Science Friday; 873; Hour 1

From NPR News in New York, this is Talk of the Nation, Science Friday. I'm Ira Fledo. When you sit down to eat dinner tonight, take a minute to consider just how far your food traveled to get to your plate. Steak from Nebraska, strawberries from South America, sure you bought it at the local grocery store, but chances are your food traveled hundreds, perhaps thousands of miles before it hit your plate. This hour we'll consider the benefits of eating locally grown food. My guests say eating local can make us healthier and is better for the environment. Plus new images from colliding galaxies show the first direct evidence of dark matter. And Pluto gets demoted. The astronomers have kicked Pluto out of the planetary lineup. It's all coming up after this great. Stay with us. From NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan says European nations have come

through with strong pledges of troops for the UN peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon. Douglas Baxter reports. After an emergency meeting of the 25 nation European Union, Annan said Europe has offered enough troops to form the backbone of the UN force in Lebanon, but will not make up the entire 15 ,000 strong mission. More than half the force has been placed today. Not only troops on the ground, but we also got naval assets, as well as air -assessed air promised. Annan said he hopes lead elements of the force would be in the Middle East soon. France earlier offered 2 ,000 troops, Italy 3000 and Belgium 400. European nations wanted to clearly define mission in Lebanon. They were concerned about getting caught in a deadly crossfire between Israel and Hezbollah. The UN mission will work alongside a force of about 15 ,000 Lebanese troops. For NPR News, I'm Douglas Baxter in Luxembourg City. India is protesting the Netherlands arrest of 12 Indian men off a Northwest Airlines

plane this week. Related release when police failed to find evidence of attempted terrorism, the 12 passengers were detained after the crew of Northwest said the men were behaving suspiciously. The India -bound plane returned to Amsterdam airport as scorted by two Dutch fighter jets. A federal judge is weighing whether to block a strike by Northwest Airlines flight attendants, Detroit Public Radio's Quinn Kleinfelter reports. Officials with Northwest say the air carrier must find nearly one and a half billion dollars in savings if it hopes to emerge from bankruptcy protection. But the Union representing Northwest flight attendants rejected cuts in wages and benefits. Earlier this month, a bankruptcy court ruled that Northwest could impose those cuts on the Union. The flight attendants responded by threatening scattered workstapages in hopes of creating what the Union calls chaos among passengers. Now Northwest wants a federal court to block any strike, on grounds that it would violate requirements that labor and management engage in mediation before any workstapage. The U .S. Justice Department filed a brief earlier this week arguing that the judge should forbid the flight attendants from striking because

it could seriously disrupt the nation's transportation system. For NPR News, I'm Quinn Kleinfelter in Detroit. Another name's storm of this Atlantic hurricane season appeared to be on the horizon. Today, the National Hurricane Center reported a tropical depression more than 300 miles south of Puerto Rico is picking up speed. It's expected to turn into tropical storm at Nesto later today. That has the attention of energy traders who fear the storm could threaten Gulf of Mexico oil facilities still recovering from last year's storms. On Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average is down 18 points at 11 ,286. The Nasdaq Composite Index up about 4 points at 2140. This is NPR News. Fire crews in Southeast Oregon have a fast burning brush fire nearly half -contained at 115 ,000 acres. A dangerous blaze in southeast Washington is still uncontained at 66 ,000 acres. Andornfeld reports from Member Station KLCC in Eugene. Lightning sparked both

fires and dozens of others around the northwest. Fire Information Officer Jerry Mills says crews have been able to focus on the region's biggest blazes due to a lull and new fire starts. We only had six starts yesterday and that's really incredible. You know, when we had the line to come through, we'd have up to 100 starts today. Washington's Columbia Complex Fire and Oregon's South End Complex Fire forced hundreds of residents from their homes this week. The blazes have destroyed two houses, a fire truck and outbuildings. They also cut off powered parts of Oregon and Northern Nevada. For NPR News, I'm Andornfeld in Eugene, Oregon. A Virginia man gets 15 years in jail after he was convicted of supporting a Pakistani terrorist group. Prosecutors today said Ali Asad Chandia helped a senior member in the group, Lashkar E -type, by including driving him around the U .S. They say members of the so -called Virginia G -Hod group played paintball in the woods as part of a training for a global holy war. Chandia maintains his innocence.

A 12th suspect in Britain has officially been charged in an alleged plot to blow up several U .S. bound airliners. Today, a judge order 24 -year -old Umar Hussein charged with failing to tell police what he may know about his brother's involvement in the suspected plot. Another sibling was charged earlier for the same thing. The prosecutor says Nabil Hussein is in police custody, but to date, he has not been charged with a crime. This is NPR News. This is Talk of the Nation Science Friday. I'm Iroflado.

