What I'm Excited About #1

Includes the following:

• Tour of the St. Paul Public School's central kitchen this Thursday


• Lesson plans I'm designing, aimed to increase cruciferous vegetable consumption


• Heirloom beans I purchased yesterday from Paula Foreman (Jacob's Cattle Gold and Orca)


• Order I got last week from Whole Farm Coop (pretty soon I won't have to shop at all!)


• Focus group I'm attending next week that's NOT organized by me


• An Eat4Equity I can finally attend!

And last, but not least, Mike Mason's Halloween party.
Photo of orca beans by Ataradrac.

Where have I been?

Allow me to give you a glimpse into my life this semester, 6 of 6 at the U of M. Fourteen credits divided among five classes and nineteen to twenty-seven hours divided between two jobs take up the bulk of the week. Two ongoing volunteer gigs fill in the cracks, and relevant conferences and presentations sometimes displace class or homework time.

Thankfully, the credits are either interesting or not taxing. My week starts with the one-credit Capstone class, which walks us future RDs through the Dietetic Internship application process. Nutrition and Metabolism follows on Capstone, a writing- (and quiz-) intensive, in-depth look at carbohydrate, lipid, and protein metabolism in humans. Here's where my work in Biochemistry pays off.

I get a break for lunch before Medical Nutrition Therapy I. As I've stated repeatedly this fall, it is NOT a good a idea to take MNT II first, as I did. I'm bored, despite Christine's engaging lectures.

Photo from Cornercopia's Web site.

Another break ensues, and it's usually a struggle to get out the door to go to the my 4 o'clock class, but I'm always glad I did. Albert "Bud" Markhart teaches HORT2031: "Organic Food - How to Grow It, Where to Buy It, and Can It Feed the World." His lectures on organic matter, composting, and season extension are even more engaging than Christine's on acid-base disorders, the nutrition care process, and metabolic stress, if you can believe that. Plus, he brings in (edible) props, like a whole kale plant, an enormous crookneck butternut squash, and pea shoots. Yum.

Can't forget Nutrition Education and Counseling! The now-familiar Dr. Teri Burgess-Champoux returns for another semester of well-put together 115-minute class sessions, while Dr. Cynthia Meyer teaches and facilitates practice of skills such as primary empathy and self-disclosure. I especially enjoy the counseling portion.

So that's what my last semester of school looks like.

Revised 7/22/12.

How Hopkins does Farm to School

I had long wanted to attend a Slow Foods MN event for their fascinating topics and delectable food, and last month I got my chance. Dina Berray and Jane Rosemarin put together an event at Eisenhower Elementary last Sunday for a conversation about Farm to School in Hopkins. Barb Mechura, Director of Nutrition Services of the Hopkins School District, Greg Reynolds of Riverbend Farm, and about twenty-five people of all ages gathered in the beautiful Wetlands Café to discuss how food from local farmers gets into a school cafeteria.

Barb and Greg sat against the backdrop of Eisenhower Elementary’s back yard. “Greg and I like to shoot from the hip,” Barb smiled before she started the informal discussion.

School food cycle

Barb described how in her twenty years of student meal program experience, she has seen meal preparation shift from cooking from scratch to heat and serve and back again. When she started in 1988, commodity food came in raw form: whole chickens, blocks of cheese, bags of raw carrots, etc. In the 90’s, several forces changed the nature of school lunches.

First, students began to prefer convenience foods, thanks to the growing prevalence of fast food outlets and the decline in home-cooking. Second, contract management became more popular. Schools turned over their cafeterias to businesses that could guarantee high participation rates. Third, food manufacturers began to step into the commodity market and process those whole chickens, blocks of cheese, and raw carrots.

Finally, the labor market changed. People who wanted to work in kitchens were in short supply. Meal preparation moved away from cutting up chicken and peeling carrots toward reheating chicken tenders and opening bags of baby carrots.

Many schools, however, are moving back to from-scratch cooking. Approximately fifty percent of meals prepared at the Hopkins School District’s six elementary and two junior high schools are from scratch, and the figure stands at a whopping 95% at the high school (check out their menu here). And farmers like Greg Reynolds are helping to bring local foods into the kitchen.

Riverbend Farm and Hopkins

Greg farms thirty certified organic acres in Delano, MN and employees young people like my friends Ranelle and Brandon. Half of Greg’s business is with local (within 50 miles), chef-driven restaurants like Alma and Common Roots Café, where my sister took me for a delicious birthday lunch.

Last winter, Renewing the Countryside, a nonprofit organization dedicated to championing rural communities, held a farmer-chef networking event. Greg had been to several of these events before and knew almost everyone, but a friend who knew that Barb was going to be there persuaded him to come. They met and began working together right away to address Hopkins’ needs.

One of the first challenges was furnishing a potato to meet the school lunch guidelines’ 6-oz. portion size. Greg talked Barb into buying two 3-oz potatoes instead. His workers spent days sorting and weighing potatoes, sitting with the “ideal” potato in front of them as a guide. “They hated it!” he said. He ended up delivering potatoes between 2 ½ and 3 ½ ounces.

The two-potato delivery and variation in size had serendipitous results. First, the two smaller potatoes were not as overwhelmingly large to the younger kids as a 6-oz potato. Also, those with smaller appetites could take potatoes sized to match, wasting less and leaving the larger potatoes to older, hungrier students.

Creating an accommodating environment

Challenges face a school food service director from all sides, from cramped, underequipped kitchens to tight budgets. After going to the trouble of preparing food from scratch, the critical next step is getting kids to eat what’s on their tray. Hopkins implemented two strategies targeting elementary students to increase food consumption and decrease waste – recess before lunch and food coaching.

This year, five Hopkins’ elementary schools will have recess before lunch, rather than after. Students have the opportunity to get all their wiggles out from sitting in classes all morning before they sit down (again) to a meal. And running around outside whets their appetites for a Rachel Wrap and Godzilla Green Beans (creative names for vegetable and fruit sides are another strategy - see more here).

Food coaching addresses the issue of attention span at another level. Parents volunteer as “food coaches” during lunch to encourage kids to take another bite of peaches, help open their milk cartons, and generally remind them that they are there to eat. “Think of meals at the holidays, with all the people and excitement,” Barb said. “It’s like that every day here.”


Local foods to finish

Once Barb and Greg finished outlining the Farm to School program at Hopkins, discussion ranged from the complaints received from parents about menu changes to Greg’s root cellar (under construction) to the billions of dollars spent on advertising aimed squarely at kids, the food that students from Le Cordon Bleu had been grilling was ready (such as peppers, eggplant, and morel mushrooms).

