COMING FROM The California Institute for Rural Studies and Fair Food Project: “Fair Food: Field to Table”, a multimedia presentation that promotes a more socially just food system in the U.S. It was created in part by Rick Nahmias Photography.

About the presentation:

Through the stories and voices of farmworkers, growers, businesses and fair food advocates, viewers learn about the harsh realities of farmworker conditions and, more importantly, the promise of improved farm labor practices in American agriculture. The growing movement for “fair food” is tapping into rising consumer demand for food produced in accordance with their values.

The presentation consists of three parts:

• Part 1: The Farmworkers
• Part 2: The Farmers
• Part 3: The Advocates

On Saturday, November 14th, about a dozen college students from the Oregon Extension teamed up with ECS clients to plant a variety of brassicas.

About a half dozen upstart cauliflower plants, some young cabbages, and several kinds of flowering kale were all eager to get out of their pots and into fresh soil!

The kale and cabbage were kindly donated by the garden department at Cole Hardware, which needed to make room for a new shipment of poinsettias. (I guess its that time of year…)  Wendy Johnson provided the cauliflower which came from the Green Gulch Farm Zen Center greenhouse.  The rain held off until the very last plant was in the ground.  Then the skies opened up!

Food management company Bon Appetit in Palo Alto has built a good reputation as a sustainable company, buying its produce and other foodstuffs as locally and organically as possible. “I’ve learned a lot working here,” said Jon Hall, head chef of Bon Appetit’s University of San Francisco cafeteria. “In other kitchens, if you can get something for five cents a pound cheaper, that’s what you buy. If I did that here, people would notice. [My bosses at Bon Appetit] would say, ‘Why’d you buy that?’ ”

But when Bon Appetit executives decided to take on the issue of worker treatment on the farms that supplied their food, they found it difficult to find reliable information on the subject. “We always felt like there was something there that needed to be done and change that needed to take place,” said vice president Maisie Greenwalt.

“But we didn’t know who to talk to.”

Her cue to act came from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a group from Immokalee County, Fla. The farm workers’ organization brought nationwide publicity to the slavery-like conditions in the area’s tomato fields. Greenwalt accompanied the group on an information-gathering trip to Immokalee and saw firsthand the places where recent immigrants were held to work against their will, living in squalor and being paid little as $20 a week.

Greenwalt saw the travesty as a wake-up call. Collaborating with the Immokalee activists, Bon Appetit developed a workers’ rights contract that all their tomato suppliers must now sign. “After Bon Appetit sent me the contract, I sort of at first didn’t see the point. But then I spoke with the [Coalition of Immokalee Workers] and it made sense. Worker abuse has been around for centuries,” said Tom Wilson of Alderman Farms, one of the company’s tomato growers.

Greenwalt says Bon Appetit cafeterias were prepared to eliminate tomatoes from their menus. “Every chef and manager I talked to said they would rather not serve tomatoes than serve the tomatoes that were coming from these conditions.” But every one of their suppliers signed, agreeing to conditions such as a mandatory worker-controlled safety committee and a “minimum fair wage.”

Seen in a seven page feature on organic food injustice, written by CAITLIN DONOHUE, published in today’s San Francisco Bay Guardian, and found online here.

MILWAUKEE, USA: Earlier this week, CNN ran a short “Solutions” feature about Will Allen and Growing Power. Watch the video here.

On Saturday November 7th I had the privilege of visiting the Edible School Yard in Berkeley, where I met up with Wendy Johnson.  Wendy took an interest in our project and was kind enough to donate all the lettuce and herbs for our first planting.  On Sunday November 8th the Grace Cathedral youth confirmation class joined a group of dedicated ECS clients for the inaugural planting at the Sanctuary!  Soil was flying, as the team got busy in a veritable planting frenzy!

We filled one raised bed planter with lettuce starts and a prominently displayed marigold.  In a variety plastic containers (salvaged from SF Dump) we repotted thyme, oregano, spearmint, and three different kinds of sage.

proud of a day's work

The Sanctuary is an emergency shelter managed by Episcopal Community Services of San Francisco. Located at the corner of 8th and Howard St, the Sanctuary provides housing, support, and program activities for 200 adult clients (75 women and 125 men) for periods ranging from 3-90 days.