Like travelers jostling one another in a busy bus terminal, colliding galaxies have given us our first direct evidence of the mysterious dark matter, dark matter, and dark energy. Make up about 95 % of our universe. But being dark, it's hard to see them. We've only felt their presence. But now, observing a collision of galaxies located over a three billion light years away, astronomers have found direct proof that dark matter does exist. Why does this matter matter? Sean Carroll is a cosmologist and senior research associate at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. He joins us by phone. Welcome back to Science Friday, Dr. Carroll. Thank you, Iroflado. Do we know what the dark matter is? No, we don't. We know some things about it. We know some of its properties, and we know more or less where it is. But it's some particle that we don't know much about. It's not anything that has ever been produced in any experiment ever done in human history. So then how do we even know it exists? Well, Einstein taught us a long time ago that everything

in the universe has a gravitational field. Everything creates gravity around it. So no matter how invisible something is, no matter how reluctant it is to interact with us, it will lead to gravity. And with the dark matter collects in galaxies and clusters of galaxies, and then we can weigh those galaxies and clusters by looking at how fast things are moving within them. And from that we deduce that there's a lot more matter there than the visible matter, the ordinary matter, and so it must be dark matter. And let's not confuse them, they did the dark matter with the even more mysterious dark energy. That's right, dark energy is a brand new thing in the sense that it was first discovered in 1998, not that long ago. And dark matter is actually relatively normal compared to dark energy. Dark matter is some particle that we haven't detected yet, but we know what particles do, we know how they move around. Dark energy is inherent in empty space. Everywhere in the universe, every cubic centimeter has the same amount of dark energy as far as we can tell. It doesn't go away as the universe expands,

it doesn't collect from here and there, but it makes the universe accelerate, which is why we know that it's there. Let's talk about what you actually did, how you were able to detect or see the dark matter that you could not do before. What happened here? Sure, well I should first say that I didn't do it. Some astronomers working with NASA satellites and also ground -based observatories did it. But what they did was they observed a case where nature was nice enough to move the dark matter away from where the ordinary matter was. We've known for years and years that something was going on in galaxies and clusters. The gravitational fields were too strong to be explained by just the ordinary matter, but it could be dark matter or it could be some modification of gravity. Maybe gravity is just stronger than we expect on cosmological scales. And the reason why it was hard to tell the difference is because everywhere there was dark matter, there was also ordinary matter there.

What you would like is to take a big cluster of galaxies with a lot of dark matter and ordinary matter and sweep out all the ordinary matter, leaving only the dark stuff. And in fact, nature did this for us because it had two clusters of galaxies that collided. They went right through each other. The ordinary matter ran into the ordinary matter from the other cluster, heated up and got stuck in the middle, but the dark matter doesn't interact. The dark matter just went right through. So when scientists took two different pictures of this cluster, one looking at x -rays to determine where the normal matter was and the other inferring where the dark matter is from gravitational lensing, which we can talk about, they noticed that the dark matter was in a separate place. There were two big blobs of dark matter on either side, a whole bunch of ordinary matter in between. It's just not possible to explain that using a modification of gravity, so this makes us quite confident that there really is dark matter there. So you actually didn't, you were able to see the separation of the two kinds of matter, but you still could not see the dark matter being dark.

No, that's right. You can only see the influence of the dark matter through its gravitational field. But the point is that now we have a gravitational field that is pointing in the direction where there's not that much matter. So the way to explain that is that there is some dark stuff there, stuff that we don't actually see. So the point is that the next thing to do is to figure out what that particle is that is the dark matter, and we're trying to do that with experiments here on Earth. What kind of experiment? Well, the best thing would be to detect it directly, so people are building underground laboratories shielding themselves from cosmic rays and other forms of interference. And hoping that the dark matter is interacting with ordinary matter, but just really, really weekly. And if we are very sensitive and very careful about looking for it, we'll see a dark matter particle bump into a detector and find it directly that way. The other thing to do is to build a particle accelerator, to collide very energetic particles with each other and see what new particles they make in those collisions. And we have a big particle accelerator with whom we're putting

the last touches on it, it's a CERN in Geneva, and it's going to turn on next year. We're very hopeful that among the many things we discover at this new particle accelerator will be a good candidate for dark matter. So you have to find new particles in nature then that we don't know about. Absolutely. That's what makes it so exciting that all the particles in nature that we know about, that we've made in the lab, are not good candidates for what this dark matter is. It has to be some new kind of particle. And theorists have been very energetic in coming up with different models for what it could be. So we have plenty of possibilities, but the possibilities are all very different from each other. So we would love to pin down which one is right. Sean Carroll, thank you for taking time to talk with us. Sure, thank you, Aaron. Sean Carroll is a cosmologist at Caltech. Up next are our global grocery store. If you're like most