Since Slow Foods MN’s mission includes advocating for farmers who grow and market wholesome food, as well as celebrating food as a cornerstone of pleasure, culture and community, after wrapping up our discussion, we adjourned for a potluck.

Tables groaned with SunShine Harvest Farm Italian sausages and bacon burgers served with grilled peppers. Attendees brought sides and desserts ranging from Snappy Crunchy Coleslaw and gardened cucumber salad to gluten-free carrot cake with goat-cream-cheese frosting and a geranium-scented pound cake. See slowfoodmn.org for their always-delicious, ever-informative upcoming events.

Photos from Kim Mechura.

Wordy Wednesday - It's a long road

I stayed up later than I should have last night, reading Keith Stewart’s It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life. Stewart put together an informative and entertaining collection of essays about nearly every aspect of his farm in New York that you could think of, from “The Driveway Rabbits” to “The Unweeded Garden” to “A Man and His Tractor.” He also uses some big words. Help from Merriam Webster and the Online Etymology Dictionary.

From “Working Man’s Mesculin:”

The leaves that don’t pass muster are thrown to our flock of chickens, who devour them with much clicking and gallinaceous enthusiasm.

gallinaceous: of or relating to an order (Galliformes) of heavy-bodied largely terrestrial birds including the pheasants, turkeys, grouse, and the common domestic chicken.

From “Kuri,” Stewart’s first and best loved dog:

In less than a year [of heartworm treatment], he was back in fine fettle, ranging across the fields, chasing raccoons and woodchucks, and generally exhibiting his great enthusiasm for life.

fettle: state or condition of health, fitness, wholesomeness, spirit, or form. From Old English fetel “a girdle, belt.”

Photo from Wikipedia.

Certified Organic - Mhonpaj's Garden

The last several posts went through the nuts and bolts of certified organic farming. The farm with which I worked this summer is certified organic, and near the close of my time with them, I asked my supervisor, Mhonpaj, to talk about why being certified organic is important to Mhonpaj’s Garden.

She gave me an earful, but it boils down to two main elements. First, as an undergrad, she read a lot about food systems on the side and her interest grew over time. Mhonpaj believes that many health problems could be prevented by switching to organic, from ADHD to cancer to diabetes.

Second, the Minnesota Food Association trained the Lee’s to farm organic. The MFA’s program sessions include “Intro to Organic Farming,” “Farmers Market Success – Learn new ways to … emphasize local, certified organic,” and “Record Keeping – Learn how to keep good records for business planning, organic certification, and for financial institutions.” Becoming certified was the natural outcome of Mhonpaj’s focus on health and the MFA’s program.

Whenever I talk to people about Mhonpaj’s Garden, I say that it is the first Hmong-owned and operated certified organic CSA. This introduction highlights their unique position in the Hmong agricultural community, their adherence to national standards, and their method of distribution, but it fails to capture the depth of the operation. I wrote in July that Mhonpaj’s Garden is “a curious blend of subsistence, organic, and mission-driven agriculture.”

This better captures the essence of Mhonpaj’s Garden. The organic piece is important, but not the whole story. “Subsistence” refers to how the Lee’s are really farming for themselves, a point Mhonpaj emphasized in our most recent conversation. What they put in their CSA boxes, sell wholesale, and vend at the farmers market is really just the extras. That said, they need to break even and so sell through different channels. They are sharing their produce with the people who know its value and are willing to pay the true cost.

And mission-driven? When I started, I noticed that their web site lack a mission statement. I asked Mhonpaj about this, and she said that every year her vision changes. And while winter is the time for organizing and planning for the year ahead, sitting down to pound out a mission statement is consistently the last thing on her mind. Still, her passion for education and outreach and the cooking demonstrations that she and May do signal a deeper purpose for their farm than just sharing their extra vegetables.

Mhonpaj pointed out that early American settlers started out farming organically, but would make the switch to reduce labor costs. “There’s not enough community discussion” around organic farming, she said. “The only source of education is the stores, [but] they are not there to educate; they are there to sell a product.” Why would someone selling herbicides tell you how to rotate your crops to control weeds? “Learning to farm organic is almost like a hidden education,” she continued. “It’s like it’s top secret, behind the counter - you gotta ask for it.”

Mhonpaj plays an exhausting role. Not only does she call the business shots on the farm in addition to her job as an interpreter at HCMC, but she is a solitary liaison between organic agriculture and Hmong farmers, along with the MFA. “No one besides the MFA is helping the farmers. Nowhere else speaks Hmong,” she said, “We have to show by example.”

Photo by Chue of red oak lettuce growing at Mhonpaj's Garden.

Certified Organic - Shelling out the Beans

The last four posts have been about the organic certification process: who’s responsible for making sure the rules are followed, what the application requires of a farmer, and how an inspection goes. Another piece of the puzzle is, of course, how much it all costs.

Let’s take the Midwest Organic Services Association as an example (Riverbend Farm has been certified through MOSA since 1994). Their cost of certification includes Base Certification, Inspection, and User Fees. The base fee for a first year crop certification is $200, and for an update, $150. The inspection fee starts with a $200 deposit, and the final cost is the inspector’s fee for service, mileage, and lodging. The user fee is a percentage of sales, with a minimum of $200 per year. For annual gross organic sales of a producer (versus a handler or processor) between $0 and $200,000, MOSA takes 0.75%. For over $200,000, it drops to 0.1%, and is capped at $7,500.

How does this compare with other agencies? Let’s take a look at the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association. MCIA charges a membership/application fee as well as a base fee, an inspection fee, and final fees. The application fee for the MCIA is $50. The base fee for a first-timer is $375, and for an update, $325. Inspection charges are listed as $75/hr; Cornercopia’s inspection fee is usually around $600-$700. The final fee is 0.5% of total organic revenue for the first $500,000, 0.25% for $500,001 to $750,000, and 0.1% for $750,001 and up. So the more you make, the less you pay (percentage-wise).

And, of course, there are all sorts of additional fees and charges Joe Organic could rack up: late fees, additional inspections, adding products or services at another time, etc. Barring those extras and assuming $30,000 in sales, an initial certification could cost between $625 and $1,175. Is it worth it? Depends on the farmer and his market.

Next up: why certification is important for Mhonpaj’s Garden.

Certified Organic - Jane Growright, Part II

This Tuesday, Courtney Tchida of Cornercopia sat down with Brenda Rogers of MCIA in a lovely air-conditioned conference room of Hayes Hall to for part two of the organic certification inspection. Last Thursday was the farm tour, this Tuesday was the records tour.

Looking at her formidable black binder, Ms. Rogers opened by noting that last year, Cornercopia was cited for using biocontrols not included in their OSP (organic production system plan). Courtney confirmed that they did not use any controls this year. Ms. Rogers then noted that she had not received documents regarding the high tunnel. Courtney made a note to turn them in. Subsequently, Ms. Rogers noted that Cornercopia had sold seedlings. Yes, Courtney replied, but not as certified organic.