Viviana Martinez, Director of Shelters, has decided that a garden would provide an additional place of rest, nurture, and healing for Sanctuary clients. A native of Peru, Viviana mourns our loss of connection to natural places. It is Viviana’s hope that clients will draw strength from connecting with life-sustaining processes, and that by learning to take care of plants, we might all become more attentive to taking care of ourselves and eachother.

Clients will join teams of outside volunteers to build and maintain this parking lot garden. Together we will turn a 28′x28′ corner of the parking lot into a living, vibrant, beautiful raised bed garden.

This space will be used to grow vegetables, herbs, and flowers, creating a sanctuary within a sanctuary. Kitchen Manager, Kuulani Imira, will use produce from the garden in the shelter kitchen, and the garden will serve as space for other shelter programs.

On Wednesday November 4th, ten volunteers began to clean and transform the space, painting the surrounding walls with free paint which was salvaged from the SF Dump.

Want to Volunteer!?

If you or your community would like to volunteer time in the garden, or are in a position to donate financial or other material resources for this and similar gardens please contact griff[at]diocal[dot]org

In December of 2008, the people of Holy Innocents Episcopal Church in San Francisco, led by their Senior Warden Margaret Dyer-Chamberlain and her husband Page Chamberlain, planted a vegetable garden. Their mission was to “come together as a community to grow food that will help the most needy and vulnerable among us.”

winter raised beds

In a sliver of land between two buildings, parishioners and community members gathered to plant a winter crop of cauliflower, beets, carrots, broccoli, and various leafy greens. By spring there was a second planting, and the children of the parish were wholeheartedly involved, planting and raising their own seedlings at home.

While some of the seedlings were planted at the church, the bulk of them were given away to clients of the Julian Pantry, housed at St. John the Evangelist. Margaret smiles as she recalls, “The children became so attached to their plants that they could hardly bear to give them away.”

As summer approached, the congregation planted fruit trees in containers on the front steps of the church—a sign to all passersby of the bustling life within. Meanwhile, Margaret and Page began organizing groups from Holy Innocents, the neighborhood, and from Stanford University (where Page teaches and Margaret is an administrator) to glean unpicked fruit from local trees. Most weeks at Holy Innocents, an offering of produce is brought to the altar and blessed alongside the eucharistic elements. The produce is then delivered to the Julian Pantry or the Free Farm Stand at 22^nd and Treat in San Francisco.

The Holy Innocents community garden is both an example of environmental stewardship and distributive justice. By using previously unproductive space and harvesting neglected crops, this community is transforming waste into life-giving nutrition, and moving us all from scarcity into abundance. In doing so they remind us of the central mission of our churches.

Believe it or not, fall and winter are great times to plant a garden in the Bay Area! Cultivate DioCal is an initiative to promote and support gardening and food-sharing around the Bay Area. For more information, or to find out how you can be involved, contact Griff, DioCal’s Environmental Justice Missioner, at: griff[at]diocal[dot]org

The California Institute for Rural Studies and Rick Nahmias Photography are pleased to announce the release of “Fair Food: Field to Table” a multimedia presentation promoting a more socially just food system in the US.

Through the voices of agricultural workers, growers, businesses and fair food advocates, “Fair Food: Field to Table” tells the story of the growing movement for fair food in the US and the promise of improved conditions for agricultural workers.

www.fairfoodproject.org

I was sitting over my breakfast in the cafeteria the other day when I spotted this article in the Star Tribune. Apparently, there is a “nationwide shortage” of Eggo frozen waffles due to “interruptions in production at two of the four plants that make them.” Bloggers and news sources alike have been following the story in hordes, some in seriousness, as does the Star Tribune, and others with just a hint of sarcasm, as Stephen Colbert does in this clip.

Believe it or not, these “vintage waffles” have already hit the virtual shelves of Ebay, selling for $49.99 for two boxes. It’s true: A nationwide emergency is on hand! What do people EAT for breakfast if not Eggo waffles???