Americans, chances are that a good portion of the food in your fridge has transverse the globe, gone around the globe sometimes to get to you. Let us from California, you get bananas from South America, you get beef from the Brasca mushrooms from Pennsylvania may get tomatoes from Israel or Spain and go on and on and on where these things are coming from. By one estimate, an average pound of produce has traveled nearly 1 ,500 miles to get to your taste buds. Think of all those mileage points you could get if you were tomato like that. In the old days, we ate food that was in season, right? You had corn and tomatoes, they showed up in the local grocery in the summertime. You got broccoli in the cooler weather. But now eating strawberries when there's snow on the ground isn't very unusual. Those and other fruits and veggies from far -flung lands are part of our weekly shopping list. We're willing to pay a bit extra for them, but what are the real costs? Shipping all this food around takes up a significant part of our fossil fuel supply and what about food safety? Can being dependent on food

grown far from where we live make us vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply as for health is locally grown just pick produce healthier for us. These are some of the issues we're going to be talking about and I invite you to call. I know you're going to call us because we always get lots of calls on this topic and the number is 1 -800 -989 -8255 -1 -800 -989 -TALK. Let me introduce my guests. Brian Hall -Wiles, the author of Eat Here, reclaining, reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket. He's senior researcher at the World Watch Institute. He joins us here in our studios. Welcome to Science Friday. Thanks for having me. You're welcome. Jennifer Wilkins is a Kellogg food and society policy fellow and a senior extension associate in the Division of Nutrition Sciences at Cornell University up there in Ithaca. She's also a nutritionist and a dietician and she joins us from the Cornell campus. Thanks for talking with us today, Dr. Wilkins. Thank you,

Ira. You're welcome. Let me ask you, Brian, give us a sense of where food comes from. I outlined it in the book. I mentioned it a little bit differently. First, where does it come from and why does it come from all these places? Well, today all of us are eating food from farther and farther away. It's partly a result of the fact that we've become very good at shipping stuff all around the planet, not just food, but computers and sneakers and lumber and steel. We have excellent transportation technology that's evolved from steamships to railroads to now refrigerated 18 wheelers and refrigerated cargo planes. And we are in search of whatever, we're in search of food that is raised most cheapest wherever it is on the planet. You show an interesting illustration of the state of Iowa, which we all know is a great agricultural state, but the people buying the food there and the food none of its local except maybe the corn. Right. The irony of the whole center of the country, the

corn belt, is that most of that corn in soybeans goes elsewhere and those very productive agricultural counties end up importing most of their food. The folks at Iowa State University at the Leopold Center looked at a typical meal consumed in Iowa, some beef, some string beans, some carrots and potatoes, berries for a pie, wheat for bread. And what they found is that most of those ingredients came from between a thousand and two thousand miles away from as far away as Chile and mostly from California. Even though Iowa is perfectly capable of raising all of those ingredients for the vast majority of the year and most importantly what they found is that long distance meal consumed about 17 times as much energy in transportation as that same meal raised within 50 miles of the university itself. So not only is it gobbling up a tremendous amount of money, but it's actually taking

dollars out of the state dollars that could be going to Iowa farmers. And why isn't it grown there then if it's possible? If you can, why not do it? Well it gets back to this sort of economic calculus that defines global trade, that defines trade anywhere at this point. And that is if a store in Iowa can find a sack of potatoes grown slightly cheaper than it would cost them to grow it in Iowa, they get it from wherever they can. And because fuel is relatively inexpensive, relatively small part of that cost, we're willing to ship those potatoes from from as far away as China. And we don't really attach a lot of value right now to the fact that those potatoes might have been grown locally which might mean that they're fresher and tastier, but also means that we're not causing all this pollution and congestion as a result of the energy use, and also means that we're keeping money in our local economy. Talking with Brian Hall, wild author of Eat Here, reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket put out by the World Watch Institute. It's a World Watch book. Also with me

is Jennifer Wilkins. She is a Kellogg of Food and Society Policy Fellow and Senior Extension Associate in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. We're going to take a break, come back, talk with Dr. Wilkins and take your questions and talk more with Brian Hall, while so stay with us. We'll be right back after the short break. I'm Ira Flato. This is Talk of the Nation Science Friday from NPR News. I'm Ira Flato and I'm Dr. Wilkins and I'm Dr. Wilkins and I'm Dr. Wilkins and I'm Dr. Wilkins.

You're listening to Talk of the Nation Science Friday. I am Ira Flato. We're talking about of food this hour with Brian Hall, wild author of Eat Here, reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket. Jennifer Wilkins, who is at Cornell University in Ithaca, our number 1 -800 -989 -8255. Dr. Wilkins, you write about the fossil fuel consuming a huge portion of our food costs. Well, it certainly does. Our food system is very fossil fuel dependent and very heavily uses fossil fuels. It's estimated that about 20 percent of our fossil fuel uses is used in the entire food system from production

to getting food on our table. And for every calorie that we consume about 10 calories, a fossil fuel has been used to produce that. What is the politics of all of this? I know the Department of Agriculture has one of the biggest buildings in Washington and it's been there for decades. There's got to be politics of the farm bill, farmers and whatever, in setting up a structure where it's cheaper, the ship at a thousand miles than it is to grow locally. Well, I think historically, particularly since the 1950s, our agricultural policy has really been driven by a desire for farms to be the most productive as possible with the lowest cost. And so we concentrated our support for agriculture within a fairly narrow set of what's called commodities. They're not called food. They're called commodities. And you mentioned a few that are that Iowa is known for corn and soybeans, but we also support heavily wheat, grain, sorghum, barley, oats, cotton and rice. And these crops really make up 74 percent

