Their Future, Made by Hand
THEY carry home-grown radishes and red-cooked pork. They transport dozens of empanadas, juggling sheet pans on the G train. They pack boxes of butterscotch cupcakes, Sichuan-spiced beef jerky and grapefruit marmalade. They haul boiled peanuts, ice-grinding machines, sandwich presses and at least one toaster oven painted hot pink.
One Saturday morning each month, the vendors of the Greenpoint Food Market converge on the Church of the Messiah in Brooklyn.
“This is my investment in the future right now,” said Fabiana Lee, 26, an interior designer who lost her job in 2009. She has been selling at the Greenpoint market since its inception in October. After experimenting with cookies (too much competition), she has pared her offerings down to two: gorgeously browned empanadas and irresistibly twee “cake pops,” golf-ball-size rounds of cake perched on lollipop sticks. At the moment, they are her main source of income.
Young, college-educated, Internet-savvy, unemployed and hoping to find a place in the food world outside the traditional route, she is typical of the city’s dozens of new food entrepreneurs. As the next generation of cooks comes of age, it seems that many might bypass restaurant kitchens altogether. Instead, they see themselves driving trucks full of artisanal cheese around the country, founding organic breweries, bartering vegan pâtés for grass-fed local beef, or (most often) making it big in baking as the next Magnolia Bakery.
Joann Kim, 26, who organizes the market, cited the intersection of the economic downturn and the rise of the local artisanal food movement as reasons for the recent flowering of small culinary start-ups.
Aspiring cooks (and the adventurous eaters who love them) come face to face at markets like this one, which are opening and expanding at a brisk pace. The Brooklyn Flea, the Hester Street Fair and the soon-to-reopen New Amsterdam Market have become tasting destinations, where handmade food is as much of a fetish as vintage Ray-Bans or bargello pillowcases. The all-food Greenpoint market, which is open to home cooks of all stripes, is one-stop shopping: Mexican-Indian tacos, artisanal soda pop, roof-grown produce, exotic chili peppers, long-brined pickles, Taiwanese street food and retro-Southern snacks under one roof.
“I feel like I’m at a science fair and I get to eat all the experiments,” said Erin Massey, a Chicago native who lives in Brooklyn, looking around the crowded church basement. “It’s like going to a music festival with all the different bands, only here it’s different kinds of kombucha.”
There were almost 50 vendors. Many had been up since dawn, rolling rice balls, filling containers with waffle batter, crimping pie crusts. In headscarves, retro-chic aprons and all manner of eyewear, they skidded around the crowded basement, jockeying for electrical outlets and space.
“We do whatever it takes,” said Nicole Asselin, who brought tiny pies filled with organic rhubarb, chocolate chip cookies (to be warmed in the hot-pink oven) and logs of butter mashed with wild ramps that she had gathered in Vermont.
Each vendor had paid $25 to $50 for a table, with half the money going to the church and half to Ms. Kim. The cash they earned was theirs to keep. At $4 an ice pop or $3 an empanada, the margins on many products seemed high, but some of the vendors who have been operating without official certification may soon see their profits shrink.
On May 28, the New York Department of Health confirmed that all food vendors in the city must have a food handling permit, and may use only approved commercial kitchens. Renting space in a commercial kitchen costs about $200 for eight hours. For some vendors like Ms. Lee, who is in the process of getting her permit, that would mean the difference between making a small profit and just breaking even on a day at the market.
Ms. Kim said that she believed that the fact that the money benefited the church meant that unlicensed vendors were allowed to participate. “I guess we’ve been trying to fly below the radar a little bit,” she said, acknowledging that the bustle of the church basement might disappear under official scrutiny. “It’s been a wild ride.”
Some of the vendors were amateurs there on a lark, to earn brownie bragging rights and a little spending money.
But for many, the stakes were much higher. In these markets, cooks like Laena McCarthy of Anarchy in a Jar, who makes extraordinary preserves from local fruit, have a shot at developing a viable food business without working with a commercial processor, such as the large food companies that she deems “evil agribusiness warlords.” (Her company’s motto is “The Revolution Starts in Your Mouth.”) Ms. McCarthy’s jams have recently been picked up for sale by a Whole Foods store in Manhattan; for her, and others, a national distribution deal is the dream.
But for now, most of the vendors have a “day job” of some kind. Ms. McCarthy works as a librarian and teaches library science. Ms. Asselin is a pastry chef at Marlow & Sons in Williamsburg. Jun Aizaki, who makes Japanese rice balls called onigiri, wrapped in and scented with banana leaves, has designed the interiors of New York restaurants such as Rayuela and Macondo.