Thus the pattern for the meeting was set. Ms. Rogers perused the OSP, made check marks, and occasionally asked clarifying questions. The first area of review was seeds. Ms. Rogers went through page after page of seed records, stopping to double-check each nonorganic entry in the master list against the nonorganic seed list, which included the companies who did not carry organic versions of the desired varieties. The list was daunting, but Courtney’s clear organization made it a breeze. “This is almost too fast,” Ms. Rogers said.

She went on to ask questions about the likelihood of greenhouse staff interfering with seedlings, the status of unplanted strawberries, previous soil tests, the rotation plan, and soil fertility. A brief discussion ensued about compost requirements. Courtney had been applying raw compost (plant material) to fields at the end of the season to avoid monitoring the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, temperature, and age of their compost heap. Ms. Rogers clarified that those requirements are only for compost containing animal products, not including plant material-based worm castings, which are, in her words, “just like magic."

The questions continued: what about chickens, wildlife, spraying, water testing, straw from the poultry barn, disease control, buffer zones, reuse of berry boxes, equipment cleaning? Courtney got dinged on that last one – she did not have records of the mower being power washed between fields. “I’ll have to get those from Mike,” she said, making a note.

Courtney was also missing hard copies of sales records, and while she went back to her office to print some samples, Ms. Rogers turned to me and politely asked what I was doing there. I gave her the run down of my recent activities and hopes for the future, then fired some questions at her (for a change) about her time with the MCIA (lengthy), who she inspects (vegetable gardeners), how much of Minnesota she covers (from Norman to Big Stone to Pine to St. Louis - look here if you need a refresher on the counties of Minnesota), and when she inspects (May to September, generally).

Courtney returned with the sales records. Ms. Rogers glanced through them and the harvest records, and was satisfied. She reviewed the few points needing follow up and then it was over.

After Ms. Rogers left, Courtney revealed her secret to success: they’d been going through this process for six years now, the first three during the transitional period, when meeting every single requirements isn’t as big a deal (except for the application of prohibited materials to land, which would set you back to month 0 of 36). With plenty of time to work out the kinks, this year’s inspection was “pretty painless,” Courtney said.

So there you have it: a ground-level look at how a certifying agency applies the National Organic Program’s rules and regulations. Discuss.

Photo from the UMN website.

Certified Organic - Jane Growright, Part I

My first post on organic certification outlined the process for Joe Organic, from contacting a certifying agency to receiving a certificate. The last two posts gave a taste of the pen-and-paper application. This post has to do with an in-the-flesh step: Jane Growright inspects the farm.

Fortunately for me, Cornercopia was scheduled for an inspection last Thursday and Courtney Tchida, head farmer, let me tag along. While waiting at the new field for Brenda Rogers, Courtney explained that she chose the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association because they are conveniently located on the St. Paul Campus, convenient because inspectees pay for the inspector’s mileage. Also while we were waiting, I rustled around in the bushes picking ground cherries, a variety of tomato I’d never tasted before.

Once Ms. Rogers arrived, Courtney handed her a map of the new field with a list of all the crops growing there. We wove through the hot peppers in paper mulch, crossed the section previously dedicated to melons (got too weedy, was mowed down), and checked on the interplanted potatoes and beans. We paused at Casey’s research plot of tomatoes, and she explained how she’s been grafting Celebrity tomatoes onto various root stems to develop cold hardiness. The hardier the root system, the sooner you can plant and mulch the tomato.

We moved on to an onion patch, covered with landscaping fabric for weed control. Courtney is very excited about this project because a) it really keeps weeds down and b) they can roll up the fabric in the fall and use it next season. Synthetic mulch is listed as an option under Section 8 of the questionnaire, with the follow-up question, “If you use plastic or other synthetic mulches removed at the end of the season?” Courtney’s in the clear.

Having checked off every crop from Ms. Rogers’ list, we left the new field for the hoop houses (aka, high tunnels). The smaller of the two is new this spring and I have no idea what’s growing in there because in the high tunnel were the biggest, most profuse raspberries I have ever seen. I paid attention just long enough to hear that I was eating Caroline and Britten raspberries, which are ever-bearing, meaning they produce in the summer and the fall.

Before I could get a stomach-ache from the berries, we headed for the old field. There lies the Keyhole Garden, home to perennial herbs and flowers, and hops growing on a trellis (that was the students’ idea) and the corner garden. The latter field is where I first encountered purple asparagus and black raspberries. Even more fruit grows here: four plum trees, elderberries, black berries, choke cherries, and an apple tree.

Too soon, we left the corner garden for the more mundane parts of Cornercopia’s operation. The farmhouse stores equipment and last year’s hops harvest. The Plant Biology Building provides a place to wash veggies; spin-dry salad greens (a washing machine works great); and store turnips, seeds, and potting soil. Attached is the greenhouse, forlornly empty by late August.

This part of the process was surprisingly low key. Ms. Rogers literally walked around and looked at the plants. Occasionally she asked a question – whether grafting involved chemical, what plans Courtney had to control the quack grass in the keyhole garden - but mostly it was about verifying that Cornercopia grows what it says it grows, keeps its processing facility clean, and its storage facilities aloof from conventional crops.

Next up: Jane Growright grills Joe Organic.

Ground cherry by Jaspenelle, and Laura and Michael in a hoop house by Lance Brisbois.

Certified Organic - Ground Level, Part 2

This post picks up where the last left off: halfway through the MCIA's Organic Producer Questionnaire.

The sixth section of the questionnaire deals with Crop Management. Here we get into weed, pest, and disease management. A quotation:

NOP Rule requires a crop rotation plan that maximizes soil organic content, prevents weed, pest and disease problems, and manages deficient or excess plant nutrients.

► After asking for the identity of your problem weeds, the questionnaire follows up with, “What weed control methods do you use?” (Note “control,” not “eradicate,” which probably isn’t an effective use of resources or even possible.)

Black fallow: Tillage without a crop for a season. Doesn’t seem to be as popular as green fallow.

Smother crops: Densely-growing crops that shade or crowd out weeds. Winter rye, vetches, and clovers work well.

Corn gluten: This natural preemergence herbicide, a byproduct of corn wet- milling, inhibits root formation of germinating seeds.

Monitoring soil temperature: Many seed germinate between 40 and 50°F. If you monitor the soil temperature, you can apply a preemergence herbicide, like corn gluten, before the weeds get going.

Soap-based herbicides: Nonselective (will affect weed and crop alike), these kill only the part of the plant with which they come into contact by penetrating the plants’ protective outer layer.

