Jennifer Hashley processes a chicken on her Massachusetts farm. Massachusetts poultry farmer Jennifer Hashley has a problem. From the moment she started raising pastured chickens outside Concord, Mass. in 2002, there was, as she put it "nowhere to go to get them processed." While she had the option of slaughtering her chickens in her own backyard, Hashley knew that selling her chickens would be easier if she used a licensed slaughterhouse. Nor is she alone in her troubles. Despite growing demand for local, pasture-raised chickens, small poultry producers throughout Massachusetts, Connecticut, and even New York can't or won't expand for lack of processing capacity.

It isn't only small producers who are feeling the pinch -- a widespread lack of processing infrastructure appropriate for small farmers has caused supply chain problems for the big retailers as well. Whole Foods -- the world's largest natural-foods supermarket -- wants to aggressively expand its local meat sourcing, according to its head meat buyer, Theo Weening. But it faces the same limitation as Hashley. Most regions of the country have "lots of agriculture but nowhere to process," Weening told me, adding that the phenomenon is most acute in the northeast.

Whole Foods wants to change all that. In a move that has national implications, the retail giant has confirmed to Grist that it is working with the USDA as well as state authorities to establish a fleet of top-of-the-line "mobile slaughterhouses" for chicken. Starting with a single unit serving Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Hudson Valley, N.Y. area, Whole Foods hopes to offer small farmers an affordable way to process chickens as well as to vastly increase the amount of locally-sourced chicken it sells. If successful, this program could be expanded to any region of the country with similar infrastructure shortages.

Consolidation Is for the (Big) Birds

That Whole Foods would undertake a move into meat processing serves to underscore the extent of the meat industry's consolidation. Today, 90 percent of beef processing, 70 percent of pork processing and nearly 60 percent of poultry processing are handled by the top four companies in each sector (with new mergers occuring almost monthly). As processing giants like Tyson scale up and buy competitors, they shutter smaller facilities. Farmers like Hashley have to truck their livestock dozens -- sometimes up to a hundred -- miles to get to the nearest slaughterhouse for the privilege of paying premium prices to process a small herd. And in some cases, small producers can't get access to these large facilities at any price; they simply won't accommodate small growers, often due to rigid "biosecurity" protocols.

What might be an inconvenience transforms into a Catch-22 considering the maze of requirements for the legal sale of meat -- this is not an area where DIY is easy or welcome. Generally speaking only meat processed at USDA-inspected facilities can be sold to the public. About half of all states allow for state inspectors to stand in for federal inspectors, but even then, that meat may only be sold within state lines. Poultry farmers are somewhat exempted from this -- they can process some of their own birds on the farm and then sell them directly to consumers. But, with a few state-specific exceptions, beef, pork, and lamb simply may not be sold -- even direct farm-to-consumer -- unless it has been processed at a state or federally inspected slaughterhouse.

Given the high costs and uncertain prospects of building new small-scale slaughterhouses, there is a growing interest among farmers in these mobile slaughterhouses--interest that got Whole Foods' attention in the first place. Currently, many farmers rely on on-farm slaughter by "ranch killers," such as one in California profiled recently profiled by Mother Jones. But there are many legal restrictions on how and where such meat can be sold, so they often end up operating in a legal gray area. USDA-certified mobile slaughterhouses--complete with a permanently assigned USDA inspector--are a much better solution, and are beginning to pop up around the U.S. The first such approved unit operates on a small island off the coast of Washington state. Bruce Dunlop, the farmer/engineer who built it for a farmer co-op, now sells plans and kits. He also consults on the paperwork process for gaining USDA-inspected status.

If Whole Foods' mobile-slaughterhouse strategy succeeds, this farmer-friendly method of processing birds will come into its own. To some, it's a welcome effort to increase options for farmers. To others, it's an ominous sign that the government is siding with a powerful retailer in a way that will, intentionally or not, squeeze farmers even more.

An Italian-made mobile-processing unit, of the type Whole Foods is considering. Photo courtesy of Whole FoodsWhole Foods to the Rescue?

Whole Foods' Weening, architect of the initiative, doesn't see it that way. He only sees the difficulties small producers have with getting their chickens processed at large slaughterhouses. For him, if Whole Foods can help the little guy while also providing an expanded market for locally-produced meat, everyone wins.

And experts in local agriculture are tempted to agree. Mary Hendrickson, a rural sociologist who specializes in regional food systems at the University of Missouri, told me that "processing capacity is an absolutely critical link that we've struggled to fill -- mobile slaughtering has a hope of filling the gap."

Weening is certainly trying to do just that. The mobile units aren't designed as a money-maker for Whole Foods. While Whole Foods will have a minimum "buy" of around 500 chickens, farmers who sell chickens to Whole Foods will be able to process as many birds as they want with the unit. Since the processing cost will be included in the price Whole Food pays the farmer, processing of additional chickens will essentially be free. Crucially, Weening also intends to allow farmers who don't sell to Whole Foods use of the mobile units (though pricing is yet to be determined). Farmers can then sell those chickens however they like -- to other retailers (remember, it would be USDA certified), at farmers markets, or directly on the farm. If all goes to plan, the first Whole Foods' processing unit will be on the road and operating by May 2010.

But support for Whole Foods effort is not universal. There is growing concern over the power large national retailers have over farmers, and the prospect of Whole Foods moving into the meat processing business does little to allay it. Fred Stokes, executive director of the Organization for Competitive Markets, a group dedicated to resisting agricultural consolidation, lauded Whole Foods for trying to provide an alternative to the large slaughterhouses, but suggested that individual farmers lacked the power to go toe to toe with such a dominant player. Hendrickson also questioned how small farmers could "maintain their competitive bargaining position" with an entity as powerful as Whole Foods.

Stokes -- along with Fred Kirschenmann, a farmer as well as a leading advocate for sustainable agriculture and president of the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in upstate New York -- took serious issue with one significant element of Whole Foods plan: the set of very specific guidelines any farmer who hopes to sell to Whole Foods will have to follow. To Whole Foods' Weening, this is about providing a "consistent" product to consumers; to ensure that all Whole Foods chickens -- in Weening's words -- "look and taste the same." Weening explained that the company will require participating small farmers to raise a specific breed of chicken supplied by a specific (local) breeder, feed them a specific brand of feed (no antibiotics or animal byproducts allowed) and raise them according to Whole Foods standard poultry production style, which requires "access to pasture" but does not require actually keeping the birds on pasture.

