MOTHER EARTH NEWS June - July 2014

Stretching the shelf life of food can be as low-tech and hands-off (set trays in the sun to dry) or as elaborate and large-scale (a day devoted to pressure-canning summer’s bounty) as you’d like. No matter where you fall on that spectrum or whether you have surplus fruit from an ample orchard or a profusion of basil from a petite, potted herb garden, the information you need to safely and deliciously put by fresh food awaits in our online Home Food Preservation Headquarters. This hub stocks more than 40 years of reliable, comprehensive know-how on pressure canning, water bath canning, drying, fermenting, freezing, pickling, root cellaring and more. We boil down the details on required equipment and which preservation method best suits which crops, plus furnish a packed-pantry’s worth of…

In this issue, we take a close look at the shortcomings of industrial food production. Noted environmental journalist Richard Manning outlines on Page 34 how agriculture’s so-called Green Revolution of the mid-20th century is delivering a high-carb but nutrient-poor diet, which causes chronic health issues for humans and livestock. Contrary to what Big Ag likes to claim, industrial agriculture is not feeding the world, nor is it “sustainable,” given its heavy dependence on fossil fuels. We interviewed food and farming activist Vandana Shiva to expand upon these points and to highlight community responses to the advances of corporate agriculture (Page 40). Following on Page 42, food writer Kim O’Donnel illuminates many of the negative consequences related to the production of meat in huge confinement facilities. O’Donnel discusses why many people…

DIY Wheat Thresher We’ve been growing ‘White Sonora’ wheat on our small homestead for three years. As your article “From Field to Flour: How to Grow Wheat” (April/May 2014) indicated, threshing wheat can be a challenge, and we definitely struggled to find the best way to do it. We tried a couple of hand-threshing methods at first: beating the heads against the inside of a bucket or smashing the heads with a rubber mallet. Both processes were quite tedious. We looked into machines, but even the cheapest models were still too pricey. That’s when we came up with an easy, quick device of our own: a thresher made from a bucket, drill and chain. You can see a video of our bucket thresher in action and get instructions for making…

A 2012 study by researchers at University of California, Davis and UCLA found that, based solely on what kids participating in the study ate, cancer benchmark levels “were exceeded by all children (100 percent) for arsenic, dieldrin, DDE and dioxins.” The team’s strongest advice for avoiding cancer, based on this finding? Children should eat primarily organic dairy products, fruits and vegetables to reduce pesticide intake. Mainstream health professionals have been slow to advocate organic food consumption, but many have voiced concerns about the cumulative effect pesticides have on young brains and bodies. Many chemicals consumed daily by kids who eat conventional and processed foods are endocrine disruptors, which means the chemicals are capable of interfering with development. And though children and pesticides don’t mix, kids are still exposed in many…

According to a 2014 report by leading climate scientists, convened by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the U.K.’s Royal Society, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 40 percent since pre-industrial times. More than half of this increase has occurred since 1970, and of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide plays the most significant role in warming the Earth. To curb the climate crisis, some policymakers and concerned citizens have recommended solutions such as renewable energy development, greater resource efficiency and cleaner cars. Land management deserves a spot on that list. How homesteaders and ranchers manage livestock, and how they manage the pastures those livestock graze on, plays a significant role in atmospheric carbon pollution. Mainstream pasture-management practices seriously degrade pastureland worldwide. Among the…

The first large, nationwide comparison of organic and conventional milk composition, conducted by Washington State University (WSU), found that organic milk has a healthier ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids. Many researchers think a higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids (found in meats and dairy products from grass-fed animals, flaxseed, seafood, walnuts and some leafy greens) reduces the risk of heart disease and, potentially, cancer by offsetting the too-high intake of omega-6 fatty acids in the contemporary U.S. diet. The typical U.S. diet contains a ratio of 10:1 omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids (the imbalance coming from consuming too much processed and fried food, grain oil, seed oil, and meat and dairy from grain-fed animals), while the ratio should be closer to 4:1 or even 2:1. The 18-month study…