Summer Reading

One of the great advents of the past few years has been “The Food Issue.”  I’ve really enjoyed seeing magazines like The Nation, The New York Times, Yes magazine, Mother Jones, and The New Yorker devote an entire issue to stories around food. The Atlantic Monthly upped the ante by creating an entire website for food stories.  I mean, it’s a pretty lefty bunch, but I guess that’s not a huge surprise.

Now we’ve got Slate’s food issue, with a few choice nuggets including Tom Laskawy’s piece on how Mother Nature’s gonna bite big Ag in the butt, and a review of Mark Kurlansky’s new book The Food of a Younger Land, about America Eats, the 1930s Federal Writers Project, and how it created a new genre: food writing.  Reading this piece, I thought—this would be a great partner book for Jane and Michael Stern’s new book 500 Things to Eat Before They’re Gone!  Turns out the folks at the San Francisco Chronicle are more clever than I and they had the Sterns review the book just last week. They had issues with it—mostly that they are more hopeful than Kurlansky about the state of American food. 

No doubt the Sterns will be roadtripping this summer.  I hope I get to roadtrip too, but I’ll also be reading—probably their book, probably Kurlansky’s.  What will you be reading this summer?

Money for Farmers Ripe for Picking

by Slow Food USA intern Carol Dacey-Charles

The June 12 deadline is fast approaching for farmers and ranchers to apply for funding to support organic farming, as well as, forest and fuel management and energy conservation. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), part of the 2008 Farm Bill, offers “financial and technical assistance to farmers and ranchers who face threats to soil, water, air, and related natural resources on their land.” 

So, what does this mean if you are a farmer or rancher following sustainable or organic methods and practicing land conservation?  It could mean a total of $300,000 over a 6-year period in moneys and support—we are not talking small change here! There are also provisions to aid beginning farmers and those who are socially disadvantaged or have limited resources with larger cost-share rates and the possibility of cash advances for purchasing materials and contracting.  The length of EQIP contracts may be from one to ten years, with most lasting two to three years.

So, what does all this mean to non-farming, but food-loving, local food eaters?  It means that there is government support for your cherished food-producers, but if they don’t use it—we all may lose.  That is how government funding works—if no one applies for the grants, our legislators figure that no one needed it, and they put that money somewhere else in the next budget.  We want to make sure that all that money is spent to encourage and support organic and sustainable practices to help conserve healthy farmland and produce more good, clean food.

What can you do to help?  Get the word out now to your local farmers and producers.  Send them to the EQIP website for more information and links to apply for funding in their state.  Email Tom Vilsack(.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)), Secretary for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and let him know you support this funding and local, sustainable farming practices.  If you are a farmer or rancher—bless you—and get filling out forms and putting that money to use.

More info:

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition website offers a grassroots guide to the 2008 Farm Bill in a downloadable format.
For info on the Organic Initiative within EQIP, the ATTRA website has good resources.

Inside the Jonesboro Cafeteria: Bringing in the Money with Familiar Foods

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

A few months ago, Hester Dye received boxes of beautiful, plump blackberries from the USDA. She was delighted — the berries were as big as her thumb — and she hoped her students would enjoy eating them for lunch.

But the kids in Jonesboro Public Schools, where Dye directs the school lunch program, didn’t touch the berries. Determined not to let the fruit go to waste, Dye and her staff made a blackberry cobbler. Still, half of it ended up in the trash. “They didn’t know what it was,” Dye said. “They weren’t familiar with it.”

Students’ familiarity with certain foods has always driven Dye’s menu. When she started working in the Jonesboro cafeteria 37 years ago, students ate home-cooked meals with their families, and that’s what they expected for lunch at school. Dye served soup, lasagna and meatloaf, because that’s what students were used to. Today, Dye serves students who have grown up with heat-and-serve entrees and fast food, and her lunch offerings have changed to accommodate their tastes.

“We’ve taken all the lasagna and meatloaf off the menu because the kids don’t know what that stuff is anymore,” Dye said. “They won’t eat it.”

Instead, Dye offers the items they will eat. Her menu runs heavy on mini corndogs, chicken nuggets and stuffed-crust pizza — the foods students are familiar with from restaurants and TV commercials.

