Class Division

Have African Americans escaped inequality? Not even close.

By Ellis Cose, Published: July 7

The Obama presidency notwithstanding, America has not become post-racial. But it has become post-caste.

This is a colossal achievement that places us awfully close to that world imagined by Martin Luther King Jr. in which “little black boys and black girls . . . join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” For there are plenty of places in today’s America where children of various hues bond and play together, happily oblivious to the differences that might once have kept them apart.

But the realization of that dream does not mean America has reached true equality. King understood this difference, as his later anti-poverty crusade made clear. Financial fragility, he realized, could be even more crippling than segregation, especially when undergirded by a history of economic discrimination that left many blacks only marginally better off than lower caste members in India. So he died fighting to level — or at least make more even — the economic playing field.

King’s legendary “I have a dream” speech focused on ending American apartheid for one simple reason: Racism loomed so large, and its clasp was so suffocating, that for African Americans of the era, it was the great, inescapable evil, and one that made it hard to focus on much of anything else. But even as the uglier forms of racism receded with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, blacks of all classes, including those with Ivy League degrees, despaired of escaping the confines of race. It was that hopelessness festering among the black elite that led me, in the early 1990s, to write a book, “The Rage of a Privileged Class,” about African Americans frustrated by their inability to shatter the glass ceiling.

Yet, in a remarkably short time, the ceiling began to crack. Corporate chief executives, the whitest cohort in America, suddenly got some color. Richard Parsons became president of Time Warner in 1995, and in 2002, he was named chief executive. Kenneth Chenault landed the top job at American Express in 2001. Oprah Winfrey became not only one of the world’s richest women, but the arbiter of middle-American taste. Meanwhile, black actors such as Denzel Washington, Will Smith and Halle Berry ascended to the top ranks of Hollywood. Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice became secretaries of state. Then, of course, came the stunning rise of Barack Obama.

On the eve of Obama’s inauguration, a CNN poll found that two-thirds of blacks believed that King’s dream had been “fulfilled.” In a narrow sense, it had been. If Obama’s election proved nothing else, it proved that the previously impermeable American caste system was at long last dead. Dark skin could no longer bar someone from the nation’s positions of power — not even from the most powerful job in the land.

The end of caste has had a huge impact on a rising generation of black achievers, a cohort that I studied extensively for my new book, “The End of Anger.” In my research, I surveyed 200 black alumni of Harvard Business School and more than 300 alumni of A Better Chance, a New York City-based program founded in 1963 that sends minority children to selective high schools across the country.

I found a massive generation gap: Many of those under age 40 had boundless faith in their ability to crash through, navigate around or simply disregard barriers that bedeviled talented blacks of earlier generations. Their outlook struck many older black respondents as naive, yet it reflected their experience of coming up in a world where African Americans are no longer imprisoned in a subordinate caste.

But of course, the reality of these highly educated young people is not the reality of the poor and unlettered. In the less privileged America, blatant racism may be forbidden, but brutal unfairness remains a fact of life.

The percentage of black men with jobs, always lower than that for whites, has dropped to its lowest level since the Labor Department began keeping such records in the early 1970s. Even before the Great Recession, the wealth gap between blacks and whites was growing. That gap, excluding home equity, stood at $20,000 in 2007 dollars in 1984; by 2007, it had increased to $95,000, according to Brandeis University’s Institute on Assets and Social Policy. And the subprime mortgage meltdown made things much worse, hitting with particular force many communities occupied largely by blacks and Latinos. The Center for Responsible Lending, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, estimated that property depreciation related to foreclosures between 2009 and 2012 would end up costing black communities $194 billion and Latino communities $177 billion. The center also concluded that “nearly 8 percent of both African Americans and Latinos have lost their homes to foreclosures, compared to 4.5 percent of whites.”

How could such things happen at the very time the nation’s racial caste system was collapsing? Because the end of American apartheid did not erase the caste system’s effects. America’s history of economic discrimination left most blacks unable to accumulate the intergenerational wealth — trust funds, mortgage-free property and unencumbered cash — that would have permitted them to weather the economic storm. And residential segregation made Zip codes largely inhabited by blacks and Latinos easy to target for subprime loans.

During a visit to India a couple of years ago, I spent time with Martin Macwan, a lawyer born in a small village to Dalits, or “untouchables,” who has made the elimination of untouchability his life’s work. He has started schools for young Dalits shunned in their home villages; created programs to provide alternatives to the menial jobs normally reserved for lower castes; and fought for Dalit rights in the courts, although untouchability was outlawed by the Indian constitution in 1950. The “social system,” Macwan told me, “is more powerful than the law.”

The United States is discovering something similar. The caste system has officially ended, particularly (as in India) in cosmopolitan circles. Yet its legacy hasn’t vanished. Even though formally sanctioned racism may have effectively disappeared, racism’s effects linger.

There is no term to describe this new reality — a world where the economic system, culture and customs conspire to keep many people trapped in what seems very much like the old caste system, even as we celebrate the collapse of the caste system. Neither the old rhetoric of racism nor the new talk of post-racialism remotely captures where we are. Nor does the oft-used phrase “structural racism” really sum it up. “Structural inequality” comes closer, but even that inelegant term does not adequately describe how history and present-day hurdles to achievement come together to keep certain communities down.

Perhaps it is time to put such language aside and to recognize that the struggle for equality was never just about race. And it was certainly not just about expanding the circle of opportunity so that privileged blacks, Latinos and Asian Americans could enjoy the same prerogatives as privileged whites. It was about expanding that circle for the underprivileged, period.

Ellis Cose, formerly a columnist for Newsweek, is the author of “The End of Anger: A New Generation’s Take on Race and Rage.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/post-racial-no-post-caste-sure-post-inequality-not-even-close/2011/06/27/gIQA2QtS2H_story.html

BPA Still Safe Until Proven Otherwise?

Study links BPA exposure in womb to behavior problems in toddler girls

By Dina ElBoghdady, Published: October 24

A chemical used widely in plastic bottles, metal cans and other consumer products could be linked to behavioral and emotional problems in toddler girls, according to a government-funded study published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

After tracking 244 Cincinnati-area mothers and their 3-year-olds, the study concluded that mothers with high levels of bisphenol A (BPA) in their urine were more likely to report that their children were hyperactive, aggressive, anxious, depressed and less in control of their emotions than mothers with low levels of the chemical.

While several studies have linked BPA to behavioral problems in children, this report is the first to suggest that a young girl’s emotional well-being is linked to her mother’s exposure during pregnancy rather than the child’s exposure after birth. Girls were more sensitive to the chemical in the womb than boys, maybe because BPA mimics the female hormone estrogen, which is thought to play a role in behavioral development.

