A personal take on “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food”

by communications intern Becca Stanger

When I began deliberately shopping for groceries almost exclusively at my local farmers market, I took great pride in my decision.  I imagined myself gracefully floating from stand to stand in culinary-goddess-like fashion, smelling Mark’s last harvest of peaches, discussing recent earworm woes with Linda, and praising the freshness of the chicken I bought from Dean last week.  Unfortunately, though, my reality doesn’t typically align with this dream.  Instead, I usually jostle my way through a horde of strollers and bicycles to buy a variety of apples I know nothing about from the next available nameless cashier.

Hoping to shorten this gap between dream and reality, I set out this past weekend to get to know my producers and their food.  With the help of a blog posting or two and SustainableTable.org, I found a slew of useful questions to help me become better acquainted with my producers and their goods.  Questions like…

When was this fruit picked?
Where is your farm located?
How do I cook this vegetable?
Is your farm organically certified?, OR, Do you grow crops organically? (While many farms grow crops organically, not all of them are USDA certified due to financial constraints or personal objections)
Did these eggs come from a hen that was caged?
What was the turkey fed?
Was the hog ever given antibiotics?
Was the cow finished on a feedlot?

In the flurry of the Saturday market, I managed to quickly and politely ask the sellers one or two of these questions before stepping aside for the next customer.  Their answers were enlightening.  While one of the meat stands boasted of honorably humane practices, its distant location challenged the classification of “local.Ԡ And while one of the farmers scoffed at my question about organic practices, another apologetically informed me their farm was not organically certified and kindly pointed me in the direction of one that was.

Certainly none of the producers or goods was perfect.  I did not find Joel Salatin selling a bountiful spread of hand-slaughtered chickens.  But I did find some products I felt good about eating.  I did find some producers I could talk to.  And I did find a food system I took pride in supporting.  With a commitment to repeating conversations like these, hopefully I may begin to build relationships with my producers and become the idyllic farmers’ market connoisseur I dream ofŠ who perhaps still manages to ungracefully stumble over a stroller or two.

Pitting Safe Food Against Healthy Food

by Debbie Lehmann, the editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

I’ve been feeling relatively optimistic about the USDA commodity program lately. Offerings are heavy on the meat and the cheese, but they have gotten much healthier over the years. When it comes to providing nutritious food, it seems like cafeterias face larger obstacles, such as maintaining student participation and keeping within tight budgets.

Well, at least that’s what I thought until this weekend. Now, after reading The New York TimesҠterrifying report about the ground beef inspection system, I am convinced that the commodity program has a critical role to play in changing the school food status quo.

The Times article — a scathing indictment of both the meat processing system and our food safety system — traced the meat from a hamburger that sickened 22-year-old Stephanie Smith and left her paralyzed for life. The ground beef was produced by Cargill under the label “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties,” and it was contaminated with a virulent strain of E. coli.

A number of sickening flaws in the meat processing system led to the E. coli in Stephanie Smith’s hamburger. Notably, the meat in Cargill’s patties was “a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.” The Times goes on:

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together. The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.

More after the jump

Good, Clean, and Fair on Campus this fall

by youth programs intern Heather Teige

This fall, we’ve teamed up with 350.org, Student/Farmworker Alliance, and Real Food Challenge to host three different events geared to draw attention to Good, Clean, and Fair. We have designed a series of actions that will pool our networks with student power to bring awareness to pressing issues in our current food system, and to create a platform where we can discuss how food interacts with climate change, labor, and community.

Each month, Slow Food on Campus chapters, along with our partners and the supporters of our student network, will plan an event engaging that month’s focus area to demonstrate publicly the change we wish to see in the food system.

We will kick things off in October with Clean by partnering with 350.org, an international organization working to engage the public in climate change issues.  We’ll help by educating our communities about the connections between climate change and food and will participate in 350.org’s international day of action on October 24th.

