Food security is a basic human right. Everyone on the planet deserves to know, for sure, where his or her next meal is coming from.

Yet what does that mean here in the United States? Most of us are indeed fat and sassy. Even though we know, dimly, that there is hidden hunger, it is not something that most Americans confront directly on a daily basis.

The new book “A Nation of Farmers” by Sharon Astyk and Aaron Newton warns us not to be complacent. They argue that when the food train goes off the rails, the United States will not be spared.

Though they do not specifically endorse the solutions offered by the Transition Movement, the authors share much of that group’s concern about the emerging threats of climate change, peak oil and economic instability. The complexity of the dilemma we face means that attempts to cure one problem risk creating others. For example, the authors note that our growing demand for alternatives to foreign oil promoted a massive investment in ethanol. Yet scientists are calling for a moratorium on the production of biofuels because they have been responsible for as much as 60% of the the recent spike in food prices worldwide.

For us to feed ourselves, Astyk proposes creating 100 million new farmers (and 200 million new localvore eaters). Research suggests that small, sustainable efforts, including urban gardens, can outperform the production on industrial farms. So Astyk wants to see us return to the days during WWII when Americans themselves produced 40% of the food consumed.

In addition, the authors ask us to re-think the American diet. Our seemingly insatiable appetite for meat not only puts millions of pounds of methane into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming, but red meat in particular clogs our arteries at the same time. In addition to reducing or eliminating the amount of meat we eat, they also propose we move from a grain-based agriculture to one that is vegetable-based. The millions of acres of wheat, corn and soybeans produced by industrial agriculture are not only environmentally unsound, but switching to a food system that emphasizes green, red and gold vegetables would provide a much healthier diet.

It is difficult to tell, with co-authored books, which ideas spring from which person. However, Astyk’s previous book, Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front, demonstrated that she has a strong and clear voice on these issues. A small, sustainable farmer herself, Astyk is clearly one of a coterie of new female voices who are thinking long and hard about how we can help save the planet by developing strategies to implement a “small and sustainable is beautiful” approach to raising, sharing and consuming food.

The Science Barge - New York Sun Works project

The New York Daily News reports that three young entrepreneurs plan to build a 12,000-square-foot hydroponic greenhouse roof garden on a de-sanctified church in Jamaica, Queens, New York. Their goal is to produce 30 tons of fruits and veggies for local markets and restaurants each year at Gotham Greens. Can this be done and done green?

The good news about the trio is that they already have a proven track record with the Science Barge Project. The group’s mission is to promote urban sustainability through research, demonstration, and educational programming. Building the greenhouses on a barge shows how creativity can help us grow food in our own cities. Dr. Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University’s Earth Institute said of this project, “The Science Barge is not only an invitation to ideas and learning, but to change.”

However, the Organic Garden site in the United Kingdom raises questions about hydroponics. The New York Daily News is silent on the kinds of fertilizer the project will use. Hydroponic agriculture typically relies on chemical fertilizers, which are not sustainable. (What about fish emulsion fertilizer?) Another issue is the source for the electric power required to run the water pumps - coal-fired power plant or solar panels? The good news, however, is that hydroponic gardening does save on the use of water. So we hope that the project can address those other concerns over time.

The three young people, Jennifer Nelkin (Greenhouse Director), Viraj Puri (Managing Director) and Eric Haley (CFO), will launch Gotham Greens as a for-profit venture dedicated to sustainability. Going hydroponic means going soil-less, so they will avoid some problems with pollution and weight. (No tractors on rooftop gardens, I assume.)

Plans also include capturing rainwater, avoiding runoff and using biodiesel trucks for delivery. A project worth keeping an eye on for others looking for entrepreneurial opportunities in urban areas.

The British organization called the Carbon Trust came up with the idea that labels should tell us how much carbon it took to produce the product. What a great way to empower consumers. Armed with such information, we could start to make informed choices, avoiding products that spew too much CO2 into the atmosphere.

However, a quick visit to the Carbon Trust website shows that only one food company has signed on since the campaign launched in 2007. They show the carbon footprint for one brand of orange juice, but no other food products at all.

This confirms that a voluntary approach will never work. Corporations won’t share what could be perceived as bad news unless they are forced to do so. Reporting on the food industry years ago, I learned that the food companies spend a fortune lobbying government over every jot and tiddle on the label. How much can you dilute a fruit “juice” before it becomes a fruit “drink”? How much can you reduce the percentage of butterfat in ice “cream” before it becomes ice “milk”? Profit margins shrink and contract on the outcome of such regulations.

Even determining how many “portions” a package contains can make a big difference in sales when people read the label to find the number of calories per “average portion.”

Another group in England offers an online food carbon calculator. Grab your food bill, enter a screen name and start figuring out how much changing your food buying habits could reduce your carbon footprint.

How much carbon your purchased foodstuffs put into the air depends on many factors. How the product is grown, whether it is processed, how far it is shipped and whether additional energy is expended keeping it frozen or chilled until you take it home (and whether and how long you store it in your refrigerator or freezer). If the product requires cooking, it matters what fuel you use and how long you cook it.

