It’s the International Year of Cooperatives!

2012 is the UN International Year of Cooperatives. To get the word out, the National Cooperative Grocers Association has teamed up with celebrity chef Kevin Gillespie to tell the story of co-op’s across the country in this 13-part video series.

written by Robynn Shrader, CEO of National Cooperative Grocers Association


Every day the food co-op members of National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) celebrate the farmers, the people and the communities that they support, and that, in turn, embrace and sustain the cooperative business model. Food co-ops play a unique role in building local foods systems and vibrant economies.


This year, the United Nations provided a global platform for all co-op enterprises to share their stories by designating 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives. This year is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for food co-ops to raise awareness and celebrate the social and economic contributions of cooperative businesses, as well as help more people across the country discover what food co-ops are all about.


To get the word out, we teamed up with celebrity chef and passionate local foods advocate Kevin Gillespie. Together, we traveled around the country and captured food co-op stories on film to create a 13-part video series airing throughout this year. In the videos, Kevin treks through farm fields and grocery aisles, sharing stories about good food – everything from raising heritage breeds and five-star eggs to urban gardens, aluminum mulch and community-driven food sourcing.


I am excited to share these videos and the international celebration of cooperatives with Slow Food USA. Together, our shared passion for good food and desire to create vibrant and sustainable communities can go a long way toward building a better food system. We hope you will join us in celebrating the International Year of Cooperatives here!

What’s in your food?

My favorite veggie burgers have a “no genetically modified ingredients” label, where is this label on the rest of my food? Tell the FDA to ‘Just Label It’

by Slow Food USA Associate Director of National Programs, Angelines M. Alba Lamb

This weekend I sent my partner to the grocery store for the weekly shop. He ventured out in the snow, and in exchange I put the apples in their bowl and the cornbread box in the pantry. As I was putting my favorite box of veggie burgers into the freezer, I noticed a label I’d never paid attention to: “No genetically modified ingredients.”  Did all my food have this label? I took the cornbread back out, and read all 6 sides. I learned that if I ate one piece, I would ingest 3 grams of protein. I learned my favorite corn bread used corn flour, corn, and baking soda. But I didn’t learn where the corn came from. Was it genetically engineered, like 80% of all corn grown in the U.S.?

Why didn’t my cornbread have the same label as my veggie burger? Because companies don’t have to disclose genetically modified ingredients.  Some do but most corporations don’t. They didn’t disclose any ingredients until later in the 20th century. Cigarettes didn’t get warning labels until 1966, years after evidence was found of their ill health effects.  Ingredient boxes and health warnings appeared after people, just like you and I, demanded that their government do everything in their power to protect consumers. Protecting consumers means informing consumers.  If you pick up a cigarette, knowing that it can cause cancer, then that is your right. If you choose to eat genetically engineered corn despite the label, then that is your choice. But we don’t have a choice with genetically engineered food.

Just Label It – a national initiative to secure labeling for genetically engineered food- is demanding that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) require all food that is genetically engineered, or made with genetically modified ingredients, be marked like my veggie burgers.  They need you and I to add our voices and send a message to the FDA consumers want this labeling. Add your voice  by sending a comment to the FDA letting them know how important this issue is to you.

Right now the soymilk smoothie you are sipping on could have been made with genetically modified soy.  The alfalfa sprouts topping your salad could have been engineered in a lab. And you have a right to know and a right to choose if you want to put that into your body or feed it to your family.  We don’t know yet how genetically engineered food interacts with human bodies. There isn’t enough research.  But don’t you want the chance to make that decision for yourself? I sent a comment to the FDA because I want all of my food, including my corn bread, to have the same label like my veggie burgers.  Join Just Label It and me and send your own comment.

The Soul of Slow Food: Fighting for Both Farmers and Eaters

Slow Food USA’s president says he is not turning his back on the organization’s roots, but is instead trying to better understand its identity.

by Slow Food USA President, Josh Viertel

When my fiancée, Juliana, and I were farming, we grew the most beautiful produce I have ever seen. I do not mean to brag. It is sort of like being a parent, or a pet owner. Anyone who has grown food with love probably feels that way about the product of his or her labor. We grew 300 varieties of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers, many heirloom varieties, and ingredients for cooking food from so many traditions. We sold them at a farmers’ market in a well-heeled neighborhood, and we charged a lot of money. We did not think twice about charging $16 per pound for salad greens. We knew what work went into it, we knew how good it was, and we knew it was worth it. We sold out. And we made $12,000 a year between the two of us. We thought we were doing pretty well.

