How new crops were established in America

Background: “Around 1870 new advances started coming led by new companies with names like Pillsbury, Heinz, Quaker Mill, Lipton. A man named Ezra Warner invented a can opener with a handle and a rotating metal blade. Glass milk bottles appeared on doorsteps, along with orange crates. The crown jewel in home cookware was a tightly lidded pot that used pressure to expedite cooking, sometimes cutting the time in half. With new inventions food became less a chore and even, at times, an experiment”

The Food Explorer by Daniel Stone is a biography of David Fairchild (1869-1954), identified as “The Food Explorer” because he spent much of his life searching throughout the world for new plants to expand the offerings of American agriculture at a time when so much was changing about the way that Americans ate and what crops they grew. 

There’s a lot in the book: in fact, far too much detail. Along with the interesting facts about the many countries that Fairchild visited and the many new foods and plants he discovered, there’s a very tedious amount of not-so-interesting biographical and botanical trivia. I also felt that there could have been more background about general trends in food history included in the narrative.

At the end of the book are a few illustrations of fruits that Fairchild discovered and introduced to American farmers.

 
In his long and active life, Fairchild alternated between intense travel and plant collecting with a mentor and wealthy sponsor named Barbour Lathrop and bureaucratic work for the US Department of Agriculture. After many international adventures, Fairchild settled down: he married the daughter of the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, which made him relatively wealthy and also very well-connected. However, he continued to work for the USDA, though laws and attitudes about introductions of new plants became more and more limiting to his goals of finding new crops. 

By the time that World War I started, Fairchild’s Agriculture Department was undergoing a lot of changes (which I don’t want to try to relate) — but I was especially impressed by the posters that were produced to encourage food economy:

This is a pretty good book, though it gets tedious in places. It’s definitely not one of my favorite food history books!

blog post © 2025 mae sander

Spring In Michigan

A bluebird in the Arboretum (Len’s photo)

A Ride through the Countryside

Near Manchester, Michigan

One day this week, when the sun was shining a bit, we decided to take a ride west of Ann Arbor, along a number of roads that we often travel. This is farming country, with many barns and silos, and fields that are just beginning to be planted. Grass and field crops are newly green. All these photos were taken through the car windows as we were driving: in some images (like the one above) you cans see reflections from inside the car.

Spring in Our Own Garden

… and a cup of coffee

Photos © 2025 mae sander.

February Kitchen Thoughts

What will happen to the farmers who grow our food?

We are very lucky to have great fruit in winter as in summer.
I hope nothing destroys that privilege.

Bad things are happening all over our country. Not the least of them for many people: runaway grocery prices, headlined by escalating egg prices and shortages of eggs. Many new policies can impact what we will be able to purchase. Our country is both an importer and an exporter of food. The luxury of fresh vegetables and fruit in winter results from trade with Mexico and South America, where new tariffs may cause retaliation and thus abrupt price increases, and all the changes will have a big impact on American farmers. In the following write-up, I would like to explore a little of the impact of new government directives on US agriculture, and how they might directly affect a consumer like me.

An egg with black beans, avocado (had to be from Mexico!) and a tortilla (probably from US-grown grain).
In my kitchen and every kitchen in America our food will be affected by new policies.

So Much At Risk

Much farm policy that enables us to stock all of our kitchens is at risk. For example, tracking of disease outbreaks among farm animals is being cancelled by cuts at government health agencies: a threat to reliable meat, egg, and dairy production. Ongoing grants supporting energy efficiency and conservation are being withheld or cancelled. Reliance on immigrant farm labor is clearly being disrupted: fifty percent of farm workers are thought to lack legal immigration status. Foreign markets for farmers' produce are being disrupted, preventing stability in farmers' planning. The new budget (being passed this week in the House and Senate) includes cuts in programs like SNAP which buy farmers' produce; Congress has also failed to renew tax protections on farmers this year.

Driving west in 2022, we saw many wind farms, which obviously yield a profit for farmers, as well as supplying them with energy. The current administration wants to stop support for wind farms.

