On Urban Farms, a Sense of Place

by Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel
This post originally appeared on the Atlantic Food Channel

A few weekends ago I went to a picnic in Red Hook, Brooklyn at my friends Ian and Curt’s farm. We ate picked salad while overlooking the New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. Pretty cool spot for a farm. But we could have been anywhere. You see, the farm is in the bed of a truck. You might have seen a picture of it on the cover of the latest issue of Edible Brooklyn.

The Truck Farm is the latest, and maybe coolest, addition to a growing body of work that urban dwellers are collectively creating: growing our own food in the city. My own inadvertent contribution is in the closed alley behind my apartment in Greenwood Heights. I’ve got hay bales I brought back with me from a trip to see friends upstate. I layered them with worm castings from the worm compost bin under the sink in my apartment, and planted herbs and vegetables directly in the bales. Now they are spilling over with basil, lemon verbena, thyme, parsley, salad, and tomatoes.

Some people say this new back-to-the-land-in-the-city trend grows out of a desire to eat food that tastes like something. Others say it comes from the need to save money in an uncertain economy. Some say it is to reduce our carbon footprint. Sure. It is all of those things.

But I think it is something else, too. The impulse to grow food, particularly in a cement landscape grows out of a simple desire to be connected to place.

More after the jump

Saving Soul Food Farm

by Gordon Jenkins

Those of you live in the San Francisco Bay Area may have already heard about the tragic fire that burned through Soul Food Farm in Vacaville, CA on September 3rd. Farmers Alexis and Eric Koefed are some of the most beloved and forward-thinking egg farmers in the Bay Area, and a deeply supportive community of people who purchase and enjoy their eggs have stepped up to help the Koefeds in a number of big ways: an emergency fund, raffles, benefit dinners and a whole lot of emotional support. In this case, the story of a community stepping in to help an outstanding local farm in a time of need is as heartening as the story of the Sept. 3 fire is tragic. The farm’s tragedy is everyone’s tragedy – and in time, the farm’s success is going to be everyone’s success.

Find out how to support the Koefeds on writer Bonnie Powell’s blog The Ethicurean and on chef Samin Nosrat’s blog Ciao Samin. Alexis Koefed also wrote an inspiring post on the Soul Food Farm blog about keeping one’s chin up in hard times.

The GMO debate: Changemakers challenges consumers to weigh in

The GMO debate rages on—with one side, including our Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and our Secretary of bajillions-of-dollars-to-invest Bill Gates, suggesting that our best hope for feeding the world’s growing population is genetically modified crops.

Some of us, on the other hand, doubt GMOs actual ability to yield, and fear their still unknown effects, their potential threat to the environment, destruction of agrarian culture, and damage to the livelihoods of farmers.  Not to mention we doubt the veracity of scientific research funded by big, powerful corporations. 

Government agencies, scientists, farmers, and advocacy organizations have weighed in, but what can we actually do? What solutions are available to help the average person make the right choices? How do we really know what we’re eating and feeding our families?

These questions are being addressed right now as part of Ashoka’s Changemakers’ GMO Risk or Rescue? Helping Consumers Decide online challenge. From now until October 21st, Changemakers invites everyone to submit ideas that will educate and advocate for consumers—whether you’re for or against genetically modified organisms.

GMO Risk or Rescue? Helping Consumers Decide is a competition in search of solutions. Anyone with an idea—from a local gardener with a seed preservation project, to a University-sponsored pro-GMO campaign—is welcome to voice their opinion, promote their cause, and ultimately provide the answers that will affect our world.

The Changemakers online community will vote for the most innovative ideas, and one lucky winner will receive a $1,500 Changemakers Idea Grant and have the opportunity to meet with Michael Pollan. The winner will be revealed on November 4th.

Visit Changemakers.com now to hear what others are saying, and to enter your winning solution before October 21st.

[photo courtesy of the Carolina Gold Rice Foundation]

The Power of Eating Together

by Slow Food USA President Josh Viertel
This post originally appeared on the Atlantic Food Channel

Letting go is hard for me. I want to touch everything. I have strong and specific opinions about the things I love: I have opinions about how fine to chop parsley and I am adamant about how close together to plant lettuce. Different varieties of head lettuce even get different spacing. I think it makes a difference. I like to think I’m right. But I’m learning to let go.

In my heart, I believe that a community’s collective creativity is always more rich, more inspired, and more impactful than any one individual’s. My mind sometimes gets in the way of my acting on that belief, but my experience keeps reinforcing the notion that large numbers of inspired people, on a mission, left to their own devices, will do brilliant and beautiful things. More and more, I am learning that my job at Slow Food USA is to create a context, offer some direction and support, and then get out of the way.

Nothing has taught me this more than the events that unfolded on Labor Day’s National Day of Action launching the Time for Lunch campaign.