When low-income people came to our stand with food stamps, we gave them two or three for the price of one. But something was broken. At $12,000, we had low incomes ourselves, and the only people we could feed had high incomes. I wanted to change the world, and I saw farming as a piece of that work. Fairness for the farmer seemed to mean injustice for the eater. Fairness for the eater seemed to mean injustice for the farmer. How could we simply choose to fight for one, with the knowledge that it undercut the other?

A few years later, I found myself standing in a room filled with about 300 extraordinary people—people working to take on the same paradox that had troubled me as a young farmer. Slow Food USA was putting on an enormous event in San Francisco in the fall of 2008 called Slow Food Nation. It brought the most inspiring artisan pickle makers, charcuterie curers, and bread bakers together with the most committed food activists and farmers. Alice Waters, Carlo Petrini, Wendell Berry, Eric Schlosser, Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, Van Jones, Vandana Shiva, Lucas Benitez, and many, many other heroes of mine were all in the same place, at the same time, to talk about food, farming, and the movement to transform both. Monsanto and Ronald McDonald would have done well to blow up the building.

More after the jump

Making it easier to feed our kids fruit than Froot Loops

2011: a Slow Food USA year in review by Josh Viertel.

by Josh Viertel, President of Slow Food USA

2011 started with a very important question.

In January, we asked President Obama what he was doing to make it easier to feed our kids fruit than Froot Loops.  He said Walmart would fix it.  You didn’t buy it, and neither did we.  So together, we went about fixing it ourselves.

When industrial agribusiness tried to make it a felony to take pictures of farms (so they couldn’t be held accountable for animal abuse) we said, “A good farm has nothing to hide.”  And we buried legislators in four states, not just with petition signatures, but with pictures of the incredible sustainable farms that make us proud.  The Slow Food “Farmarazzi” saved the day—and the bills died in all four states.

When Fast Food said that it had value for everybody and Slow Food was just for the elite, we proved them wrong.  On one day, at more than 5,500 shared meals all over the country, 30,000 of you sat at the table together and took the $5 Challenge, cooking Slow Food for less than fast food.  People shared their tips, tricks, recipes, and what made it a challenge.  Together, we are taking back the value meal.

And when a handful of congressional leaders tried to sneak past a “secret farm bill” cooked up for the corn and soy lobby, we brought Congress a Recipe for Change, written and signed by over 13,000.  No “secret farm bill” was going to slip through on our watch.

We couldn’t have done any of it without your support. And in 2012 we’ve got even more work to do.

2012 is going to be about building change from the bottom up: community by community; farmers market by farmers market; garden by garden.  Slow Food’s chapters are building grassroots solutions to a broken food system.

Already, Slow Food chapters have built over 300 school gardens.  They reach over 33,000 kids.  And they make it happen as volunteers.  One inspiring example is Slow Food Miami, where chapter volunteers planted an astounding 63 school gardens in 44 days. 

If we can support 650 more leaders like these to make this kind of change in their own communities, we can build more gardens in schools than McDonald’s has franchises!

But, really, we can’t do any of this without the support of the Slow Food community.  We’re all in this together.

Will you help us make it happen?

What now? The post-Super Committee Food and Farm Bill

Food policy was front in center in November, we recap where we were and where we’re going with the Food and Farm bill.

Now that November has come to an end, it’s hard to forget the ruckus Congress stirred up in the food and farming world—some of it good and some of it bad. Organizations and lawmakers from all ends of the spectrum made sure to voice opinions about how the government should be involved in food and farming. From introducing legislation to help local food economies, to attempting to cut food stamps as part of the Super Committee process, November saw a lot of folks weighing on the future of our food system. Many of you weighed in too, by endorsing our Recipe for Change.