Funds for Next Summer’s Harvests Are Being Withheld

As farmers prepare for 2025 spring planting and eventual summer harvests, promised government funds to support their activities, including purchases of farm equipment as well as routine expenses, have been frozen by the new administration. The consequences: inability of farmers to implement their plans for the growing season. The USDA has not only frozen funds, but has prohibited release of any information about when or how the funds might be released. (source) 

Some cancelled funds were promised through conservation and climate programs, along with access to data sets that helped farmers adapt to changing conditions. This climate-related data also has been scrubbed from websites at the Department of Agriculture. Earlier this week several farmers’ organizations sued the Department saying that “the pages being purged were crucial for farmers facing risks linked to climate change, including heat waves, droughts, floods, extreme weather and wildfires. The websites had contained information about how to mitigate dangers and adopt new agricultural techniques and strategies. Long-term weather data and trends are valuable in the agriculture industry for planning, research and business strategy.” (source)

According to their lawyer: “You can purge a website of the words climate change, but that doesn’t mean climate change goes away.”

Threatened or actual defunding of farmers and removal of useful information will result in food supply issues in the coming months: “Farmers across the U.S. are struggling to make critical decisions ahead of the spring thaw, as billions of dollars in promised federal payments remain frozen by the Trump administration.” One discontinued initiative was $19.5 billion in agriculture-related conservation programs. Another funding freeze involved $3.1 billion for “climate-smart” farm projects. Some of these USDA funds are slowly being released, but the impact of the disruption is widespread. (source)

Fresh salad vegetables and canned tuna may be in jeopardy from import/export issues, too. A big salad like this is one of our frequent dinner entrees.

USAID Cancellation Impacts US Farm Profits

In another disruption of commitments to farmers: American agriculture supplies 41% of the food that’s provided internationally by USAID, which was abruptly shut down this month. This has resulted in immediate loss of tens of thousands of US jobs, and shutting down some welfare organizations as a consequence of cancelling food aid worth over $340 million. Commodity purchases now cancelled include rice, wheat, and soybeans. These farmers had relied on USAID as a place to sell their crops (source). The impact on farmers could resonate into our own food supplies: destabilizing our agriculture isn’t a very good idea. 

From an ABC News article titled “The USAID shutdown is upending livelihoods for nonprofit workers, farmers and other Americans” —

“USAID-run food programs have been a dependable customer for U.S. farmers since the Kennedy administration. Legislation mandates U.S. shippers get a share of the business as well. Even so, American farm sales for USAID humanitarian programs are a fraction of overall U.S. farm exports. … U.S. commodity farmers generally sell their harvests to grain silos and co-ops, at a per bushel rate … farmers worry any time something could hit demand and prices for their crops or give a foreign competitor an opening to snatch away a share of their market permanently.” (source)

Farmers and Tariffs

Tariffs are challenging to understand, but here’s a summary of what the increasing tariffs will mean for American agricultural markets: “Midwest farmers fear economic fallout as Trump’s shifting tariff policies reignite trade tensions with key partners. Many worry that new trade wars will further disrupt global markets, leaving them with fewer buyers and declining profits.” (source) 

Citrus Growers Depend on Immigrant Labor

Florida's citrus growers were just recovering from hurricane damage as they were hit by the Trump-tariff-generated threat of disruption in their Canadian sales, along with disruption in immigrant labor supply and abrupt interruption of promised government grants. 

California citrus growers are expecting a good season this year, though reliance on immigrant labor creates challenges. 30% of California citrus is exported, so tariffs will be an issue. California Mandarins like the one shown in my kitchen are becoming more and more popular, but also more expensive.

Cattle grazing as seen from the Interstate on our 2022 trip west. Cattle are another agricultural product that’s jeopardized. The US is the world’s largest beef exporter. Value: over $4 billion per year. However, we also consume imported beef, so prices may rise as controls are implemented.

Trump’s Promises?

From The Minnesota Reformer:

“Many farmers voted for Trump because he promised less regulation and greater prosperity for America’s farmers. The hard truth is that, like most of the folks who voted for Trump, farmers failed to do their homework about the reality of the new administration. All of this has occurred in the context of higher input costs and tight margins for virtually all crops.

“We are now living and working in an environment where the only constant is chaos. Chaos produces uncertainty, and that leads to loss of trust. The buyers of U.S. farm products are not going to deal with nations that cannot be trusted. There are plenty of options in today’s world for those buyers to bypass the United States. Why on God’s green earth would they put up with the insanity that we have in Washington now?” (Ben Palen, Feb. 17, 2025)

Higher Prices Coming 

The disruption of farm stability and agricultural supply chains, whether within the US or through imports, will have an effect on grocery prices and food availability for Americans, whatever their political views, and will especially affect those who are food insecure. For more examples, see “Trump’s Funding Freezes Bruise a Core Constituency: Farmers” in the New York Times.