Actually, there are quite a few other options. But Eggos are just one of the many processed breakfast foods that many people — especially kids — eat on a daily basis. Even if they were generally healthy for you — see the not-so-nutritious facts here — Eggos would still perpetuate the industrial agricultural model that dominates the food system by using processed and enriched grain products.

To combat these issues, try eating fresh, local fruit for breakfast, if it’s in season. Or you could even make your own waffles, using as many local or organic ingredients as you can find. If you’re concerned about the time it takes to cook in the morning, make a big batch on the weekend and then freeze them for the week. It’s like eating frozen Eggos — except more delicious.

But there’s a problem here: the cost. Eggos usually cost somewhere around $2 for a box. If you want to buy fresh fruit or fresh ingredients for waffles, you have to spend more money. This brings up one of the major issues with the local and organic food movements: How are people supposed to support the movement if they can’t afford it? Eating well shouldn’t be a class issue, as a comment on my last post noted. It’s easy to understand why less-privileged consumers wouldn’t want to spend money on expensive local food if they are struggling to eat.

Luckily, there are many organizations already trying to remedy this problem. Here’s a video — produced in part by a fellow Ole, Jensen Power — from Growing Gardens, an organization in Portland, Oregon. This organization plants urban gardens for low-income households to promote food security as well as healthy, local eating.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about Eggos, breakfast, or the cost of food.

Dr. Wayne Roberts spoke on food policy and a new vision for cities at Toledo Library in the US. As always his witty humour is always a hit. The photos he uses in the presentation are also quite insightful. Dr. Roberts also proposes hopeful solutions and answers to fixing cities and the food system. If you want the quick written summary you can read it below.

Watch the full video and get the quick written summary at FoodCycles.org.

CHICAGO, USA: A Slow Food write up in promotion of organizing like the Growing Food and Justice Initiative, and farming like Growing Power.

Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
Mark Winne, 2008

Closing the Food Gap is a reflection on Winne’s decades in the business of working against food insecurity. His book is filled with anecdotes from his career as a food equality advocate: community gardener, policy advocate, food system coordinator, and concerned neighbor.

I found the anecdotes the most poignant and memorable parts of the book. Without them book is more of a where-we-stand reflection than a pointed advocacy piece. But Winne’s motivations are so right and his experiences so interesting, I’d forgive him almost anything. Anything except this atrocity, supposedly describing his own childhood:

“The soft spaces of a thousand suburban lawns were the stage upon which I performed life’s early dances. Marinated in green, steeped in autumn foliage, and dipped in spring’s robust fragrances, I was nothing more than a semipermeable membrane open to every one of nature’s gifts.”

Holy Guacamole. Fortunately, once Winne gets this out of his system on page 4 his prose is clear and straightforward, and not trippy. Seriously there’s nothing else remotely as bad, or I wouldn’t have read a word further.

Winne gives a thoughtful history of the American response to food insecurity over the past 30 years, explaining how the food bank model has become the 800 pound gorilla with the best of intentions but all the wrong tools. He then touches on all the tools of food advocacy: food stamps, farmer’s markets, community gardens, nutrition education, community-supported grocery stores in urban deserts, and policy advocacy, detailing the successes and failures of each tool through his experiences in Connecticut.

But what won this book it’s real place on my bookshelf were Winne’s own experiences, and these words at the end of the book where we explains why he has chosen to spend his livelihood working on food equality. He writes:

“Food was the most tangible and direct way to help individuals and communities gain a measure of control over their lives… Food was the path to empowerment.

“…because the food system is so diverse and complex, it has many interconnected parts, none of which can be ignored for too long before the system falls out of balance. Focus too intently on hunger, and you’ll lose sight of its cause. Devote yourself too narrowly to agriculture, and you’ll forget about the consumer. Care too much about your own food, and you’ll forsake food justice. There are larger purposes in life when all our interests come together. Closing the food gap is one of them.” (173-4, 193)

Amen.