of the total that sort of answers part of the question is that we're very concerned about and want our agricultural policies to support production and increase yield per acre and also support our export. So it's very export oriented. And what this tends to do is drive consolidation and concentration in our agricultural production. So therefore you have the situation that you were mentioning in places in Iowa where you have areas that don't produce a lot of their own food and have to import it when they very well could. Brian, you point out in your book of fallacy about the efficiency of factory farms versus local farms. Well, again, as Jennifer said, you know, it sort of depends how we what we want to get out of our farms. If you are solely interested in how much corn or soy beans or wheat you can get off of a typical

acre, then American farms are very productive. They're sort of the leaders around the planet. But if you think about the total nutritional value raised on that acre, if you think about the energy that goes into that raising that corn, if you think about some of the agrochemicals, some of which cause pollution going into that farm, then all of a sudden a factory farm is not that productive. And consider, for instance, how most of the meat in this country is raised. Most of the cows and pigs and chickens in this country as we sometimes don't like to imagine are crammed into these giant feed lots where they're not allowed to move much, which makes them very efficient converters of feed into meat and brings down costs, but really only in the short term because we know that these farms are breeding grounds for all sorts of food safety problems and diseases. And we also know that these farms tend to burn out because diseases become so prevalent that they're really only productive for a few years, then the farmers got to move on and set up shop somewhere else. So the

agricultural system that we've set up, this long distance food system, is really only efficient in the same sense that a coal -fired power plant is efficient. It produces energy, but only if you ignore all the smog that's coming with it. Dr. Wilkins, you wrote an article in the Times Union, the local newspaper in Albany, New York, saying, food policies fail to spur good health. And you talk about something that sort of flies below the radar screen of most Americans, most politicians, and that is the legislation that sets up the farm bill and what goes on in the farm bill affects just about all kinds of things that we eat. Talk about what your concerns are. Well, and this gets back to our concentration of supporting very few commodities as opposed to supporting diversity and variety, which we promote in the dietary guidelines. So our dietary guidelines are very sound in what they're promoting in terms of eating a

variety of fruits and vegetables and eating whole grains and a variety of different kinds of foods. Yet our production system that we support with policy is very narrow in what it supports. And the Economic Research Service of the USDA has estimated that we would need to put in six million acres more in crop production to supply the kinds of foods if people shifted to the dietary guidelines and produce far fewer acres of corn and far few acres about 10 million fewer acres of soybeans. So we're producing foods that are then converted to being available as commodities to the food industry that then finds multiple uses for them. We walk into a supermarket today and see nearly 40 ,000 items in the supermarket gives a really great impression of a lot of choice. But when you start really looking at the ingredients and a lot of the packaged foods and highly processed foods that we have in the supermarket, you'll see you'll start seeing the

same ingredients all over the place and high fructose corn syrup, which didn't exist before 1970, is now pervasive throughout our food system. Is a lot of added fat from soybeans? Do you think that part of the speaking of that, do you think that part of the obesity epidemic with kids and that we're seeing now becomes because we're not eating more directly from the farm and eating too many processed foods? Well, I think that there probably is one factor. Another is that we have seen over the last several years, a tendency toward larger and larger portions being available. So it's not only that people are not eating directly from the farm, they're not eating a diversity of foods that they once did. They're seeing food everywhere. Food is ubiquitous around us, our eating environment is sort of as it's been described as toxic in terms of being prone to making us obese. And we have larger and larger portion sizes. But the concern about

obesity is one of the things that's causing people to rebel against this food system. Eating locals probably the easiest way to cut out a lot of those highly processed junk foods because you are depending on more raw wholesome ingredients that you're cooking yourself. It's also a very good way to avoid all sorts of preservatives and fume against that are used on foods that have to endure a long shelf life and long distance transportation. Let's go to Beth and Ottawa Illinois. Hi, welcome to Science Friday, Beth. Hi, thanks. I just wanted to say that my husband and I are farmers. We do have one of those small local farms that we also encourage people to eat locally. We have vegetables as well as chickens, beef, and pig. And I wanted to let your listeners know about a great resource called localharvest .org. And you can go to their website and search by your zip code and find local farms doing CSAs and farmers markets in any area of the country. Are you able to make a good living doing this? We're working on it. It's a

challenge and it's a whole lot of work. But it's starting to come together. This is our fourth year in business and this will be the first year that we're doing it without a second farm income. Brian, typical of a small farm? It's typical not just of a small farm but also of a lot of these sort of startup businesses that are rising to meet this demand for local food, for organic food, for grass fed meats, and sort of alternative foods compared to what we typically get in the supermarket. The supports aren't there in the same sense of the sorts of massive subsidies that go for large commodity farms. And the support isn't yet there from consumers like you and me. I mean a lot of us are beginning to shop at farmers markets by food directly from farms. But the vast majority of places where we do are eating and cafeterias and restaurants and supermarkets. Those are only beginning to come to the party now. They're only beginning to realize the benefits of eating local. And some big food corporations are rising up to it. And that's beginning to make a difference for small farmers like