The results add to a growing body of research that suggests exposure to BPA poses health risks in humans. While the federal government has long maintained that low doses of BPA are safe, the Food and Drug Administration and other federal agencies are taking a closer look and investing in more research about the chemical’s health effects.

In the Cincinnati study, the authors cautioned that their results could have been skewed by the eating habits of the mothers observed. For more than 40 years, BPA has been used to make plastic bottles and the lining of metal-based cans. It’s possible that mothers who ate a lot of packaged foods simply didn’t eat enough nutrients essential for brain development, said Joe M. Braun, the study’s lead author.

None of the children exhibited behavior outside the normal range, said Braun, a research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. But they behaved worse than children whose mothers had relatively low traces of BPA in their urine, he said.

The results were based on urine samples from the mother (two during pregnancy and one at birth) and urine samples from their children taken at ages 1, 2 and 3. The mothers then filled out surveys about their children’s behavior at age 3.

The American Chemistry Council, which represents the chemical industry, dismissed the study, saying it has “significant shortcomings” in design and its conclusions “are of unknown relevance to public health.”

The group cited the study’s small sample size as one drawback. Braun said it’s difficult to conduct this type of research with a larger group.

Several experts who track the issue said they would like to see the study repeated with another group of children.

Linda Birnbaum, director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said the sample size is reasonable and its results support studies that show similar effects in animals. The challenge with observational studies such as this one, she said, is that the effects are subtle and, therefore, tougher to tease out.

“These are not the kinds of effects that hit you over the head,” Birnbaum said. “We’re not looking for missing arms and legs.”

Birnbaum’s group and the Environmental Protection Agency funded the study.

Meanwhile, she said, the marketplace has spoken.

Due to consumer pressure, some companies have voluntarily removed the chemical from products or started offering BPA-free alternatives. A number of states and cities, including Maryland, have banned BPA in some children’s products. France has taken action to prohibit BPA use in food packages altogether, but the ban has not yet taken effect.

Earlier this month, the American Chemistry Council petitioned the FDA to ban the use of the chemical in baby bottles and sippy cups. The group said the chemical hasn’t been used in those products for years, but that the ban would help clear consumer confusion. The council maintains that BPA is safe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/study-links-bpa-exposure-in-womb-to-behavior-problems-in-toddler-girls/2011/10/24/gIQA6ihRDM_story.html

Food Labels

Nutrition rating, labeling system proposed

By Dina ElBoghdady, Published: October 20

A symbol, such as a check mark or a star, should be displayed on the front of every food item and beverage sold in grocery stores so harried shoppers can judge nutritional value at a glance, according to a government-sponsored report released Thursday.

In the report, a panel of experts from the Institute of Medicine told federal regulators that the epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases warrants a single rating system to help consumers sort through nutritional information. The panel devised a labeling plan intended to be simple enough for kids to use. But it’s unclear what regulators will do.

The food and beverage industry, which launched its own labeling initiative this year, immediately resisted the plan, arguing that consumers do not want the government to interpret information for them. But the panel concluded the opposite. It cited the success of the Energy Star ratings for appliances and five-star safety ratings for cars.

“Simply providing information about healthy choices has not consistently translated into changes in dietary behavior,” said Ellen Wartella, head of the panel and a professor of communications, psychology and human development at Northwestern University.

Under the panel’s plan, products would be graded in three categories — added sugar, sodium and fats. If the sodium level is acceptable, for example, the product would get a point (or check mark, or maybe a star). The same goes for the added sugar and fats, for a maximum of three points or symbols for each product.

Some products may earn no points. For instance, a sugary soda may have low levels of sodium and fat, but it would not be eligible for points because of its high sugar content, the group said.

Also, the calorie count would have to be displayed in familiar measures, such as “per cup.”

The appeal of this method is that it does not require consumers to have a deep knowledge of nutrition, said Matthew Kreuter, one of the panel members. “You just need to understand that three [symbols] is better than two, two is better than one, and one is better than zero,” said Kreuter, a health communications professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Food and Drug Administration, which co-sponsored the study, has been pressing for a front-of-package label since 2009. Back then, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg decried the barrage of sometimes inaccurate slogans displayed on food. Her criticisms came soon after the industry launched its now-defunct Smart Choices program, which gave its trademark green check mark to sugar-laden foods such Froot Loops.

Since then, the industry has launched a new program known as Facts Up Front. Under that voluntary initiative, food makers display nutrients that should be limited (such as fat) and some that should be encouraged (such as fiber.) But they do not rate products.

“Consumers have consistently told us that they want more information in a clear and easy-to-use format,” said Scott Faber, a vice president at the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which helped launch the effort. “What they don’t want are summary symbols that make judgments for them.”

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the panel’s proposal is far more promising than the industry effort. But it’s not flawless, he said. For instance, a diet soda would get three points under this system, even though it contains artificial coloring and other chemicals.

But the FDA and its partners, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who co-sponsored the study, may not get the chance to act.

“The reality is that even if the FDA wanted to do something, it would take a few years to implement the plan,” Jacobson said. “If the Obama administration departs next year, kiss the whole effort goodbye.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/nutrition-rating-labeling-system-proposed/2011/10/20/gIQAp8Dg1L_story.html

Blue Berries

Berry happy the local blues are in

By David Hagedorn, Published: June 21

It’s time to indulge in locavore blueberries, those sapphire superfood dynamos rich in antioxidants, imbued with vitamins C and E, high in fiber, low in calories.

A dream come true, right?

As if to dampen the glee of blueberry lovers everywhere, the watchdog Environmental Working Group recently ranked blueberries No. 10 on its 2011 Dirty Dozen list of conventionally grown domestic fruits and vegetables that contain the highest levels of pesticides. It’s the second time they’ve cracked the top 12.

Not surprisingly, the Alliance for Food and Farming, a group representing producers’ interests, contends that EWG’s numbers are misleading and that, in general, the pesticides used on blueberries are within USDA safety limits.

The best strategy for consumers, says EWG senior analyst Sonya Lunden, is to ask your local farmers about how they grow their produce. The proliferation of farmers markets has made that increasingly easy to do, and, in the case of two Maryland blueberry growers, I’ve done the legwork already.

Arthur James, 63, co-owns Washington County’s Blueberry Hill with his 33-year-old son, Michael. Ewald August, 76, owns Moody Blues Farm in Baltimore County. Both men — white-haired, earnest and with compelling personal histories — sell extraordinary northern highbush blueberries at markets in the Washington area. James is a certified organic grower; August is not.

At age 21, James was drafted, went to Vietnam and returned two years later seriously wounded, settling in Clear Spring, Md., on secluded mountain land that offered privacy. At17, August began a long corporate career with A&P, eventually becoming a produce buyer.

