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Monday, February 8th, 2010, 4:27 PM
Check out this terrific story about a class called “Food, Land and You,” taught at the Automotive High School in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. These city high schoolers are not only learning about where food comes from, but also food access and justice issues.
–Kate
Friday, February 5th, 2010, 1:39 PM
Exciting times for the sustainable food movement in Seattle.
Mayor Mike McGinn and Seattle City Councilmembers just announced a campaign to promote urban agriculture and increase community access to locally grown food.
Dubbed “The Year of Urban Agriculture,” the initiative comes with it’s own nifty web portal, chock full of information and resources and events going on throughout the year.
This campaign comes out of efforts around Seattle City Council Resolution 31019–the Local Food Action Initiative–which was passed in April 2008 and outlined actions to promote local and regional food sustainability and security.
We’re excited that Anna is headed to Seattle for a stop on the DHP book tour. We look forward to meeting the folks behind the policies and no doubt it will be inspiring to be on the ground in a place where so much exciting work is taking place.
–Kate
Thursday, January 21st, 2010, 4:54 PM
Amy Cotler, culinary professional and long time farm-to-table advocate, recently published a fabulous new book called The Locavore Way: Discover and Enjoy the Pleasures of Locally Grown Food (and sent me an advance copy).
It’s chock full of great tips on how to buy, cook, and eat locally produced food. I know there are a lot of books out there on this theme, but The Locavore Way is a welcome addition to my already bulging sustainable food bookshelf.
Check it out for yourself at Amy’s website.
Friday, January 9th, 2009, 5:45 PM
CivilEats.com, an offshoot of the popular Slow Food Nation blog, has launched a new website with a host of foodie allies. The site will focus on the current challenges facing the food system, with contributions from chef/activists, to farmers and urban gardeners. The website promises to “promote critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems,” something we are in critical need of given the current economic, climate and food crises. Visit the site here, we are!
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008, 11:13 AM
Just got word about this cool new initiative out of Michigan…
The state’s governor recently launched Garden for Growth which allows residents to use “tax-reverted” (aka, unusued, abandoned, overgrown) properties to create community gardens–bringing crunchy, fresh, organic, healthy foods into the heart of the state’s urban communities. Gardeners and curious urbanites can lease vacant lots without the cost burden, and if they are successful, they can decide to purchase their plot to create a permanent garden.
Maybe other states will get inspired by this creative idea for re-zoning urban areas, to ensure greater community access to fresh, healthy foods.
To learn more click here.
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008, 9:53 AM
We know that to revolutionize our food system we must reconnect people, especially those billions of urban dwellers, to the food that nourishes them. There is no better leader in this movement than Milwaukee’s Will Allen. And now, that’s not just my quirky opinion, it’s a view that’s been confirmed by the mucky-mucks at the MacArthur Genius Fellowship who chose Will among this year’s honorees. Congratulations Will!
From the 2008 MacArthur Fellows description:
Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization Growing Power, which he directs and co-founded. Guiding all is his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting. Through a novel synthesis of a variety of low-cost farming technologies – including use of raised beds, aquaculture, vermiculture, and heating greenhouses through composting – Growing Power produces vast amounts of food year-round at its main farming site, two acres of land located within Milwaukee’s city limits. Recently, cultivation of produce and livestock has begun at other urban and rural sites in and around Milwaukee and Chicago. Over the last decade, Allen has expanded Growing Power’s initiatives through partnerships with local organizations and activities such as the Farm-City Market Basket Program, which provides a weekly basket of fresh produce grown by members of the Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative to low-income urban residents at a reduced cost. The internships and workshops hosted by Growing Power engage teenagers and young adults, often minorities and immigrants, in producing healthy foods for their communities and provide intensive, hands-on training to those interested in establishing similar farming initiatives in other urban settings. Through these and other programs still in development, Allen is experimenting with new and creative ways to improve the diet and health of the urban poor.
Friday, August 1st, 2008, 5:27 PM
With not one but two petitions (here and here) being launched to convince the next occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania House to transform the front lawn into a vibrant organic garden, it seems like forward-thinking San Franciscans are getting their hands in the dirt none too soon: Inspired by the lead-up to the foodie pow-wow, Slow Food Nation, gardeners dug up the lawn in front of City Hall and planted… food.
Does growing food in front of City Hall and the White House sound wacky?
Well, it won’t be the first time you could pick a parsnip on these green patches. Back in the 40s, SF’s City Hall sprouted food. And, over on the other side of the country, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted her own Victory Garden on the White House lawn.
Providing abundant healthy food to neighborhoods, knitting community together, and reducing that ever-growing carbon footprint are only some of the many reasons these initiatives are encouraging cities — even our nation’s capital — to embrace the grow-it-yourself trend.
Along with news about the White House Project, Eat this View, and the Slow Food Nation garden, we couldn’t help but notice other urban ag initiatives getting props in the nation’s press, too.
Take this TIME magazine article or New York Times piece about such initiatives, including our very own Added Value community farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn, sprouting produce from a former asphalt baseball diamond, supplying local restaurants and providing a farmers market for local eaters.
Denniston Wilks farms in East New York, Brooklyn (Photo: Todd Heisler/The New York Times)
“Hundreds of farmers are at work in Detroit, Milwaukee, Oakland and other areas that… have low-income residents, high rates of obesity and diabetes, limited sources of fresh produce and available, undeveloped land,” wrote Tracie McMillan in that New York Times article.
Some organizations have even figured out not only how to turn on city dwellers’ green thumbs, but how to turn a profit making an old lot grow. “On a fringe of Philadelphia, a nonprofit demonstration project used densely planted rows in a half-acre plot and generated $67,000 from high-value crops like lettuces, carrots and radishes,” says McMillan.
Thursday, April 24th, 2008, 5:25 PM
A spate of articles–from Michael Pollan’s Earth Day piece to one on the kitchen garden movement–encourage readers to get back to the garden.
Tapping into the gardener in each of us, these articles stress, is not only good for our health but good for the planet, too.
Of course, not all of us have gardens to dig into: My Brooklyn apartment is certainly not garden-friendly. Those of us garden-inclined, but city-bound, can transform our stoops, windows, or porches or tap into the abundant gardening possibilities popping up across the country. Here in New York City, thousands of gardeners get their fingernails dirty in community gardens in all five boroughs. Seattle Tilth has been helping folks in that slightly greyer city get into the garden, too.
During World War II, nearly 40 percent of the nation’s produce came from kitchen gardens. It’s long time for a new homegrown food revival.
Learn more at Kitchen Gardeners International: www.kitchengardeners.org.
Thursday, March 13th, 2008, 7:38 PM
Tonight in Seattle, I gave my first Eat the Sky speech for the celebration of the 30th anniversary of Seattle Tilth, a community gardening institution in the gray city.
After, my friend and colleague Ethan Schaffer from www.growfood.org pulled together a gathering at Six Arms of local foodies, farmers, and food activists. The night ended with a not-so-local Cosmo at The Hideout and ultimately collapsing back at the hotel and falling asleep to the subtle swooshing of “Fasha,” my room’s pet goldfish. (What will boutique hotels think of next?)
Bite Blog is produced by Anna Lappé with friends and colleagues from around the country.
Have a question? A hot topic you’d like to see covered here? E-mail us.
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See below for a highlight of upcoming events.
Friday, March 19 2010
Professor Nancy Romer
Brooklyn College, CUNY
Brooklyn, New York