In November, we’ll address Fairness in the food system by working with Student / Farmworker Alliance to take on dining service providers and to ensure better wages for farm workers in Immokalee, Florida, this winter.  And in December, we’ll get back to Slow Food USA’s roots with a focus on Good – doing good in our communities by bringing people together to share good food.

Through the days of action, we hope to creatively engage our communities in thought, discussion, and action. Together, we will unite to change our food system into something we believe in, something Good, Clean, and Fair.

Students Rethink New Orleans’ School Food

by Jessica Weiland, Time for Lunch campaign Intern

One thing we have learned on the Time for Lunch campaign trail is that giving people a sense of their power has an incredible effect—Behold! What things are achieved when you feel like you possess the ability to achieve them! No one has experienced the triumph that comes with empowerment like the Rethinkers, a student-formed, student-organized, student-run, student-everything activist group in New Orleans. I came across this group while researching examples of successful school lunch programs and thought that they were a shining example to reinforce this valuable power lesson we’ve learned and are continuing to explore.

The Rethinkers formed in mid-June 2006, in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina destruction that left New Orleans schools a wreck. They took this rebuilding period as an opportunity to “rethink” some fundamental issues in their school districts. Since their formation, they have tackled Goliath-sized issues —from inadequate, waterlogged libraries to unwarranted security measures to bathroom deficiencies. Now, in the group’s third summer, they are taking on school cafeterias and lunches. 

Not surprisingly, these students have a lot on their plate. They started by single-handedly nixing the once omni-present “spork” that was a symbol of the slop-consistency food the cafeteria served for lunch. Now they are working to replace styrofoam trays with real plates and utensils. They have designed a 21st century “green” cafeteria kitchen (with a water conserving dishwasher and an actual kitchen), have interviewed over 500 students at nine different schools to more accurately gauge their needs and concerns, and have developed a video game called “The Ultimate Lunch Tray” so that younger children can have fun with learning how to eat healthy.

More after the jump

Georgia Farmers Need Your Help

Many of you have been following the news about the devastating floods that hit Georgia in late September.  The flood waters resulting from the heavy rains caught many by surprise and resulted in eight deaths throughout the state.  The governor declared a state of emergency in the 17 hardest hit counties.  There were numerous photos of houses half under water and people wading through streets to save stranded motorists and pets. 

What you may not have seen is the devastation caused to the farms and farmland throughout Georgia.  Many farms have lost their entire fall crops and large amounts of livestock.  Others have seen all of their valuable topsoil just wash away.  This is a tragic turn of events for many of the farmers in Georgia, so we can hope you’ll consider helping them.  Slow Food Atlanta has set-up a fund, which you can contribute to by visiting their web site.  The Slow Food Atlanta chapter board will distribute raised funds to those in greatest need.  We encourage you to help these farmers get back on their feet and re-build for a new season.  We know many of you in the southeast have already contributed to this fund.  Thank you, on behalf of those farmers, for your generous support.

A proper FEAST – culinary education in school

by Kate Justen with Patrick Keeler

On September 24th the first FEAST (Fresh, Easy, Affordable, Sustainable, Tasty) cooking course of the new school year was held at Asheville Middle School. Over the course of the day, we worked with two 7th grade classes, two 8th grade classes and the FEAST cooking club. Capitalizing upon the local bounty of the season our agenda was simple: salsa and tortillas!

The produce was donated from Flying Cloud Farm and Pisgah View Peace Garden, and preparation was made possible thanks to the generous cookware donation from Anolon. We christened our new skillets with the tortilla batter, and our paring knives by chopping veggies.

Many of the students had never cut a fresh tomato before, and had only eaten store-bought salsa. We discussed knife safety, different ways to cut vegetables, how to seed a tomato, how to use a garlic press, how to safely cut a hot pepper.