Steam weeding: Destroy weeds’ cells with hot water under pressure.

Electrical: High voltage pulses electropermeabilize the cell membranes of germinating weed seeds. I'm really not sure what this is all about.

Prevention of weed seed set: Plant weed-seed-free crops and keep weeds from going to seed.

► On to pests. MCIA asks, “What strategies do you use to control pest damage to crops?”

Timing of planting: Know when your particular pest is prevalent and plan accordingly. For example, carrot root flies peak in late May and September, so sow as early as possible or in June after the first wave is over.

Companion planting: Grow specific combinations of plants that benefit one or both of them; for example, grow flowers that attract parasitic wasps or hoverflies, which will attack aphids, beetles, caterpillars, etc.

Trap crops: Crops that are more attractive to the pest than the harvest crop due to appearance time or physiological properties. Did you know that stink bugs like black-eyed peas?

IPM: Integrated Pest Management, which takes into account the ecosystem as a whole, incorporates regular monitoring, and understands that the presence of a pest is not necessarily a problem.

► We’re not through with all the potential threats yet. Do tell, “What disease prevention strategies do you use?”

Solarization: A soil pasteurization technique that suppresses damaging nematodes. You raise the temperature of tilled, moistened soil by trapping solar heat with clear plastic sheets.

Vector management: Vectors are insects or other living organisms that transmit diseases, as deer ticks do with Lyme’s disease. Manage the green peach aphid and you’ll manage the Potato virus Y.

Compost/tea use: Compost tea, which is compost extract brewed with a microbial food source, has fungicidal properties.

Field sanitation: Removal or destruction of diseased plant residues

Soil balancing: Adding nutrients to correct deficiencies in the soil.

Whew! Crop Management is finally over. The only thing that puzzled me about the seventh section, Maintenance of Organic Integrity and Crop Storage, was “gravity wagons.” I had an inkling that I knew what they were, just didn’t know the name. And in fact, I had met a gravity wagon at Kent and Linda Solberg’s farm that stored chicken feed.

The eighth section is Record-Keeping System. The questionnaire lists twenty categories of records to be kept for five years, including input records for soil amendments, seeds, manure, foliar sprays and pest control products (“keep all labels”); compost production records; equipment cleaning records; and storage records that show storage location, amounts stored, and cleaning activities. Farmers, start your spreadsheets.

Sections nine and ten are Final Fees and Affirmation, exciting only because it means you’re almost done... with the paper application. Later on, an inspector will come to tour your fields and go over your records with a fine tooth comb. As luck would have it, Cornercopia is going through the inspection process right now and yours truly gets to sit in on the fun. You'll hear all about it on Wednesday.

Corn gluten from Planet Natural and green peach aphid from DPVweb.net

Certified Organic - Ground Level, Part 1

In the previous post, I addressed how a branch of the USDA accredits agencies that certify farmers who apply for organic certification. I glossed right over what’s in the application and what makes "organic" organic. Today we will see in detail that “organic” means much more than refraining from using pesticides; it includes resource cycling, ecological balance, and biodiversity conservation.

The certifying agency Minnesota Crop Improvement Association (MCIA) put together an Organic System Plan Questionnaire (find it here under "Organic System Plan Producer"), each section of which refers to a specific part of the USDA’s National Organic Program’s regulations. Farmers could develop an OSP independently and then fill out the questionnaire, or could use the process of filling out the questionnaire to codify their practices into an OSP.

The questionnaire has ten sections - we'll tackle the first half in this post. The first section is General Information. Nothing very exciting, just your farm's name, legal status, etc.

The second section is Farm Plan Information, which requires copies of field history sheets and field maps that show the boundaries and buffer zones of all organic and transitional fields. This is where the MCIA verifies that no prohibited materials have been applied within the past 36 months. If you are renting land and the previous landowner has no records of chemical application, you’re out of (organic) luck for the next three years.

Dragon tongue beans. Photo Credit: Sarah Gilbert

The third section is Seeds and Seed Treatments. Seeds must be organically grown. But if you can’t find organic Dragon Tongue Bush Bean seed, for example, you can document your attempts to find it and then use non-organic seed. Genetically modified seeds? Prohibited. Seeds treated with fungicides and inoculants derived from genetically modified organisms (scroll down for a description of an inoculant)? Prohibited. Prohibited treatment, however, may be used if it’s a federal or state phytosanitary requirement (a quarantine measure taken to prevent the spread of pests).

The fourth section is Seedlings and Perennial Stock. Pretty much the same as above – use organic.

The fifth section is Soil and Crop Fertility Management. Here’s where we do more than refrain from using pesticides. A quote:

NOP Rule requires active management to build soil fertility, mange plant nutrients, protect natural resources, and prevent soil erosion.

Enter sustainability. Joan Gussow and Katherine Clancy (1986) defined “sustainable” as capable of being maintained over the long term in order to meet the needs of the present population without jeopardizing the ability of future generations to meet their needs. This includes the broad activities mentioned in the NOP Rules. But how specifically does one maintain land over the long term without diminishing its value?

Time for the nitty gritty. The questionnaire has a number of boxes to check:

I’ll leave out terms and procedures that are probably familiar to most, like “Compost,” or self-explanatory, like “Incorporation of crop residues,” and focus the head-scratchers, like “Side dressing.”

► MCIA wants to know, “What are the major components of the farmer’s soil and crop fertility plan?”

Valerian flowers. Photo credit: Wikipedia.

Biodynamic (BD) preparations: Nine preparations developed by Austrian scientist and philosopher Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) to increase soil quality and stimulate plant life. Consists of mineral, plant, or animal manure extracts which are usually fermented and added in homeopathic quantities to compost, manures, or the soil, or applied to plants. For example, one teaspoon of BD 507 (Valerian flowers extracted into water) would service 7-10 tons of compost.

Interplanting: Planting different crops together. Certain crops, like corn and beans, are complementary (beans fix nitrogen, corn uses it).

Soil inoculants: Dry or liquid preparations of microorganisms, like mycorrhizae, which live in or on plant roots. These fungi promote nitrogen fixation and absorb phosphorus and other nutrients much faster than the plant would on its own.

Subsoiling: Breaking up soil layers below the reach of normal tillage. Improves water infiltration and drainage, root penetration, and breaks up compacted layers without inverting them. Thus, surface residue remains on the surface.

Foliar fertilizers: Nutrients sprayed onto the leaves and stems of plants, such as BD 508 (diluted horsetail). Can be 8 to 20 times as effective as ground application.

Side dressing: Applying fertilizer around growing plants.

That was A. General Information. We’ll skip B, C, and D (Compost Use, Manure Use, and Natural Resources) for now.

► MCIA also wants to know, “What practices are used to protect water quality?”