this couple in Iowa. Beth, thanks for Illinois, rather. Thanks for calling, Beth. Good luck to you. Let me ask Dr. Wilkins cafeterias. I mean, can they make a difference if they decide what they're going to order? Absolutely, they can. I mean, individual food choices is one major area to look at. And individuals, if you look at consumer research recently, local has surpassed organic in terms of an interest that consumers have that are driving food choices. But you look at institutional food service, cafeterias and schools, colleges, hospitals, prisons, they're much bigger buyers. And so when they make a decision to buy local and buy direct from farmers, it makes a huge impact on the local economy. And there are several examples. There are over 400 school districts. It's estimated that are buying or have farm to school programs right now. And they're buying from local farmers either directly or through their suppliers. And Kaiser

Permanente has been well getting a lot of attention for their work in this area. Brian, talk about this diner, the farmer's diner in Vermont, right? This is another great example of a sort of typical food business, but instead of using typical ingredients, they're buying all their ingredients locally. A few years back, a farmer in Barry Vermont named Todd Murphy decided he wanted to open a diner. In fact, there was a defunct diner in his town, and he wanted to start a diner there, but he would serve all the typical diner foods. But instead of getting all of his ingredients from some big distributor that shows up once a week in an 18 -wheel truck and drops it all off, he wanted to get everything from within 50 miles. So the beef for the burgers and the wheat for the hamburger buns and the berries and the fruit for the pancakes and the milk for the milkshakes and the eggs for the omelets all come from

farms and food makers within 50 miles. And the business is thriving, partly because people are intrigued by this idea, it serves very good food. In the winter, you don't get a tomato on your burger, you get a slice of pickled beet on your burger, which some people, I guess, prefer. And there has been a plan to franchise the idea, not only in Vermont, but into Boston. And the business is experiencing some growing pains like this farm in Illinois because it's trying to redefine the model. But it's a very good example of how eating locals beginning to grow beyond the culinary fringe. Supermarkets are beginning to do similar things. There's a supermarket chain in the Pacific Northwest called New Seasons markets based in Portland, Oregon, a typical supermarket. But a large share of all the products that they sell come from the Pacific Northwest and they bear a label that designates that. A lot of their seafood, a lot of their meat, a lot of their vegetables come from there. And they make a very big effort to educate their

customers about that fact. And what they found is it draws customers into stores. Sometimes people are willing to pay more for it, but it also helps educate people about what's in season in their area. I've heard about some of these being food coops where people put up money in the front and they get the harvest later. Exactly. And there's also a movement to buy a sort of food subscription where you might become a member of a farm. It's referred to as a CSA community -supported agriculture. In the sense that you pay up front to the beginning of the season to become a member in an exchange every week or so, you get a box of produce, which is able to feed your family. You share in the risk of this farmer who's trying to make a go at something new. And if the farmer has a very abundant crop of something, you also share in that. But again, these are all just really good examples of Americans becoming fed up with anonymous food, wanting to know where their food's coming from, who's growing it, what impact it's

on their landscape and having some direct control over that. Talking about food this hour and talk of the Nation Science Friday from NPR News with Brian Hall -Wile, author of Eat Here, Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket and Jennifer Wilkins, a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow and Senior Extension Associate in the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University, Nithika. Jennifer, being a Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow, how do the big food companies, the process food companies view these things? Do they view these, the movement back to local as a threat or something they want to get in on? Well, I think that they maybe are starting to pay attention. It's still a fairly small part of the market, but I think that they are starting to look at this as maybe something that they can take advantage of and maybe build into their profile.

We're starting to learn that Walmart, for example, might be wanting to buy more local. They have bought local in New York. They, in fact, have featured local apples and other New York state -grown products. I think that this is a very good opportunity. It is definitely an opportunity for local growers. I think that with this opportunity, of course, will come challenges. It presents a chance for states, local areas to maybe develop an organized way of approaching this so that farmers can definitely reap some benefit in terms of making sure that they get the cost of production while they're doing business with a big entity like that. Brian, if we all want to eat locally and buy locally, are there enough farmers and farms out there for us to find to do that? And if there were to be a switch, could we make the switch? I think there's no doubt that we could make the switch. We've lost a lot

of farms in this country. The number of farms has gone from close to around 10 million at the beginning in 1900 to under 2 million today. It's a little known fact that there are now more people incarcerated in the United States than there are full -time farmers. And that's a good example of what's happened to our food system. There will definitely be more people flocking back to the land to start up farms, to start up small -scale food businesses as this movement grows and as there's more demand. The reality is, as Wal -Mart gets interested, as big food distributors get interested, as big healthcare companies like Kaiser Permanent get interested, it becomes easier for people to do this. It's not just sort of die -hard parents who want to shop seasonally and can and store food year round for their families, but we'll be able to eat locally by going to our local restaurant or by going to our local supermarket. But people are not going to give up the convenience of having their off -season fruits and vegetables in the winter time, for example. They may not

