Back in the early seventies, the then US secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz declared a policy of using food as foreign policy weapon. The weapons were used in many places for different purposes. In India, it was used to get India accept the green revolution technology. Are we facing the the same prospect as our food security dwindles and we are increasingly left with less and less option of dealing with India other than by following the dictates?

ke bhayo yesto 14 sept 09

I’m following an established method of brewing that produces an
excellent diversity of soil microbes, so the goal is as you say
Marisha, to  ”pump up the populations”. I’m also looking for precision
in this effort. I intend to verify the presence of the desired soil
life under the microscope, leaving little to chance.

I simply love the notion of compost tea. Creating the right conditions
during brewing for  explosive population grow of the soil organisms we
need. The marriage of Yeomans keyline cultivation and Ingham’s
inoculant compost tea is a match made in fertility heaven!

Then add a Salatin inspired relocalised cow and chicken husbandry duet
to a Yeomans lock pipe gravity flood irrigation approach and there you
have it – a total retrofit of your typical grass farm. An about face!
Better soil, better nutrition, a renewed local economy. A reversal of
all degrading effects in a 180 degree about turn towards building
fertility year by year instead of seeing it drop steadily through ill
conceived methods. It’s the number of beneficial connections that
counts.

The more aware I become of the intricacies of soil life, the more
respect I develop for pasture soil (since this is my current area of
focus). I believe it should be treated with the same reverence
afforded the soil in an organic veggie patch. That’s why I’m thrilled
to get this system up and running. It is truly a means of ‘farming
like a gardener’. Of treating acres of land the way we might treat
meters of garden.

I’ll publish the brewing and trails over the next month or so. Then
people have a reference if they want to do this themselves.

And thanks Lawrence for your interesting suggestions. I hadn’t thought
of rock dust!

Ben

“…the greatest change we need to make is from consumption to
production, even if on a small scale, in our own gardens. If only 10% of
us do this, there is enough for everyone.

Hence the futility of revolutionaries who have no gardens, who depend on
the very system they attack, and who produce words and bullets, not food
and shelter.” – Bill Mollison

Here is the full Hardnews article by Devinder Sharma

My friend Tom Philpott wrote this on Borlaug’s legacy on his Grist page.

The longer term goal therefore has to be to slowly contribute to building economic activities that share the issues of sustainability, dignified life of farming communities. Part of that also involves financial institutions and investments.

This Time magazine article on slow money alliance is quite interesting in that regard

Kakdooki (left) and Nepali mulako achar.

I now look first to fermentation when trying to preserve my garden abundance. I’ll admit the method appeals to my laziness. I don’t enjoy spending hours sweating over boiling pots in late summer heat. But I also worry about what so much heat does to the food. And I know that all my work will yield vegetables that often loose their distinctive flavors and end up tasting like the vinegar I drown then in.

I prefer the tang of natural fermentation and draw on culinary traditions form around the world to achieve it (for more details, see resources below). This summer, I’ve brewed radishes into Nepali pickles and kakdooki (the all radish version of Korean kim chee). Based on old European recipes, I’ve also brined half-ripe cherry tomatoes and fermented tomato juice (a great addition to soup). My happiest discovery for preserving tomatoes is lacto-fermented salsa. It’s so much better than vinegary canned versions. We’ve almost finished our first gallon and have a second beginning to bubble.

Fermented salsa and brined cherry tomatoes

I do have moments when I long for pantry shelves stocked with pretty little jars of sterilized garden color. My odd assortment of jars filled with rotting vegetables won’t win me any domestic diva awards. But when I’m looking for taste, I’ll take a good ferment over beauty any day.
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My Current Favorite Pickle Book:

The Joy of Pickling

Linda Ziedrich gives clear directions for making pickles from around the world, including many fermented or refrigerated ones. The kakdooki recipe I used is delectable. Her boiling water methods look better than many I’ve seen (though I haven’t tried them). They tend to rely on cider or wine vinegars rather than the harsh distilled white vinegar. The author also provides ideas for interesting variations.

Other Resources:

Preserving Food Without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Terre Vivante. This small book has lots of interesting ideas, such as the fermented tomato juice that’s been spiking our soup stock. But the directions are pretty vague.

Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. I just bought this one and am eager to try it out. Based on his own experiences living with HIV/AIDS, the author makes strong claims for the health benefits of naturally fermented foods.

Food-Nepal and Nepali Cooking have recipes for fermented radish pickle. I’ve tasted many different version of these and usually add roasted and ground cumin, coriander, fenugreek, chili pepper to mine. Spice them to your own taste.

Lacto-Fermented Salsa Recipe. I increased the number of chili peppers (a common theme in my cooking) and added garlic too.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) offers a technical report on fermented foods from around the world.

Cross-posted at Yips and Howls and included in Fight Back Friday at Food Renegade for September 18.

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What’s your favorite Nepali pickle?  Feel free to comment and share recipes.

This is the piece I wrote for the Kathmandu Post, September 15, 2009. I know it will be very hard for those who are involved in ‘higher education’ in Nepal. After all, they came there to escape the soil. But the way Tribhuvan University’s central campus Kirtipur’s landscape is, it purely symbolizes utter lack of societal concern, expropriation without accountability and frozen and degraded vision of a university that has increasingly less connections with the living world in it, around it.

This is one part of 6-part essay on transforming TU. I will post others as soon as they get published in my regular column