November began with the release of Representative Chellie Pingree and Senator Sherrod Brown’s Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act. Two days later, the National Sustainable Agriculture Committee (NSAC) hosted a farmer fly-in, bringing over 50 farmers, advocates, and scientists from across the country to Washington DC to show support for the bill.

Alex Loud, a fly-in participant and Slow Food Boston chapter leader, describes why the Act is an important step for rebuilding the economy:

Small farms are a growing and increasingly important part of the American economy and the American food system.  The Federal government is not doing enough to support them—and indeed in some cases is even hindering their growth.  The Local Farms, Food and Jobs Act will, if enacted, start to change this.

The legislation addresses issues from across the board – including rural development, reforms to nutrition assistance programs that will allow food purchase at farmers markets, and boosts to programs that support farmers struggling to obtain a USDA certified organic status.

What more could we ask for than the introduction of a bill like the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act? How about 13,000 supporters of Slow Food USA’s Recipe for Change! Introduced at the end of October on Food Day, the Recipe for Change continued to accumulate signatures in the two weeks leading up to November 17th when names were hand delivered by us to each of the Super Committee member’s DC offices.

In the end, the Super Committee failed to come up with a deficit reduction plan by their November 23rd deadline.  This does not mean, however, that your voices were not heard or that the message of the Recipe for Change will not be important for the next big obstacle to come – the 2012 Food and Farm Bill.

November may be over but the fight for better food and farming policy is just beginning. Follow the developing Food and Farm Bill campaigns of these organizations to stay in touch with what is going on and learn how you can get involved:

NSAC
Environmental Working Group
Food Democracy Now
Bread for the World
Oxfam
Food and Water Watch
Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Hope Ahead Despite Hefty Ag Budget Cuts

Two developments this week indicate that massive congressional budget cuts might not spell disaster for nutrition programs and support for small farmers after all.

In this time of national financial crisis, agricultural funding has been flagged to take a big hit. Two big developments this week indicate that congress is waking up to the potential that regionally focused agriculture holds for job creation, improvements to public health, and economic development.

The first came earlier this week—on Food Day—when Congresswoman Chellie Pingree announced a bill that she plans to introduce to the House: The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act. The bill will provide new kinds of support to farmers growing healthy food; make it easier to use food stamps at farmers markets; and require USDA research to focus less narrowly on genetically modified plants. A companion bill is on its way to the Senate.

Tell your Congressmen to be a part of the Recipe for Change by supporting the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act.

More after the jump

Budget cuts could be a recipe for change or disaster

Congress is planning dramatic cuts to the American budget and anything and everything is on the chopping block. The agricultural sector is likely to take a big hit but will the special Congressional “super committee” make positive change or keep pandering to Big Ag?

Behind closed doors, lobbyists for food system giants are pressing lawmakers to continue the status quo or make cuts elsewhere. Whose belts do they think should be tightened?

• NUTRITION: nutrition programs that provide critical access to food in this time of economic crisis. These programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly called “food stamps”), the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, and affordable school lunch. When nearly 50 million people in the U.S. live in constant threat of hunger, cutting the budget for these programs is an outrage.
• JOB CREATION: programs that support family farms, create jobs, and keep money in rural communities. In a recent letter to the co-chairs of the “super committee,” House Agricultural Committee Chair, Rep. Chellie Pingree (D, ME) wrote “While efforts to reduce the federal deficit remain paramount, we must place an equal if not greater emphasis on policy changes that will put Americans to work and boost economic growth. Local food systems can yield significant benefits to the economy and create thousands of jobs. According to a recent study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, a modest amount of funding or 100-500 farmers markets could create as many as 13,500 jobs over a five-year period.”
• SUPPORT FOR FARMERS AND FARMLAND: a hodgepodge of programs to address environmental quality and to provide essential support to vegetable farmers, beginning farmers, and socially-disadvantaged farmers. One of the most puzzling parts of the Food and Farm bill is that the majority of the foods that we eat (things like vegetables, fruits, and beef) are referred to as “specialty crops.” Cutting the already meager portion of Food and Farm Bill funding that goes to producers that make real food- not corn for ethanol and animal feed- is egregious. As the average age of US farmers steadily reaches retirement age (the majority of farmers today are in their 60s) it’s critical to the future of our food and agricultural economy that we continue to support the next generation of farmers, especially those from diverse communities. Related to that is ensuring that developed farmland continues to be used to grow food instead of being developed and thus saying goodbye to the investments that generations of farmers have made to the soil and surrounding terrain. And yet programs for supporting new farmers and farmland conservation are instead treated like an ATM for subsidies for Big Ag. Under a Senate Ag committee proposal, these programs could lose up to $4 billion. That’s nearly 20% of their current budget.
• FOOD SAFETY: FDA funding which goes towards (already underfunded) farm inspectors who we need more of to keep us safe from outbreaks of food-borne illness. Unless the “super committee” comes up with a better plan, FDA funding could be reduced by nearly $200 million from the 2011 level. This would lead to fewer FDA staff, including those who inspect our domestic and imported foods. Large food facilities are already sorely under-inspected- just look to recent deadly food-borne illnesses in eggs, cantaloupe, and spinach.