Big Buyer, Small Seller

These experts expressed concerns that, despite Whole Foods' good intentions, such a strict set of guidelines when applied to small farmers put the whole enterprise dangerously close to "contract farming." In contract farming, a farmer raises birds under contract for sale to a large processor like Tyson Foods or Purdue. With large processors like Tyson, the farmer doesn't even own the birds, but is still responsible for the land, the equipment and all the infrastructure required to raise the animals, often making significant investments to satisfy the needs of the processor. But if the processor ultimately refuses the sale for whatever reason (and these contracts are very favorable to the processor), there is no backup plan. The farmer raised the birds specifically to satisfy the contract. Without the sale, it's a total loss. In such cases, the farmer has a nasty tendency to go bankrupt. Too often, farmers "essentially become," as OCM's Stokes put it, "indentured servants on their own land."

Now, Whole Foods denied that it has any interest in "contract farming" -- there will be no contracts signed in advance -- and the company strongly asserts that it is trying to give small farmers more options, not fewer. But Hashley, the Massachussetts farmer, painted a scenario whereby small East Coast farmers are forced by Whole Foods to compete on price with the large scale "natural" poultry growers in California that currently supply the retailer's stores. If that's the case, according to Hashley, farmers may find themselves pushed to expand their operations, making up on volume what they can't make per bird, and investing large sums of money in chicks, feed, and even barns with only Whole Foods as a buyer. If Whole Foods then refuses the sale for a declared violation of one of its guidelines, the financial loss to the farmer will be disastrous.

Hashley is clearly skeptical that partnering with Whole Foods is a good idea for individual small farmers. And worst of all in her view, Whole Foods guidelines will effectively preclude pasture-raised birds. With space in Massachusetts, and most of the northeast at a premium for farmers, providing adequate supply to a buyer the size of Whole Foods will inevitably lead farmers to move their birds indoors, since barn-raised chickens can be more densely packed. Aside from the financial implications, Hashley resented the idea of replicating the Whole Foods "access to pasture"-style of intensive poultry production: birds that in reality rarely if ever step outside despite an open barn door.

Tipping the Scale

There are, of course, alternatives to a reliance on Whole Foods as a local food enabler. Hashley herself has been working hard with state regulators and local boards of health to create a farmer-owned solution to the infrastructure problem, which she had hoped would be funded by a USDA Rural Development grant. As I finished reporting for this article, Hashley learned (and I confirmed) that her grant proposal will be rejected, though she continues to seek funding from other sources. Hashley passionately believes that a farmer cooperative should own the processing units, which would initially be certified by the state for direct sales by farmers (i.e. at farmers markets or on the farm) but not for sale to retailers. Small farmers would no longer have to haul their chickens halfway across the state for processing, but they would still have to sell their birds directly -- something that many farmers are happy to do. Over time and with the coops having proved the model, USDA certification and inspection could follow. In any event, access to the unit would not be controlled by a private entity with a substantial financial interest in how it's used.

Resolving these sorts of market-oriented conflicts and helping farmers is, of course, the role of state and federal regulators. Where do they stand on the Whole Foods effort? Jay Healy, Massachusetts State Director for USDA Rural Development, the office that turned down Hashley's grant proposal, is more sanguine about Whole Foods' effort. One obvious appeal: unlike Hashley, the retailer isn't asking for any federal money for its initiative. Healy also praised Whole Foods "state of the art," stainless steel, Italian-built unit, a version of which already has regulatory approval in Europe, for addressing to his satisfaction all the relevant food safety and environmental concerns. While Healy appreciates the coop's efforts and hopes to fund them in the future, he felt that their unit still needed further refinement. The Whole Foods unit seems to him poised to get federal certification, which is the ultimate goal if mobile slaughterhouses are to become a mainstream solution.

Healy's was exactly the response that Hashley herself feared when she first got word of the Whole Foods proposal. Aside from her concerns about the guidelines, Hashley doesn't have a blanket objection to Whole Foods effort overall since her processing options are virtually non-existent. But she is concerned that, Healy's statement notwithstanding, state and federal regulators will eventually lose total interest in working with farmer cooperatives as a result of the Whole Foods' move into small-scale processing. Like the other experts I talked to, she's also deeply skeptical of relying on Whole Foods' good intentions. While a breakeven project now, the company's processing units may transform into a revenue center later, which would be a threatening development for farmers.

Small is beautiful, but not always enough: Hashley's on-farm processing unit. The good news for Hashley is that Massachusetts' top agricultural official Scott Soares appears to share her concerns. In a recent meeting with Whole Foods, Soares strongly encouraged the company to work with the farmer coops to avoid a conflict over the dueling proposals. He wants to be "certain we have a level playing field for all the players out there." That means balancing the concerns of farmers as well as the interests of Whole Foods. Soares has requested detailed information from Whole Foods on its inititative, including pricing and provisions for access to the units, and emphasized in his discussions that coops do have an important role to play. While Soares has a limited regulatory role in approving the unit, he will continue to seek assurances that Whole Foods will operate fairly and in good faith.

But Healy's and Soares' comments make clear that, while Whole Foods is neither enemy nor savior for farmers, the danger is real that state regulators and the USDA will view large processors and large retailers as their ideal partners. Ag experts like Stokes, Hendricksen, and Kirschenmann all agree that regulators should instead side with farmer coops as entities best suited to counterbalance the market power of industry giants, even well-intentioned ones like Whole Foods.

It's also clear that no one really wants to stop Whole Foods' move into meat processing -- though that fact has more to do with the lack of processing infrastructure than with Whole Foods itself. And the retail giant's initiative may yet collapse if the USDA proves unwilling to certify the units themselves. But should Whole Foods succeed and launch mobile slaughterhouses, regulators, farmers, and consumers will be relying on a corporate behemoth to address problems created by the existence of other, larger behemoths. While it may be the best available solution to an entrenched problem, it doesn't seem a robust one.

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Hard times aren't always the worst times for magazines. In 1941, with the economy still depressed and the nation on the verge of war, a magazine called Gourmet hatched.

In the years since, Gourmet sprouted into the nation's most celebrated and influential glossy food magazine. But this week--in the wake of another Great Crash and years into two grinding wars--hard times spelled doom for the "magazine of good living."

What does its demise mean? One early reading is that Gourmet had badly lost touch with the times. In a witty Wednesday editorial, the Boston Globe declared Gourmet a "symbol of [a] bygone vision of gourmet life in America," and a "sign that even upmarket niches can be too confining."

Judith Jones, the legendary editor who ushered Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (among many other classic cookbooks) into being, echoed that sentiment. "Gourmet got away from the things that are going on in people's homes, and seemed to be for an elite that got smaller and smaller," Jones told the New York Times.

In this view, glossy celebrations of gracious living just don't mix with 10 percent unemployment and stagnant wages. Move over, Gourmet, and make way for Every Day with Rachel Ray, a practical-minded magazine that has continued to thrive even as Gourmet's ad pages plunged.