The idea was simple: let’s see if we can organize a series of demonstrations, part pot-luck, part sit-in, all over the country on one day, where people share food they believe in and demand legislation that gives kids real food in school. We will call the events Eat-Ins. If it works, it will be like a virtual march on Washington. The collective story will be told on the Internet and in the media.

We wanted to tell Congress that this is an issue that matters to a lot of Americans, and in the process we wanted to strengthen both the local communities where the events took place, and the national network of people working to change the way food and farming happen in America. We aimed for 100 demonstrations in 25 states. By the time Labor Day rolled around, we had 307 events confirmed, and we had demonstrations in every state in the nation.

More after the jump

USDA Unveils “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” Initiative

by Gordon Jenkins

This week, the USDA is unveiling its new “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” initiative, which Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan has created to help re-connect American families to American family farmers, as a step towards building vibrant local and regional food systems. Each day this week, the USDA web site is celebrating a theme that underscores the need for local food:

   
• Monday was “Rural Revitalization” Day, with information on how government officials, community organizations, businesses, and citizens can develop rural economies by building local food networks;
• Tuesday is “Farm to Institution” Day, with background on the history of the National School Lunch Program, Farm to School and urban agriculture;
• Wednesday is “Healthy Eating” Day, and will feature a celebrity chef leading a cooking demonstration for staff at the USDA;
• Thursday is “Direct Marketing” Day, and is the day that the White House’s new farmers’ market opens in downtown D.C.;
• Friday is “Ag is Back!” Day, and will feature the launch of a new USDA web site and a live Facebook chat with Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan.

This initiative marks an outstanding new commitment to local food on the part of the USDA, which usually puts its resources towards propping up big, industrial farms. Many attribute the new interest to the Obama Administration, which appointed Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture and directed him to get more local fruits and vegetables into America’s schools and institutions. Vilsack subsequently tapped Merrigan, a longtime local food advocate, as his Deputy. We at Slow Food USA hope that “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food” is the start of many more good programs to come.

*Thank you to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s weekly newsletter for providing most of this information.

DISEASE DRIVEN EARNINGS: Is It Time for a New Prescription For Generation Rx?

by Robyn O’Brien

Today’s headlines are enough to make any mother wary. As we battle our toddlers in the grocery store, we hardly have the energy left to decipher the headlines: Organics aren’t healthier, death panels await health care reform, bankers receive record bonuses, swine flu pandemics swirl .  What has happened to the world that our children are inheriting?  And does anyone care?

Perhaps we should.  Because the children of today represent the economy of tomorrow.  Today’s parents and grandparents are raising the “think tanks” that are going to be the solutions to tomorrow’s problems .  Today’s children will reinvent energy technology, redefine reform and regulations and enhance agricultural productivity in ways that we can not even begin to imagine.  But only if we give them the tools with which to do it. 

Obama insisting on school and education, with the support of Laura Bush, is a start.  But more fundamentally, what about health? Today, 1 in 3 American children now has autism, allergies, ADHD or asthma.  90% of the worlds ADHD medications are prescribed to the American kids, while the US only represent 5% of the world’s population. According to MSNBC, sales of EpiPens are up, while test scores are down.  And according to the Centers for Disease Control, 1 in 2 African American kids and 1 in 3 Caucasian kids born in the year 2000 (that is this year’s 4th Graders) will be insulin dependent by the time they reach adulthood. 

And while Kraft, Coca Cola and Wal-Mart formulate their products differently for children overseas (with reduced fat, salt and synthetic ingredient content), our National School Lunch Program continues to be a dumping ground for the remnants of the agrichemical corporations who are unable to dispose of their technology laced corn and soy in grocery stores, restaurants or to the livestock industry.  And while we allocate $600 billion to the Pentagon in 2009, we only allocated $9 billion to the National School Lunch Program and a meager $2.4 billion to the FDA. 

And we wonder why our children have earned the title “Generation Rx” or why our economy is heaving under the burden of health care costs. 

More after the jump

No Impact Man and the Pursuit of Happiness

In dieting, I learned early on, exercises in extremes do not yield good results.  Starve yourself of chocolate, and you can be sure the first thing you’ll do when no one is looking is dive into a kiddie pool of chocolate, roll around in it and then lick your own arms.  I once even tried to give up bread.  After two weeks I sat down and ate an entire baguette, crusty end-to-end. Walk the middle ground, I decided, in food and all things.

Maybe it was this hard-earned (and hard-learned) lesson that led me initially to avoid Morgan Spurlock’s “Supersize Me.”  It reeked of gimmick, and seemed on the outside to offer no takeaway lessons.  Nobody eats fast food all three meals (right?) so what could be the point?

I did see the movie later and had to admit that I was wrong.  It turned out that the parameters of his experiment were more rigorous than I expected, and it also turned out that setting an extreme goal yielded behavioral and biological results that could be extrapolated for meaning in the not-so-extreme.  And it turned out that, in truth, the way many Americans were/are eating is extreme.  And I was forced to confront that extremity.

