to the USDA – 100,000 Americans for a Sustainable America

Next week we’re delivering your signatures and comments to Secretary Vilsack at his offices in Washington DC.

Please forward this message to 5 of your friends to help us reach our goal of over 100,000 Americans for a sustainable USDA. To date over 84,659 Americans have signed the letter calling for sustainable change at the USDA.

Original signers to the letter include Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, Wes Jackson, Marion Nestle, Francis Moore Lappé, Bill McKibben, Alice Waters, Dan Barber and Rick Bayless among many others.

So far we know that we’ve had success in changing the debate in how agriculture is being discussed in the 21st century. Since his confirmation, Secretary Vilsack has made a number of forward-thinking statements that prove he understands the urgent need for change in our nation’s food policies.

Let's make sure the administration understands how much support the idea of sustainable practices in U.S. food and farm policy. We’re asking that you forward this message to 5 friends  to have them sign the petition and help put us over the top. (You can forward the message from the site.)

Thanks again for all your help, we look forward to creating a sustainable food system for the 21st century.

Best,
David Murphy
Paul Willis
Lisa Stokke
Aaron Woolf

Food Democracy Now!

 Recently, Cleveland City Council passed legislation to allow some small farm operations within the city.  But, no one wants to wade through legislation.  I have never bothered to consult the city ordinances on composting,  and , if such language exists, it is easier, as they say, to ask for forgiveness then to ask for permission. 

Where in all of this is the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste District?? With all the vacant land that we will accumulate in NEO due to demolitions, surely composting stations should fit into this green scheme?

The work house site at Harvard used to have a large composting facility and you could order mulch and composted soil from the location and from the Cleveland Greenhouse where shredded trees from the Department of Urban Forestry became mulch.  What is the status of these operations?

Dbra, thanks for reminding everyone of the food waste from the Westside Market.  Does it, by any chance, get delivered to the nearby Kentucky gardens? 

This should also serve as a reminder to Councilman Cummins to institute the same legislative protection that applies to Kentucky Garden to Benjamin Franklin's gardens in Ward 15.  The CMSD still has designs on Benjamin Franklin and plan to demolish this historic school at some point along their criminally bungled facilities plan.

It seems to me that there is a communication gap between the city and those that have the ideas and knowledge for a green cleveland. Being green shouldn't impose additional cost or effort.

I know the ideas are out there (re-imagining Cleveland & the pattern Book for vacant land in Cleveland, and the food congress http://www.cccfoodpolicy.org/food_waste_recovery.html). But why is it getting harder and more expensive to do the right green thing in Cleveland?  Why is it easier to start a small business than it is to start a community garden in Cleveland?

I can't help thinking if we had the clout and connections of developers we would be getting breaks from our rising NEORSD bill for rerouting rainwater into rainbarrels and gardens, encouragement for farming efforts (as opposed to ridiculously onerous compliance regulations), and a monetary thank you for advise and sharing experience. 

This really isnt high math. I think its more about people's fear of dirt and complete ignorance when it comes to anything "unsterile". http://www.nhlink.net/enviro/scp/recycle.html

Why on earth did the mayor decide to close the city composting facility over around East 165th and St.Clair? I used to buy a pickup bed full of beautiful leaf compost for 20 bucks.

 the only thing "green" about Cleveland seems to be cash (what little of it, but if you got it, the city is your oyster).

Its just frustrating - particularly the chicken/bee legislation (and I thought there was something written about controlling specs for composting too). I know several people meant well and worked hard, but it just doesn't advance the cause, in my opinion. I think we need FEWER compromises. And again - if it were a development issue - they would be falling over themselves to provide us "incentives". Truth is - it IS a development issue - but not one they understand.

I have spent a few weeks trying to determine if I had a honey bee vs yellow jacket swarm in an area of a porch that is going to be repaired. I so wanted them to be honey bees but finally got a close up view of yellow jackets. This means that the one honey bee that I saw in my flowers a couple of months ago remains the only honey bee for me this year. 

This is probably a dumb question dwebb, but how can you tell the difference between honey bees and yellow jackets?  I had quite a few bees in my yard this summer but I have no idea what kind of bees they were. 

Not a dumb question at all but an important one. I spent lots of time looking a pictures of honeybees. One of the problems is that the insect I have act like honeybees. They are up high, so I spent a lot of time with offers of fruit and honey, and attempts to track them. I had someone come look at them, and she also thinks that they are not honeybees, but they also don't fit the typical yellow jacket. I got to see one up close finally this afternoon. No fuzzy at all, which honeybees have, and no pollen collection legs/pouch. If they were honeybees, they would have been moved to a safe hive.  Yellow jackets will die off over the winter so the repair will just have to wait until nature takes it course, and we will tear out those boards and then we will know more. I also have steeple jackets flying around. Google honey bees and yellow jackets and you will discover a new world. Both have important places in nature, but I would have gone to great measures to preserve the honey bee. Of course, ignore the ads from pest control companies.

Thanks Dwebb.  I don't like to kill things and I don't care much for chemicals so the bees will not be killed off by me.  lol.  I will google the bees and learn more about them.  When my house was getting painted we found a wasp's nest high on the back peak of the house.  The volunteers wern't able to get up that high to paint that area so the nest remains. 

This summer and last summer too I spotted a preying mantis in my yard.  I like to watch them.  I have garter snakes too.  And I had a butterfly or two this year too.  I thought they left my yard forever since I haven't seen any for the past few years.  And we have birds since my husband feeds them everyday.  This year I registered my yard with the National Wildlife Federation and got my plaque.  My children and grandchildren and even my husband kinda snicker about it, but I am proud to give wildlife a place to live in the city.  I learned this year that the male butterflys like a wet sand pit to congregate.  I hope to find ways to attract more butterflys to my yard next year. 

Good luck with your honey bees. 

W14R, I have a lot of perennials that the butterflies love so if you want some next March/April, let me know. I always need to thin out stuff. Someone gave me a butterfly bush 12 years ago. I love to watch both the butterflies and hummingbirds go to the bush.

Types of bees

Varroa destructor 

I'd like to have hive but it freaks people out,  I watched this wasp the other day pretend it was stuck in a spiders web.  

It was not stuck it was pretending, I almost knocked it loose, but when the spider came in it was stung and then the wasp broke lose and flew off with it.   I was reading about them, they have been known to catch spiders and bring them to the hive as quards!  The spider web as a form of addtional defense. 

Mud daubers they are called, it was a blue metalic...I never have seen one before.  

 just beautiful. 

You ever watch a mud dauber build a nest.  They carry mud and make these long tube looking things lined up kind of neat like. 

 they are amazing. When I see some of these insects with their stream lined efficient bodies, I see where the design for fighter planes came from. We were not kind to mud daubers in the hills and would destroy their nests as soon as they were built if they were close to the house or barn.

I remember school lunch. I ate one once. But the mystery meat made me sick, just looking at it. It was a gray pattie drowned in some slimy gravy next to a scoop of rehydrated potato flakes and some vapid looking canned peas - shadows of real peas. After that, I watched others eat that stuff. Not for me. We referred to it even back in the 60s and 70s as mystery meat. We didn't know the real truth of that moniker.

Then, while watching Food, Inc., I learned that the meat in that pattie could have come from 11 or more different animal processors, some from animals from US growers, but more from growers abroad much of which is not inspected when it comes into the US.

Now this: Fast-food standards for meat top those for school lunches

Good to know that the mainstream media is catching on...

Thanks for sharing this Susan. Glad that some are hearing this and responding to it. The school food industry must go many more steps before we can call school lunches safe, let alone likable by kids.

Debbie