But I think the out-of-touch explanation is too facile by half. True enough, Gourmet burned through cash like an Italian chef uses olive oil. One well-placed source tells me that a typical Gourmet photo shoot, all gorgeously rustic locations and impossibly beautiful models, could cost as much as $100,000. (To be fair, I'm also told that up until the Great Recession settled in, the magazine consistently turned a profit).

And while the magazine always maintained a reverence for the kind of aspirational living that characterized its post-War heyday, it has also evolved in ways that its post-mortem critics aren't acknowledging. For years now, alongside elaborate spreads featuring splashy feasts, Gourmet has run plenty of the kind of 30-minute, weeknight-ready, simple-ingredient that have made Rachel Ray an icon. As a home cook on a limited time budget, I've successfully used these precisely written recipes dozens of times in the past several years.

More importantly, Gourmet has been a pioneer among its glossy peers in making space for a new and fast-growing appetite among American readers: the desire for critical perspectives on the food system. Since editor Ruth Reichl took the helm a decade ago, the magazine has run excellent articles on the quiet rise to ubiquity of genetically modified foods; the ecological damage wrought by industrial farming; the public health damage wrought by trans fats and the FDA's limp response to it; and the abominable working conditions in Florida's tomato fields.

While Reichl trail blazed food politics as a topic for glossies, few of her rival editors had the stomach to make more than baby steps in that direction. Yet given the popularity of books like Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, the foodie public clearly craves more information about where their food comes from.

In a sense, then, far from being out of touch with the times, late-model Gourmet was ahead of its time. No doubt, it was bleeding money, and no doubt, its parent company Condé Nast, could no longer afford to maintain its spendy ways. But rather than kill a vital and iconic asset like Gourmet, you could always simply cut its budget.

And this brings us to the real trend behind the Gourmet story: the power of axe-first, ask-later consultants in molding the media landscape in a time of crisis. For weeks now, according to various reports, grim-faced outsiders in suits have swarmed the Condé Nast offices. Employed by the consultancy McKinsey, their evident task is to scrutinize the books and hack away at anything not turning a profit.

Yet in their search for maximum short-term profit and return on invested capital, they tend to be myopic, unable to see beyond the next quarter's bottom-line prospects. They are like the cynic in the Oscar Wilde play--they know the price of everything and the value of nothing. More than the dismal economy and ongoing changes in readers' habits, the biggest threat to good journalism going forward could well be the unaccountable power of consultants.

Indeed, if public interest in the politics and ecology of food continues growing, Condé Nast execs may live to regret their decision to heed McKinsey's counsel on this one. In throwing Gourmet to the dogs, they've sacrificed their one publication with a long track record in telling people where their food comes from--which it did in such a stylish and palatable way.

Note: The essay was first published on Huffington Post Green.

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This week’s verse was contributed by the White House as it worked on plans for a farmers market. Check out more climate poems from Grist.

First we thought cars were the fix, so Congress made a bet:
Give people cash and they will trade their clunking old Corvette.
And boy, they did! In drives—uh, droves—till we ran out of dough.
Now sliiiightly more efficient rides are always on the go.

If we can’t change the climate with a 2 m.p.g. bribe
Perhaps there is another way we can convert this tribe.
They still love dirty coal and oil and gas and even nukes,
But maybe they will see the light if we start selling cukes!

stuartpilbrow via flickr

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Nicholas KristofNicholas Kristof, the much-celebrated columnist for The New York Times, is essentially a Victorian-style moralist.

In a typical column, he alights on some harsh scene--a slum in an Indian megopolis, a dirt-poor village in Cambodia--and delivers a heart-wrenching report. He then prescribes an extremely narrow "solution" to the problem he has uncovered--one that typically leaves its root cause unaddressed (and, often, involves a heroic role for Westerners).

His most famous campaign involves child prostitution in South Asia. In the literally dozens of columns he's devoted to the topic over the years, I've never once seen him address structural poverty, and the role of neoliberal policy and hyper-capitalism in creating it.

Here is a passage from a classic Kristof piece from 2006:

She was a lonely 16-year-old working in a garment factory in Bangladesh when an older employee began mothering her. They grew close, and one day the older woman gave Hasina some cakes to eat.

Two days later, Hasina emerged from a drug-induced stupor in India, sold to a brothel in faraway Gujarat. The brothel's owner beat Hasina and threatened to deform her face with acid if she tried to escape. She had to do whatever the customers wanted, with or without condoms.

So, does he use his perch at the Times to interrogate an economic system that has 16-year-old Bangladeshi girls earning pennies an hour to produce clothes for Westerners--making them vulnerable to human traffickers? Nope. His solutions run to stuff like "focus on virginity sales" and "inspect brothels regularly for prisoners." (In a famous 2004 column, he ventured the ultimate narrow solution to the prostitution problem: he bought two girls to rescue them from a brothel.)

In his latest column, Kristof turns his attention to hunger in Africa. He opens with a typical tug at the heart strings.

The most heartbreaking thing about starving children is their equanimity.

They don't cry. They don't smile. They don't move. They don't show a flicker of fear, pain or interest. Tiny, wizened zombies, they shut down all nonessential operations to employ every last calorie to stay alive.

And he points to a remedy so narrow it's literally microscopic: "One solution is to distribute supplements to vulnerable people, or to fortify foods with micronutrients." To prove his case, he presents the U.S. food industry: "Americans typically get micronutrients from fortified foods, and the same strategy is possible in Africa."

Of course, another way to make micronutrients more abundant in Africa is to invest in smallholder farming. (For an example of a successful initiative that does just that, see the Soils, Food and Healthy Communities Project in Malawi.) Study after study shows that produce grown in healthy, living soil is significantly richer in micronutrients than industrial fare. Yet as Raj Patel shows in Stuffed and Starved, global economic institutions like the IMF and World Bank have for decades been pushing African nations to dismantle support programs for farming and let "the market" decide what people eat.

As a result, much of Africa's prime farmland is now used to grow "high-value" crops for Westerners--and African smallholder farmers are locked in a long-term crisis even as the ranks of hungry urban dwellers grows. And now, insult to injury, nations with large dollars reserves from selling oil and manufactured goods to the United States are snapping up farmland in Africa for their own use (see Maywa Montenegro's fine piece on this trend in Seed ; BusinessWeek weighed in as well.)

Not a peep on any of this from Kristof. I understand his zeal to address immediate suffering, but can't fathom his blindness to root causes. He's like a doctor who enthusiastically prescribes aspirin to treat a brain tumor.

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ZJ Farms: Everyone's a farmhandI had the pleasure the other day of visiting ZJ Farms, the anchor of Local Harvest CSA, which is one of the biggest in the area. Farmer (and pillar of the local food scene hereabouts) Susan Jutz has been running this organic farm for all the years I've been buying food around here. A walk on her farm gives you an understanding of the paintings of Grant Wood.