Every meal we eat depends on both our own farmers and on imported food, often from Canada or Mexico.

In My Kitchen this Month

Participating in Sherry’s “In My Kitchen” is always fun, as I like to look back on what I’ve been cooking, and then to share what other bloggers from far-away places have in their kitchens. Sherry herself lives in Australia, and I enjoy reading about bloggers’ kitchens in Europe, Canada, Africa,  and many US states. The world is small and tightly connected. Disruptions in global trade may not now affect other places, but eventually there may be more consequences than just for us in the US. Attributing any single price or availability change to a specific policy or program isn’t straightforward, but I think all Americans are beginning to experience the result of the new administration’s craziness.

More Foods That We’ve Cooked and Eaten Recently

Sautéed fresh mushrooms tossed with frozen peas.

Ginger muffins in silicone muffin cups.

Valentine gift from Carol: a box of fantastic chocolates, including a white-chocolate mouse.
Climate change and other factors have vastly disrupted cocoa production and caused large increases in prices.

Our new kitchen knife with a magnetic holder.

New serving tray with a local theme.

Thinking of Other People

Please understand that though I write about my own fortunate situation, I am deeply aware that many Americans are suffering terribly from the increasingly dire food situation in our country. This photo from the New York Times highlights the desperation for food that many are experiencing. (source)

Photos of mouse and of cows shared with Eileen’s Critters

Shared with Sherry’s IMK and with Deb at Readerbuzz.

Photos © 2022, 2025 mae sander

We Are All Ultra-Processed

 

It is depressing to read about the destructive effects of a great deal of the food we eat! I just reread Ultra-Processed People by Chris Van Tulleken (reviewed it here last January), and read The Dorito Effect by Mark Schatzker. Both books clearly define the topic of ultra-processing — a term that denotes a type of food processing that is recent, growingand demonstrably dangerous. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs) are the subject of many other books and articles, but these two present a very large part of the facts that are currently known.

The major characteristic of UPFs is the presence of industrial additives that have been developed in the last century, mainly quite recently. The first of these was saccharine, the artificial sweetener. Now there are thousands of them, with an incredible variety of effects on the taste, texture, shelf-life, and nutritional content of foods. Van Tulleken offers a list of such additives that might be listed on a package. If you see them, you know the product is ultra-processed. The list includes: monosodium glutamate, MSG, disodium guanlyate, disodium inosinate, torula, hydrolyzed protein, autolyzed yeast, saccharin (Sweet Twin, Sweet’N Low, Necta Sweet), aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, Sugar Twin), acesulfame potassium (Ace-K, Sunett, Sweet One), sucralose (Splenda), neotame (Newtame), advantame, and stevia.

A huge percent of food consumption is made up of UPFs, especially in the US and the UK, but also inmany other countries, including a growing segment of the poorest third-world countries. UPFs are much more difficult to resist eating in large quantities than foods without such additives: the food manufacturers view this as an advantage because (obviously) if you eat more they make more money. As Van Tulleken says:

“Sometimes entirely novel products and textures are created – things like gummy sweets or lentil-foam crisps – but usually the aim of UPF is to replace the ingredients of a traditional and much loved food with cheaper alternatives and additives that extend shelf life, facilitate centralised distribution and, it turns out, drive excess consumption. Pies, fried chicken, pizza, butter, pancake mix, pastries, gravies, mayonnaise – all these began as real food. But the non-UPF versions are expensive, so their traditional ingredients are often replaced with cheap, sometimes entirely synthetic, alternatives.” (Van Tulleken, p. 20)

The key here is that food manufacturers and retailers care primarily about making money, not about promoting health or about quality. Schatzker’s view is that agricultural development of larger yields from plants like corn and tomatoes and animals like cattle and chickens have resulted in a loss of flavor, which makes the additives even more necessary. He writes:

“The real reason food companies keep jacking spices and taking aim at specific receptors is that we need them to. Chicken is different now. Tomatoes are different now. Corn, pork, wheat, strawberries, broccoli, collard greens, melons, barley, celery, lettuce, and radishes are different now. All food is different. It’s been diluted. It’s gotten worse. It needs help.” (Schatzker, p. 63)

A vicious circle results. The evidence (which I’m not even trying to summarize) is enormous. In other words: the objection to UPFs is not merely about taste, overeating, or nutrition. Scientific studies have repeatedly shown that UPFs do substantial harm to their consumers. They cause many diseases, and they promote obesity at a very dangerous level. The studies have been validated many times, and results correspond to statistical observations about current human populations. It’s both sad and terrifying. 