Approaching 50 and realizing he’d need something to do once his career ended, August bought his 20-acre farm in Windsor Mill near Baltimore in 1984. It proved a wise strategy; unable to adapt to a computerized corporate environment, he retired in 1996.

An early attempt at farming began with planting 3,500 Christmas trees and ended when deer ate the tops off all the trees. After that, August thought he’d try blueberries, an interest he’d acquired when traveling to Texas, Florida and New Jersey as a buyer. In 1991, he bought his first plants.

On a hot, sunny May morning, we stroll his 2¹ / ₂-acre plot of neatly rowed, four-foot-high bushes packed with green berries. August claims he did not really know what he was doing when he started out 20 years ago.

“I bought 25 Bluecrop (a variety that ripens mid-season) plants the first year and then 75 more and just stuck ’em in the lawn. I had good connections in the produce business, and this fellow from Variety Farms in New Jersey sent me a box of 300 cuttings about 1 year old, each about six inches with bare roots.” They were Dukes.

They “are just about the best berry there is,” he says. “Bright, big, juicy and sweet, but with some sour in the back. When they turn from green to blue, they pick up another third in size.”

By 2008, August had 500 bushes. He got 250 more in 2009 and another 250 in 2010. Each bush can yield 10 to 35 pints of berries.

“It wasn’t until two years ago that they really proliferated,” says August. He credits that to a combination of irrigation (from a system he installed then), mulch, proper pH and brutal pruning down to the crown, cutting out about 25 percent of old wood every year.

Blueberries thrive with lots of water at the roots — hence the importance of mulch — and in acidic soil with a pH between 4.5 and 5. The pH of August’s loamy soil is not that low, so in addition to conditioning it with Canadian peat moss, he fertilizes with ammonium sulfate.

“I use what the USDA recommends (for non-organic growers). I think that’s what makes my bushes so full, but it’s also the big thing that doesn’t make me organic,” August says. He also sometimes uses Bonide, a chemical insecticide, to spray his bushes at the end of the season, when they are “sick puppies.”

The subject almost pains August. He talks about his bushes as if they were his children.

“I’d never spray the fruit. If you use [the pesticide] to the right degree, with discretion and care, it can be beneficial,” he contends. “I really don’t know about the organic products, but I’d like to learn about them.”

Arthur James planted his first blueberries in 1980 and now has about 800 bushes. Even if the acidic soil on his acre near Fairview Mountain weren’t already perfectly suited for blueberry cultivation, James says, he would never use chemicals to lower the pH.

“I had a horrible experience with chemicals for seven months [in Vietnam]. I saw what Agent Orange did, defoliating whole jungles. Triple canopies. I know how sick I was and others with chloracne and jungle rot,” James recounts. “Three of my friends died.”

At first glance, James’s bushes seem helter-skelter and overgrown, with weeds creeping up their stalks. But as you walk up the slope on which they’re planted, the layout of rows becomes evident. At the base of each bush are the grass clippings, sawdust, horse manure and straw that fertilize it.

They must be doing something right. Blueberry Hill was one of 12 farms invited to bring the product that best represented them to the annual congressional picnic, held at the White House last week. Michael James brought blueberries.

The younger James, who graduated from Cornell University in 2001 with a degree in agriculture, runs Blueberry Hill, which now includes three acres of land his father bought in 1996, about three miles away. He has grown the business, which supports his family plus two full-time and three part-time employees, by building a high tunnel (unheated greenhouse) that extends the growing season and expanding into five farmers markets a week, up from one. He says growing a wide range of crops is essential.

“Blueberries are in for maybe a month and a half, so we need something to sell the rest of the time,” he says.

For blueberry lovers, however, that month and a half is nirvana.

On a recent Saturday at Moody Blues, Ewald August and his wife, plus a few helpers, had picked and packed 500 pints of berries to be sold at the Bethesda Central Farm Market the next day.

August says that what makes his berries so sweet and flavorful is the fact that, unlike Blueberry Hill, he doesn’t refrigerate them.

When I first developed the blueberry recipes that accompany this article, I used North Carolina berries purchased at Whole Foods Market, because Moody Blues berries weren’t yet ripe. When I retested with August’s fruit, the very berriness of my blueberry lemonade intensified, and the lemony compote on my summer couscous pudding popped.

In all fairness, I cannot discount the significance of one particular ingredient that could well have swayed my objectivity: the halo effect of having created a relationship with the farmer. When I finally tasted Blueberry Hill berries — grown on a mountainside, they are just ripening now — I scarfed them up without even washing them. (Of course, you should always rinse fruit well under cold running water, but note that EWG tested their fruit samples after they had been washed. On 20 percent of those samples, by the way, there was zero pesticide residue.)

Maybe I was predisposed to prefer the local product, but I cannot deny that August’s berries had a bright bloom about them that the North Carolina ones did not. The Dukes’ back-of the-palate tartness perfectly suited them to the mignonette dressing I created for a savory salad of grilled scallops, corn and feta cheese nestled in an arrangement of bright red butter lettuce, radicchio and arugula. Their plumpness and juiciness made them perfect foils in blueberry fritters, practically rendering their dipping sauce superfluous.

One noticeable organic/non-organic difference: price. August gets $3.50 per pint; Blueberry Hill charges $5 for a half-pint.

August, basically a hobbyist retiree, reckons his blueberries probably put him in the red. Still, he plans to plant 1,000 more bushes in the fall. That way, he says, he might be able to make some money at it.

“I kinda look at it like a future thing,” he says. “But I don’t think I’m gonna live that long.”

Hagedorn will join today’s Free Range chat at noon: live.washingtonpost.com.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/berry-happy-the-local-blues-are-in/2011/06/15/AGp9SYeH_story.html

Blueberry Lemonade With Ginger and Basil

The Washington Post, June 22, 2011

• • Course: Beverage
• • Features: Fast

Summary:

Ginger and basil add a bit of zing to this summer cooler, which is especially refreshing when mixed with club soda. Served on the rocks with gin or vodka, it makes a terrific summer cocktail; straight up, it’s a smasheroo Blue-tini. Garnish with a bamboo skewer that holds blueberries and a few basil leaves.

MAKE AHEAD: The base mixture can be a made a few days ahead.

Makes 6 cups

Ingredients:

• • 1 pint blueberries, stemmed and rinsed, plus more for optional garnish
• • 1 cup sugar (may substitute the sweetener of your choice, such as Splenda)
• • 1 cup plus 1 quart water
• • 1/2 cup basil leaves, packed, plus more for optional garnish
• • Two-inch piece peeled ginger root, cut crosswise into thin slices
• • Finely grated zest and freshly squeezed juice of 2 or 3 lemons (about 2 tablespoons zest and 1/2 cup juice)

Directions:

Combine the blueberries, sugar and 1 cup of the water in a medium saucepan over medium heat; cook for 2 to 3 minutes, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved and the berries just begin to burst.