In case you're unfamiliar, CSA means community-supported agriculture --a new name for what family-scale farming used to be. These days it works very much like a magazine subscription. You pay up front, usually in the late winter when the farmer really needs it, and in return you share in the bounty throughout the season. In these parts the season lasts roughly 20 weeks, so for each of those weeks we'll receive a box full of all the fresh goodness that's in season right then, usually picked that same morning.

Even though it's just me and my wife at home these days, I still buy a full "family share." I take what I want to cook with at home, and the rest goes to my restaurant, where my crew uses it for specials and such. Every Wednesday the cooks are always excited to see what's in the box - they unload it like kids on Christmas morning. The box, of course, gets returned to be used for the next week's bounty.

Laura Dowd of Local Foods Connection, left, and Susan Jutz of ZJ FarmsPhoto: Kurt Michael FrieseBuying a share of the bounty also means buying a share of the risk. It's been a cold wet spring here in Iowa, so many plants aren't even in the ground yet. I saw thousands of seedlings in Susan's hoop house, each one yearning to breathe free sometime after Mother's day - the traditional end of the danger of frost here. This means the season will start a little later this year, but all of us will gladly take that over last year's disastrous storms and floods. ZJ Farms was high and dry, but some savage straight winds did take out her 100-year-old barn, sheeps and pigs still inside.

That barn is still being cleaned up a year later, but volunteers from Local Foods Connection, an organization Susan helped create, have been helping out. LFC is a charity that helps get fresh wholesome food to needy families. Volunteers do work on area farms, and in return farmers give CSA shares to the charity, which in turn gives them to the families. There is also a wonderful educational component too. Families are encouraged to learn about the foods, and how to cook them. They earn points that can be redeemed for kitchen tools.

Families are also required to visit one of the farms. Often they are reluctant, but LFC founder and president Laura Dowd says that the only thing harder than getting them to visit the farms is getting them to leave. Many of the families have never had the opportunity to see a working farm up close, and that is intrinsically rewarding for anyone.

So now we await our first box, expected the week of the 18th. I'll be looking for asparagus, and radishes, and lots of baby greens. They'll probably all end up in a salad topped with Devotay's own balsamic vinaigrette.

Balsamic Vinaigrette
3 shallots
1/4 cup Boetje's Dutch mustard (a Rock Island original)
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup balsamic vinegar
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup Iowa Natural Soy Oil (strictly non-GMO, & made right here in Iowa)

Mix the oils together. Place shallots, mustard, pepper and salt into food processor and chop fine. Add vinegar and pulse. While running the processor, slowly add the olive and soy oils to emulsify. It may not all fit, so mix in remaining oil in bowl with a whip.

Make plenty--this dressing will keep in the refrigerator for weeks.

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Courtesy Stewart via Flickr

Michael Pollan ended The Omnivore's Dilemma with this line: "we eat by the grace of nature, not of industry, and what we're eating is never anything more or less than the body of the world."

Sustenance, it seems to me, has always been humanity's most persistent and direct link to the landscape. But at least since the rise of agriculture 10,000 years ago, class relations have had the power to obscure that link. It's doubtful, for example, that Queen Victoria knew very much about what it took to supply her table, which (telegraphing today's food-miles debate) included delicacies from all over Britain's massive empire.

Even Victorian-era Britain's notoriously exploited workers enjoyed class privilege of a sort. They received a huge portion of their calories from sugar--grown and processed under dire conditions by out-of-sight, out-of-mind black workers all the way in the West Indies, as the anthropologist Sidney Mintz shows in his great book Sweetness and Power. One shudders contemplating the vast swaths of carbon-sucking tropical forest that came under the ax to make way for those sugar plantations.

The rise of industrial agriculture in the 20th century dramatically expanded our distance from the processes that sustain us. In a sense, most of us now live like royalty--separated from the land, as removed as we choose to be from the drudgery of growing and cooking food, with the ability to procure food from dizzying distances with little more than a finger snap.

It's because of this separation from the land, I think, that food has been slow to catch on as an issue for the modern environmental movement. From the start, of course, there were rumblings that how we feed ourselves exerts a huge environmental impact. Rachel Carson's landmark Silent Spring (1962) revealed dirty secrets about what agricultural pesticides were doing to ecosystems; and Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet (1971) delivered a cogent, ahead-of-its time look at the vast ecological footprint of meat.

Despite the popularity of these books and the stirrings they created, food mainly stayed at the margins of environmental debate. The first Earth Day celebrations focused on population growth, industrial pollution, and threats to wildlife. Activists likely plotted them over Big Macs of beef from the nation's emerging corn-sucking feedlots, jacked up on coffee from vast mono-crop plantations in Brazil. Food was merely fuel for the body; protecting the environment meant saving the whales.

Over the past five years, food has moved much closer to the center of the movement. Probably the signal moment was the publication of Livestock's Long Shadow in fall 2006, a lengthy report by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The report, lavishly documented and bluntly written, delivered a bombshell whose full effects we have yet to see the last of: "The livestock sector is a major player [in global climate change], responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport."

A higher share than transport. From that point on, it became impossible to credibly discuss climate change without discussing food. Not that policymakers don't try. The draft Markey-Waxman legislation, which would cap greenhouse gas emissions, stunningly exempts agriculture from regulation. In doing so, the bill's sponsors are bowing to the influence of the agriculture lobby, which has brazenly demanded (PDF) that not only should the greenhouse gas emissions generated by industrial farming not be capped, but that its alleged carbon-sequestration services be fully credited.

Official acceptance of such claptrap may soon crumble under the weight of its absurdity. Another recent study (PDF) may prove even more important than the FAO report, even if it lacks its headline-grabbing power. The paper, published by the International Council for Science (ICSU), examines the impact of the synthetic nitrogen fertilizer on which industrial agriculture relies. Scientists have long known that a portion of that fertilizer enters the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, a gas with nearly 300 times more heat-trapping power than carbon. The question is, how much? Most climate assessments, including the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the FAO's livestock study, have assumed about 1 percent of fertilizer turns into nitrous oxide. But the ICSU paper pegs the true level at 4 percent or as much as 5-meaning that old estimates may be dramatically undercounting agriculture's role in climate change.

As the political class lurches toward acceptance of this harsh reality, the rapidly converging environmental and sustainable-food movements still have plenty of work ahead of them.

The main task, I think, is ramping up accessibility. Historically, people of limited means have tended to scrape by on what's locally available, while the wealthy have used their resources to draw in fancy food from far away. Now, that situation has turned upside down. Micro-farms dot the areas outside metropolises, producing hand-picked, highly nutritious, and pungent microgreens to be plopped on lawyers', accountants', and high-tech professionals' plates for astronomical prices. Meanwhile, the people who staff the vast services economy get the dreck served up by environmentally abusive companies like Smithfield Foods.