Two eminent but unemployed pastry chefs — Fany Gerson and Hannah Goldberg — banded together to start La Newyorkina, making delicious Mexican-style paletas, or ice pops, in flavors like mango, guava and horchata (cinnamon-rice). They have been selling outdoors at the new Hester Street Fair, and handed out mini-paletas to children to draw their parents in.
“If we first build a following at the markets and online,” Ms. Goldberg said, “then we can get the money to open a storefront that much more easily.” Professionals like Ms. Goldberg say that a commitment to marketing, packaging and general hustling are as important — or more so — as kitchen skills. Twitter, Facebook, Etsy, Tumblr and Blogspot are important for spreading the word; so are the city’s many new amateur cooking contests, like the Brooklyn Pie Bake-Off; so are food shops with a commitment to local artisans, like Blue Apron Foods in Park Slope and the Northern Spy Food Company in the East Village.
So is paring down your line.
“I’ve already seen that you do much better if you’re ‘that girl’ who sells ‘that thing,’ ” said Ms. Asselin, who has yet to commit.
Ms. Lee is still deciding whether her business, La Tía Faby, will focus on empanadas or cake pops. Growing up in Buenos Aires, she said, she set her sights early on a life in New York City.
“I was used to being the only Asian girl at school,” said Ms. Lee, whose parents were born in South Korea and now own a knitwear company in Argentina; she is fluent in English, Spanish and Korean. “But I loved the mix of people and food in New York.” Ms. Lee said that her mother, who served steak with kimchi on many nights, taught her the basics of cooking, both Argentine and Asian. Ms. Lee’s chorizo and kimchi empanadas with Korean glass noodles are pleated down the edge, like huge Chinese dumplings; the spinach and mushroom version is folded like a fortune cookie.
Ms. Lee moved to New York to study interior design at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn; when she graduated in 2006, she quickly found a job at a downtown firm. But in early 2009, she said, the effects of the stock market downturn began to hit. “It was almost a relief when I got laid off like everyone else,” she said. “Better than sitting at my desk waiting for it to happen.” Then she spotted an online open call for vendors at the Greenpoint market.
The recession weaves through the back stories of many of the itinerant vendors, even those who are not new to selling food. Matt and Alison Robicelli had both a fledgling cupcake operation and a specialty foods shop in Bay Ridge until last October, when they decided that brick-and-mortar was a losing proposition. “We sat down with an adviser who looked at our crazy life and said, ‘You have three things to take care of: your shop, your cupcake business and your kids,’ ” she said. “He told us we had to pick two.” Now they sell cupcakes — including a dark, bittersweet “Bea Arthur” number that combines chocolate, coffee and cheesecake flavors — through various cafes, at the Greenpoint market, and at another newly opened Brooklyn venue, the outdoor Red Hook Mercado.
Ms. Lee is still unemployed, but she has never worked harder, she said, trying to build a viable business one bite at a time. The day before the Greenpoint market, in her sixth-floor walkup in Chelsea, Ms. Lee folded hundreds of empanadas and painstakingly decorated dozens of cake pops to look like pale yellow chicks, using sprinkles and edible inks she orders from online candy suppliers. (Cake pops and cake balls, made by mixing fresh cake crumbs with frosting, then dipping balls of the mixture into “candy melt” for a smooth, Ring-Ding-like coating, are up-to-the-minute successors to the no longer trendy cupcake.)
“Transportation is by far the biggest stress,” said Ms. Lee, who must travel by subway or taxi to Greenpoint; there are many casualties among the empanadas. But her wares have always sold out, so far. All day at the market, women exclaimed over the cake pops and asked about custom orders for baby showers and birthday parties; only a few of these inquiries have ever panned out. She took home about $500 in cash, having sold out by 3 p.m.
One of the charms of the food-market scene is an Old World sense of cozy community: everyone seems to know one another. But this also means a race to capture shoppers before somebody else does. At Greenpoint, two vendors of kombucha were stationed right across from each other, and there was more than one seller of pickles, fizzy drinks and gluten-free muffins.
“I didn’t know there would be another granola,” said Alex Crosier of Granola Lab, eyeballing the competition for her ginger-molasses and cranberry-cashew mixtures.
At the end of the day, said Ms. Asselin, the vendors are very tired, very thirsty (much of the food is very sweet, very salty or both) and not much richer.