right now, but that convenience also comes with some problems. 80 % of the tomatoes in this country are ripened artificially after they're harvested. That is, they're harvested green so they could be shipped long distances and when they get close to where they're going to be sold, they're exposed to ethylene gas to ripen them up. Now, that compromises flavor in a major way, anyone who's raised around tomatoes or shopped at a farm stand knows what a tomato is supposed to taste like. So, that convenience of getting that tomato in the middle of the winter or a strawberry comes with a cost to flavor, comes with a cost to your local farmer who is dependent on selling those tomatoes and strawberries to you during tomato season. They're sort of an excitement involved in waiting for that season to come around. And a great flavor, much different, as you talk about. We'll talk more about the foods we're going to take a short break talking with Brian Hall while eat here, reclaiming homegrown pleasures in a global supermarket. Jennifer Wilkins of Cornell University,

and I think I'll stay with us. We'll be right back with your calls and more questions so don't go away. I am, I reflected what this is, talk of the Nation Science Friday from NPR News. Support for NPR comes from this and other NPR stations. And from the National Science Foundation, America's investment in the future. From Boston Scientific, now more than ever, innovating to help doctors improve patient care, delivering what's next, BostonScientific .com. And from the Cresky Foundation, investing in non -profits to help them catalyze growth, connect to stakeholders, and challenge greater support on the web at Cresky .org. This is NPR, National Public Radio. Could a new

way to make stem cells solve a moral dilemma? I, my Reflado, join me on the next Science Friday as we talk about a research breakthrough, plus one year after Katrina, we're have all the hurricanes gone, and the latest link between hurricanes and global warming. That's all on Talk of the Nation from NPR News. You're listening to Talk of the Nation Science Friday. I'm I Reflado. We're talking about to eating

locally this hour with my guest Brian Hall -Wall, author of Eat Here, a reclaiming home grown pleasures, and a global supermarket put up by Norton is a World Watch Institute book. Also Dr. Jennifer Wilkins, who is a senior extension associate Cornell University, she is the Kellogg Food and Society Policy Fellow at Cornell. Number 1 -800 -989 -8255. In fact, you're welcome, what about terrorism? If having our food supply so concentrated in the hands of a few companies, is that dangerous for us? Well, anytime you have a one large target that if hit has a big consequence, that's probably more dangerous than having a more distributed system, and this would be true of the food system. So if you have many smaller entities of a more dispersed production and processing and distribution system, it's less of a target that just seems logical. So it would be more secure, and it's great. I have this poster on my office door

at work. It was produced by the New York State Farm Bureau, and it has a big banner at the top. It has Homeland Security on it, and then the slogan at the bottom is Eat Local. It matters. So that big farm representing representative agencies really noticing this. And this isn't just a theoretical concern. The Department of Homeland Security a few years ago ran a war game, a simulation to look at how the United States would respond to an act of agricultural terrorism. That is, if someone were to dump some corn fungus out of a plane flying over the Midwest or introduce foot and mouth disease onto a Western cattle rancher, dumpy coli into the batch at a large centralized processing plant. When all was said and done, the agricultural and military officials running this concluded that the long -distance nature and intense concentration of our food system,

they make us a proverbial sitting duck, very vulnerable to spikes in oil prices, vulnerable to disruption, the transportation system, and vulnerable to any sort of large -scale food contamination if it's accidental or malicious. It could very easily begin to affect millions of people all around the country. In contrast, it's not to say that local farms are immune to these sorts of problems, but the problem is likely to be much more localized and able to be controlled, and a lot of food safety problems are a result of how long food is kept after it's been harvested. 1 -800 -999 -8255. Let's go to San Diego. Fred, hi. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi. We just, as part of a school project, my son, we switched from, I guess you consider standard food buying practices to local or inorganic. While I have to say the quality, certainly as the vegetables has improved, it has come

at a significant cost. Our food bill for a family of four was running about 1 -89 a week, and we're now at 3 -29 a week for a local and organic. I don't know how many families can afford that, but that's that's a significant jump in costs. We're in San Diego, which I think is probably given all the farms we have around here. I would think we're probably as good off in this regard as anybody. I think it's a real concern, and sometimes shopping that way will be more expensive. It's not always going to be. Shopping in season is often a lot cheaper than shopping out of season. When local tomatoes are in, they're going to be a lot cheaper than in the middle of the winter. A part of that cost difference could be the organic food, as opposed to the local