At this point, no more than 3 percent of the food consumed in the United States is grown under ecologically sustainable conditions, the Kellogg Foundation estimates. We've created a greenhouse gas-intensive, lavishly subsidized system for delivering cheap food to a public that has seen real wages stagnate since the 1970s -- and that is now enduring the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Under such conditions, simplistic calls for people to "pay the true cost" of their food aren't enough. We need to figure out new economic models to make sustainably produced food a viable option for everyone. For food to reach its full potential as a green issue -- for our society to feed itself in a way that's not literally destroying our habitat -- that's our challenge going forward.

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Photo: Justin Russell

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire. Visions of sugar plums dancing. A partridge in a pear tree. The holiday season is rife with gastronomic traditions, as well as delectable memories of shared meals past. To get in the spirit, and perhaps encourage a few new traditions, we asked some all-star sustainability-minded chefs—including our own food columnists—to share their favorite holiday recipes. So grab a cup of organic ‘nog and dig in!

Dan Barber & Blue Hill’s Dairyless Fennel Soup
Deborah Madison’s Steamed Persimmon Pudding with Silky Persimmon Puree
Andrea Reusing’s Lion’s Head Meatballs
April McGreger’s Sweet Potato Angel Biscuits
Tom Philpott & Maverick Farms’ Holiday-Morning Cumin Biscuits
Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s Potato Latkes
Roz Cummins’ Warm Cider Caramel Sauce for Fresh Apple Slices
Monica Segovia-Welsh’s Chocolate Panforte

“With the last of the local fennel, don’t hide a thing by adding cream (or anything else).”

Dairyless Fennel Soup Dan Barber. 3 tablespoons olive oil
1 onion, chopped
3 small shallots, minced
  3 1/2 cups diced fennel, white part only, reserving green fronds for garnish
  1 apple, peeled and diced
  Salt and ground black pepper
  1 tablespoon fennel seeds, crushed
4 cups vegetable stock
  1/2 teaspoon chopped thyme Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large saucepan, add the onion and shallots, and sweat until translucent. Add the fennel and apple, and season with salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes before adding the fennel seeds and stock, bring to a boil, and simmer for 30 minutes. Add thyme and season to taste with salt and pepper.

Transfer to a blender and puree, adding the remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil. Return to saucepan and heat gently. Garnish with fennel fronds.
Dan Barber is an award-winning chef and co-owner of Blue Hill Restaurant in New York City and Blue Hill at Stone Barns in upstate New York, also home to the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture.

“I have an affection for persimmon pudding because it was a favorite dish of my father’s, a Midwesterner who probably made it with native persimmons until he moved to California. Then it was Hachiyas. I can see the delight on his face upon pulling a pudding out of the oven. He used a recipe from the Joy of Cooking that was very buttery and moist and good—different than this steamed one which is also good, but more cakelike in texture. We had persimmon pudding as surely as others would have pumpkin pie.”

Steamed Persimmon Pudding with Silky Persimmon Puree For steaming you will need a bowl or pudding mold with a 6- to 8-cup capacity. Serves six.

Deborah Madison. The Pudding
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 to 3 ripe Hachiya persimmons, enough for 1 cup puree
1 cup sugar
1 beaten egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon 1. Select a bowl for your pudding. It can be made of crockery, metal, glass, or it can be a proper pudding mold with a lid. Make sure it fits inside a large second pot or pan which can then be covered with a lid. You’ll also need to place a small inverted metal bowl in the pot for your mold to sit on so it won’t be directly over the heat.

2. Melt the butter. Generously brush some of it over the pudding dish and set aside the rest. Put the buttered mold on the inverted bowl. Bring a teakettle of water to a boil.

3. Halve the persimmons, pick out any seeds, then scrape the soft fruit from the skins. Puree, then measure 1 cup. Place the 1 cup of puree into a bowl with the remaining melted butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, milk, and salt. Whisk until well combined. Stir the dry ingredients together, then whisk them into the wet ingredients.

4. Pour the batter into the mold and cover with foil. Add the boiling water to come up 2/3 of the outsides of the mold, then cover the pot and cook gently for 1 1/2 hours. When the pudding is done, a cake tester inserted will come out clean. Remove it from the pot, then invert it onto a serving plate. If you’re not ready to serve, leave the mold resting on the pudding so that it will retain its heat. Whip the cream and make the persimmon puree (see below).

5. To serve, spoon a little of the whipped cream around the base of the pudding, along with a ribbon of the persimmon of puree. Or you can spoon drops of the puree into the cream, then fan them out with a tip of the knife. If you like, garnish the plate with pine or holly.

The Whipped Cream
1 egg, beaten
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
1/4 cup brandy
1 cup whipping cream Beat the egg with the sugar, butter, and brandy. Whip the cream into soft peaks, then fold it into the remaining ingredients. If it separates before serving, a few strokes of the whisk will bring it back to a smooth, ivory sauce.

The Silky Persimmon Puree
4 very ripe Fuyu persimmons or 2 Hachiya persimmons
1 tablespoon sugar or honey, to taste
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, to taste
Pinch of salt Halve the persimmons, remove the seeds, then puree until smooth. Stir in the sugar, lemon juice, and a pinch of salt. Taste and add more sugar or lemon juice, if desired. Makes about 1 cup.
Deborah Madison is author of Local Flavors and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

“We first served these braised meatballs at the restaurant as a way to use an overwhelming amount of whole hog after a miscalculation when ordering pigs. But I also really like it for a cozy holiday meal at home because the whole thing can be made day or two ahead, smells delicious while it reheats, and the cook can have her holiday, too.”

Lion’s Head Meatballs Makes about 45 meatballs, serving 8-10

Andrea Reusing. For the meatballs
5 pounds fatty ground pork (at least 30% fat) from a pasture-raised pig
3/4 cup egg whites
1/3 cup, plus 1 tablespoon shao tsing wine or dry sherry
1/3 cup, plus 1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon, plus 1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 1/2 cups minced green onions, white and light green parts only
3 tablespoons finely minced ginger For frying
2 quarts vegetable oil Braising liquid and finishing the dish
2 quarts chicken stock
15 dried black mushrooms, soaked in 2 cups of the chicken stock until soft, about one hour
1 thumb-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced into thin matchsticks
1/2 cup shao tsing wine or dry sherry
1 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 teaspoons sugar
Salt to taste
1 tablespoon cornstarch, mixed with 1 tablespoon water to form a slurry
15-20 small baby bok choy, trimmed and cleaned
Sliced green onions for garnish In a large bowl, briskly combine the first seven ingredients with a wooden spoon, stirring in one direction for about 3-5 minutes, until the fat is well integrated with the meat and other ingredients. Stir in the scallions and ginger and then form the mixture into two-ounce meatballs, about the size of large ping pong balls.