“It’s hard work,” said Hannah Goldberg, speaking about her time at the Hester Street Fair. “Our ancestors came through the Lower East Side to find a better life, and our parents think it’s crazy that we’re back here selling from a pushcart.”
Reference Link
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/dining/02vendors.html?nl=nyregion&emc=ura3
Courtesy
The New York Times Company
Solar Greenhouse to Produce Food and Electricity
Imagine a greenhouse that is producing solar power and food too. This excellent experiment is being done in Italy. The companies responsible for this project are Renewable energy company Solar ReFeel, CeRSAA and solar panel manufacturer Solyndra. The test site has been constructed at CeRSAA’s Albenga, Italy. The project intends to attain the production of both food and electricity. The research team also wants to validate the crop growth benefits of Solyndra’s technology by taking help of independent testing by a leading agricultural research institution.
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The project region is spread over an area of 400 square meters at the CeRSAA research center. At this unique building, Solyndra’s photovoltaic systems have been incorporated into the greenhouse structures. Solyndra is going for an exclusive cylindrical technology (see video above). This technology helps in capturing direct, diffused, and reflected sunlight across a 360 degree surface and at the same time permitting a uniform transmission of light for the plants underneath.
The study will focus on the production of numerous crops common in the Mediterranean region. They will observe, measure and evaluate these crops which are grown under the greenhouse structures with the integrated solar system. This project will quantify and compare the yield and the expected benefit for crops grown under Solyndra’s new, integrated greenhouse structures with same crops grown in usual greenhouses.
The time span of this project will be 24 months. During this period all the partners will provide their expertise to this project. CeRSAA, special agency of the Chamber of Commerce of Savona, will take care of the design and implementation of agricultural studies as per its specialization. CeRSAA will also be responsible for technical and human resources. Solyndra is the United States based producer of solar systems. It had supplied the greenhouse framework and photovoltaic components. Solyndra has also supervised the construction of the test site. Enerqos Group is a leader in the design and implementation of PV systems in Italy. They are providing installation support and electrical contracting.
Solar ReFeel has specialization in both the ground-mounted and rooftop photovoltaic plants. Solar ReFeel is coordinating the research amongst the involved parties. Solar ReFeel will share the research findings. They also intend to cash in on the successful products.
The goal of the study is to fully understand and take advantage of the extraordinary potential of greenhouse integrated solar power development as a long-term, substantial business model.
Reference Link
http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/solar-greenhouse-food-electricity/
Courtesy
AE News Network.
Montek for 35-kg grain a month to the poor
NEW DELHI, India: Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia is pitching for supply of 35 kg of foodgrains every month at Rs. 3 a kg to the poor, up from 25 kg proposed under the new Food Security Act.
“Not unreasonable if it is for the poor”
It is not wrong or unreasonable to increase the quantity. “This will be costlier but if we are doing it for the poor, it will not be unreasonable,” he told journalists on the sidelines of a CII-organised interaction with U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner here on Tuesday night.
Mr. Ahluwalia’s remarks came a day after the Empowered Group of Ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, asked the Commission to provide an exact definition of Below the Poverty Line (BPL) families which are entitled to a specified quantity of rice or wheat every month.
‘Under study’
As for the Suresh Tendulkar Committee report on measuring poverty, he said: “We are examining it. We will certainly prepare an estimate of BPL households on the basis of the Committee report.”
The government, he said, would have to decide which data to use while providing the needy food security: the poverty line fixed in the 2004-05 survey or the one to be obtained from the ongoing survey (2009-10) or from a new census (2011).
“The Tendulkar Committee has suggested some increase in the poverty line for rural areas. I don’t think it is unreasonable.”
The 2004-05 survey put the number of BPL families at 6.5 crore. It would increase to a little over eight crore, if the methodology suggested by the committee was taken in account.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/08/stories/2010040862241000.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
Feeding the next generation needs cash up front
Big food push urged to avoid global hunger
A big push to develop agriculture in the poorest countries is needed if the world is to feed itself in future decades, a report warns.
With the world’s population soaring to nine billion by mid-century, crop yields must rise, say the authors – yet climate change threatens to slash them.
Already the number of chronically hungry people is above one billion.
The report was prepared for a major conference on farming and development that opens next week in France.
The first Global Conference on Agricultural Research for Development (GCARD) will bring scientists, policymakers, aid experts, businessmen and pressure groups together in an attempt to plot a way out of the hunger crisis.