Eating meat and eating fast food conspire to up the ante even more. Treehugger features some calculations by Jamais Cascio. He says that if we eat three burgers a week, that’s 150 burgers a year per person, which translates into 941 to 1023 pounds of greenhouse gases per person per year. He says that if 300 million people in this country maintain this three-burger-per-week average, this equals the annual carbon output of 7,500 to 15,000 SUVs.

In contrast, last night I expended nothing more than a little sweat and shoe leather to walk to my garden, where I picked some beets and some greens for dinner. I will admit that my rice wasn’t grown nearby, but even without a calculator, our carbon footprint for dinner was relatively small.

Now if I can just resist the impulse to drive to Dairy Hill in Mason for a turtle sundae . . ..

“Food, Inc.” is a new documentary that exposes the dangers of industrial agriculture. Directed by Robert Kenner, the film features reformers such as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma), as well as visionary practitioners such as Sonyfield’s Gary Hisrchberg and Polyface Farm’s Joel Salatin. Much of the information in the film comes from the work of The Center for Food Safety (CFS). CFS founder and Executive Director Andrew Kimbrell “urges all concerned with the food they eat to see the film.”

The film opened yesterday in major cities around the country. Here’s the trailer (3:30):

A growing number of people, myself included, believe that the United States is already in the initial throes of a wrenching reinvention because of the confluence of climate change, peak oil and economic instability. Russian Dimitry Orlov, in his book “Reinventing Collapse,” offers us a blueprint of what to expect based on his firsthand view of the collapse of the Soviet Union. While your first reaction is likely to be that we are not Russia and could not face a collapse as dramatic and serious as theirs, Orlov warns us not to be complacent.

To paraphrase Orlov: Oil powers just about everything in our economy, from food to plastics. When oil becomes less available, it becomes more expensive, prices rise and inflation inevitably ensues. Since the U.S. relies on other countries to finance its deficit spending, inflation will persuade those countries to stop investing in the U.S. Treasury Bills that fund our way of life.

Orlov writes, “Result: Less money with which to buy oil and, consequently, less oil with which to produce things. Lather, rinse, repeat; stop when you run out of oil. Now look around: Where did that economy disappear to?”

Orlov notes that average Americans are, in some ways, even more vulnerable than middle-class Russians were. In the old Soviet Union, most people lived in state-supported apartments. When the economy crashed, few were evicted because the government let them stay to avoid another bloody armed insurrection. Yet it is clear from our foreclosure and eviction rates that the banks and landlords in the United States are not as forgiving. We do not see roving bands of the dispossessed storming Washington, at least yet, because the U.S. government and the mainstream media collude in telling us that we are all part of a middle class that will soon see sunnier days.

Orlov’s analysis about what happens to food supplies during a crisis is particularly illuminating. As in most countries over the centuries, Russian farming their own land used practices that did not wear out the soils. As long as they avoided growing just one crop, they could grow enough to sustain themselves and their families over the years, even though the labor often bent their backs.

“But try replacing the humble [woman with a hoe] with a university-trained agronomist, her hoe with a tractor, her bag of heirloom seeds with some mass-produced hybrid and rainfall with an irrigation pump, and you soon find yourself on the road of environmental oblivion,” Orlov writes.

The government takeover of agriculture under communist collectivization proved devastating. Yet the one-tenth of the land allocated by the government to “kitchen gardens” actually produced 90% of the country’s food. That tradition of backyard and windowsill gardens provided many people a buffer against malnutrition and even starvation when hard times hit.

Notable as well is that Russians then did not survive on restaurant and take-out food to the degree that we do now. In the old Soviet Union, people did rely on commissaries where they worked for meals eaten away from home, and jobs were often considered desirable based on the quality of food in the cafeteria.

As Orlov notes, even our supermarkets are less a source of basic ingredients than purveyors of prepackaged meals. Adding to our vulnerability, our supermarkets have just a few days’ supply of food, relying in “just in time” delivery that are heavily dependent on fossil fuels. If the supply chain is disrupted, what happens to people in our suburbs who don’t even have a tomato plant growing in a pot on the back deck?

The former mayor of a bedroom suburb outside Detroit told me that his blood ran cold a few years ago during that infamous summer power outage in the eastern U.S. when he saw how close we came to utter chaos. To prevent hoarding, the local supermarket had put a limit of two on the number of cases of bottled water each shopper could buy. Then they stationed a young clerk in front of the pyramid of the display. “That poor kid was minutes away from being overwhelmed,” the man reported. The thin veneer of civilization can rip apart quickly and dramatically when people are threatened with shortages of food and water.

Adding to the pressure on the U.S. food supply, one out of every four acres of corn is now devoted to the production of ethanol. As Orlov sees it, we live in a society “where cars always eat first.” He worries that people of modest means risk being priced out of the market for food so that “the more fortunate can keep driving their cars a tiny bit longer.”