In a deep stockpot, add the vegetable oil to about 4 inches depth. Heat oil over medium high heat to 350 degrees. Fry the meatballs in small batches for about 2-3 minutes, until deep golden brown, but still raw in the center.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

While the meatballs are frying, start the braising liquid. Place a large clay casserole or other heavy casserole over low heat and add the chicken stock, dried mushrooms, ginger, shao tsing or sherry, wine, and sugar. Once the casserole begins to heat, increase the heat to medium, add salt to taste, and bring to a low simmer. Cook for about 15-20 minutes until the mushrooms have completely softened and the broth is fragrant and flavorful. Add the meatballs, return the broth to a simmer, cover the casserole, and place it in the oven to braise for about 15 more minutes, or until the meatballs are cooked through. Remove the casserole from the oven and then remove the black mushrooms from the broth. When they are cool enough to handle, trim their stems and discard them, then return the mushrooms to the casserole. Place the casserole over low heat on top of the stove, correct the seasoning, then add the slurry gradually while stirring. Add the bok choy and cook until its color has intensified to a deep, bright green and it is tender but still slightly crisp.

Garnish with green onions and serve at the table from the casserole along with steamed jasmine rice.
Andrea Reusing is chef and owner of the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based restaurant Lantern.

“Angel biscuits are a classic Southern cocktail nibble. You can make the dough and simply keep it in the refrigerator for up to a week, rendering it the perfect make-ahead bread. I add sweet potato to my version for a festive touch, because they are such an important crop to my Vardaman, Miss., home, and because they go so well with ham.”

Sweet Potato Angel Biscuits Yield: 30 biscuits

April McGreger. 1 tablespoon yeast
1/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of fresh grated nutmeg
1/2 cup pastured lard or non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening
1 1/2 cups cool mashed sweet potato (about 2 medium-sized sweet potatoes)
1 3/4-2 cups very cold buttermilk
Zest of one lemon, preferably organic
3 tablespoons melted butter Prick the washed sweet potatoes with a fork and bake them at 400 F for about one hour, until very soft. When cool, peel, mash, and measure 1 1/2 cups of puree. Mix the puree with 1 3/4 cups of buttermilk and the lemon zest and set aside in the refrigerator.

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water with the sugar.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, ground ginger, nutmeg, and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut in the lard or shortening with a pastry blender, a fork, or your fingers until you have clumps the size of peas. Stir in the buttermilk-sweet potato mixture and the yeast mixture and mix lightly until the mixture forms a soft dough. You may need to add up to 1/4 cup more buttermilk to get the dough to come together.

Place dough in a large oiled bowl or container, cover, and refrigerate 8-36 hours.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and roll out 1/2-inch thick. Cut with a 2-inch biscuit cutter and place biscuits 1 inch apart on a parchment-lined and lightly buttered baking sheet. Allow to rise at room temperature approximately 1 hour until puffy. Preheat the oven 400 F.

Brush tops with melted butter and bake 15-18 minutes, until lightly browned. These can be baked several hours ahead if desired. Store covered at room temperature. Reheat before serving if desired.

Tuck slithers of baked, country, or prosciutto ham inside these biscuits, pile them high on a platter, and serve with mustard or chutney.
April McGreger is the proprietor of Farmer’s Daughter, a farm-driven artisan food business in Carrboro, N.C., and writes a column for Grist of the same name. She is a leader in her local Slow Food convivium, where she is known to curate field pea tastings and write for the Slow Food Triangle blog. When not in the kitchen, she can usually be found at her local community garden or singing and playing the tenor banjo with her husband Phil.

“When some close friends visited Maverick Farms a few years ago, I wanted their last breakfast to be memorable. Something made me spike the biscuit batter with lashings of ground cumin and chile pepper—and the result rocked. Now we serve these on special mornings.”

Holiday-Morning Cumin Biscuits Tom Philpott. Photo: Bart Nagel 1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup whole-wheat pastry flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon ground cumin, freshly ground if possible
A generous grind (or three) of black pepper
optional: chile flakes, to taste; or chopped fresh chile pepper, to taste (note: Do it!)
6 tablespoons butter, cold
1 cup buttermilk (see note below)
1 cup grated cheddar cheese Makes 12-16 biscuits

Preheat oven to 450 F.

Combine all dry ingredients (up to and including optional chile flakes) in a large bowl. Whisk to combine. Cut butter into small chunks. Add to bowl and cut into dry ingredients with two forks, until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Gently stir in buttermilk and cheese.

Dust a clean work surface with flour. Dump dough onto surface, pat down a little, and lightly dust with flour. Using a floured rolling pin, gently roll out to 1 inch think. Cut dough into rounds (I use an upside-down teacup), placing on baking sheet about an inch apart.

Bake until golden brown, 15 or so minutes.

Note on buttermilk: To substitute regular whole milk for buttermilk—as we often do at Maverick Farms—add a tablespoon of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to a little bit less than a cup of milk. Let sit for a few minutes, and it will sour.
North Carolina-based Tom Philpott is Grist’s food editor and co-founder of Maverick Farms.

“When the cold weather kicks in there is nothing as comforting as potatoes, and if you need an excuse to eat fried food, this is it. Latkes have always tasted like home to me. It’s funny, because although I grew up eating them, my family never actually made them. It was only when I was a teenager that I came up with this recipe that I began to serve at family functions. Serve with plenty of homemade applesauce.”

Potato Latkes Makes about 18

Isa Chandra Moskowitz. 2 1/2 pounds starchy white potatoes, peeled (russets, Idaho, et al)
1 small yellow onion, peeled
1/4 cup potato or corn starch
1 teaspoon salt, plus extra for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 cups matzo meal
Lots of vegetable oil for frying If using a food processor, use the grating blade to shred the potatoes and the onion.  If shredding by hand, use a grater to shred all the potatoes. Dice the onion as finely as possible.

Have ready brown paper shopping bags or paper towels for draining the oil from the latkes. You may also want to have the oven on at 200 F to keep the latkes warm until you’re ready to serve. If serving immediately, just have a baking pan covered with tin foil ready to keep the finished ones warm after they’ve been drained.

In a large mixing bowl, using a wooden spoon or your hands (I use my hands; it’s faster) mix the potatoes and onions with the potato starch until the potatoes have released some moisture and the cornstarch is dissolved, about 2 minutes.

Add the salt and pepper to combine. Add the matzo meal and mix well. Set aside for about 10 minutes. The mixture should get liquidy but sticky.

In the meantime, preheat a large—preferably cast iron, but definitely non-stick—skillet over medium high heat. Add about 1/4 inch layer of vegetable oil to the pan. The oil is hot enough when you drop a bit of batter in and bubbles rapidly form around it. If it immediately smokes, the heat is too high and you should lower it a bit. If the bubbles are really lazy, give it a few more minutes or turn the heat up a bit.