The taste testing part of the class was the most fun to watch. One girl “HATES tomatoes” and did not want to try the salsa, but with some positive peer pressure she caved. She closed her eyes, opened her mouth and dropped a tortilla loaded with homemade salsa into her mouth. She came back for seconds, no longer a “hater.”

Feedback from these courses has been overwhelmingly positive. Out of over seventy students we have worked with this semester, 50 students stated they wanted to make this at home. Even students who said they would not bother preparing this at home said they liked the cooking activity, and enjoyed the food. By year’s end we hope to see their confidence go up alongside their interest in preparing food at home.

The FEAST garden-to-table cooking program is a joint initiative of Slow Food Asheville leadership and the efforts of the course’s educators. The concept behind FEAST is simple – teach children and their families ways to cook affordably and sustainably on fixed income.

If your local chapter has a similar garden-to-table project and is in need of in-kind cookware support, Anolon might be able to provide assistance through our Creating A Delicious Future partnership. Please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more info.

“Pay what you can” membership extended with a matching grant!

by director of development Kate Krauss

Wow. It’s been a pretty exciting few days.
Our September membership drive—where we waived our traditional $60 membership fee—was a huge success. More than 5000 people joined Slow Food, over ten times our normal monthly rate. It turns out there was some pent-up demand for lower membership rates, after all, and not just from my fellow non-profit-employed friends.
Perhaps our most incredible response came from Mr. Donald Sussman. He was so enthusiastic about the positive results that he encouraged us to keep the drive going. And his encouragement was particularly compelling: he has offered to match all new gifts that come in between now and October 15 dollar for dollar.
As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of excitement and positive spirits here in the Brooklyn office of Slow Food USA. What a welcome break from the grey spirits of a year where we’ve seen dips in charitable giving across the country and so many of our friends deal with layoffs and downsizing.
If you haven’t yet joined Slow Food, now is the time. Help us maximize this incredible opportunity that Mr. Sussman has given us. And if you have, know that there is an office full of hard-working food advocates toasting you with a glass of locally-grown, seasonally appropriate apple cider.

Are All Sugar Beets Created Equal?

by biodiversity intern Alaine Janosy

Genetically modified organisms (GMO) are being introduced into our food system regularly, and there is no easy way for consumers to know if what they are eating is GM or non-GM. Since the United States has not issued any legislation related to genetically engineered (GE) products since 1986, the general public is left to their own devices when trying to determine the genetic origins of their food. If companies are going to continue to splice genes into plants to make them insect resistance or herbicide tolerant there should be a labeling requirement so each of us can make the personal choice whether or not to ingest them. No new legislation in 23 years is a little ridiculous considering how prolific GMs are becoming in our food system.
Lacking all-encompassing federal legislation, the issue will continue to be handled on a case-by-case basis, generally as a result of a law suit being brought once the GM food has already been in our food system for months, if not years, in courtrooms nationwide, as it was on Monday, September 21, 2009, in Federal District Court in San Francisco. The source of the debate, the sugar beet, which has long been a source of sugar in the United States, and accounts for about 30% of sugar production worldwide.

Although sugar beets have been processed for sugar in the United States since the mid-1800s, it was only recently that genetically modified (GM) sugar beets began to be planted. During the spring of 2008 the first ‘Roundup resistant’ sugar beets were planted. These beets contain a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to the chemical weed killer, Roundup, produced and sold by Monsanto, a global provider of agricultural products for farmers. Monsanto also licenses the gene that makes the beets ‘Roundup resistant.’

More after the jump

September Youth Programs Recap

The new school year has only just begun and already students in the Slow Food network have explored new communities, connected with our partners and forged relationships with new student activists.  As I begin my second fall with Slow Food on Campus, it is inspiring to see how many more young people are interested in getting involved to make a difference in their community.  To give you a sense of how students are already engaged check out what our youth network has been up to in September.