Sooo…..I have decided to get back on this blog and work to regenerate it into a more lively look at food justice and thoughts on that…

Working sporadically on it all summer i was constantly desperate to add meaningful posts while at the same time having doubts about blogs in general especially in a world that seems to need less of internet communication and more face to face communication.

However, I am trying the blog for food justice again, this time with my sister Camille, a hardcore health eater and runner. So tomorrow I will start more frequent additions to a blog that is going through regeneration….get pumped!

I saw an article the other day in the Star Tribune that featured the Thousand Hills Cattle Co., which sells its locally grown, grass-fed beef to my school’s cafeteria. Naturally, I was interested. But the story wasn’t quite what I expected. Apparently, along with selling grass-fed beef to humans, Thousand Hills has started producing and selling dog food.

Are we spoiling our pets?

Yes, dog food. The product is a blend of grass-fed raw beef and sprouted grains, plus vitamins and minerals. This concoction is supposedly healthier for your dog — since raw meat is what they evolved to eat — and is supposed to keep down veterinary bills in the long term. But at $5 a pound in some stores, this dog food isn’t exactly cheap when compared to standard Purina brand dog food, which costs between $1 and $2 per pound.

Now I want to make it clear: I love dogs. I love most animals, for that matter. And I greatly admire the Thousand Hills Cattle Co. for their amazing efforts to produce beef in a sustainable fashion. But I question whether such a specialized farm should be spending time, effort, and money on creating pet food.

From 1994 to 2004, the amount of money Americans spent on pet food rose from $17 billion to $34.2 billion, according to 2006 article from CNN. (Also check out this website for “Pet Bistro”: They specialize in organic, gourmet “pet cuisine.”) Instead of spending that money on pet food, consumers could have supported local and organic food markets for humans. But consumers chose to buy massive quantities of pet food while supporting cheap, processed food for themselves — inevitably unhealthier for them and the planet, as journalist Michael Pollan has argued — leaving the harmful practices of industrial agriculture to continue at will.

I don’t think that we should let our pets starve. And I think that we have the right to worry about what we put in our pets’ bodies. But I do believe that maybe we should think twice about spending our money on pricey pet food, and what it is actually benefiting — especially now that companies like the Thousand Hills Cattle Co. have entered the game, throwing a whole new loop in the justice of the food market. Just think: How many human mouths could that extra money feed?

Let me know what you think. Should Americans be lavishing their pets with such luxuries? What is your pet worth?

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights
by David E. Gumpert
(with foreword by Joel Salatin)
Chelsea Green Publishing
Printed on recycled paper

What do government regulators have against raw milk?

The Raw Milk Revolution is an exploration of this and other relevant questions in a time when the entire industrialized food system is coming into question.

Based on his blog, The Complete Patient, David Gumpert provides a reasonable, balanced, and straightforward account of the pros and cons of raw milk consumption and the legal constraints placed on its production.

The book provides historic context of the dairy industry, from about the time of the Industrial Revolution to more recent regulatory history regarding food safety. It balances past events with the current trend toward consuming raw dairy, explaining both the purported risks and benefits of the product that comes unadulterated from the cow (or goat or sheep).

A taste of the past
Pasteurization was a response to the increasingly deplorable conditions and industrialization of dairy farming. As dairy operations crowded into cities and were coupled with distilleries for “efficient” use of grain (as cow feed, something cows do not naturally eat), cows became sicker, farms became a breeding ground for pathogens.

An emotionally charged debate
But is the method of pasteurization – slow on the uptake at the turn of the century, yet widely used today – still valid? Is it making us safer? The answer is somewhat unclear. The rates of raw-milk–related illness are debatable, depending on who you ask. According to some groups, like [grass-fed] raw-milk advocates the Weston A. Price Foundation, the rates are inflated, while state and federal agencies argue that raw milk carries an inherent risk to health. As do parents of children who may have become seriously ill from it.

Raw milk is outlawed in 28 out of 50 states. But the incidence of other food-borne illnesses is just as high, if not higher, than that of raw milk. Even pasteurized milk carries some risk. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the highest rates of listeria illness are due to deli meat. If deli meat is 10 times more likely to expose you to listeria illness than raw milk, why isn’t it restricted or outlawed?