With wet hands (so that the mixture doesn’t stick) roll into small golf ball-sized balls. Flatten into thin round patties. I do about four to six at a time. Fry on one side for about 4 minutes, until golden brown. Flip over and fry for another 3 minutes.

Transfer to the paper towels and proceed with the remaining latkes. Once latkes have drained on both sides, place in a baking pan to keep warm.
Isa Chandra Moskowitz is the creator and co-host of the Post-Punk Kitchen, a public-access vegan cooking show in New York City, and co-author of Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.

“I like to serve this at the end of a holiday meal, because it is light but satisfying. The crisp, cool apple slices contrast nicely with the warm pool of cider-based caramel. I hope that you all enjoy a peaceful holiday surrounded by loved ones.”

Warm Cider Caramel Sauce Makes enough to drizzle over 8 sliced apples

I think it’s fun to have a variety of apples to try: Cortlands for their juicy white flesh and ultimate “crisp apple” flavor, Granny Smiths (scroll down to see a picture of the actual Granny Smith) for their signature tart/sour bite and firm texture, and some Golden Delicious for their mild-mannered flavor (there’s almost a banana-pear-honeysuckle thing going on in some of them). Share some of the apple that you cut in exchange for some of the apples that were cut by the others at the table.

I rarely use corn syrup, but when I do I buy organic corn syrup so that I am not unwittingly supporting the use of GMO corn.

3 cups sugar
1/2 cup organic corn syrup
1/2 cup cider, apple juice, or water
1 teaspoon genuine vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/3 cup heavy cream
8 apples Stir the sugar, corn syrup, water or cider, vanilla, and cinnamon together in a medium-size pot until well blended. Let the mixture cook, without stirring, over high heat until it reaches the hard-crack candy stage (300 to 310 degrees).

Take the pot off the stove the very minute the syrup reaches the hard-crack stage, otherwise the syrup will burn. (Seriously. You cannot let your guard down about this!) Let cool for 5 minutes.

Add the heavy cream and stir until combined. Serve over freshly cut apple slices.
Roz Cummins is a Boston-based food writer and former Grist columnist who is interested in figuring out how to shop, cook, and eat in a sustainable way on a day-to-day basis without going crazy, i.e. the intersection where activism meets flavor and budget constraints at the end of a busy day.

“I started making a version of chocolate panforte when I worked at a small bakery in northern Wisconsin. I became addicted to the chocolate-honey-spice combination so much that it has become a yearly winter tradition with my family. The variations of nuts and fruits are endless, and I look forward to using what’s local to make it seem ‘new’ every year.”

Chocolate Panforte 1 1/2 cup pecans
4 oz. dried black mission figs, destemmed and quartered
4 oz. dried sour cherries
2 oz. crystallized ginger, diced
2 1/2 oz. unsweetened Scharffenberger chocolate
1 oz. bittersweet Scharffenberger chocolate
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/2 teaspoon each, ground black and pink peppercorns
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 cup dark rum
3/4 cup Sourwood honey
3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 vanilla bean pod, seeds scraped
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted Preheat oven to 350 F. Put pecans on a sheet pan and lightly toast for 10-12 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Butter the bottom and sides of a 9-inch springform pan, line the bottom and sides with parchment, and butter the paper.

In a medium bowl, combine the cooled nuts, dried fruits, chocolate, spices, and rum.

In a saucepan, combine the honey, brown sugar, and vanilla bean seeds. Bring it to a rolling boil and cook for one minute. Take it off the heat and immediately pour onto the nut-chocolate mixture. Gently stir to combine, making sure all the chocolate is melted.

Add the flour and gently fold it together. It will be smooth, glossy, and very sticky. Immediately pour it into the prepared springform pan and spread it evenly. It’s helpful at this point to dip your fingertips into cold water and press the dough evenly into the pan.

Bake it for 40-50 minutes until it bubbles in the middle and sets. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack completely. Release springform and remove pan bottom. Peel off the parchment.

You can leave it plain or dust the top with a combination of powdered sugar and cocoa and then brush away the extra.

Cut into 16-20 thin slices and serve or keep wrapped airtight for up to a month.
Monica Segovia-Welsh is the pastry chef at the Chapel Hill, N.C.-based restaurant Lantern.

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Dear Umbra,

I try to eat as many vegetarian meals as possible, but I haven't "gone all the way" yet, mostly because my in-laws (whom my husband and I live with at the moment) raise beef, chickens, and hunt deer; and my husband and I end up with a lot of free, locally produced meat. How does this fit in with eco-friendliness? Would it still behoove (no pun intended) me to continue to push for vegetarianism? I am by no means a meat-lover and it's fairly easy for me to pass it up, except when it comes to eating and cooking with my husband's family. In other words, when they roast one of their own chickens for dinner, does it really make an environmental impact if I said "no thanks," or am I still reducing my eco-footprint even though I'm the only one at the table not eating it?

Chickened Out
Fayette, Mo.

Dearest Chickened Out,

Two questions here: Is homegrown meat just as bad as all other meat, and if meat's going to be eaten anyway, can't we just join in? Maybe the first question will help us answer the second. I freely admit, I want the answer to the first question to be no. (I'm happy to take up hunted meat in another column, but I don't have enough room to do so here.)

From Mom's pasture to your plate.

I think we can look at the research on agricultural climate impacts and make some decent inferences. Agriculture contributes significantly to global warming.

Consumers can take simple action to reduce harm through eating meat and meat products less frequently, or cutting meat from their diets entirely. But what of eating ultra-local animals, grown on the farms of family and friends? I think the answer can be found in examining the details of livestock's impacts, via both the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization report "Livestock's Long Shadow" and a recent U.K. study from the Food Climate Research Network.

The FAO estimates livestock-related emissions at 18 percent of the world total. It identifies land degradation, water use and pollution, and loss of biodiversity through deforestation and other pollutions as other major problems affiliated with livestock. The climate impacts of livestock production include creation of potent methane via poop and enteric fermentation in ruminants (cows & co.), refrigeration in the supply chain, food transport, fertilizers, feedstock production, and deforestation. The U.K. study found that agriculture did contribute to CO2 emissions, but the larger footprint came from methane and nitrous oxide emissions.

Looking at this list, I believe that homegrown meat is potentially better than industrially produced meat on many levels. If a farmer is growing in a sustainable manner, using land appropriate to grazing, feeding appropriate and well-grown foods, and managing manure well, it's all better than poorly managed ag, and they already have the benefits of no refrigerated supply chain and no transport. Additionally, sustainable small-scale growers have opted out of the industrial livestock system as eaters. They aren't necessarily eating less meat, but they are not supporting irresponsible meat production.