food. Right now we're in a situation where the sort of markup of organic food in this country is still considerably higher than conventional foods. But I think it's also important to look at what we're spending our food dollars on, how we're eating. Think about buying a bag of potato chips versus buying a few pounds of potatoes. We're willing to pay three bucks for a bag of potato chips, which has barely a potato in it, and in three dollars will buy you a lot of raw potatoes. Of course, that does come with the need to cook them and be creative in your kitchen. But I think there are ways to eat locally and to seek out organic food and still keep the budget in mind. Dr. Wilkins. Well, yes, and I think that this is a good place to talk about schools again, because we are now school is starting, and there's a lot of attention being paid on the food that is served in schools in terms of addressing childhood obesity. And if you look at the cost that food service directors have to work with to provide a lunch,

it's about $2 .33. And about half that goes to labor and equipment and other expenses of the food service operations. So you're getting down to about a dollar 50 that might be available for food. So in terms of our national policy and our state policy, in terms of reimbursements for those meals, we need to start looking at how much we're really providing to the schools and what we're expecting them to be able to serve. If we want them to serve fresh fruits and vegetables, perhaps organic, perhaps locally grown, then we need to realize that that's more valuable and it's worth spending more money on. And that costs that the price that we pay for a given food item, whether it's local or organic, doesn't necessarily give us a sense of all it goes into that food. I mean, think of buying a meal at McDonald's, which is inexpensive, but it's not particularly healthy. So buying something that's raised locally or buying something that's raised organically, even if it's more expensive, that's money that's staying in your local economy. It's money that's preserving farmland in your

area. If it's an organic farm, that's money that's keeping pollutants out of the water supply, which someone does have to pay for eventually. It's got a Sandra in Memphis. Hi, Sandra. Hi, how are you today? Fine, quickly. After reading some of our Kings Harbor books, I made a decision about two and a half years ago to start eating locally and more importantly, eating seasonally and not demanding raspberries and january and strawberries and February, but finding the progress that was available in my local market from local farmers. That means eating a lot of root crops in the winter time or eating reconstituted dried vegetables or fruit, but I think it's been worth it. And I've even found some sources to buy bulk coffees and such to cut down on the transportation cost. I think it's been worth it. Well, this gentleman in San Diego said it was very expensive to him. Do you find it that expensive for you? It has not changed my food budget at all, but again, I'm not demanding oranges in january. I'm

buying local produce in season. I mean, you can go to the health food store and buy raspberries in the middle of winter, but you're going to pay a tremendous cost for them. Well, good looking. And the cost to the environment in terms of the fuel that's expended to get those fruit and vegetables to me is my concern that it's a bigger cost to the planet than I'm willing to pay. Thank you, Sandra. Thanks for coming. Thank you, thank you. 1 -800 -998 -255 is a number. We just got a few more minutes left of Brian. Do you think we're going to be seeing growing more, I mean, of more farms like these and these restaurants that can? Oh, we already are. The number of farmers markets in the United States has doubled just in the last five years. There's not a school, major school district in this country, as Jennifer indicated, that isn't trying some program to get more locally raised ingredients into the schools to make it fresher and healthier. And all the innovators in agribusiness are realizing that this is going to be an important way for them to distinguish themselves from their competition,

but also to get ahead from their competition and to get back to some sort of connection to their community. I mean, that's the reason why Walmart's interested. Dr. Wilkins, you're taken and the possible future of politically in the farm bill? Well, I definitely agree with Brian that if you look at what consumers are interested in today, they're interested in expressing their values in their purchases. They're interested in taste, nutrition, and flavor, and eating locally is definitely a way to do that. There are organizations all over the country right now that are weighing in and developing language for the farm bill, but there's other ways of expressing values and expressing your desires as consumers in policy. And one way to do that is just to communicate with your congressperson about the fact that you want more locally grown fruits and vegetables, you value fresh, and you want organic, and you want to have agriculture production that is good for the environment.

Could you just say that also to your local food supplier? You're supermarkets. Absolutely, absolutely. It's been determined that it takes us few as three requests at a supermarket for the supermarket to carry an item. So I would encourage consumers to express their desires and tell their supermarkets that they would like to have more locally grown available to them. I want to thank both of you for taking time to be with us today. Jennifer Wilkins, who was a senior extension associate Cornell University. She is the Kellogg, Food and Society Policy Fellow at Cornell. Thank you, Dr. Wilkins for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. You're welcome, Brian. A whole while's author of Eat Here. He is a senior researcher at the World Mod Institute to eat here, reclaiming homegrown pleasures and a global supermarket. It's an eye -opening book. I highly recommend it. Thank you for taking time to be with us today. Thank you. It was a pleasure, Ira. A program notes a year ago, Hurricane Katrina,

howl the shore and the residents of the Gulf Coast fled homes and neighborhoods. Some have never been seen again now. For next week's science Friday, we want to know where you are. So for Talk of the Nation on Monday, we want to know where you are, where you have shown up. If you're left the Gulf Coast because of Katrina, we want you to email your story to Talk of the Nation on Monday. We'll be talking about it on that show with a Neil and his guest. So here's your email address. Talk at npr .org. That's simple. Talk at npr .org. That's from Monday's Talk of the Nation from NPR News. We're going to continue now and talk about something that happened this week. Something strange to a lot of people. What happened with the Pluto? Pluto is gone. It's no longer a planet. That's the latest decision by the folks who decide what a planet is. That's the International Astronomical Union. And after a roller coaster of debate, yesterday, its members voted to drop Pluto from the ranks of