Another question I kept asking is: Why can’t we just put a label on raw milk and let consumers decide whether they want to take the supposed risk? Or more to the point, why don’t consumers have the right to choose their foods, raw or treated?

A question of rights
Joel Salatin, now famous farmer of Polyface Farms in Virginia, posits in the foreword,

The only reason the right to food choice was not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is because the Founders of America could not have envisioned a day when selling a glass of raw milk or homemade pickles to a neighbor would be outlawed. At the time, such a thought was as strange as levitation.

Indeed, what good is the freedom to own guns, worship, or assemble if we don’t have the freedom to eat the proper fuel to energize us to shoot, pray, and preach? Is not freedom to choose our food at least as fundamental a right as the freedom to worship?

Due to the current laws regarding the sale of raw milk, people who choose to produce it are putting themselves at risk of government crackdown in order to fulfill a growing demand. Something is compelling consumers to, in many cases, cross state lines to obtain raw milk. Often, these consumers are pregnant women and mothers. Why are people putting themselves and their families at risk of breaking the law in order to potentially put themselves at risk of illness?

Having tasted raw milk and, unknowingly, carrying it over state lines illegally, The Raw Milk Revolution left me wanting to take the risk again, maybe in order to prove that the benefits are worth the risks.

I think I now have more questions than answers regarding the raw milk debate, but perhaps this is the point – to keep the questions coming with regard to food and our right to choose what we consider healthful to eat.

For more on the raw milk debate, visit The Complete Patient.

Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. To achieve this goal Eco-Libris is working with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry worldwide. Until now Eco-Libris balanced out over 110,000 books, which results in more than 120,000 new trees planted with its planting partners in developing countries.

Colorado, USA / México DF, México:

2009 FOOD JUSTICE AWARD and RECOGNITION, DONATION and SCHOLARSHIP from Mediacompost Beta Blog Food and Justice Fund:

DONATION AWARD and SCHOLARSHIP NOMINATION:

Nominate and vote for ecological agents of change working for food justice and food security.

For a $1000 MN peso or equivalent donation, this blog nominates the following ten people, organizations and places for their leadership, achievement and hard work in the field of food justice and security:

1. LaDonna Redmond, Graffiti and Grub, Chicago, USA

2. People’s Grocery, Oakland, USA

3. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya Farms, Uttarakhand, INDIA

4. Detroit, USA (one group or farm)

5. Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida, USA

6. Via Campesina, WORLD

7. Sin Maiz No Hay Pais, MEXICO

8. Havana, CUBA (one group or farm)

9. East New York Farms, NY, USA (one group or farm)

10. Growing Power, Milwaukee / Chicago, USA

11. Raj Patel, London, GB

The winning food justice vote will be awarded a $10,000 MMN equivalent donation and a second $1000 MNM will be matched as a local agriculture scholarship.

Nominations for candidates of the scholarship should be mailed to or be posted on this blog.  A nomination application should be filled out after making a nomination.

Applications are available in English and Spanish from this website.  Scholarship is eligible for residents of USA and MEXICO.

I don’t know if it’s just the fact that I live in Brooklyn, the home of the nations largest food co-op and countless CSAs, but wherever I go I find myself in discussions about our changing food system. Today, I attended the Fort Greene Food Conference, a small community gathering that grew out of the Brooklyn Food Conference this past spring. Over a hundred people of all ages gathered at a school close to Fort Greene park, to talk about food in our community. The topic was primarily access, how can we get healthy food into all parts of our neighborhood. Food deserts are a huge problem in large cities, especially places like New York, where poverty and unemployment is common.

