"essay" news and stories

Commercial beekeeping is a huge industry, though the component parts are very small. Bees are directly responsible for $15 billion worth of agriculture every year because they are needed to pollinate fields of all types of crops, as well as to produce honey. Farmers could rely on wild bees, but there just aren't enough of them to be reliable. The problem is, that there really aren't enough beekeepers, either.

There are roughly 125,000 beekeepers in the US and only 600 are commercial keepers. Almost three-quarters of all the beekeepers in the US are over 45 and most of them are retired, having embarked into beekeeping as a hobby. This means, in effect, that $15 billion worth of industry and agriculture "depend[s] on a bunch of retired hobbyists."

The issues that surround beekeeping, from fighting the mites that destroy the bees to shipping them out to farmers season after season so that crops can be pollinated, are actually more complicated and more interesting than you might expect. It's a hard industry that is getting harder to sustain every year - and yet so much depends on it. Reading the whole Plight of the Humble Beekeeper at eGullet will give you a new perspective on what is - and isn't - a buzzing industry.

[thanks, Elise]

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There is a movement gaining popularity that concerns the way we eat. Some say that we should focus on organics, but this movement says that isn't quite enough. They think that people should eat locally produced and grown products. Exclusively, if possible. Some of the biggest proponents of this movement, the Locavores, are based in the San Francisco Bay Area.

This is a fantastic and do-able plan, admirable in that it supports local businesses and farmers. It still gives you great variety in your diet, too - if you live somewhere where a wide variety of foods are widely available. Some states aren't so lucky. According to the California Farm Bureau Federation, "California produces all of the nation's commercially grown almonds, artichokes, dates, figs, kiwifruit, nectarines, olives, persimmons, pistachios, prunes, raisins and walnuts. Its top performing commodities in [terms of] gross sales are dairy products, grapes, nursery products, lettuce, cattle and calves." There are other fruits, like avocados and strawberries that thrive in the golden state like no where else. And this rules out quite a few possibilities for the diets of those who want to eat locally but live in less agriculturally friendly areas. Must people in Chicago forgo artichokes and avocados, asks Barrett in a brilliantly written essay at Too Many Chefs?

The gist of his argument is that people throughout history have been driven to new places and into discovering new cultures all in pursuit of foods: chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, oranges, spices, bananas - the list goes on. He's not saying that eating locally is a bad thing, just that there are plenty of good reasons to import foods, from different states or different countries, as well. Read the article. It's a good one.

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