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 Everywhere you go in Africa you can buy Coca-cola or Pepsi-cola, but you can’t buy a packet of seeds so easily  Professor Sir Gordon Conway
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“It’s a huge problem,” said Sir Gordon Conway from the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, the conference’s keynote speaker.
“We have more than a billion people hungry at the moment, then on top of that we’re going to have to feed a growing human population – we’re looking at having to double food production by 2050.”
The Green Revolution of the 1950s and 60s brought vast increases in yields of crops such as maize and rice to Asia and in South America.
But Africa remained largely untouched; and even in Asia, yields have plateaued.
Fertiliser use on Asian cereal fields has soared 40-fold in 50 years, but yields have only risen about four-fold.
Easy harvest
“In Asia, the Green Revolution created a sense of complacency, that we had solved the problem – and that lasted until the [food price] crisis of 2007,” said Uma Lele, the former senior World Bank official who co-ordinated the report.
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“What we are looking at now is a much more complex ‘perfect storm’, because all of the ‘easy fruit’ has been harvested during the Green Revolution.”
There was no single, simple measure, she said, that could bring about the yield increases needed in poorer countries, and make sure that the increases were sustainable.
Ensuring all farmers had access to good information about farming methods would be a good start, she noted, but would require different mechanisms in different countries.
Access to facilities also needed to be improved, said Professor Conway.
“Everywhere you go in Africa you can buy Coca-cola or Pepsi-cola, but you can’t buy a packet of seeds so easily,” he noted.
Aid organisations working together with business had begun to transform that picture, he said; and when African maize farmers had access to the best techniques, their yields could jump fivefold.
But western donors were still more likely to put money into health or education projects than into agriculture, he added, despite the commitment that G8 leaders made at last year’s G8 summit in Italy to spend $20bn on agriculture for development.
Despite the burgeoning wealth in South Asia, millions of people remain in stark poverty.
Ninety-seven percent of the chronic hungry live in South Asia or in Africa.
“These two regions of the world are going to be most affected by climate change,” said Dr Lele.
“And that’s where the majority if the world’s poor live; if we don’t invest in research now, that’s where the problems will be in 10 years’ time because developments don’t happen overnight.”
Combating hunger in these regions, said Professor Conway, meant using every level of technology available, from conventional cross-breeding through to genetic engineering that could specifically give new traits to crop strains.
The much-discussed Golden Rice – enhanced with Vitamin A – was in pre-commercial trials, following years of wrangling about patent issues, he said, and Chinese scientists had developed about 30 GM varieties that were almost ready for commercial release.
Reference Link
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8585504.stm
Courtesy
BBC News
Safe food practices keep diseases away: expert
‘Food kept open on roadsides causes disease’
‘Food turns unsafe due to improper storage
after cooking and unsafe handling’
‘Vegetables, meat and dairy products should
be stored separately’
Thrissur, India: Lack of awareness about food safety practices causes severe health hazards, N. Anandavally, UN-Food and Agriculture Organisation Food Safety Consultant, has said.
She was addressing a workshop organised by the Food Safety Commissionerate here on Tuesday to create awareness of food safety, anti-adulteration drive and the Food Safety and Standards Act among traders and industrialists.
“About 75 per cent of the diseases are caused by food contamination. Diarrhoea claims about 4 lakh lives in India every year. Still we don’t care two hoots to the food safety measures,” she said.
Ms. Anandavally recalled that Indian ‘parotta’ had been exported to the U.S and the European Union from China as the ‘parottas’ made in India failed to satisfy the food safety standards.
Mushrooming roadside eateries and their increasing clientele were a cause for concern, she said. “The emissions of vehicles can cause cancer. The food items that are kept in the open at roadsides can cause diseases. Absence of a proper mechanism to check hygiene practices increases the risk.”
Food poisoning could be avoided by following good food preparation procedures, she said. “Food turns unsafe due to improper storage after cooking and unsafe handling. Overuse of colour and chemicals also causes various diseases.”
Vegetables, meat and dairy products should be stored separately and maintained at the appropriate temperature, she said.
Proper cleaning and cooking of food items were also very important. “Chicken, if not properly cooked, may contain bacteria that cause typhoid. Unclean raw carrots may have parasites that can even cause death.”
Management of food safety practices should start from the bottom, she said. “We need a farm-to-fork approach. Systematic awareness programmes should be held for preventing contamination of food at every stage of production, not just processing and packaging,” she said.
