Our Food and Farms: Let’s Take a Long-Term View

By Lisa Sedlar
I’m a pretty happy go lucky kind of person, so it’s somewhat unusual for me to rant (my husband would probably dispute this however, so too would my daughter, friends, boss and well everyone who knows me, but that’s beside the point.) The point is that the time is ripe to rant about the future of our food and farming systems! In the past few weeks I have heard some of the most alarming and short-sighted thinking regarding our food system. One example includes encouraging farmers to stop growing organically because conventional (read: pesticide-laden) crops have a higher yield and are cheaper to grow. Well, first of all organic crops have been proven to yield as much or nearly as much food as their pesticide-laden counterparts.

Secondly, why would we want to go back to dumping chemical pesticides on our food when we are trying to reduce our impact on the earth? The more chemicals we put into our land, the less healthy our land and food and our bodies. On average, the earth is covered in about 3 feet of topsoil – this nutrient-rich dirt sustains most of our food and plays a huge role in supporting life on Earth. If we continue to farm using conventional Big-Ag methods we will deplete our topsoil to the point that it won’t be farmable.

We have to consider future generations when deciding how best to feed our growing population. The natural products company Seventh Generation gets their name from an Iroquois saying that says “In our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations”. It seems like we can’t as a nation think beyond the next seven days, let alone seven generations.

Another short-sighted food proposal I heard of late comes compliments of the U.S. Department of the Interior who recently announced plans to open Alaska’s Bristol Bay—which provides us with the world’s largest salmon run—to drilling for oil and gas. They also have plans to move forward with a two-mile-long open-pit copper and gold mine – the largest in North America. What’s at stake here is 40 percent of our nation's wild domestic salmon catch, and the survival of a region whose ecological diversity is enormous and mostly pristine.

A few weeks ago, I read in the NY Times that Japan and Europe, who up until now have said no to genetically modified crops are now considering lifting the ban on GMOs because of the current shortage of food.

Again, this is incredibly short-sighted thinking. GMO seeds have not been proven to help our food supply, nor have the health effects of Monsanto’s Round-Up Ready seeds been studied long enough to know if they might present any health issues for humans. The problem is that once GMO seeds are in the food supply or once the cloned meat is in the food supply there is no going back.

Buying locally produced and grown foods is definitely the way to go. Not only is local food fresher and better tasting, it also doesn’t have to travel as far and therefore reduces our on dependence on fossil fuels (although this is a complicated issue). The more we support our local farmers the more likely it is that family farms will remain in our communities. Did you know that the average age of the farmer in Oregon is 55 years old? That means that 50% of our farms will change hands over the next 10-15 years. If we don’t actively support local farmers, what will happen to these farms? I for one don’t think we need more strip-malls or condos (Yikes!).

Look, I know that food is more costly now and it’s a hardship for people and families but what will food cost if/when we don’t have local options anymore? It pains me to think that our Oregon blackberries, hazelnuts, dairy-farms, lamb ranches etc., could go away because we didn’t take a long term view of our food and farming systems. In the United States people on average, devote about 9% of their income to food. Compare that to European countries, where the norm is closer to 15% (in Italy it’s almost 25%). Good and healthy food costs more, there’s just no way around it and in the long run it’s going to cost a lot more if our treasured farm resources go away.

You may think that I’m preaching to the converted here, but last year in Oregon we lost 1000 farms, so it’s clear we aren’t doing enough. What can we do about it? We can vote with our dollars and buy local. We can buy from our local farmers markets and co-ops. We can go out to the U-Pick farms this summer. We can __________. You fill in the blank.

We're a "2008 BEST Practices for Sustainability Award" Winner

This morning we were really honored to be the 2008 City of Portland BEST Award Winner for “BEST Practices for Sustainability” for a large company. “BEST” stands for Businesses for an Environmentally Sustainable Tomorrow. Since 1993, the BEST Awards have been presented annually to Portland area companies demonstrating excellence in business practices that promote economic growth and environmental benefits. I was particularly proud to be able to attend the breakfast with Robby Berg, Kate O’Malley and Nate Kay. They are New Seasons Market staff who provide leadership for the Green Teams in their stores. All of our Green Team members have been our internal champions for increasing our focus on sustainability.

It took a village to create a green dream here in the Portland area. Daring entrepreneurs, consumers willing to vote with their dollars, environmental advocates, and courageous civic leaders have all joined to build a foundation for a new kind of community. Judging by the number of people in attendance at the BEST award breakfast, the seeds of change have been sown for a green revolution city-wide. One of the things that I love about attending the BEST Award Breakfast is that it reminds me that there are thousands of people working to make our city sustainable. Who knew there was such a thing as a green dentist? I didn’t until today. We sure are glad to be part of this village.

Other winners this morning were Full Sail Brewing Company, Hawthorne Auto Clinic (highly recommended—this is where I take my car for service), Mint Dental Works, Yolo Colorhouse, The Civic and The Morrison (for Green Buildings), Laughing Planet Café and Your Backyard Farmer. All of these companies have great stories to tell and are worth checking into.