Micro-spray: A high-efficiency, low-pressure cross between surface spray and drip irrigation. Water travels through micro tubing to nozzles on risers.

Laser leveling/land forming: Leveling the land with the use of lasers or reshaping the surface of the land to increase uniformity of water distribution and improve surface drainage.

Tensiometer: A device used to measure soil water tension, an indicator of soil moisture.

That’s it for Soil and Crop Fertility Management. The next post will cover the second half of the questionnaire, which includes green peach aphids and gravity wagons!


Updated 6 Oct. 2010 to reflect the comment made by Michelle Menken, MCAI Accounts Coordinator.
Revised 7/23/2012.

Certified Organic - Where can I get that seal?

Mhonpaj’s Garden, the first Hmong-owned and operated USDA certified organic farm in Minnesota, is certified through the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association (MCIA). That is to say, you know that May, Chue, and Mhonpaj farm according to the Organic Foods Production Act of 1990, because they've been certified by the MCIA, which has been accredited by the USDA’s National Organic Program (NOP).

Wait, what?

The US Department of Agriculture is a busy department and cannot review all ~13,000 of the organic producers in the US. So they delegate the certification responsibility to outside organizations. The chain of command goes something like this:

USDA►Agricultural Marketing Service ►National Organic Program ►Accredited Certifying Agents

So, part of NOP’s job is to accredit private businesses, organizations, and state agencies which then certify organic producers and handlers. According to a data set here, in 2008 there were 20 state and 40 private certifiers, and according to NOP, there are 56 domestic and 42 foreign certifiers.

Mhonpaj’s Garden and Cornercopia (UMN’s student organic farm) are two of fifty crop producers certified through the MCIA. Loon Organics is another organic crop producer in Minnesota, and they are currently certified through Midwest Organic Services Association (MOSA).

Which begs the question: How does one pick an Accredited Certifying Agent among the almost one hundred out there? For one, some agents serve only certain areas. Case in point: MCIA serves only six states in the Midwest. To tease out other differences, the Rodale Institute has a nifty guide that lets farmers search certifiers by attributes, compare two side-by-side, and more. For kicks, I compared the top five (self-identified) strengths of MCIA and MOSA:

MCIA	MOSA
Personal contacts	Prompt, courteous service
Timely service	Always someone in the office to answer questions
Long history of independent status	Organic plan questionnaires are user-friendly
Professional	MOSA information meetings, conferences, events
Unbiased	Newsletter

What about the certification process itself? The basic process is as follows:

1. Farmer Joe Organic contacts MCIA for information.
2. Farmer Joe Organic receives introductory documents and fills out application.
3. MCIA office staff reviews application and sends it to Inspector Jane Growright.
4. Inspector Jane Growright inspects farm and files a report. Farmer Joe Organic corrects any noncompliance issues.
5. Organic committee reviews farmer's file, accepts it, and sends Farmer Joe Organic a contract and a bill.
6. Farmer Joe Organic signs contract, pays bill, and receives certificate.

In some ways, this process is reminiscent of applying to colleges. You hunt around for an institution that looks good, get information about their programs, fill out an application, and have an interview. A committee decides to let you in (or not), and you pay them a bunch of money every year for the privilege of their services.

What the application process lacks in self-reflective essays, it more than makes up for in management techniques, as probed in the organic plan questionnaire, #3 of MOSA's strengths and the topic of the next post.




Revised 7/20/2012.

Exploring the Details

This summer, the HECUA class "Environment & Agriculture: Sustainable Food Systems" was responsible for supplying a steady stream of new ideas and experiences to my brain. From the opening day of hearing about the lens through which my classmates view the food system to the closing days of my internship with Mhonpaj Lee, the class planted seed after intriguing seed. Some have germinated, but a lot I haven't even watered.

Through this final project for the internship, I get deeper into the practicalities of the food system. I have spent plenty of time reading books like Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System, by Raj Patel, and Remaking the North American Food System, eds C. Claire Hinrichs and Thomas A. Lyson, that gave me an overview of food system issues. The field portion of E&A showed me that my knowledge of how systems like dairy farms and small towns work day to day is limited.

For example, at the Symposium for Small Towns at Morris, I attended a breakout session entitled “Local Governments: Doing more with Less – LGA, Leadership, and Communications.” In case you don’t know, as I didn’t, Local Government Aid is a critical source of revenue for cities whose property tax revenues cannot cover the costs of services. In 2009, St. Paul received $62.6 million in LGA, Morris $2.3 million, Delano $179,684, and Inver Grove Heights, zilch (numbers found here).

When LGA from the state drops, towns are left wondering if they can increase revenues and where they can cut the budget. And if the state issues a mandate about storm drains at airports, towns are in an even greater bind trying to come up with the money to pay for it. During the session, I was so caught up placing these new concepts into context that I missed the bigger picture of how to grapple with budget woes.

This project then, is about stepping back from a top-down view of food system issues and getting closer to the problems that actors in the food system face, specifically, organic farming, nonprofits, and farmers markets. I explore these issues at personal, organizational, and ground (pun sometimes intended) levels through interviews, personal experiences, handbooks and other publications. Stay tuned for the next couple of weeks for the inside scoop on organic pest management techniques, 501(c)(3)s, and the St. Paul Farmers Markets.

Soil Improvement Wordy Wednesday

This week I am gearing up for a series of posts that will constitute the final project for my HECUA internship. Mhonpaj's Garden is certified through the Minnesota Crop Improvement Association, so I looked into what it takes to get certified. I was not prepared for the 16-page handbook, the 14-page Organic Producer Questionnaire, or the depth of management planning required, but slogged through them anyway.

One goal of my final project is to have a handle on the management techniques used by organic farmers, some of which the Organic Producer Questionnaire mentions. To jump-start that goal, I present this week's Wordy Wednesday, taken from Section 5: "Soil & Crop Fertility Management." Definitions of crops are taken from ATTRA's Overview of Cover Crops and Green Materials.

“The producer must implement a crop rotation including but not limited to sod, cover crops, green manure crops, and catch crops that provide the following functions that are applicable to the operation: maintain or improve soil organic matter content; provide for pest management in annual and perennial crops; manage deficient or excess plant nutrients and provide erosion control.”

Sod: a section of grass-covered surface soil held together by matted roots.

Cover crops: any crop grown to provide soil cover, to prevent soil erosion by wind or water. Try hairy vetch, rye, clover, medic (legume related to alfalfa), or field peas.

Green manure crop: any field or forage crop incorporated into soil while green or soon after flowering. Use legumes like cowpeas, soybeans, annual sweet clover, sesbania, guar, crotalaria, and velvet beans; or non-legumes like sorghum-sudangrass, millet, forage sorghum, and buckwheat. Green manuring will improve biomass, smother weeds, and improve soil tilth (physical structure).