Transfer to the blender, along with the basil, ginger and lemon zest. Puree until smooth, then strain into a pitcher, pushing on the solids with a rubber spatula to extract all of the liquid. Discard the solids.

Add the remaining quart of water and the lemon juice to the base mixture.

Serve over ice. Garnish with blueberries and basil leaves, if desired.

Recipe Source:

From Sourced columnist David Hagedorn.

170 calories, 0g fat, 0g saturated fat, 0mg cholesterol, 0mg sodium, 45g carbohydrates, 2g dietary fiber, 41g sugar, 1g protein.

Tested by David Hagedorn for The Washington Post.
E-mail the Food Section at food@washpost.com with recipe questions.

Nutrition Facts
Serving size: Per 1-cup serving
Calories: 170
% Daily Values*
Total Fat: 0g	0
Saturated Fat: 0g	0
Cholesterol: 0mg	0
Sodium: 0mg	0
Total Carbohydrates: 45g	15
Dietary Fiber: 2g	8
Sugar: 41g
Protein: 1g

*Percent Daily Value based on a 2,000 calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs.
Total Fat:	Less than	65g
Saturated Fat:	Less than	20g
Cholesterol:	Less than	300mg
Sodium:	Less than	2,400mg
Total Carbohydrates:		300g
Dietary Fiber:		25g

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2011/06/22/blueberry-lemonade-ginger-and-basil/

Business Of Farming

Being Like Soros in Buying Farmland Reaps Annual Gains of 16%

By Seth Lubove
August 10, 2011 12:00 AM EDT

Perry Vieth baled hay on a neighbor’s farm in Wisconsin for two summers during high school in 1972 and 1973. The grueling labor left him with no doubt about getting a college degree so that he’d never have to work as hard again for a paycheck. Thirty-eight years later, and after a career as a securities lawyer and fixed-income trader, Vieth is back on the farm.

Except, now, he owns it. As co-founder of Ceres Partners LLC, a Granger, Indiana-based investment firm, Vieth oversees 61 farms valued at $63.3 million in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee. He’s so enthusiastic about the investments that he quit a job in 2008 overseeing $7 billion in fixed-income assets at PanAgora Asset Management Inc., a Boston-based quantitative money management firm, to focus full time on farming, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.

On a spring afternoon, Vieth, 54, barrels along backcountry roads in a Jeep Cherokee in Indiana and Michigan to scout a fruit orchard and corn and soybean farms to buy. Rural towns with names such as Three Rivers pass by in a blur, separated by a wide horizon of fields with young crops popping up.

“When I told people I was leaving to start an investment fund in farmland, they said, ‘You’re doing what?’” says Vieth, in a red polo golf shirt and khakis. “It will always be difficult for Wall Street firms to understand. It’s not like buying stocks on a computer.”

It’s much better: Returns from farmland have trounced those of equities. Ceres Partners produced an average annual gain of 16.4 percent after fees from January 2008, just after the firm started, through June of this year, Vieth says.

George Soros

The bulk of the returns are in rent payments from tenant farmers who grow and sell the crops and from land appreciation. The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Agriculture Index of eight raw materials gained 5.3 percent annually over the same period, and the S&P 500 Index (SPX) dropped almost 1 percent.

Investors are pouring into farmland in the U.S. and parts of Europe, Latin America and Africa as global food prices soar. A fund controlled by George Soros, the billionaire hedge-fund manager, owns 23.4 percent of South American farmland venture Adecoagro SA.

Hedge funds Ospraie Management LLC and Passport Capital LLC as well as Harvard University’s endowment are also betting on farming. TIAA-CREF, the $466 billion financial services giant, has $2 billion invested in some 600,000 acres (240,000 hectares) of farmland in Australia, Brazil and North America and wants to double the size of its investment.

Jim Rogers

“I have frequently told people that one of the best investments in the world will be farmland,” says Jim Rogers, 68, chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1996. “You’ve got to buy in a place where it rains, and you have to have a farmer who knows what he’s doing. If you can do that, you will make a double whammy because the crops are becoming more valuable.”

The growth in demand for food, spurred by the rising middle classes in China, India and other emerging markets, shows no signs of abating. Food prices in June, as measured by a United Nations index of 55 food commodities, were just slightly below their peak in February. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization said in a June report that it expects food costs to remain high through 2012.

So many investors have rushed to capitalize on food prices in the past three years that they may be creating a farmland bubble. The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which covers Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and other agricultural states, said in May that farmland prices had surged 20 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier.

Safe Haven

“Yes, farmland will be a bubble again; all agricultural products will be in a bubble again,” says Rogers, who is an investor in Agrifirma Brazil Ltd., a South American farmland owner.

Hedge-fund manager Stephen Diggle calls farming the ultimate safe haven. Diggle began buying farms with his own money in 2008 after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEHMQ) filed for bankruptcy in September of that year and the S&P 500 plunged 43 percent in the next six months. He purchased 8,000 acres in Uruguay, three smaller plots in southern Illinois and an 80-acre New Zealand kiwi-and-avocado orchard.

“We really thought all the investment banks would go under,” says Diggle, who as a hedge-fund manager uses options and warrants to bet on price swings in the market. “Everyone said, ‘Buy gold.’ But at the end of the day, you can’t eat it. If everything else goes and I just have these farms, it makes me moderately wealthy.”

‘Prosperous China’

The hedge fund Diggle co-founded, Artradis Fund Management Pte in Singapore, suffered about $700 million in losses. He closed it in March and opened another Singapore-based hedge fund, Vulpes Investment Management Pte. Diggle plans to incorporate his five farms into an investment management group run by Vulpes.

From his vantage point in Asia, where the British expatriate has worked for the past two decades, Diggle says he’s witnessed aspiring locals eating their way up the food chain.

“You can see what a more prosperous China will consume,” Diggle, 47, says. “It means more dairy, more meat -- not just pork and chicken.”

Investors find in farmland a respite from the cyclical price swings of the commodities market. Since 1970, there have been at least four price jumps of at least 100 percent that were followed by steep declines in the S&P agriculture commodities index. By contrast, the average value of an acre of farmland tracked by the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been on a mostly steady climb from $737 in 1980 to $2,350 in 2011.

Leaving BlackRock

“Farmland is the lowest-risk part of the value chain, but it’s also a key part of production,” says Jose Minaya, TIAA- CREF’s head of natural resources and infrastructure investments.

In the U.K., where farm prices are also rising, one money manager traded his career at BlackRock Inc. (BLK) for one in farming. Graham Birch, 51, left in 2009 as the London-based head of the natural resources team at BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, to run his two dairy, wheat and barley farms in southwest England full time.