More after the jump

Sustainable Food Producers and Conservationists Need to Co-Exist

Marin County Oyster Farmer at Crossroads with National Park Service

A major debate is bubbling up in Drakes Bay in Marin County, Calif., testing the ideals of sustainable farmers, ranchers, fishers and foragers leasing Federal lands for their operations, especially when those lands are set aside for conservation.

Kevin Lunny, a local rancher, purchased his oyster farm – Drakes Bay Oyster Company – in 2005.  As part of his purchase he received a special-use permit from the California Coastal Commission. Since the Lunny’s began to manage it, Drake Bay Oyster Company has focused on sustainable aquaculture methods for Pacific oysters. They have also collaborated with researchers, planning the recovery of Olympia oysters, purple-fringed scallops, and snowy plovers. Lunny Farms also raises certified organic, pasture-fed cattle on the land surrounding the Drake Estero.  Drake’s Bay Oyster Company has been honored by the National Park Service itself, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Society for Range Management for its sustainability initiatives.

Nevertheless, the Park Service has for the last two years taken actions to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company in 2012, when its lease expires, to officially designate the area as wilderness. But Park Service judgment was recently called into question when a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel released a report finding the federal government lacked scientific evidence to back assertions the company is harming the waters or wildlife of Drakes Estero. In fact, in a breech of scientific integrity, Park technicians fabricated data on marine mammal disturbances in an attempt to evict the oyster company from Point Reyes National Seashore.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein supported efforts to allow Drakes Bay Oyster Company to continue operating by recently sending a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

As Gary Nabhan, RAFT co-founder and a University of Arizona scientist states, “We are at a critical moment in this controversy and need reconciliation not further conflict. National Park Service regional director Jon Jarvis has the opportunity to demonstrate his leadership position in driving collaboration between farmers, ranchers, fishers and foragers – and conservationists – to ensure sustainable food production that reduces our carbon footprint and is not pitted against conservation.”

Leaders in sustainable agriculture are getting on board to help mediate the situation between the National Park Service and Drakes Bay Oyster Company.  However, we’re interested in your thoughts about this debate. What are the challenges to developing a symbiotic relationship between sustainable farmers and conversationists?  Legislative challenges?  Perceptual challenges? What level of scientific integrity and collaboration should we expect from the Park Service?  How would you resolve this specific situation? 

Sam Kass Serving School Lunch to Congress Today

by Gordon Jenkins

White House chef Sam Kass and a team of Chicago high school students are serving Congressional leaders a delicious, healthy meal on Capitol Hill today in order to brief Congress on the need to invest in the National School Lunch Program. The meal—which features carrot quesadillas, stuffed peppers and salad—was designed by high school students participating in the Healthy Schools Campaign’s “Cooking Up Change” contest. The students were asked to make a delicious, nourishing meal using ingredients typically available to food service directors. Over 40,000 school children in cities across the U.S. will be served the same meal today in their school cafeterias.

Many organizations are focusing their attention on this year’s reauthorization of the Child Nutrition Act, which is the bill that funds and sets standards for the National School Lunch Program. Over 30 million children eat school lunch everyday. If we’re going to build a nation where everyone is able to enjoy food that is good for them, good for the people who grow it and good for the planet, then there’s no better place to start than in schools. here, on CNN]

Food Service Provider Boycotts Florida Tomatoes

As reported yesterday in the Washington Post, a BIG victory for the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and their Dine With Dignity Campaign:

  Bon Appétit Management Company, a socially responsible food service provider operating on 400 university campuses and in corporate cafés throughout 29 states, has forged a new agreement that frames acceptable working conditions and enforces those conditions with a strict code of conduct. Appalled by what federal prosecutors describe as slavery, one of the largest food service companies in the country has promised to boycott Florida tomatoes unless conditions improve. Bon Appétit’s chief executive called on growers to “do the right thing and our five million pounds of business can go to them. Or they can let the tomatoes rot in the fields.”

The new frontier in sustainable food is social justice and pressure from labor organizations is part of that new wave, but defending ‘green’ credentials is at the heart of it.

More after the jump

Wisconsin Fourth-Graders Boycott School Lunch

by Gordon Jenkins

Patricia Mulvey reports on the blog F is for French Fry that last Friday, a group of fourth-graders at Nuestro Mundo Elementary School in Madison, WI had planned to protest the unhealthy food served in their cafeteria by staying behind in class during recess and enjoying a home-cooked meal with fresh fruits and vegetables. Their “Real Food Picnic” – you might call it an Eat-In– was canceled, however, when the school district’s assistant superintendent alerted parents and administrators and asked them to discourage the event, citing concerns about food allergies, lack of supervision and the presence of news media.