What gets me every time is that it is so easy. Once people’s eyes are opened to the problems, solutions seem to bubble up in rapid streams. There was Yonette Fleming, VP of Hattie Carthan Community Garden in Bushwick, a thriving place where 60 members grow most of their food in small assigned plots. A 23-year veteran farmer named Mr. Simmons grows food for his entire senior center (many of it’s members were in attendance). Next to the garden, there was a vacant lot, where people had been dumping waste for years and years, where graffiti and illegal activities had taken over and made it quite the unsafe place. Fleming rallied her community and convinced the city to turn the lot over to Hattie Carthan, and she now runs a hugely popular Farmers Market in that same spot.

In a workshop session, Stacy Murphy of BK Farmyards talked about her business model of growing food in the backyards of those who have space, but no time, for gardening. Homeowners only pay for the share of the produce that they want, and Murphy sells the remainder. How could it get easier than that? In that same session, an attendee mentioned the underused park across the street from his house, and asked if she could do something with that. Greene Harvest CSA coordinator Stephanie Bergsma told him to speak to Council Member Letitia James, since she had been looking for a project that would suit that same park, since it was considered underutilized. Connecting the dots…

The world is a beautiful, connected place. It seems all we have to do is bring people together and give them something to talk about. Change will happen organically after that, because we’re all in this together, and we all have something to bring to the table. This is why conferences were invented.

People’s Grocery wins the 2009 Green Alternative Honoree at MyHumanRightsHeroes.org.

Oakland CA: A new report from the Oakland Institute, The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor, sounds the alarm on the threat that land grabbing poses to food security and livelihoods. Land grabs–the purchase of vast tracts of land from poor, developing countries by wealthier, food-insecure nations and private investors–have become a widespread phenomenon, with foreign interests seeking or securing between 37 million and 49 million acres of farmland between 2006 and the middle of 2009.

While such land grabs have not gone unnoticed, much attention has focused on individual countries, such as China and Saudi Arabia, buying land in poor nations. The Great Land Grab lays bare the insidious role played by international financial institutions like the International Finance Corporation of the World Bank and Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS), as well as rich nations, in promoting and facilitating this widespread land reappropriation–all in the name of promoting food security through foreign investment in agriculture. The report concludes that the current debate surrounding the land grab phenomenon fails to adequately and rigorously examine the consequences of this trend, and exposes how the huge sell-offs of resources undermines food security and land reform efforts. The authors implore that we question the assumption that increased investment in agriculture is beneficial for all parties involved.

“The history of foreign direct investment in agriculture reveals the plethora of social and economic problems that have plagued local citizens and belies the claims that the current land acquisitions will positively impact the development of poor nations,” said Shepard Daniel, fellow at the Oakland Institute and lead author of the report. “Throughout history, corporate agribusiness has been known to establish itself in developing countries with the effect of either driving independent farmers off their land or turning farmers into plantation workers. No matter how convincing the claim that these massive international acquisitions will bring much-needed agricultural investment to poor countries, evidence shows there is simply no place for the small farmer in the vast majority of these land grab situations that will only increase monoculture-based, export-oriented agriculture, further jeopardizing international food security,” she continued.

“Our report dismantles the myth of the ‘win-win’ argument that has been offered to quell concerns around this trend. A myopic focus on potential benefits, such as increased investment in agriculture in poor countries, is sidelining the issue of food security for the world’s poor and land reform from the forefront of the debate,” said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute and co-author of the report. “Food security and the implementation of land reform policies are inextricably linked. There are 1.5 billion small-scale farmers in the world who live on less than 2 hectares of land; secure and equitable access to and control over land allows these farmers to produce food, which is vital for their own food security as well as that of rural populations throughout the developing world,” she continued.

The Great Land Grab critically examines the role of the private sector in agricultural development and exposes implications of private sector control over food resources. The report concludes that those who promote the benefits of private sector growth in agriculture fail to recognize that acquisition of crucial food-producing lands by foreign private entities poses a threat to rural economies and livelihoods, land reform agendas, and other efforts aimed at making access to food more equitable. “Much press coverage and research has focused on the food security motivations of food import-dependent countries,” said Daniel. “We forget, however, that the main thrust of investment is coming from the private sector, whose interests do not lie in establishing food security, but rather in making a profit in international food markets.”