Birch, who says farming has suffered from a lack of investment and management talent, has spent $1 million on improvements. He now captures all of the effluent from his 600- cow herd, stores it in a 4 million-liter (1-million-gallon) steel tank and uses it as fertilizer for his crops. “At heart, I am basically a businessman, and I want to try to apply the things I learned over the years to see what I could do,” Birch says.

Wall Street Roots

Ceres Partners’ Wall Street roots are evident in the firm’s makeshift office in an old clapboard farmhouse that sits in the middle of cropland. Lucite tombstones resting on a shelf in a small room mark deals done by Brandon Zick, a former vice president of strategic acquisitions at Morgan Stanley (MS)’s investment management unit. Vieth hired Zick in January to help analyze and manage farm purchases.

Vieth, a 1982 graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School, began his career as a securities and corporate lawyer before moving to the pits of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he traded S&P 500 options. After a series of stints running an arbitrage team for Fuji Securities Inc. and other firms, he was hired as chief investment officer of fixed income at PanAgora, the quant firm, in 1999.

By about 2006, Vieth’s concerns about the economy were mounting: Inflation was at a low, and the dollar had peaked as U.S. debt and deficits soared. So he searched for an asset class that would benefit from a currency decline and rising prices. His research led him to farms, since a falling dollar boosts U.S. crop exports.

Falling Dollar

Vieth then connected with Paul Blum, a fellow Notre Dame alumnus who spent some of his youth on a farm in upstate New York and today acts as Ceres’s point person with tenant farmers.

As the dollar fell 24 percent against the euro from January 2006 through May 2008, the pair started buying land as personal investments until the business grew too big for Vieth to manage during evenings and weekends. So, in late 2007, he founded Ceres, just as tightening credit markets began to push the global economy into a recession.

He named the firm Ceres for both the Roman goddess of agriculture and a bar he frequented during his trading days in Chicago. “I was more convinced hard assets were where you wanted to be, and farmland was the best investment I could identify,” Vieth says. By May 2011, he had collected 17,238 acres, mostly in the Midwest.

Shade and Rocks

When Vieth wants land, he goes shopping, as he does with Zick and Blum under a partly cloudy southern Michigan sky in May. Armed with aerial and soil maps, they look for farms with predictable rainfall, mineral-rich land and good drainage. They avoid land that slopes too much, which could lead to soil erosion.

The trio drive by a 337-acre farm for sale by a bank, and Vieth frowns at the slant of the land and the trees that line the perimeter. “Those trees will shade the corn and stunt growth,” he says. Blum doesn’t like the many rocks scattered on the unplanted dirt. Zick is skeptical that the bank will get its asking price of $7,000 an acre in a foreclosure sale.

The investors next visit a farmer they hired, Ed Kerlikowske Jr., who grows watermelon, peas and corn on their 782-acre spread near Berrien Springs, Michigan. For farmers such as Kerlikowske, the entry of outside investors frees up money for new equipment that they would otherwise have to spend on land. “To really grow the business in today’s economy, you need partners,” Kerlikowske says as he passes around slices of fresh watermelon.

Possible Bubble

The farm-investing boom is making lots of people happy, but could it all end in tears? The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which regulates banks that lend to farmers, has examined whether investors may be pumping up prices and creating the conditions for a crash like the one that devastated the market in the 1980s, resulting in the failure of 300 farm banks.

In March, then-FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair devoted a symposium to the topic in Washington with the participation of economists, bankers and agricultural experts. “If there is a bubble in farmland prices, I hope the bulk of any correction is borne by investors such as hedge funds and not by the banking industry,” William Isaac, chairman of the FDIC during the farm banking bust and now senior managing director of FTI Consulting Inc. (FCN) said during the event.

Overpaying

Charles McNairy, whose family has been involved in agriculture since 1871, says neophyte investors who lack a deep understanding of farming are making bad deals. In 2009, McNairy started U.S. Farming Realty Trust LP, a fund based in Kinston, North Carolina, that had raised $261 million as of late May to buy farms, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.

McNairy says funds such as Ceres have been overpaying for land, based on the return from crops. “Ceres shouldn’t be buying in the Midwest,” says McNairy, who declined to disclose the states he invests in. “It’s crazy to be buying up there.”

Vieth disagrees, saying Ceres’s returns prove that his strategy is working. “I certainly don’t want to start slinging mud, but I don’t know what the heck he’s talking about.”

Greyson Colvin, who started farming fund Colvin & Co. LLP in Anoka, Minnesota, in 2009, dismisses the idea of an overheated market. “After the housing bubble, people are a little too quick to assign the word bubble these days,” says Colvin, whose two funds and separately managed accounts hold 2,300 acres of farmland in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota valued at more than $10 million.

Head Winds

Colvin, a former analyst at UBS AG (UBSN) and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN), says U.S. farmers aren’t carrying as much debt as they did during the 1980s crisis, which contributed to the downfall of banks as agriculture loans defaulted. The farm debt-to-asset ratio, which peaked in 1985 at 23 percent, is expected to fall to 10.7 percent in 2011, according to Agriculture Department estimates.

Vieth’s farm funds are facing head winds in coming months and years: A likely rise in interest rates will push up his acquisition costs and the value of the dollar, which in turn might hurt commodity exports. While the former trader keeps a close eye on the dollar, he says farming will continue to thrive.

Investors seem to agree. At a dining-room table in the farmhouse in Granger, Vieth sits down at his computer one evening and totals the day’s haul: another $900,000 from investors looking for comfort -- and profits -- in one of the oldest and most essential industries on the planet.

To contact the reporter on this story: Seth Lubove in Los Angeles at slubove@bloomberg.net;

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Laura Colby in New York at lcolby@bloomberg.net.

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-10/being-like-soros-in-buying-farm-land-lets-investors-reap-16-annual-gains

Expanding The Climate Zone - Ginger In Virginia

Growing baby ginger: Farmers find it’s worth the fuss

By Tim Carman, Published: October 18

If you walk past the tidy rows of raspberries inside the hoop house at Casselmonte Farm, you’ll dead-end at a waist-high forest of green stalks, whose explosion of leaves conceals not a single fruit or vegetable. If you didn’t know any better, you’d swear that Bill and India Cox were growing Florida swamp grass on their property in Powhatan County, Va.

As it turns out, the couple is raising a crop with virtually the same recognition factor as swamp grass: baby ginger. These young rhizomes, buried in the soil just under that jungle of foliage, will not mature long enough to develop the familiar beige skin of their older siblings. Nor will they develop any of those stringy fibers that can make grating mature ginger feel as if you’re trying to shred a burlap bag. Immature ginger is off-white, rather soft and pliant, with rosy, undeveloped leaves called bud scales. Baby ginger tickles your palate instead of assaulting it.