K. Anil Kumar, Joint Commissioner of Food Safety, spoke about Prevention of Adulteration and Food Safety Acts.
Mayor R. Bindu, who inaugurated the workshop, called upon the traders to return to the traditional cuisines of the State instead of aping the Western tastes. District Food Inspector Joseph Shaji George, Joint Commissioner of Food Safety B. Sudharma and others spoke.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/24/stories/2010032460050300.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
“Good rabi harvest may bring down food prices”
C. Rangarajan commends the Union budget Photo : M.Vedhan.
INFORMATIVE: C. Rangarajan Chairman, Economic Advisory Council to Prime Minister (second from left ) and G.Thiruvasagam, Vice-Chancellor, University of Madras, releasing a souvenir at an international conference in Chennai on Tuesday. M.S. Sundara Rajan, Chairman and Managing Director, Indian Bank ( second from right) and M. Ranganatham, Registrar, University of Madras, are in the picture.
CHENNAI, India: While the rise in prices of food products is “troubling,” a good rabi harvest is expected to bring down prices in the next few weeks, said C. Rangarajan, chairman, Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, on Tuesday.
Dr. Rangarajan said the outlook on rabi arrivals [starting April] was good and that would ease some concerns of consumers even as the inflation rate closed in on double-digit figures.
Delivering the inaugural address at an international conference on “Global Financial System in the post-crisis era: Issues, Opportunities and Challenges” at the University of Madras, Dr. Rangarajan added that the government would have to wait a few weeks before deciding on a rollback of fiscal stimulus measures.
He said the revised estimates for the fiscal deficit in 2009-2010 showed it at 6.7 per cent of the GDP. This was unsustainable and the Union budget of 2010-2011 had brought the deficit down to 5.5 per cent. He commended the Union budget for striking a “proper balance between the need for fiscal consolidation and the need to provide adequate stimulus for growth.”
The government had responded well in tackling the need for stimulation following the financial crisis, but reforms in the regulatory framework were required for the long term, Dr. Rangarajan said.
Ruling out an abandonment of “financial innovations” including derivatives, which he said were satisfying a felt need of customers, he said the regulatory measures were needed to discourage excessive risk-taking and leveraging by banks.
“Too little regulation may encourage financial instability but too much of it can impede financial innovations which are badly needed,” he said.
M.S. Sundara Rajan, chairman and managing director, Indian Bank, said the financial crisis had provided India an opportunity to position itself as an attractive destination for global capital. But issues including the ballooning fiscal deficit, transparency, governance norms and an adequate method for the measurement and management of fiscal risk needed to be sorted out, he said.
G. Thiruvasagam, vice-chancellor, University of Madras, said it was time to think about rehabilitative and preventive measures to protect the Indian economy.
The two-day conference is being organised by the Department of Commerce of the Madras University and is supported by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the Indian Bank.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/17/stories/2010031755870700.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
Hospitality industry regaining momentum
The food and beverage industry is slowly but surely looking up, say hotel owners
Hyderabad, India: With the dark clouds of recession showing signs of fading away slowly, the hospitality industry too is inching forward, nevertheless.
It was only a few months ago that restaurants in the city were crying foul over the economic downturn and its impact on the city’s hotels.
However, if the same is to be assessed now, hoteliers say the scene is changing gradually. “The markets were down, but since the last few months, there has been a growth in the food and beverage industry. Primarily because the jobs are back and bookings have begun for in-house conferences, which would pick up after April,” points out Karan Mor, Area General Manager, The Grand Solitaire.
Occupancy on the rise
Moreover, room occupancy in hotels is also on the rise. “There are a few more five star hotels coming up in the city soon and room occupancy has also gone up by 17 per cent,” says Mr. Mor.
Given the fact that the new hotels are being launched in the city, a lot of restaurants too are revamping their menus to allure customers. “Compared to the previous months, restaurants are doing better. A lot of people are seen walking into the restaurant for lunch and midnight buffets,” says Joydeep Majumdar, Manager, Food and Beverage, Hotel Green Park.
But this is not all. Though hotels are enjoying their share of families and corporate customers, the political turmoil still remains a deciding factor. “During the past few months, most of the business conferences which were supposed to be held in Hyderabad were either held at Vishakapatnam or Tirupati, due to political disturbances.
Though new hotels are being inaugurated, we are waiting for the outcome of Sri Krishna Committee, which will be a major factor for the hospitality industry in the twin cities,” adds Pradeep Dutt, Secretary, Hotels and Restaurants Association of Andhra Pradesh.
Reference Link
http://www.hindu.com/2010/03/04/stories/2010030463510200.htm
Courtesy
The Hindu
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