All too often, when government looks at the potential for food shortages, the focus is on securing what we have. I would put more emphasis on helping people learn how to grow and cook more of their own food. In her new book “A Nation of Farmer,” Sharon Astyk, with co-author Aaron Newton, proposed that we commit to producing 100 million new farmers and 200 million new cooks in this country. That those of us with the expertise to grow and prepare food should teach the next generation these life-affirming skills.

Food security means knowing where your next meal is coming from. Orlov’s lessons from the Soviet Union, our lessons of Katrina and the challenge posed by Sharon Astyk remind us that we should focus on what we can do for ourselves.

Planet Whizbang offers parts & plans

As gardeners who read Eliot Coleman know, a wheel hoe is a nifty labor-saving way to keep the weeds under control. You simply skim the oscillating blade across the soil between the rows, and the gizmo slices off the weeds just below the surface.

The challenge is that wheel hoes are pricey. I purchased mine from Peaceful Valley, but it costs me almost $400, and I still had to assemble it when it came in. (I also had problems putting the rubber grips on the metal handles. The manufacturer had put sticky tape into the ends of the handles, which I could never quite remove. This made it virtually impossible to slide the handles all the way on.)

A better and cheaper bet might be to build your own wheel hoe. Herrick Kimball of Planet Whizbang has a blog that shows you how. And he will also sell you the component parts so that you can simply add your own handles and still save significant money.

I can grow tomatoes that look bigger and better than any in my local supermarket, but my bell peppers - no matter whether they are green, red, yellow, orange or purple - all end up looking puny beside those grown by professionals. What’s the key?

I have learned that sprinkling some Epsom Salts around each pepper plant will add magnesium, which peppers apparently like. Pepper plants can also be susceptible to blossom end rot, so I incorporated some crushed eggshells into the soil around each plant to add extra calcium.

Perhaps the moderating effects of the hoophouse will help. Like Golidlocks, our passive solar greenhouse allows us to keep the environment not too hot, not too cold, but just right. I can control the water and wind as well.

Check back at the end of the summer (or sign up for our RSS feed) for updates.

My new garden rocker out in the hoophouse

The older I get, the harder it is to bend over and weed. So I am delighted to find that my clever new Garden Rocker allows me to sit down and scoot wherever I want to go.

The plastic gizmo has an adjustable “tractor” seat, expansive enough to accommodate my widening bottom. You can also adjust the height. I also like the pointed base that makes it easy to slide the seat wherever you want to go. And you can indeed rock back and forth, so that it is far easier to pluck weeds all around you.

My six-foot-tall husband used the seat recently when inserting dozens of screws on our new shed. The seat seems surprisingly sturdy.

Two green thumbs up.

At least 15 farm and consumers groups in the United States, Canada and Australia have banded together to urge their governments to reject genetically engineered (GE) wheat. (Click here to download the PDF of their statement.)

Their lengthy statement explains that wheat is an essential crop that deserves to be treated with care. The government’s failure to regulate GE wheat and the GE proponents failure to outperform traditional plant breeding put traditional wheat breeders and producers at risk for little to no benefit. Considering the risks and the consumers’ rejection of genetically modified food, they are asking their governments to take a stand against funding further GE experimentation.

Higher quality wheat can be achieved efficiently and accessibly through conventional plant breeding, and this is where support for research needs to be located.

Groups in support include the National Farmers Union of Canada, the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN), the Network of Concerned Farmers in Australia, the Organic Federation of Australia and Greenpeace, as well as the National Family Farm Coalition, the Center for Food Safety and the Organic Consumers Association in the United States. CBAN also asks groups around the globe that support this effort to join them by August 31 this year, to make this a global effort.

Miniature Hereford calf on Bryan Hill Farm at three weeks old

It sounds like a joke to suggest that there is a spurt of interest in smaller-size cows for smaller farms, but it’s true. As this article in the Los Angeles Times reports, the half-size Herefords are becoming so popular that their numbers have exploded from 5,000 to 20,000 in the past decade. The article focuses on Kenny and Ali Petersen of Nebraska, who are one of 300 miniature Hereford breeders nationwide. These easy-to-handle animals weigh 500 to 700 pounds, compared to 1,300 for a standard-size animal. The minis produce half to three-quarters the number of ribeye steaks as their larger counterparts. Mini-Jerseys produce two to three gallons of milk a day.

Tim and Debbie Bryan of Bryan Hill Farm in Broadway, Virginia, whose calf is pictured above, say that more and more people are interested in raising these minis. Tim says, “As far as advice on raising minis, it really depends on what you want. If you want a few to fool around with and keep the grass down and perhaps for the grandkids, they are great. If you want to start with buying a breeding pair or two and raise them for resale yourself, there is plenty of interest out there for that. They are a docile breed of cattle and are easy to handle. They are easy keepers and you can easily raise two minis on one good acre of pasture.”

As more and more people begin raising their own food on relatively small acreage, these mini-cows start to make good sense. But looking at that picture of that sweet little calf, I’d have a hard time thinking of these animals as livestock and not pets.