You sort of feel as though you want to pinch baby ginger’s cheeks.

The infant analogy is apt. The growing season for immature ginger, roughly from March to October, is almost as long as the gestation period for a human newborn, and baby ginger might be just as difficult to raise. The plants require not only a long growing period (which, on a farm, can monopolize valuable real estate) but also ample amounts of water and just the right soil temperature. “They’re not an easy crop,” says Heinz Thomet, owner of Next Step Produce, an organic farm in Charles County, which was an early adopter of “fresh” ginger (as it’s often called) about five years ago.

Bill, 64, and India Cox, 59, a pair of former office professionals from Richmond and Annandale, respectively, are just discovering the unique challenges of growing a tropical plant in the Mid-Atlantic as they move forward with their second careers as small-scale farmers. The couple planted baby ginger for the first time this season to supplement their more common crops, including tomatoes, greens and carrots, and they’ve had to confront the limitations of central Virginia as a hub for ginger production.

The weather, of course, is the primary obstacle. Ginger is fussy; it prefers a warm environment — but not too warm. The plant generally requires soil between 50 and 90 degrees, which essentially means that the Mid-Atlantic can be a miserable place to grow the crop. The late winter and early spring months are too cold, and the summers too hot.

To deal with the climactic vagaries, the Coxes had to sprout their ginger seed — merely pieces of mature rhizomes — in a tented and heated area in their basement until temperatures in the hoop house were warm enough for replanting. In late April, the couple transferred the ginger to the hoop house, where it fared well until the heat of July turned some of the plants’ leaves brown. The farmers tried to comfort their stressed crops by keeping the space well ventilated and the plants well watered.

Like all beginners, the Coxes learned other tricks too late. They could have bought a screen that would have limited the sun’s ability to heat the hoop house like a toaster oven; they could have rotated the plants around the hoop house, giving each one equal time near the structure’s ventilated walls; they could have clumped the plants closer together, so that their own foliage would provide shade for the soil. Yes, they could have done any or all of those, but they didn’t have to. Instead, the weather finally cooled a little in August.

You might wonder how the Coxes could move their ginger around once the seeds are planted. Simple: Rather than placing the rhizomes directly into the ground, the couple submerged their ginger in durable fabric grow-bags filled with a nutrient-rich potting soil mixed with mineral-heavy, super-fine rock dust from a nearby quarry. The bags allow the farmers to have, literally, a movable crop.

Despite the farmers’ best efforts, however, nature still tends to win out in the region, which explains, in part, why the Coxes harvest their ginger when it’s immature. The cold fall temperatures, by and large, won’t allow them to extend the season the extra two or three months that ginger needs to mature fully. Plus, as Bill Cox notes, baby ginger is “a product that you can’t find. Period.” That gives Casselmonte Farm some cachet when it takes its produce to markets, such as the Powhatan Farmers Market on Thursdays or the South of the James Market on Saturdays in Richmond.

If Susan Anderson has anything to say about it, the Coxes soon will have a lot more competition. Early this year, Anderson started East Branch Ginger, a company in Pittsboro, N.C., that imports organic ginger seed from Puna Organics in Hawaii, where the plant thrives. Anderson is sort of the Joanna Appleseed of baby ginger. Her company might be built for profit, selling nearly 4,000 pounds of the Big Kahuna ginger seed to about 150 growers in its first season, but her agenda is largely to proselytize. She has the constitution for it. Anderson is not just a saleswoman for ginger. She also grows the stuff; she holds a degree in horticulture from Virginia Tech.

“Countrywide, this is something that’s very new,” says Anderson, who also works with her customers to help them grow ginger. “It’s like people discovering basil for the first time. . . . I think the potential is huge. It’s a matter of getting farmers on board with it, because it is a different crop.”

Anderson sold Bill and India Cox their seed pieces. Her sales pitch is direct and somewhat fear-based: While ginger rhizomes bought at local stores or through wholesalers can be tainted, she says, East Branch’s products are free of diseases such as fusarium and bacterial wilt, ginger’s most common afflictions. Once one of those diseases sets in, “it’s very difficult to get rid of it,” Anderson says. The fusarium fungus, in particular, can contaminate a field for years.

Such a warning, you’d think, would scare the bejesus out of the average baby ginger farmer in the Mid-Atlantic, who’s still a rookie in this budding business. But apparently not. Next Step Produce and Tree and Leaf Farm in Unionville, Va., buy ginger seed in bulk: Next Step from a restaurant wholesaler and Tree and Leaf from an international market. “Our seeds can’t be traced back” to their source, says Katherine Stewart, the Tree and Leaf manager who handles the farm’s fresh ginger production (which, alas, has already wrapped up for the season).

The problem with the organic, disease-free seed from Hawaii is, plain and simple, the price, says Thomet of Next Step. East Branch Ginger’s rates range from $5.50 to $9.50 a pound, depending on the quantity purchased. Thomet can pay a fraction of those prices for his wholesale seed, which gives him a better return on investment for such a high-maintenance crop. The going rate for baby ginger can vary widely at farmers markets around the country — from $7 to $25 a pound, says East Branch’s Anderson — but even the lowest price is still higher than the price of mature ginger at, say, Whole Foods on P Street NW, where it sells for $5.99 a pound.

“I think it ends up being a pretty good moneymaker for the farmers,” says Bernie Prince, co-director of FreshFarm Markets, whose outdoor markets have featured at least three vendors selling baby ginger this season: Next Step, Tree and Leaf and New Morning Farm (whose experiments produced only a small amount of the crop).

In the end, the gamble on ginger seeds essentially falls on the farmers’ shoulders; they’re the ones who assume the risk of contaminating their soil or losing most of their crop. (The consumer assumes no risk at all: Even diseased ginger is safe to eat.) So far, Thomet says, he has had only one misfire: Several years ago he bought Chinese rhizomes, which “just rotted,” he says.

If a rhizome is disease-free, whether purchased from East Branch or H Mart, it can produce baby ginger of rare beauty, all pink and slender and ivory, in contrast to the majority of fall produce, a khaki parade of lettuces and squashes. The aroma of baby ginger is intoxicating as well, even three feet above the rhizomes. Just plant your face in the middle of ginger leaves and breathe deeply. It’s a contact high of perfume and pungency.

You don’t have to sell Greg Haley on the benefits of baby ginger. The chef de cuisine at Amuse restaurant at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond has been gobbling up ginger from Bill and India Cox from the start: rhizome, stalk, leaves and all. The chef has incorporated the immature rhizomes into a half-dozen dishes, including a new one in which he pairs grilled chicken thighs with fried lengths of baby ginger and a carrot juice reduction infused with the flavor of ginger leaves.