For a summary of the unhappy truth about processing and food additives, see this article by Bee Wilson: “How ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket” (link) Though published in 2020, it has an excellent summary of the issues discussed at greater length in the two books and also in many other places. Here is her useful explanation:

“Why should food processing matter for our health? ‘Processed food’ is a blurry term and for years, the food industry has exploited these blurred lines as a way to defend its additive-laden products. Unless you grow, forage or catch all your own food, almost everything you consume has been processed to some extent. A pint of milk is pasteurised, a pea may be frozen. Cooking is a process. Fermentation is a process. Artisanal, organic kimchi is a processed food, and so is the finest French goat’s cheese. No big deal.

“But UPFs are different. They are processed in ways that go far beyond cooking or fermentation, and they may also come plastered with health claims. Even a sugary multi-coloured breakfast cereal may state that it is ‘a good source of fiber’ and ‘made with whole grains.’ Bettina Elias Siegel, the author of Kid Food: The Challenge of Feeding Children in a Highly Processed World, says that in the US, people tend to categorise food in a binary way. There is ‘junk food’ and then there is everything else. For Siegel, ‘ultra-processed’ is a helpful tool for showing new parents that ‘there’s a huge difference between a cooked carrot and a bag of industrially produced, carrot-flavoured veggie puffs’ aimed at toddlers, even if those veggie puffs are cynically marketed as ‘natural.’”

What’s in my pantry? What’s in your pantry? Are we doomed to eat this way? I don’t know.

Review © 2024 mae sander 

“Frostbite” by Nicola Twilley

Frostbite by Nicola Twilley describes two centuries of development of refrigeration: from ice houses and wooden boxes of ice in the 19th century through early technology for railroad shipment of meat and produce and onward to our current situation where a “Cold Chain” transports optimally chilled food from farm to table. In the US today this huge network ensures that we have fresh produce and meat no matter how far our meals have had to travel. Here’s a summary from the end of the book:

“Since the early days of the ice trade, refrigeration has changed everything about how and what we eat—reshaping trade, transportation, politics, and economics in the process. It has redesigned not only the contents of our plates but also our bodies, our homes, our cities, our landscape, and the global atmosphere. … Fridges have freed women from daily shopping and made fresh food both affordable and available year-round. For some farmers, refrigeration has offered a route to riches—or a way to escape the land. …

“Still, a wholehearted appreciation of those benefits shouldn’t prevent us from counting the cold chain’s costs and considering its alternatives—especially as the rest of the world starts to refrigerate. Some of its disadvantages are inherent to the technology. It takes a lot of energy to remove heat, which has environmental consequences but also tends to create socioeconomic ones, as smaller farmers growing a diversity of foods for local consumption are less likely to benefit than large landholders cultivating export crops at scale. The resulting concentration and intensification have their own ecological impacts. … Other outcomes are enabled by the fridge rather than fundamental to it. Food waste is used as a justification for refrigeration, but refrigeration also seems to encourage waste. … Refrigeration tends to shift where the waste takes place, as opposed to eliminating it. … In short, our food system is frostbitten: it has been injured by its exposure to cold.” (p. 309-310)

Frostbite includes fascinating histories of changes in agriculture, shipping, industry, and domestic life. Refrigeration affects the way food is grown, transported, processed, and sold. Home refrigerators as well as industrial advances made enormous changes not only in what can be purchased and kept on hand in households, but also ultimately in what is eaten. Fresh produce from farms can be quickly chilled, shipped in refrigerated train cars or trucks, held in cold storage facilities, and then delivered to supermarket refrigerators. Produce like tomatoes and bananas is harvested early and ripened on demand. Consumers generally are unaware of this long process or of the surprising age of their "fresh" food. They don’t seem to notice the loss of flavor compared to naturally ripened local and seasonal fruit and vegetables.