Another highlight of the morning was a presentation about global warming by Secretary of State Bill Bradbury. What was particularly cool about Bill’s talk was that he has adapted Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” slide show to include local and Northwest examples. Bill is doing this presentation regularly around the state and it is definitely worth seeing if you have the chance.

Heather Schmidt, one of the leaders of the sustainability efforts at our company, put together our application for the BEST awards. I have to admit that even I was taken aback (in a good way) to see a fairly comprehensive list of all of the things that we’re up to. A handful of examples are:

• Reclaiming waste heat from our refrigeration systems to heat water in our stores.
• Our company wide effort to encourage alternative methods of transportation by our staff, including subsidized Tri-Met passes.
• Our leadership in the food composting program. We've been doing this for over five years and our compost represents over 13% of all food waste that is composted in the entire Metro region.
• Our Home Grown program which allows us to focus on local, sustainable farmers, ranchers, fishers and manufacturers when stock our stores.
• We've created bioswales, a series of planter-like ditches and rain sculptures to divert storm water from the sewers at three of our stores. The bioswales are full of native plants and improve the water quality and livability of our community.

I’m posting the actual application here, with lots more information, so you can see for yourself what your ongoing support has allowed us to do. Thanks for that.

Friday Update on Tuna Testing

You might recall that several weeks ago we tested all species of tuna that we sell to have a better understanding of their mercury content. The tests showed that both our imported and local tuna had mercury levels higher than deemed safe by Physicians for Social Responsibility (although within the FDA’s acceptable level). We (and most of the local fishing community) were shocked by the results from the local albacore, because other testing has been done on a fairly frequent basis and, while mercury levels in imported tuna have been known to be high, the local albacore has generally been considered safe. We ran a retest on the local albacore and it came back at the same high levels. To play it safe we decided to pull all of our tuna until we had a better grasp of the whole situation. Earlier this week we tested a different lot of local albacore tuna and it came back with mercury levels well within the safe standards. You can follow the whole saga and find links to all of the results in the blog entries below this one.

This morning I received the results from another round of testing from a different sample of albacore tuna from the original lot; a different fish, but from the same catch. I’m happy to tell you that the result is .16 mercury parts per million. This is very different from the outcome of the testing in the original lot and these mercury levels are considered normal and safe. Read the results here. A second sampling, with a second lab, returned results ranging from .20-.27 parts per million. Read the results here.

The other sample was from imported ahi tuna. The ahi had come back at unacceptable mercury levels in its first round of tests also. This time the ahi’s mercury level was at .14 parts per million, which is in the safe range.

Confused? So are we. In my original post about this issue on March 4th, I asked folks to weigh in and help us decide what position we should take in terms of offering this fish for sale; should we pull some or all of it (particularly the imported tuna) because of uncertainty, or should we just share the information that we have and let everyone decide for themselves if they want it?

Based on the feedback that we’ve received and on the wild variance in the test results, we’ve come to the decision to bring all these species back into our stores as soon as possible. We will continue to post the results of the testing that we will be doing on an ongoing basis.

As for me, I don’t eat any meat or poultry so seafood is a big part of my diet. Eileen and I have salmon and tuna for dinner regularly. Going forward we’re going to stay away from the imported tuna and only eat the local albacore. - Brian

Update on tuna testing. Looks good so far!

I'm happy to report that the third round of testing that we had done on the Oregon albacore tuna has come back and shows mercury levels well within the acceptable levels established by all the various monitoring organizations, including the FDA and Physicians for Social Responsibility. You can take a look at the results here. This tuna is from a different lot than the tuna that we had tested a couple of weeks ago, although it was tested at the same lab. Within the next couple of days we expect to get the results of the other two pending tests and we'll let you know the outcome as soon as we have them. It's our hope that they'll both show that the Oregon albacore will have acceptable mercury levels, that we'll be able to call the high levels in the first lot an anomaly and we'll feel comfortable putting this great product that we've been promoting for so many years back in our seafood cases.



As you might imagine, we've had quite a few interactions with all sorts of folks from the Oregon fishing community in the last week or so, and even though some of the conversations have been somewhat heated, we're feeling really good about the direction that we're all headed. I think we're going to end up with a comprehensive program that helps ensure the safety of the seafood that we're offering to our customers and at the same time helps support our local fisheries.



This afternoon we had a conference call with representatives from Oregon State University, the Oregon Albacore Commission, the Seafood Consumer Center, Pacific Seafood and others. The purpose of our conversation was to brainstorm an on-going, third party testing program that would sample our tuna on an ongoing basis. Our intention is to share the results of these tests with our customers so they will be able to make informed decisions about the seafood they choose to eat. Each of the participants on the call agreed to go back to their organization and to ask their colleagues for suggestions on the most effective way to make this happen. We agreed to regroup later this week and I'll update you on the status then.

By the way, I had a tuna fish sandwich for lunch today--made with Oregon albacore tuna from Local Ocean Seafoods. It was delicious.