Catch crops: a cover crop planted after the main crop’s been harvested with the intent of reducing nutrient leaching. Rye after corn, for example, helps “scavenge” leftover nitrogen, which could otherwise contaminate groundwater.

Picture of hairy vetch from Jarrett.

Wordy Wednesday in the Amazon

This week's Wordy Wednesday is a double-header because I won't be able to update next Wednesday. Today's theme is the Amazon, where my friend Ranelle will be spending some time this winter. Winter for us, that is. It'll be the middle of the summer for her. As before, this words are from Charles C. Mann's 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus. I'm on the last section, which is about the Native American's ecological management, and I'm fascinated. Definitions brought to you today by the Oxford English Dictionary.

[Amazon terrain] is pullulatingly alive: howling insects, hot and humid as demon’s breath, perpetually shaded by mats of lianas and branches. (281)

pulluate: “2.b. To teem, swarm.” Latin pullulus young nestling or chick

liana: “The name given to the various climbing and twining plants which abound in tropical forests.”

Behind the canoe armada was a floating orchestra of horns, pipes, and rebecs like three-stringed lutes. (284)

rebec: “A musical instrument played with a bow and typically having three strings; an early form of the violin.” Probably after Middle French bec beak, on account of the shape of the instrument.

Like their confreres elsewhere in the Americas, Indian societies had built up a remarkable body of knowledge about how to manage and improve their environment. (286)

confrere: “A fellow-member of a fraternity, religious order, college, guild, etc.; a colleague in office.”

Amazonia was not a dead end where the environment ineluctably strangled cultures in their cradles. (297)

ineluctably: “irresistibly, so that one cannot escape from its grip.” Latin ineluctabilis to struggle out.

Like strawberries, peach palm throws out adventitious shoots. (303)

adventitious: “3. Nat. Hist. Appearing casually, or out of the normal or usual place, esp. in Bot. of roots, shoots, buds, etc. produced in unusual parts of the plant.”

There was the same cool green light from the canopy, the same refulgent smell, the same awe-inspiring sense of variety. (304)

refulgent: “2. Fig. and in extended us in various contexts: resplendent, glorious, illustrious, sumptuous, etc. Formerly freq. applied eulogistically to a woman.” Latin refulgere to radiate light, to shine with reflected light, to be conspicuous.

Dude’s reaching with this one. An illustrious smell? That's like C. S. Lewis's pale voice (name that chronicle!).

Beans for Hungry Bellies

My classmate Kelly Wilson is interning on Voss Farm in Paynesville, MN and she's working both in the field and on marketing. One project is Beans for Hungry Bellies: for every dollar you donate, Doug and Beth Voss will donate 2 pounds of organic pinto beans to Second Harvest Heartland.

Here's the backstory: Doug and Beth grow pinto beans and have for last 2 or 3 years. Last year, the crop yield was lower than expected and they ended up with a semi-load and a half of beans. The elevator bought the first load, but wouldn't take the half. As a result, about 20,000 lbs of lovely organic pinto beans have been sitting patiently for about a year on their property.

So Doug and Beth looked for a solution and came up with the idea to donate them to people who really need it through Second Harvest Heartland. They've teamed up with Grace United Methodist Church to raise funds to cover cost of production and transportation, and one dollar just barely does it. The pinto beans will stay in the area, going to food shelves in Minnesota and Western Wisconsin.

How do you give? You can send a check, payable to Grace United Methodist Church with "Beans for Hungry Bellies" in the memo line to

Voss Farms
27725 Hwy 23
Paynesville, MN 56362

Or, talk to me. I'll be collecting cash and sending a check at the end of August.

Driven by tradition, mission

Last month, I said I’d talk more about Mhonpaj’s approach to farming. Before we start, I’d like to point out that while I refer to Mhonpaj a lot, it would be more accurate to refer her entire family. I have met or at least spotted a dozen family members so far that pitch in an unknown amount of labor, and after having spent more time with Mhonpaj’s mother May, I understand better her crucial role as Chief Farmer at Mhonpaj’s Garden.

Mhonpaj’s Garden was born out of a combination of tradition and necessity. Mhonpaj says that her family gardens because that’s just what they do. It’s their lifestyle. When I asked her if they had any employees, she laughed. She reassured me that there are no employees; family members do most of the work, with occasional outside help from neighbors and a mission trip. They don’t strive to make a profit, she said, just to make enough money to buy seeds for the next year. Still, they won’t budge on $3 a tray for their organic potatoes because of the work that goes into picking off bugs by hand. They know how much their produce is worth and they don’t undersell themselves.

On the one hand, this mindset releases Mhonpaj from the treadmill of continually trying to increase profit for the sake of “growth” and “shareholders,” but on the other, it makes an off-farm job a necessity. I’m not sure how Mhonpaj manages to balance work at HCMC with all the work generated by the farm and her ambition, and I have no idea how her parents spend their time in the winter.

I’ve heard hints of the challenges Mhonpaj’s Garden faces. Marketing is a challenge common to all farmers who realize its necessity, and there’s always room for improvement. In one of our first conversations, Mhonpaj mentioned that her goal for the CSA was a hundred members. At the St. Paul Farmers Market this weekend, a customer asked May how many members they had. "Fourteen," May said. At the White Bear Lake Farmers Market, another customer told us we needed more signage proclaiming our USDA Organic certification. “You need signs out here,” she said, “not just that little one back there,” indicating the seal on the banner behind us.

Another challenge is finding land to own. David Washburn, from whom they rent, has no plans to sell his land. According to Mhonpaj, he knows that the value is going to keep increasing and thinks that whoever would buy it wouldn’t be able to keep up with property taxes. Eventually, he believes, they would be forced to sell the land and it would be “developed.” From what Mhonpaj said, it sounds like his long-term goal is to build up a community of farmers who rent from him and show commitment to the land. Then, someone (Washburn himself? A community member?) would create a nonprofit that would own the land, keeping the taxes down.

So it seems to me that Mhonpaj’s Garden is a curious blend of subsistence, organic, and mission-driven agriculture. It started as the traditional way to make a living, but Mhonpaj has adapted to the Minnesota food system. The farm is certified organic, which is a big deal to some customers. They operate a CSA, which is a hallmark of a regional food system (I’m not sure that it should be, but that’s another topic entirely). They donate to the Emergency Food Shelf Network, our culture’s preferred method for disposing of leftover produce (versus throwing it away). They have a website (maintained by yours truly) so that customers can learn more about the story behind the produce.

In these ways, Mhonpaj’s Garden distinguishes itself from other Hmong farms and integrates itself into the dominate culture’s local food movement paradigm. I think I need more exposure to other Hmong farmers to draw more complete conclusions. Too bad I don’t speak the language.

