Louise Fresco on feeding the whole world with Wonder Bread

I listened recently to Louise Fresco‘s TED talk contrasting artisanal bread and the culture that prizes it with its industrial counterpart (Wonder Bread) and arguing that something like sustainable Wonder Bread is essential to feeding the planet as its population grows to 9 billion. TED puts this talk in the “Unconventional Explanations” category, and the moniker certainly fits. There’s a lively series of comments about the talk on the TED site.

Louise Fresco on feeding the whole world | Video on TED.com.

Big Food should worry about Mother Nature

Thoughtful blog post by Tom Laskawy on Slate, arguing that despite the policy shifts signaled by the new administration and some changes in public opinion, industrial agriculture, with help from the farm lobby, is largely safe in the hands of Congress:

Big Food feels the ground shifting beneath it. So much so that its acting as if it could lose its grip on the American food system. But Big Food persists in battling the wrong target. While it is indeed locked in an existential struggle with an implacable foe, the government is not the enemy. The enemy is Mother Nature.

Mother Nature is represented by drought, industrial agriculture’s almost complete dependence on petroleum, flat crop yields (even in GMO crops).

Support your CSAs, folks, and plant bigger gardens!

via Big Food shouldnt worry about the government. Mother Nature is its foe. – By Tom Laskawy – Slate Magazine .

Reflected glory?

Schatzi just sent us a link to a new video from Wine Spectator that includes Mike with two other winemakers who use grapes from Andy Beckstoffer’s To Kalon Vineyard in Napa. (In Mike’s case, the grapes are used in a Cabernet Sauvignon he makes for Realm Cellars.) Hope you’ll understand the parental pride and find the video interesting as well.