Of course, this is basically a well-informed opinion on my part, not anything supported by data. Fortunately or unfortunately, the dire problems lie in the global supply chain, industrial ag, and resource-poor farmers, and these are the folks whose impacts have been studied. Your family is kind of under the radar.

As for your own diet, carry on eating less meat, and by all means refuse it at restaurants or other people's homes. If your family is willing to take you into account as they plan their year's harvest, then refusing it at home will also reduce the amount of meat produced, and that's no bad thing. If you think they are responsible farmers or you simply wish to maintain domestic harmony, eating some of their meat is also no bad thing. It may even be tasty.

Homesteadingly,
Umbra

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Fewer chemicals in our sparkling wines? We'll drink to that.

Nothing says festive quite like the pop of a chilled bottle of bubbly.

But while sparkling wine delivers a party in a glass, things are typically less thrilling out in the field. Like most wine, bubbly tends to come from grapes grown in large monocrops -- vines as far as the eye can see. And they're more likely to be swathed in a cloud of pesticide spray than in a farmer's careful attention.

These grim conditions generally hold sway at all price points, from $5 headache bait to the brand-name Champagnes flaunted by rap stars. In her important book The Search for Wine and Love: Or How I Saved the World from Parkerization, Alice Feiring described a visit to the vineyards of Moet & Chandon, one of the Champagne region's most prestigious producers. According to Feiring, the soil "looked dead, with a cadaver-like grayness. Chemical weed killer had clearly been deployed instead of vineyard plows."

Grist's Pick

Feiring champions so-called "grower Champagnes": wines made within France's Champagne region by small-scale farmers, not prestige houses like Veuve and Moet. Alas, these tend to be priced out of a reasonable budget. Grower Champagne is lovely stuff, but it's difficult to find a bottle of it for less than $50.

For this tasting, I wanted distinctive, affordable sparkling wines made from grapes grown on human-scale farms without the use of chemicals. I knew that the "affordable" part would steer me away from Champagne and toward less-hyped regions. How to find them? One option would be to merely seek out certified-organic wines. But that would exclude hundreds of potential candidates that flow out of the so-called "natural wine" movement -- vintners who reject chemical farming and modern wine-making techniques, but who also often reject organic certification. (Allergy to certification comes in many forms: an aversion to paperwork, a lingering but now largely antiquated belief that "organic" denotes low-quality wine, or plain curmudgeonliness.)

So I did what anyone should do who wants to identify such wines: I consulted a knowledgeable wine merchant in my area. I asked Jay Murrie, partner and wine director at Chapel Hill-based 3 Cups, to pick out five "natural" sparklers, all under $30. The ones he chose are widely available nationwide, in the kind of shops that seek off-the-beaten-path wines.

I then assembled a panel composed of wine-loving amateurs (my old Maverick Farms colleague Sara Safransky and me) and wine pros (Jay, plus 3 Cups employees Matt Souza and Elaine Thomas). We tasted the wines blind, and -- amid the frowning and sniffing and swirling -- scribbled down our reactions. I asked everyone to rank the wines by preference. Altogether, the tasting was a mini-New Year's Eve for wine nerds.

Dom. de Montbourgeau Cremant du Jura
Region: Jura, France
Price: $21.99
Natural note: Hand-harvested grapes come from an eight-hectare farm run by the founder's granddaughter.

This one took top honors. All three wine pros noted apple flavors. Jay ranked it number one, impressed by its "balance of green-apple fruit and yeast." Elaine found it "bright, clean, and fruit-driven," while Matt picked up "some good minerals on the finish" and a "nutty aftertaste." We amateurs liked it, too. Sara said it "tickles the tongue and keeps going," while I scribbled "bright, nice acidity, tight bubbles."

Avinyo Cava Rosado
Region: Penedes, Spain
Price: $25.99
Natural note: Four small organic farms supply the winery; the winemaker consults a 300-year-old book for farming tips.

This pink wine (the only rosé in our tasting) placed dead last; no one ranked it in the top three. Even so, it's a delightful, interesting wine that I'd happily drink again. I found a cherryish, almost Kool Aid-like aroma, which gave way to a bone-dry, racy flavor profile. Matt, probably its biggest enthusiast, detected "very fresh flavors -- zesty, with a good amount of acidity." Jay liked its "cranberry/red currant" hints, but found its acidity "pretty severe." Elaine judged that it would "probably be better with food."

Avinyo Cava Brut
Region: Penedes, Spain
Price: $15.99
Natural note: See above.

Most folks found this one solid but unspectacular. Its biggest enthusiast, Matt, detected floral and mineral notes in the aroma, and "honey, pear, and wildflower" flavors. Elaine judged it "pleasant, but not much personality," while Jay declared it "fine, but miles from decent Champagne." I was intrigued by its "lemony, citrus nose," but not wowed by the flavor.

Foreau Vouvray Brut
Region: Loire Valley (Vouvray), France
Varietal(s): Chenin blanc
Price: $26.99
Natural note: 12-hectare farm managed organically; yields intentionally held down to privilege quality over quantity.

This one pleased the panel. Matt found "aromas of earth and leaves and some kind of exotic fruit (mango?)." Jay detected a "really lovely soapy/chalky aroma," with lavender, honey, and pear notes on the palate. "Double-yum," he concluded. Elaine picked up "good layers of fruit and mineral and acidity." I loved it. I found the nose intensely earthy and slightly honeyish -- like hanging out near a beehive in high summer. And on the palate, a long, bracing acidity. Sara praised the quality of the bubbles.

François Pinon Vouvray Petillant Brut
Region: Loire Valley (Vouvray), France
Price: $20.99
Natural note: Supplied by 14 hectares of organically managed land, with a variety of microclimates and soil types.

Another attractive sparkler. I was its biggest admirer, ranking it No. 1. I found pretty fruit notes on the nose, including pineapple. On the palate, I picked up lemon peel and honey, and enjoyed its feather-light effervescence. Jay found it "really well made" and "elegant," with apple and pear notes. Matt detected raw nuts and sake aromas, and pear flavors. Elaine found wheat on the nose and praised its "good lengthy finish," but wished it had more acidity. Sara enjoyed its "fruity undertones" and "very mild sparkle."

Bottom Line: "Natural" sparklers rock, if this tasting is any indication. They may be a little more cerebral than what folks are used to quaffing on New Year's Eve -- they ask you to slow down and contemplate, but they also offer plenty of fun flavor. The panel's favorite, the Dom. de Montbourgeau Cremant, is a worthy choice, but I'd be pleased to toast the New Year with any of them.

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Only cows that have gobbled grass in pasture for at least 120 days per year can produce milk labeled "organic," according to draft rules issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Activists have long criticized a loophole that allowed organic-milk producers to keep their cows in giant feedlots, as long as they were fed organic grain.

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