The students are members of a group called “Boycott School Lunch (BCSL)” that they founded last fall after conducting some “gross experiments” like measuring how much grease they could squeeze out of a hamburger. This year, they’ve been learning about Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement in history class. When teacher Joshua Forehand showed them a film about the Children’s Crusade that took place in Birmingham, AL in 1963, the students were inspired to organize a peaceful protest in support of improving school lunch.

More after the jump

Getting Vocal about School Lunch

The School Lunch conversation is heating up on the Hill and off.  The New York Times ran an editorial on Monday saying “The schools should not be trading their students’ health to buy office supplies,” and lauding Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat of California, and Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, for introducing (and promising to introduce) bills that would “update nutritional standards and give the Department of Agriculture broader authority to promulgate new regulations for food sold in schools that accept federal food subsidies.” 

For more information about those bills, as well as for excellent daily coverage of school food policy—as covered by the Child Nutrition Act, up for reauthorization this September—check out schoolfoodpolicy.com.

College Students Learn Where Their Food Comes From (and Goes To)

by Terra Madre 2008 delegate Annie Myers

Some projects are inspired by enthusiasm, some by curiosity, or morality, ambition, passion, friendship, or obligation.  The inspiration for Radishes and Rubbish was born out of such a combination of these emotions that Carla and I never doubted our ability to draw others into our work.  We are both novices and experts, both endlessly enthusiastic and quite stunningly naive.  We had no idea what times were in store.

Radishes and Rubbish is (in elevator speak) a series of field trips to food production and processing sites and waste management locations within the New York City region.  The Green Grant program of NYU’s Sustainability Task Force provides the funding for these trips, during which my friend Carla Fernandez and I offer participants an adventure, education, transportation, and a meal, all for free.  The transportation may be by foot, by subway, or by boat, by the occasional rented van, or the rare and appreciated large comfy bus.  The meal is always made with ingredients sourced as locally as can be, grown organically if possible, and always made or sold by people or shops that we know and support.  The participants are ideally freshmen in college, though they have ranged from librarians to chemistry professors, from film students to food distributors to the curious and unemployed.  The destinations are up to us.

Carla and I came at the idea of our trips from slightly different perspectives.  I study regional food systems; she studies socially responsible supply chains.  She wanted to learn about the large-scale waste management centers where our trash so misleadingly seems to disappear; I wanted to share my friendship with and knowledge of several innovative and small food producers and processors in the region.  As students at NYU’s Gallatin School, we both proposed parallel “field trip” projects in April 2008, without knowing of each other’s propositions.  The Green Grant committee told us we would receive funding if we combined forces.  And thus Radishes and Rubbish was born.

We have led our fellow students (and students at heart) to one recycling center, one artisan baker, two urban farms, two slaughterhouses, three cheese shops, three farms upstate (of which one composts NYU’s organic matter), one importer’s warehouse, and the second largest wholesale fish market in the world.  We’ve just finished up the school year with two trips in one weekend: to a commercial rooftop greenhouse on the Upper East Side, and to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island.

More after the jump

Earth Day and the People’s Garden

Happy Earth Day, Everyone!

Here at the Slow Food USA offices, we’re planting our window boxes full of herbs, and beginning our office composting; around the country, Americans are planting trees and gardens; Obama will be visiting a wind turbine; over at the USDA, the People’s Garden is growing.  As stated in the USDA Press Release:

AGRICULTURE SECRETARY VILSACK EXPANDS “THE PEOPLE’S GARDEN” TO PROMOTE HEALTHY FOOD, PEOPLE AND COMMUNITIES ACROSS THE NATION
 
WASHINGTON, April 22, 2009 - In honor of Earth Day, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared the entire grounds at the USDA Jamie L. Whitten Building as ‘The People’s Garden’ and unveiled plans to create a sustainable landscape on the grounds.

“USDA is an every day every way kind of department and this garden will help illustrate the many ways USDA works to provide a sustainable, safe and nutritious food supply as well as protect and preserve the landscape where that food is produced,” said Vilsack. “The garden will help explain to the public how small things they can do at home, at their business or on their farm or ranch, can promote sustainability, conserve the nation’s natural resources, and make America a leader in combating climate change.”

To read the entire release, click here.