Students from the University of Gastronomic Sciences, founded in 2004 by Slow Food, were in New York City for one of the programs thematic study trips, or stage.  The University’s goal is to create an international research and education center for those working on renewing farming methods, protecting biodiversity, and building an organic relationship between gastronomy and agricultural science.  To enhance the student’s international understanding, stages are planned all over the world.  This fall a group of 12 students visited New York City and the surrounding area for ten days of visits to farms, producers, markets and local food cultural events.  Those of us who helped to shepherd the students through their itinerary wished we could have taken ten days off to accompany them on all of the site visits.

For the last 5 years, the Student / Farmworker Alliance (SFA) has set aside a weekend to bring together the organization’s broad network of allies to connect and deepen their work in solidarity with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW).  The weekend is called the Encuentro.  I attended this year.  It was my first visit to Florida, where almost everyday there are massive thunderstorms in the middle of the afternoon.  The experience changed my understanding of fairness in the food system and reaffirmed my personal motivation to work for food justice. 

And, since the Encuentro, two major wins have been made public with the support of the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Agriculture.  The food service provider Compass and major tomato grower East Coast Growers and Packers have come to the table and negotiated Fair Food agreements with the CIW.  For the details of these negotiations, check out articles from The Nation and the Washington Post.

And, this past weekend, the Yale Student Environmental Coalition and NextGEN hosted a College Environmental Activist Leadership Conference at Yale.  This exciting conference played host to more than 200 college leaders, many of whom were new to environmental activism.  Gordon Jenkins, Slow Food USA’s Advocacy Coordinator, and I presented a workshop entitled ‘Shifting Attitudes Towards Food’ where we discussed changing attitudes as a tactic for the larger goal of altering the food system. 

Needless to say, our youth network is already busy and it’s only the end of September.  We are all excited to see how things will take off with our fall program to draw attention to Good, Clean and Fair.

Fashionable Foraging becomes Heedless Harvesting

by biodiversity intern Alaine Janosy

Foraging, the practice of gathering wild foods for their nutritional or medicinal value, is something humans have done since the beginning of time. It is the “gathering” part of the hunter/gatherer communities from whence we all came; before humans learned how to cultivate the land and agriculture became the norm. Today, as people search for new and creative ways to eat local, seasonal, and sustainable, there has been a resurgence of foragers in the forest. The practice, regarded by most as ‘naturally’ sustainable, requires prudence and precaution to be truly sustainable, without which, foraging can jeopardize the future of wild foods.

Traditionally, the collection of these wild edibles was limited; foragers were focused on subsistence, primarily gathering what they or their families would consume. As wild foods have increased in popularity and North American gastronomy has exploded, however, foraging has become a livelihood. Those with knowledge of the natural world harvest what they find in the forest to help pacify the ever-increasing demand for wild foods among chefs and foodies nationwide.  Hailed for their organic origins, wild fruits and vegetables are featured on the menus of many high-end restaurants and can be purchased at Greenmarkets around the country, but the proliferation of wild foods comes with a price. Certain plants, such as ramps (wild leeks), have become so highly prized that they are being over-harvested; their numbers have dropped so drastically in Quebec that the provincial government categorized the species as endangered and passed a law banning all commercial harvest and import.

Ramps are particularly vulnerable to over-harvest because when you pick a ramp, you pick the entire plant, including the bulb, removing the possibility of perennial re-growth as well as creating aesthetic and ecological damage. According to Russ Cohen, professional environmentalist and wild foods enthusiast, this ecological damage can include an increase of invasive species, which can inhibit the growth of native species and negatively impact the forest’s existing mycorrhizal associations (symbiotic relationships between fungi and plant roots). He suggests confining primary ramp harvesting to just the leaves, allowing the bulbs to remain in the ground with at least one leaf attached. This way, the bulb can grow new leaves next season and the leaf can flower, release seeds, and spread the species. He argues that, since ramp leaves are just as usable, and delicious, as the bulbs, nothing would be lost gastronomically by implementing this more sustainable harvest method.

More after the jump