Bagged salad mix is an example of a recent invention that depended on refrigeration and changed people’s eating habits. This product required unbelievable new technology to create the storage bags that kept the leaves alive. “Astonishingly, the bag itself—a cheap, disposable plastic lettuce bag—was a miniaturized version of [a] … controlled atmosphere warehouse. The microperforations in its carefully designed films let oxygen in at one rate and carbon dioxide out at another to maintain the ideal atmospheric microclimate around the leaves as they traveled the country and sat on supermarket shelves.” (p. 130)

Orange juice, another revolutionized product, was radically changed after World War II. In its new frozen-concentrate form, it became a commodity product, not something squeezed at home from a seasonal fruit. The availability of frozen orange juice affected both supply and demand, including many newly planted orchards in Florida; innovations in the processing, packaging, shipping, and retail environment; and family habits: “Frozen orange juice, as opposed to fish sticks, ice cream, or TV dinners, was the killer app for home freezers.” (p. 148) Fresh-chill juice, which has largely replaced frozen juice, is a subsequent invention dependent on the “cold chain.”

Every chapter of the book had a few surprises for me as I read. While the author was more focused on the American experience with the progression from ice houses to modern refrigerated warehouses and huge home refrigerators, there’s also quite a bit about the more recent proliferation of refrigeration to other countries — such as China (where we meet a “frozen dumpling millionaire”) and Ruanda (where virtually no cold storage is currently in use at all). The impact of continued expansion of supply-chain dependence on refrigeration, with its enormous and environmentally dangerous energy demands, is very interesting. I’ve read many books about the development of food technology and about changes in agriculture and taste, and this is a good one!

The Earliest Large-Scale Cold Technology

Frostbite described the earliest machinery for managing large quantities of meat and produce, especially for managing large animal carcasses, which require specialized chilling to create meat that is tender and flavorful. As I read, I realized that I had once actually seen such a processing plant that was made into a combined museum and hotel. (It’s not mentioned in the book). 

This relic stands nearly at the southern tip of South America in Puerto Bories, Puerto Natales, Chile. The Puerto Natales region once raised sheep and cattle to be shipped to England via the docks of this town. The now-hotel preserves probably the most complete example of an early 20th century meat shipping facility with its interesting technology. Note that via modern air travel, we took around 3 days to get to Puerto Natales from North America, as it’s not even close to the nearest airport, which is in Puento Arenas — a truly remote place. Here are some photos from our trip in 2017.

This is the pier where the refrigerator ships once were loaded with frozen meat headed to England. Two black-necked swans are in front of the pier. Our reason to travel so far was seeing both scenery and wildlife.

A view from our room in the hotel. We stayed here one night on our tour of Patagonia and then continued to Torres del Paine, a Chilean national park. Then we traveled by ship to see more wildlife and scenery.

Looking out of the hotel you see the contrast to what was once a busy dock area.
The slaughter house and packing plant operated from 1913 to 1993.

I find the look of the old equipment — which was all imported from England — fascinating and beautiful, with its bright colors and complex patterns. But what are we seeing? In one room there is a huge electric-generating plant that supplied power not only for the factory, but for the town. In the meat-cooling areas, electric compressors turned ammonia vapor to liquid. Held in sealed coils it circulated and turned back from liquid to vapor, which removed heat from the surroundings and thus acted as a refrigerant. The scale was large enough to process large numbers of slaughtered animals and have them ready to load on ships at the dock.

To get from the reception and dining areas of the hotel to the bedrooms, one walks past the equipment that once was used to slaughter, butcher, chill, and prepare meat to be shipped from the nearby dock.

Chilling meat is important for both preserving and making it palatable: “For most of refrigeration’s short history, humans have focused on its ability to stop spoilage by slowing down the reproduction of bad bacteria. But in the much longer annals of meat eating, cool air has been equally, if not more, appreciated for its ability to ripen red meat, turning dry, tough muscle fiber into a juicy, savory steak.” (p. 98)

The Hotel in the Factory

The breakfast buffet is in one of the many converted areas where meat packing once took place.

 

The Singular Hotel, Patagonia, Chile.

 Photos of the hotel © 2017 mae sander.

Blog post and book review © 2024 mae sander