“It’s a lot more subtle” than mature ginger, Haley says. “I like that most of the things I’ve used it in so far, I don’t even peel it. . . . There’s no need to; the skin is so white and thin, it just melts into whatever you’re doing.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/growing-baby-ginger-farmers-find-its-worth-the-fuss/2011/10/12/gIQAHHEhuL_story.html

Olive Oil

Beyond extra virgin: New standard aims to guarantee quality in olive oil

By Jane Black, Published: October 18

Paolo Pasquali does not like to be called a crusader for good olive oil. But when I visited his oleoteca, the tasting room he built at Villa Campestri, his “olive oil resort” in the hills north of Florence, it was impossible for him to talk of anything else. At lunch, dinner and breakfast the next morning, Pasquali rhapsodized about the storied history of the olive and fumed about consumers’ feckless embrace of cheap oil. And, for most of the time, his pitch sounded like that of any number of upstart chocolate, coffee or cured-meat producers: Like wine, my product deserves more respect.

That is, until Pasquali reached into an imposing antique sideboard and pulled out a silver tray holding several small, brown apothecary bottles. “Smell this,” he said, waving one labeled “rancid” under my nose.

It didn’t smell bright or floral, like Pasquali’s oil. But it did smell familiar. The rancid oil smelled like most olive oils I had had at restaurants and cooked with at home.

It has been about 30 years since many Americans began giving up their lard and Crisco for more-healthful extra-virgin oil. But that extra-virgin label has proved a poor guide to choosing the highest-quality oils. According to a recent study by the UC Davis Olive Center, 73 percent of the top five brands of imported extra-virgin olive oil failed to meet accepted international standards for extra-virgin. Moreover, a separate report revealed that 44 percent of consumers actually preferred rancid or fusty oil, a possible result of the prevalence of substandard extra-virgins available to American consumers.

Now, a new movement is afoot to redefine extra-virgin, teaching consumers — and the marketplace — what makes high-quality olive oil. Last year, Pasquali helped build an olive oil tasting program at the Culinary Institute of America in California’s Napa Valley. An international organization, 3E, has created a “super-premium” category for extra-virgin oils that meet exacting standards of production, milling and storage. At the “Beyond Extra Virgin” conference this summer in Cordoba, Spain, the executive director of the International Olive Council, the guardian of the current extra-virgin standard, acknowledged that better label information should be a “priority for the sector.”

New students of olive oil often believe the product was better before the sector industrialized. But extra-virgin oil is, in fact, a 20th-century invention. New technology allowed for faster picking and pressing and, therefore, fresher oil. Modern storage techniques eliminated exposure to heat and light, two factors that lead to rancidity. Indeed, the European Parliament invented the term “extra-virgin” only in 1960. Many Americans believe it refers to the first pressing of the olives, but in fact it’s a baseline standard that embraces any oil made by solely mechanical means, instead of chemical treatment, and with less than 0.8 percent of free acidity, a laboratory measurement of rancidity. (Formerly, the limit was 1 percent.) Extra-virgin oils also are forbidden to have “disgusting odors such as rancidity, putridity, smoke, mold and olive fly.”

“Extra-virgin just means it’s free of defects,” said Greg Drescher, executive director of strategic initiatives at the Napa CIA. “Can you imagine a stamp of approval in the wine industry that says it’s good enough because it’s not defective?”

The popularity of the Mediterranean diet in the 1990s was a boon to the olive oil industry. But olive oil fraud was also on the rise, according to a forthcoming book, “Extra Virginity,” by Tom Mueller (Norton, 2011). Generous government subsidies encouraged farmers and corporations to overstate their production figures and to make up the difference with inferior olive oil or even seed oils. Americans aren’t the only consumers who are cheated. “There is no difference between Tuscany and the United States,” said Pasquali, who takes his own olive oil with him to local restaurants. “We’re all in the same boat.”

Rampant fraud makes it difficult for high-quality producers to compete. But critics say the extra-virgin standard fails even the market of legitimate oils. The minimum sensory and chemical requirements admit a huge range of oils. Some are perfectly fine. Others are extraordinary. “But as a consumer, it’s impossible to look at a shelf of bottles and be able to guess which is which,” said Drescher.

3E (pronounced “tray ay” because it’s Italian), an international organization, is trying to change that with the debut of its “super-premium” category. The group gives that stamp of approval to 21 producers, including Pasquali’s Villa Campestri and McEvoy Ranch, in Marin County, Calif. To receive the 3E certification, oil must pass rigorous chemical and sensory analyses. (Where extra-virgin allows oils with 0.8 percent free acidity, for example, 3E allows just 0.3 percent.)

Producers also must submit documentation about cultivation, milling and storage practices and on-site inspections. The aim is to certify the oil in a particular bottle and not — as is done for, say, Burgundy and Bordeaux wines — the estate. So a producer’s oil might make the cut one year but not the next. Super-premium olive oils cost far more than the supermarket stuff. Half-liter bottles run between $30 and $55.

The new category offers particular opportunities for small California olive oil producers, which have difficulty competing with the scale and reach of their European competitors. California producers provide about 1 percent of the olive oil consumed in the United States; over time, they aim to grow that to 10 percent. “We see this as an opportunity to set our oil apart,” said Jeff Creque, McEvoy’s mill supervisor.

McEvoy’s 3E oil is available at the Flavor Bar at the CIA in Napa. Guests pay $15 to watch a video presentation that explains how super-premium olive oil differs from plain old extra-virgin. Then they taste: chickpeas, shredded cabbage and chocolate custard with marmalade, each paired with a super-premium oil.

As at Villa Campestri, the CIA also offers an olive oil menu in its restaurant, which employs Pasquali’s patented olive oil dispenser called OliveToLive. The shiny copper console keeps three oils under a layer of nitrogen gas — safe from heat and light — until the moment they are poured into small glass flasks and served.

The contraption, says Bill Briwa, a CIA chef-instructor, allows consumers to taste the variety of flavors in an extra-virgin oil that’s as fresh as if it had just been pressed. Since the CIA’s olive oil tasting program launched in February 2010, 3,500 visitors have sampled olive oils at the Flavor Bar or in its restaurant.

Educating consumers about peppery, grassy or fruity notes is fun. But freshness is the simplest and most compelling way to illustrate the difference between excellent and run-of-the-mill extra-virgin olive oils, says Luanne O’Loughlin, manager of Olio2Go, an online olive oil market based in Fairfax that sells about 75 varieties (including a spicy, fruity, 3E-approved Tuscan estate oil, La Poderina Toscana).