That’s no way to balance a budget: that’s a recipe for disaster.

Click here to tell the super committee to follow our recipe for change.

More after the jump

Over 5,570 meals shared

Yesterday, as part of the $5 Challenge, over 5,570 meals took place all over the country. Hundreds of people submitted photos as well as sharing what parts of the challenge were difficult and what made it difficult.

Yesterday, as part of the $5 Challenge, over 5,570 meals took place!

Click here to see photos from Hawai’i to Illinois to New York to Texas….from potlucks to family dinners to community suppers to food truck rallies,

No matter where they were or how they came together, they were all trying to answer the question: is it possible to make a healthy, local, and delicious meal for under $5 per person?

People got creative and brought their own flair to it—like Bear Braumoeller of Slow Food Columbus, who decided to take the $5 Challenge one step further. He attempted (and, SPOILER ALERT, succeeded) to create a sustainable $5 meal in 15 minutes—to show that sustainable cooking can be quick as well as affordable. Also he live tweeted it.

Bear wasn’t the only one tweeting his progress. Joe Yonan, food editor of the Washington Post, asked his 6,000+ followers questions like “My #5challenge dilemma: Cut which of these to make budget: 3 of 8 apples 4 tart? Squash (ergo soup)? Sausage 4 stuffed peppers (more rice)?”

More after the jump

Food hubs: collaboration can help grow a vibrant local food economy

The new Backyard Bounty Co-op program supports micro-entrepreneurs by connecting aspiring urban farmers and market gardeners with local food markets.

By Maika Horjus
Backyard Bounty Co-op program coordinator
Urban Abundance Intern

Last February, over fifty people squeezed into the historic Minnehaha Grange Hall in Vancouver, WA to learn about a new opportunity opening up through local non-profit Urban Abundance: an “urban farmer’s co-op” geared towards greenthumbed city dwellers passionate about growing good food and looking to earn some income from their garden bounty. The new program, christened Backyard Bounty Co-op by its founding members, aims to support micro-entrepreneurs. It connects aspiring urban farmers and market gardeners with local food markets by pooling resources, sharing costs, building capacity, and providing a range of services to its members. Backyard Bounty offers support with marketing, accounting, market logistics, and—not least—a network of like-minded entrepreneurs and a vibrant sense of community.

During its first season, Backyard Bounty members have worked closely with one another and with Urban Abundance staff to operate market booths at venues throughout Clark County. Growers’ products are aggregated and sold side-by-side or intermingled at the market booth. A 20% consignment fee goes towards Co-op operating costs and the rest of the profit is divided proportionally based on each grower’s contribution. Responsibility for setting up and staffing the booth is shared among growers and volunteers and regular meetings offer an opportunity for discussion, collective decision-making, and community-building. Throughout the process, the goal is to help growers enter and thrive in the marketplace—a task that can be daunting or even impossible for small-scale growers working on their own.

More after the jump

Today we launch our campaign to take back the value meal

Today, Slow Food USA launches the $5 Challenge, our campaign to take back the value meal.

Today, Slow Food USA launches the $5 Challenge. See the official release below or download it here...

More after the jump