planetum. Keep the number of classic planets to eight. Joining us now to talk more about the Y Museum gift shops must now relabel their inventory is npr. Science correspondent David Kestinbaum. David, welcome to Science Friday. Hi, Ira. Sound like there was a rocket debate going on there. Yeah, what's next, Rhode Island? It was a total stunning reversal of fortune because this had been something that had been debated for years and in June, the International Astronomical Union appointed a secret little group to gather in Paris and try and come up with something they thought everyone could agree on. And they thought they'd done it and they were very excited about it. And it got presented at the meeting and it was totally torn shreds. Yeah. And their proposal would have kept Pluto. It was it was what you might call a structuralist approach and they basically said look a planet is you know, it's round. It's big enough that gravity has pulled it into a round shape. You know, when you think about that makes a lot of sense. But then when you when they write down your definition, you realize, oh, we're going to have to include Pluto's

moon Sharon. Oh, and there's this asteroid in the asteroid belt called series that counts also. And oh, maybe there a dozen, two dozen, three dozen, maybe four, five dozen other things out by Pluto, which are going to count. Also, and I think that, you know, there are people who to whom that didn't quite seem right either. Yeah. So yeah. So what did they decide to do with Pluto? Well, so they just so there was an alternate proposal that was put forward, which which added one requirement said it has to be round. It's got to go around the sun. But it also has to be a gravitational bully. It has to be big enough that it can clear out any riff raff from, you know, from the area, from its orbit. And Pluto doesn't count because it's part of the Kiber Bell and there are hundreds of objects out there. So that passed overwhelmingly. People stood in this big auditorium. They held up a yellow card and they didn't even count the no votes because it was clear. Talking with David Kested Bell, in pure science correspondent on talk of the nation science Friday from NPR News. So now they have this headed. So now they will have to describe

basically in different words, what these different objects are. Pluto, the planets and these other objects. Pluto is going to be is counted as a dwarf planet, but they say it's not a planet. It's actually there was an amendment offered where they were putting, they put it in quotes. It is important that it be quote, dwarf planet end quote. And they're going to be probably a bunch of, a bunch of those and then, and then there are other small things in the solar system. But they did vote to give Pluto some special kind of designation, but they couldn't come up with a name. They're going to say Plutino or something, right? Plutino, Plutonian, Plutonian was close, but I think it was 186 to 183. And so yeah, Pluto is special, but we don't quite know what we're calling it yet. And some future subcommittee of a committee of a committee is going to decide that. You know, the astronomers really care about this. I mean, you know, they know what it is. Why? Well, it's just a nomenclature there stuck out. Right. So there's a whole category of people who say, I don't care. It is what it is. Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered it, his wife,

he died, but his wife said apparently before he said, before he died, he said, well, it is what it is. You know, it's a big rock out there that people are interested in as a big member of the Kuiper belt. So there are people in that category, but you know, there are definitely Pluto huggers out there, and for historical reasons, we want to keep it. And there are other people who said, look, it's ridiculous to include this teeny tiny little rock, you know, along with the other big thing. And you had already some planetariums that had taken it out of it, out of their exhibit area. The Rose Center, the Planetarium in New York. If you talked to Neil deGrasse Tyson, who runs it, he says, look, we didn't take it out. We never had it, you know, but where they actually put it is in the Kuiper belt exhibit, and they do call the other things planets. So you can see why he's got a file a hate mail from kids, which he has. Right. Right. And headaches in the, and headaches in the museum shop where they probably have objects, they'll say, Pluto. I think this is going to increase support for Pluto. You know, I think people are really going to rally behind this little thing.

But he did, Neil said that if the voted gone the other way, if Pluto had been included, he was going to go down. And he would have etched in a new inscription underneath Pluto to say, by the way, this is considered some sort of planet or something. So he was among the people who really didn't care. He thought it was the least interesting question you could ask. Well, you know, but it stirred up debate. People are talking about the planets in the solar system, like they never have. It's true. I mean, it's a much more interesting thing to talk about. Like, how would you define a planet? Turns out it's really hard because you say it's big and round. Well, then what about our moon? You know, that's funny, big and round or Europa or it just becomes very hard. You do start to think it's like, it's like saying, what's the difference between a river and a stream? You know, Supreme Court held that. There was some cases. We won't go there today. But you're right. But yeah. So, you know, it's hard to play. All right. You've run out of time. David, thank you very much for taking time to talk with us about Pluto. You're welcome. David Kestinbaum is a science correspondent for NPR. This program is produced by Karen Vergoth and senior producer and at Heist, our directors are Gwen Outten in Washington, Charles Berquist in New York. Our intern is Julie Leibach,

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