“Without tasting a good and a mediocre oil side by side, it is very hard to convince someone. Freshness is a concept they can grasp,” O’Loughlin said. It is also essential, she added, for reaping the health benefits of olive oil. Older, rancid oils lack not only vitality and flavor but also antioxidants, which are believed to protect against some cancers, heart disease and other chronic ailments.

Ultra-fresh oil is what brought the CIA’s Briwa to his olive oil “aha” moment. It happened about 10 years ago, when the culinary academy was given an olive press by a local producer. The oil straight from the press tasted “pure, unsullied, like sunlight,” he remembers. It was completely different from the oil served with bread he had tasted at Napa restaurants.

Still, even Briwa, an avid crusader, knows it will be difficult to reeducate the American public. “There are some consumers who get it. They’ve had their epiphany here or somewhere in Tuscany,” he said. But for the rest, it’s a challenge. “The question is: How do you make someone have an epiphany?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/beyond-extra-virgin-new-standard-aims-to-guarantee-quality-in-olive-oil/2011/10/13/gIQAG8Q1uL_story.html?wprss=rss_lifestyle

Saturday, October 8, 2011 9:44 AM EDT

California Tightens Olive Oil Labeling Rules

California's burgeoning olive oil producers are counting on a newly enacted state labeling law to persuade more consumers that American brands are more virginal than their imported rivals.

The measure, signed into law on Friday by Governor Jerry Brown, tightens the definitions of various calibers of olive oil, such as "virgin" and "extra virgin," to conform with standards recently adopted by the Department of Agriculture.

Supporters of the bill say overseas labeling enforcement has slipped to the point where the overwhelming majority of imported "extra virgin" olive oil on supermarket shelves is actually a lower-grade product.

The aim of the new law is to help persuade California shoppers to reject imported olive oil touted as "extra virgin" in favor of domestic brands that are more honestly labeled, and more than likely made from olives grown in-state.

"We spend a lot of money for imported extra-virgin olive oil that in many cases isn't extra virgin, when we produce actual extra-virgin olive oil ourselves," said state Senator Lois Wolk, a Democrat who sponsored the labeling measure.

In 2010 studies, University of California at Davis and Australian researchers found that of the five best-selling imported "extra virgin" olive oils 73 percent of bottles tested failed to meet International Olive Council standards for "extra virgin."

To California's expanding olive oil industry, what "extra virgin" means is a big deal. The state's "extra virgin" is unable to compete against lower-priced and sometimes lesser quality imports claiming to be "extra virgin."

A tighter definition of olive oil grades is aimed at preventing that.

Each year, more California growers enter the marketplace. The amount of California farmland devoted to olives raised for oil has increased from 6,000 acres in 2004 to 30,000 acres today.

Given its Mediterranean-like climate, California accounts for 99.5 percent of U.S. domestic olive oil production. It ranks about 20th worldwide.

Still, roughly 80 percent of all categories of olive oil are made in the European Union. While labeling standards there are comparable to the USDA's, enforcement has been lax, allowing for adulteration and labeling abuses, critics say.

The volume of olive oil consumed by Americans has jumped ten-fold during the past 30 years, from 8 million gallons to 80 million gallons annually.

"One of the fastest-growing production crops is olives. They're being planted the way they were planting vineyards 10 years ago," said Wolk, whose kitchen contains bottles of olive oil made in her northern California district.

"The good stuff tastes different. More flavorful. Full-bodied."

http://sanfrancisco.ibtimes.com/articles/227560/20111008/california-tightens-olive-oil-labeling-rules.htm

October 17, 2011

A Surfeit of Pesto

By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

Summer is long gone, but my basil doesn’t know that. When tomatoes are around I have no trouble staying on top of my crop, as rare is the tomato salad on my table that isn’t showered with slivered basil leaves. Now I’m making big batches of puréed basil with olive oil to freeze and use later for pesto and pistou (the Provençal version of pesto, minus the pine nuts). I make the pine nut and garlic paste and blend it into the basil and olive oil along with the cheese when I need the pesto; the garlic will taste much better if it’s fresh. If you don’t like the taste of raw garlic, you can always leave it out.

I use pesto and pistou in many other dishes besides pasta. Pesto is a nutritionally dense condiment; basil is a great source of flavonoids that are believed to have antioxidant and antibacterial properties. It’s also an excellent source of vitamin K, and a very good source of iron, calcium and vitamin A.

Pesto and Pistou

Purists will only use a mortar and pestle for pesto. I like the results I get using a hand blender inside a straight-sided jar. As long as you make the full batch, this is the best machine to use, as it purées the basil much more efficiently than a food processor.

1 or 2 garlic cloves, to taste

2 cups fresh basil leaves, tightly packed (2 ounces)

2 tablespoons Mediterranean pine nuts* (for pesto; omit for pistou)

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup (1 1/2 ounces) freshly grated Parmesan, or a mixture of pecorino Romano and Parmesan (more to taste)

1. If using a hand blender, place the garlic, basil, pine nuts, salt and olive oil in a pint jar. Stick the hand blender right down into the mixture and turn on. Blend until smooth. You may have to start and stop a few times at the beginning, and scrape down the sides of the jar. Once the mixture is smooth, add the cheese and stir or blend together. If using a food processor fitted with the steel blade, turn on and drop in the garlic. When it is chopped and adhering to the sides of the bowl, stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula. Add the basil, pine nuts, salt, pepper and olive oil to the food processor and process until smooth and creamy. Add the Parmesan and pulse until well combined. If using a mortar and pestle, add the basil leaves a handful at a time and mash with the pestle. Add the pine nuts, garlic, salt and pepper, and mash to a paste with the basil. Work in the olive oil and the Parmesan.

Yield: 1/2 to 2/3 cup

Advance preparation: You can freeze pesto or pistou for several months, and it will keep in the refrigerator for a few days. If you are making this for the freezer, you’ll get the best results if you purée the basil with the olive oil and salt only. When ready to use, mash the garlic and pine nuts, blend in the thawed basil purée, and add the cheese.

*If I can’t find pine nuts that come from the Mediterranean, I substitute pumpkin seeds. Some people have a bad reaction to certain varieties of pine nuts, and I am one of them.

Nutritional information per tablespoon: 86 calories; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 6 grams monounsaturated fat; 2 milligrams cholesterol; 1 gram carbohydrates; 0 grams dietary fiber; 42 milligrams sodium (does not include salt to taste); 2 grams protein

For pistou (without pine nuts), per tablespoon: 98 calories; 2 grams saturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 7 grams monounsaturated fat; 3 milligrams cholesterol; 0 grams carbohydrates; 0 grams dietary fiber; 53 milligrams sodium; 2 grams protein

Martha Rose Shulman is the author of “The Very Best of Recipes for Health.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/17/health/nutrition/17recipehealth_pesto.html?_r=1