| Welcome to GoodFood World | December 12, 2012
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Our "National Hymn," America the Beautiful, opens with the image of endless skies over fields of ripe golden grain that reach to purple mountains on the horizon. Poet Katharine Lee Bates would probably be appalled to realize that she was eulogizing one of the worst examples of mono-cropping in existence - second only to the carpeting of Iowa with corn.
That idyllic scene represents thousands of years of human development beginning with the gathering and consumption of grass seeds in the Fertile Crescent 17,000 or more years ago, however mono-cropping of wheat has been one of the major contributors to decades of soil and water erosion and water contamination.
And a contributor to one of the greatest environmental disasters of the Twentieth Century: the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.
 | | Eastern Washington Grain Farm |
Something new is happening in New York, in California, and in the Pacific Northwest, particularly in Washington. Creative small growers are experimenting with local landraces and locally developed varieties of wheat and barley. And being successful! Combining grain with vegetable and fruit crops on diversified farms brings back some of the beauty and uniqueness to family farm landscapes. Grain for flour, animal feed, or brewing and distilling integrates well with crop rotations in organic production.
Heavy, rich, and nutritious bread was once a daily staple; today commercial industrialized bread, produced in automated factories, is full of chemical additives and preservatives and too much salt, and has too little nutritive value. By reconnecting the broken links between local and regional grain farmers, the grain cleaners and millers who process their harvest, and the home and commercial bakers who make it into loaves, we can take back our wheat AND our daily bread.
Here is how to do it: Local Grains: Taking Back Our Wheat.
There's more, keep reading! Get a cup of coffee and join us at GoodFood World, where we get to the source by talking to the people who produce, process, and deliver good food.
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What can you do? Get to know more about small growers, millers and bakers, and try your hand in your own kitchen with small grains:
Organic Dryland Farming: Eastern Washington and Northwestern Montana: For those who are trying to farm in the Palouse region of eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and northwestern Montana, there is only one name for it - Dryland Farming. Annual rainfall levels of 8 to 16 inches mean that farmers have to be good - very good - at moisture management.
How to Buy a Flour Mill: Check Craig's List: No, we're not talking about a table top model, we're talking about a real business!
Search and Rescue - Reclaiming Farmland and An Ancient Grain: Brooke and Sam Lucy are bringing emmer - one of the very first domesticated wheats - back to the future.
When Did Our Daily Bread Take a Wrong Turn? When exactly did things start to go wrong?
Let them eat bread! Tall Grass Bakery: Amanda Irving and René Featherstone are an unlikely partnership and yet it takes both - the farmer and the baker - to turn an ancient grain like spelt into delicious bread.
Essential Baking - Seattle's Biggest Small Bakery: George DePasquale is experimenting with locally grown and milled wheat, and he has become an advocate for the terroir of wheat.
   
Time to try making your own bread? Here's how: Kate's in the Kitchen: It's All About Bread |
Reading List: Taking Back Our Food and Farms
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Learn more about taking back our food and farms with these books:
Fatal Harvest: The Tragedy of Industrial Agriculture, Andrew Kimbrell.
Fatal Harvest takes an unprecedented look at our current ecologically destructive agricultural system and offers a compelling vision for an organic and environmentally safer way of producing the food we eat.
Specialty Grains for Food and Feed, edited by Elsayed Abdel-Aal and Peter Wood. This is a book for grain and agriculture professionals; it is expensive but well worth it for those who want to learn more!
 White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf, Aaron Bobrow-Strain.
How did white bread, once an icon of American progress, become "white trash"? Good question!
Home Baking, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.
(Trust me, if I can bake bread, you can do it too!)
There are more books on GoodFood World and more coming every week. |
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  Cascadian Grain Conference, Jan. 12, 2013, Tacoma WA Early bird registration ($95) closes Dec. 21, 2012. Register now and save $25! More information here.
Organicology 2013, Feb. 7-9, 2013, Portland OR
Registration Deadline: January 15, 2013. This event usually sells out! More information here.
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For some small cheesemakers, millers, bakers, and farmers, it can be too costly to seek assistance to develop business and marketing plans, complete food safety certification documentation, design and develop labels and packaging, create distribution networks, and promote their products to discerning consumers and buyers.
At GoodFood World we deliver business and marketing services to farmers and growers like Amaltheia Organic Dairy, Crown S Ranch, Larkhaven Farmstead Cheese, Pine Stump Farms, Timeless Foods, and others. We need your help to keep providing services at a cost that small producers can afford.
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