An estimated 1.02 billion people-one sixth of humanity-suffer from chronic hunger, and, in one of the world’s cruelest ironies, 70 percent of this starving population live and work on small-scale farms and in rural areas. To tackle the growing crisis of world hunger, policy makers and agriculture experts will gather at the World Food Summit in November 2009; preparation for the summit is revolving around increased investment in agriculture. However, as The Great Land Grab points out, there is a dangerous disconnect between increasing agricultural investment through rich countries amassing land in poor countries and the goal of secure and adequate food supplies for poor and vulnerable populations.

To Download a Copy of the Report Click Here.

The Great Land Grab: Rush for World’s Farmland Threatens Food Security for the Poor is a publication of the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org), an independent policy think tank whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic, and environmental issues.

Quaker Oats/Goodbite.com “Awaken Your Senses” Challenge
With a click of the thumbs-up button under the Cherries video, you can help Jen win $10,000 to benefit the National Farm to School Network.

Twelve food bloggers shared their favorite food memory via a video diary posted at YouTube.com/QuakerTalk. Website visitors will vote for their favorite oatmeal topping, and the blogger associated with the winning topping will receive $10,000 to donate to the charity of their choice.

To help Farm to School, just watch Jen’s video here and click the thumbs-up button that appears at the bottom of the frame – then tell your friends and family so they can help, too!

Voting on the video runs until Thursday, October 22nd at 11:59pm.  The idea is to mobilize supporters to vote for Jen so that we make it into the semi-finalist round.  Voting for the grand Prize (10K!) will then take place among the 3 semi-finalist on 11/9/09.

So how can you help?

1) Visit Quaker Talk on YouTube (just click the link) by this Thursday, October 22nd.

2) Click on the Vote or Watch & Vote button.

3) Select Jen’s video (it isn’t always in the same position depending on how you get there, so you’ll have to actually READ for her topping: Cherries Jubilee) and click on the GREEN THUMB to vote for her topping!

4) Spread the word.

Help nourish kids and communities!

November Reader Survey: Which projects, places or reports should everyone know about Oakland, California?

1.) People’s Grocery is a community-based organization in West Oakland that develops creative solutions to the health problems in (the) community that stem from a lack of access to and knowledge about healthy, fresh foods. Visit their site here.

2.) City Slicker’s Farms are growing affordable fresh produce for West Oakland.  Look up one of their farms here.

3.) Planting Justice is based in Oakland and dedicated to food justice, economic justice, and sustainable local food systems. Visit them here.

4.) Oakland Based Urban Gardens is a West Oakland organization with youth gardening programs. Visit them here.

5.) The Oakland Food Connection is a not-for-profit organization focused on Oakland’s heritage of Food, Community and Culture. Visit them here.

6.) Oakland Food Policy Council is promoting an Equitable and Sustainable Oakland Food System, visit them here.

7.) Cultivating the Commons: An Assessment of the Potential for Urban Agriculture on Oakland’s Public Land, a new report that reveals untapped potential for food production on Oakland’s Public Land. A new report released this week identifies 1,200 acres of vacant and underutilized public land in Oakland, California, that could potentially be used for food production. If only half of this land were cultivated using intensive ecological farming methods, the authors conclude that these “commons” could contribute at least five percent of the city’s recommended vegetable needs to the local food system, a significant step towards Oakland’s goal sourcing a third of its food locally.

The report also emphasizes urban agriculture’s potential contributions to Oakland’s sustainability goals. In addition to producing fresh and nutritious food, urban farming creates green jobs, and provides and other environmental services, green space, and educational opportunities. Read the report here.

8.)  Repairing the Local Food System: Long-Range Planning for People’s Grocery, an award-winning Master’s Thesis by Alethea Marie Harper (2007), from Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, at University of California, Berkeley.  Download the PDF here.

9.) History of Food Insecurity in West Oakland can be read here.

10.) Poverty and Race Research Council Report: Food Justice Activism in West Oakland, California (Jan/Feb 2008), read it here.

11.) Oakland Food System Assessment was study was conducted by graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley in 2005.  Gain access to their research here.