Photo by Joan Benjamin, from the Summer/Fall 2009 Issue of the Newsletter of the NCR-SARE.

Updated 8/30/10.

The closest I've gotten to a manifesto

The following is an excerpt from my final project for HECUA's Environment and Agriculture: Sustainable Food Systems class I took this June.

I feel like I’m on the brink of something big and important. Everyone says it’s an exciting time to be in food systems. Am I “in food systems”? As long as I’m eating, I suppose I’m in the food system. But what am I supposed to be doing in food systems? What’s my work? Considering the state of the food system right now, I have my work cut out for me. But what does it look like?

Right now, it looks like bringing local food to schools. School lunch has captured my passion in a way that not much else has. The reasons for improving the quality of what we serve our children are clear and oft-repeated: we are feeding our most vulnerable population our worst food, teaching them to accept meat patties, reject overcooked vegetables, and enjoy industrial pizza. Eating habits are formed early in life and the longer people eat processed foods, the sicker they will be and the harder it will be to make a change.

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) intrigues me. Like the Food Stamp Program, it connected the need to dispose of the Depression-era dirt cheap commodity products with the need to avert malnutrition. Over the decades, it grew and spawned offshoots such as the School Breakfast Program, the Special Milk Program, and the Summer Food Service Program. Now it is an institution, a given, here to stay through the Great Recession.

Seventy years later and are we still filling empty bellies with dirt cheap commodities?

Any program that affects forty percent of children under eighteen seems like a program that needs careful management and foresight, first because 30.5 million children is a huge number and second because they are the future of our nation.

We are filling the empty bellies of a significant proportion of our future with dirt cheap commodities. That is not foresight. That is a recipe for disaster. This recipe will persist. The NSLP is here to stay and commodities are going to stick around like a bad cold.

I am painting a bleak picture with broad strokes, only because I want to inspire parents and farmers and students and policymakers to brighten the picture with regional color. I want to see small farmers thrive by growing native foods and selling them to schools so that students can thrive on them. The NSLP is positioned to accomplish both these goals. The NSLP provides a stable market for farmers, especially vulnerable farmers, and has an obligation to feed children nutritious food, especially vulnerable children. For this reason, we must carefully manage the NSLP to provide a stable market for more than just commodity farmers and to feed children more than just food whose nutrition labels have the right numbers.

Enter the question central to the E&A experience and pertinent to the NSLP issue. Why is it important to know where your food comes from? I have to admit that I did not have a ready answer. What does it matter that we visited Cedar Summit Creamery or that students know where their apples are from? But once I turned my mind to matter, the answers came flying in. I had learned all the answers, but they finally all collapsed gracefully together.

The popular question as it stands, I realized, is too narrow. Not just where, but who, how, why and when? Understanding the journey from seed or sperm to plant or animal to a meal on our plate allows us to evaluate the decisions made along way. We decide what is important in the journey, whether it’s the health of the land at the source, the human and animal rights involved, or the numbers on the price tag or nutrition panel.

Knowing your sources adds personal accountability to the transactions that take place. If Kent Solberg wants to continue to sell fresh milk, he has no choice but to keep his milking parlor squeaky clean. In contrast, if your hamburger from Beef Products, Inc. makes you sick, tracing the contamination would be a nightmare.

Knowing your sources connects you with the rhythms of farming, appreciate the gifts of the seasons, and understand that the vagaries of weather or the price of oil will have an impact on food availability and cost.

Where do we learn about the source of our food? Parents teach through action. Take your kids shopping and the source of food is the grocery store. Grow a garden and the source is dirt and air and water. Rely on school food service and the source is… unknown. Teaching children that their apples come from the orchard 50 miles away prepares them to ask where the oranges come from, who picked the pears, why Red Delicious tastes so inferior.

Keeping up with it all

On Wednesday, I meet with Mhonpaj Lee, with whom I am interning. I always hesitate before describing her role in the Hmong and farming community because it seems so informal and yet so powerful. Suffice it to say for now that she has a new baby girl, works as an interpreter at HCMC, and manages the business end of her family’s farm, Mhonpaj’s Garden.

This was our second meeting, intended to flesh out the details of my HECUA internship. We agreed that I would maintain the website, write a weekly column on nutrition for the newsletter that goes out with the weekly CSA shares, and put together recipe cards to hand out to customers uncertain what to do with bitter melon or mustard greens.

Beyond these tasks, I have other exciting opportunities. I will help put together the CSA shares on Sunday for Monday delivery. I’ll assist at cooking demonstrations, taking pictures and posting them to the website. I may even make cold calls to organic buyers around the Twin Cities (cold calls! me!).

Even the seemingly duller activities, like weeding, hold the promise of getting to know the family better and plumbing for details about traditional farming techniques, oral tradition, and the challenges of farming in a new country.

Once we got some logistics squared away, Mhonpaj started sharing some of the projects that come across her desk. Last time we met for lunch at HCMC, we sat outside and she pointed out the rooftop herb garden. She told me that they had started growing them so that the female Hmong patients could have their traditional post-partum diet. The mayor came to cut a ribbon and everything. Now MCTC is starting an herb garden and North Memorial wants to know how to get one started.

“It’s not that hard,” she laughed. “You get a box with dirt and put seeds in it.”

Mhonpaj also told me about a magazine interview (Simple Life?) that was to include her cucumber recipe. But when it got the editor, the recipe was deemed too exotic for the magazine’s audience. She was asked to share a more traditionally Asian dish – perhaps she had a spring roll recipe? Mhonpaj declined to comply.*

I wondered aloud if Mhonpaj had heard of crop mobs. She hadn’t, but apparently twenty students from Nebraska are descending on her farm on June 29th and July 1st to trellis tomatoes. Sounds a lot like a crop mob to me.

Fresh from my HECUA experience, I asked her a question about employees. Her answer led to a fascinating discussion of her farming philosophy (if you can call it that) and her landowner's wishes for his land. More on that later!

*It sounds like the magazine finally came around and the article will be printed in all its exotic glory.

flickr photo from h-bomb.

Why to head for the greens!

I’ve been exploring various sources of calcium and seeing how they stack up against one another. In general, cheese, with its low water content, does well in the Most Calcium per Gram category, especially Parmesan cheese. Leafy greens do rather well with Most Calcium per Calorie – collard greens and Chinese cabbages are winners here.

So why pick leafy greens over dairy products? Besides side-stepping the protein issue, leafy greens have so much going for them that I’m ashamed that I don’t eat them at every meal. Let’s compare a cup of plain low-fat yogurt with a cup of cooked collard greens on a smattering of nutrients: fiber, fat-soluble vitamins, and a few minerals.