Similarly, I was wary of “No Impact Man.”  I admired the gesture, and appreciated its Thoreauvian allusions (did I just make up a word?), but I wondered if there was anything of merit for me in there.  Again, similarly, I had to admit I as wrong.

More after the jump

Battling Bio-Uniformity

by Biodiversity Intern Alaine Janosy

If everyone looked, dressed, acted, and thought exactly the same, the world would be a pretty dull, bland place to live; diversity keeps things interesting. Human beings like to have choices in all aspects of life; from our mobile phone to our shampoo, we are presented with hundreds, if not thousands, of options and we are able to exercise our free will to determine which option suits us best.

Although we rarely think about it, we exercise this same free will every time we make a decision about what to eat. Eating is something all of us do multiple times every day, whether it be alone or with friends, at home or at a restaurant, we must eat to survive. Humans thrive when they consume a diverse diet comprised of the many plant and animal species we share the planet with, but that diverse diet that keeps us happy, since we like to have choices, and healthy, since we cannot get everything we need from a single source, is threatened. A combination of various factors, including climate change, and the commercialization of agriculture on a global scale, has resulted in this worldwide loss of variety. This decrease in biodiversity not only makes mealtime dull, but also, more significantly, it makes the world food supply more vulnerable to disease and less adaptable to changes in climate or population growth.

Steps are currently being taken on a global level to reverse this seemingly unstoppable course toward bio-uniformity. A new $116 million fund was established this summer when members of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA) met in June. The fund will pay the 11 communities around the world, chosen based on the crops they grow, to continue farming these threatened crops thereby helping to maintain diversity in our food system. The money will provide the compensation necessary to prevent these farmers from switching to more commercially successful, and therefore more profitable, crops. Although on a much smaller scale, Slow Food USA and partners in the Renewing America’s Food Traditions (RAFT) Alliance are also working to increase the biological and cultural diversity of our food supply. Every time Slow Food USA chapters start a project to save an apple, a strawberry or a rare potato, they are making a difference.

Currently, the United States is not a signatory of the treaty, but signing is under consideration. As one of the richest nations in the world, the United States would send a strong message about its commitment to maintaining the health of people and the planet by signing this treaty and committing funds to both this and future initiatives agreed upon by treaty countries. Then again, an equally strong message would be sent should the United States choose to remain aloof. 

Vote With Your Fork To Save Wild Salmon!

by Biodiversity Intern Regina Fitzsimmons

Trout Unlimited—the nation’s largest coldwater fisheries conservation organization—has asked Slow Food Seattle and Seattle Chef’s Collaborative to partner in a public awareness campaign to protect the wild Bristol Bay sockeye salmon.  These three organizations are asking their neighbors and community members to “Vote with their Fork.”  Trout Unlimited hopes that people will seek out and eat at restaurants that are serving wild Bristol Bay sockeye salmon on their menus and in so doing, support a sustainable food source that has renewed itself for the past 9,000 years that salmon have returned to Bristol Bay.

These fish need our protection now.  Pebble Mine is attempting to set up new open pit mining operations (to the tune of $345-500 billion) at the headwaters of Bristol Bay, a territory prone to earthquakes.  Pebble Mine wants to extract gold – a non-renewable resource that could be mined 50 years before running out.  (FYI, as you can read in our previous blog post from last January, the EPA ranks open pit mining as the most polluting industry in the nation.)

If Pebble Mine were able to set up camp on the banks of Bristol Bay, the development and pollution would be irreversibly harmful to the watershed and the 80 million wild salmon that migrate back to the Bay each year, not to mention the animals one notch up the food chain that depend on wild salmon for sustenance.  What’s more, Bristol Bay is home to many people who also rely on the Bay’s fisheries for their income.  If the sockeye faded off the world fishery stage, there would be an international crisis; Bristol Bay salmon make up 40% of the world’s sockeye salmon. 

More after the jump

Nationwide “eat-ins” show way to a revived National School Lunch Program

by Slow Food USA Board Member Chef Kurt Michael Friese

All across the country this past Labor Day, folks gathered for picnics. That’s no surprise, of course. After all, it was a holiday, and the weather was grand across nearly the whole continent. But there was something unique about one group of picnics; 307 of them to be exact, in all 50 states. They were dubbed “Eat-Ins” (modeled on the sit-ins of the ‘60s), and they were a call to action by Slow Food USA

At those picnics, including one right here in Iowa City, more than 20,000 people gathered around tables in parks and farms and school grounds to tell Congress to fix the School Lunch Program. Most of the discussions at these events and in the press afterwards centered on improving the food itself through increased Federal spending and local food initiatives. But there was another topic directly relevant to Labor Day: the call to create green jobs with a “School Lunch Corps.”

via Grist (click here for rest of article)