Plain low-fat yogurt vs.Cooked collard greens

	Yogurt	Collard Greens
Fiber:	0g	5g
Vitamin A:	125 IU	15416 IU
Vitamin D:	n/a	n/a
Vitamin E:	0.1 mg	1.7 mg
Vitamin K:	0.5 mcg	836 mcg
Calcium:	448 mg	266 mg
Iron:	0.2 mg	2.2 mg
Magnesium:	41.7 mg	38.0 mg
Phosphorus:	353 mg	57.0 mg
Potassium:	573 mg	220 mg
Sodium:	171 mg	30 mg

Collard greens clearly have the upper hand when it comes to fiber and fat-soluble vitamins (water-soluble vitamins – C and the Bs – are more of a mixed bag), but yogurt comes rushing back in the mineral department, with the exception of iron.

But more sodium is not necessarily better, despite what Cargill might tell you, and too much phosphorus in conjunction with too little calcium is bad news for your bones.

Two more points I’d like to bring out. First, yogurt has 32 mg of omega-3 fatty acids and 76 mg of omega-6 (~1:2.4 ratio) compared to collard greens’ 177 mg and 133 mg, respectively. That’s a 1.3:1 ration, which is great! The more omega-3’s, the better, especially when they outnumber omega-6’s.

Second, a cup of collard greens has a third of the calories of a cup yogurt, so you could eat three times as much and get the upper hand on the minerals! I would recommend, however, adding between a quarter of a teaspoon to a teaspoon of olive oil or butter per cup of greens. Doing so would add up to 40 more calories, but also increase absorption of fat-soluble vitamins, satiety, and deliciousness.

I could go on about phytonutrients and the Brassica family, but I believe I hear the greens of a farmers’ market calling my name.

Photo by Mark Farnham

Calcium and protein: friends or foes?

In the last post, we saw that dairy products are a fine source of calcium, thanks to the absorption-enhancing property of lactose and the density of calcium by weight or calorie. So why consider anything else? I think many people have an idea that protein, in which dairy products are rich, interferes with calcium or bone health in some way. In the chapter on bone health in Krause’s Food and Nutrition Therapy, John JB Anderson states that “the relationship between protein and calcium is unsettled” (625).

Let’s take a step back. What is this relationship? On the one hand, protein is considered to have an anabolic (building) effect on bone. After all, around 25% of the bone matrix is protein in the form of collagen fibers. Calcium and phosphorus make up the hydroxyapatite that gives bone its rigidity. On the other hand, a chronically low intake of protein decreases the serum concentration of albumin, a protein that transports nearly everything in the blood, including calcium (Anderson, 625).

So why would high protein intake pose a problem? Here’s where the textbook gets a little fuzzy. First it says that “actions of proteins and their absorbed amino acids… [have] a catabolic [breaking down] effect resulting from the generation of an acid load” (625). But as far as I can tell, extracellular excesses of acid are buffered primarily by bicarbonate - calcium doesn’t have much to do with it.

The second reason given is that urinary losses of calcium increase following meals that contain large amounts of animal protein (625). The exact mechanism is not clear, but it may be because the sulfates generated by the metabolism of sulfur-containing amino acids (cysteine, cystine, methionine) bind to calcium ions in the kidney and prevent them from being reabsorbed (Gallagher, 115). A list of food sources of sulfur follows: meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dried beans, broccoli, and cauliflower. This is a bit misleading, as 3 oz of beef has fourteen times as much methionine as 1 cup of cooked broccoli.

Studies tracking protein consumption and bone fractures or bone mineral density are… numerous. Some come out in favor, some come out a wash. I would say that most people should consider getting more calcium from vegetables, and in the next post, I’ll explain why it’s a great idea.

Photo source: fooducate.com

Can we use calcium from dairy products?

A few weeks ago when I entered Aunt Gayle’s hospice room, the gathered family had a nutrition question for me: can humans absorb the calcium found in milk and other dairy products? I was fairly confident that dairy is a good source of calcium and is well absorbed. If not, the government and the dairy industry’s been doing us a huge disservice for decades.

Then my mother-in-law raised the same question this weekend. Her doctor had recommended leafy greens as a calcium source. Again, I was fairly confident that most leafy greens are a good source of calcium, though not necessarily as well absorbed.

So what's the deal? Should one consume dairy products for the calcium? My newly purchased textbook, Krause’s Food and Nutrition Therapy, by L. Kathleen Mahan and Sylvia Escott-Stump (Saunders-Elsevier, 2008), offers two reasons to do so. First, dairy products are the most concentrated calcium sources, and second, lactose enhances calcium absorption, probably even in those with lactose intolerance (104, 106).

A cursory glance at a Google Scholar search related to lactose-enhanced calcium absorption reassured me that this reason was probably valid.And while "most concentrated" sounded about right, I was curious as to how exactly that played out.

I started calculating the concentration of calcium in some foods, both dairy and non-dairy to get some numbers. I began by calculating milligrams of calcium per calorie, but that didn’t result in dairy being uniformly more concentrated:

Food	Calcium (mg)	Kcals	Mg Ca per kcal
Yogurt, plain, low fat, 1 cup (245g)	448	154	2.9
Milk, 2%, 1 cup (144g)	286	122	2.3
Cheddar cheese, 1 oz (28g)	202	113	1.8
¼ block firm tofu (81g)	163	57	2.9
Kale, 1 cup cooked (130g)	94	36	2.6
Broccoli, 1 cup cooked (156g)	62	54	1.2
Almonds, 1 oz (28g)	75	169	0.4

Tofu stands eye-to-eye with yogurt, a cup of kale beats a cup of milk - what's going on? I switched to milligrams of calcium per gram, which still didn’t yield the results I expected:

Food	Mg Ca per gram
Cheddar cheese, 1 oz	7.2
Yogurt, plain, low fat, 8 oz	1.8
Milk, 2%, 1 cup	1.2
Almonds, 1 oz	2.7
¼ block firm tofu	2.0
Kale, 1 cup cooked	0.7
Broccoli, 1 cup cooked	0.4

Here, water content plays a big role - generally the more water, the heavier the food is. Cheddar is the leader by far, since cheese is basically milk wrung of water. This time, almonds are doing pretty well, and tofu is still a champ. NOTE: These calculations are based on calcium-set tofu, not the silken type, which has about 80% less calcium. Straight-up cooked soybeans have about 0.6 mg Ca per kcal, and 1.0 mg per gram.

Bottom line – the author of the statement "Cow's milk is and dairy products are the most concentrated sources of calcium" has a different understanding of “concentrated sources” than I do.

Next up: the relationship between protein and calcium.

Photo Source: UMN Extension