Local Harvest

Although I myself would like to purchase organic, locally grown foods more often than I do, I find myself using the all too common excuse that finding places that sell organic and local foods is hard, tedious, and often out of the way. However, I came across a fantastic resource on the Internet called Local Harvest, which has listings of farms, markets, restaurants, and grocery stores that sell local and organic foods. The main page of the website even has a map and search engine so you can easily find places to buy these types of food near your own home. I was actually surprised to see how many local farms and restaurants that use local products are located quite close to where I live in the suburbs of Seattle.

There is also a link from this website to Slow Food's Ark of Taste, which "aims to rediscover and catalog forgotten flavors by documenting excellent food products that are in danger of disappearing." This deals with the GMOs we have been discussing in class that lead to the endangerment of the original crops. It's shocking to look at the list of products they have deemed as in danger.

Beyond this, you can find a calendar listing various local farm events, reasoning and surveys concerning why you should eat local foods, and education on the importance of eating organic produce. I do know that this cite does not feature all local markets and organic restaurants, as there are some I know of that are missing in the listings, but overall it appears to be a very useful tool. The website can be found at http://www.localharvest.org/.

-Ryan Sharnbroich

Eating Where We Learn

The Student P-Patch Garden at UW

I want to take a moment to talk about where food is growing closest to us: two on-campus gardens. The (slightly) older of the two, known as the Urban Farm, grows near the two Botany Greenhouses on the south end of campus. Anyone interested is welcome to garden there - just join the email list or check out the website to hear about opportunities - and all gardeners share in the harvest.

I spearheaded the creation of the Student P-Patch Garden, shown in the picture, last spring, with the help of the Urban Gardeners and students in SEED, the residence hall environmental group. In this garden, each student or group of students tends one garden plot. This garden is intended to give residence hall students a sense of ownership over a place that they wouldn't otherwise have in the dorms.

Both of these projects, along with the dozens of other school farms across the country, yield a substantial amount of produce, but their main product is food for thought. Student gardens open students' eyes to food issues and teach them the basics of growing their own food. We need more gardens like this for food sovereignty and sustainable food systems to take root again in the United States.


Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley

The Farmer and the Ideology

Closing circle at the Gathering - I am on the far left

Last weekend, I attended the National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture 2008 Leadership Gathering in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. Being very new to the sustainable agriculture scene (and professional conferences), and never having seen Missouri, I had no idea what to expect. Fortunately, everyone I talked to was friendly and warm, eager to share what they were doing and learn about my project. The activists and farmers I met impressed me with their insight and inspired and energized me to join the sustainable agriculture movement.

I learned a lot about food policy in the workshops, but even more in between them. Two farmers who became my friends over the weekend, Sandra and Melynda, helped bring to life for me the debate over the value of organic certification. Sandra raises certified organic poultry and produce in Kentucky. She is a staunch advocate for organic certification, and expressed frustration to me about farmers who claim to follow organic standards but aren't certified. Organic farming, for her, goes beyond forgoing chemicals: it is about replenishing the soil and protecting the land. The certification ensures that farmers go to this level in conservation. And, she says, the certification process is easy and affordable, contrary to what seems to be popular belief.

Melynda, on the other hand, sustainably raises a small herd of cattle without organic certification, in Connecticut. For her, organic certification would mean she couldn't treat her cows with antibiotics when they get sick, something she views as inhumane. She also finds certification unnecessary, because she already has a loyal base of customers who buy milk and meat directly from her farm and can see for themselves how sustainably her cows are raised.

How can these two valid perspectives directly contradict each other? Part of the issue might be differences between cows and chickens, although the debate does exist within the dairy community as well. Differences between the ways the two farmers market their products (farmers' markets v. selling directly on the farm) might also play a role. Maybe, though, both perspectives are limited. Perhaps Melynda does unwittingly cut corners in the stewardship of her land. And maybe Sandra underestimates the weight of the antibiotic issue for larger animals. Probably, both farmers went home with an increased understanding of the other side of the issue. I know I did.

Ariana Rose Taylor-Stanley

Evolutionary Anthropology Research

In my research of our blog topic, I came across a fascinating study performed at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, comparing human diets to that of other apes. They fed distinctly different diets associated with either humans or apes to laboratory mice, and within only two weeks noted significant differences between the mice that are also noted between the genetics of humans and apes. The implications of this experiment are overwhelming - if only two weeks of eating a certain diet can produce such noticeable results in such a short amount of time, imagine what the effects of a lifetime of eating a certain way may be. We may not exactly be what we eat, but what we eat surely does shape who we are and what we may become. You can follow this link to read the summary of this experiment and its findings:


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130092139.htm


-Ryan Sharnbroich

Other Side of the Red Line

Supermarket Red-Lining is generally seen in low-income, minority dense areas and marked by the absence of supermarkets in a region.

Whats the problem? Well it encompasses our blog theme: you are what you eat, you eat where you are.

This red-lining is troublesome because it limits the range of food that people in these supermarket-deprived areas can consume. Basically the range in what they can eat goes from everything nutritious, fresh and good to just strictly processed, full of preservatives and high fructose corn syrup canned/frozen/boxed foods etc.

Food is purchased at mini-marts that are found at every corner flanked by liquor stores or fast food restaurants. Their food that they consume is strictly because of where they are. Many of these people do not have means (i.e. money, transportation) to get to these supermarkets where fresh-produce could be found. This had led to many studies done in where residents of red-lined areas are suffering from malnutrition and health problems.

The New York Times briefly talks about the support and opposition to a one year moratorium that was passed in South Los Angeles that bans new fast food restaurants from opening and gives incentives to those prospective owners who open a grocery store or non-fast food restaurants. Although it does not explicitly speak towards redlining, South L.A. is subject to it, as hinted in the article (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/09/us/09ban.html?hp).

Vera Tran

Recycle

I came across this documentary in a summer course that I took, World Hunger and Resource Development. I wanted to pass this along because I feel that it touches on a few issues that we have talked about in class.

It touches on the idea of having a sense of place. Miguel Diez, the man in the film, left his home and wife and opted for a new way of life. With the creation of the garden, he was able to to create a special relationship to the place in which he inhabited, which then tied him to the land. I think this is even more important when considering that people have this innate affiliation to nature. It's a culture that everyone can relate too. Miguel found peace in creating this garden directly in an urban matrix. Gardening, restoration or spending time with nature can mend the natural connection we humans have with the environment and lead to an understanding of a land ethic.

You can find this original short documentary here at, www.mediathatmattersfest.org/mtm_good_food/#
It has plenty of other great films on food, sustainability and the environment as well as other important issues that we face today on both a local and global scale. I encourage everyone to take a look at the website. .

Vera Tran

Undercover Investigations

A few weeks ago, a vegan organization on campus handed me some pamphlets about animal cruelty. I happened to come across on of these pamphlets the other day, and what I read was horrific. It discussed the multitude of inhumane methods that animal factories in our country use to increase efficiency and profit with no thought and absolutely no respect to the well-being of the animals. I read about the debeaking of chickens, cramped quarters of pigs and cows, various antibiotics animals are injected with to keep them alive in the inhumane conditions that actually effect the meat we eat, trickery companies use to convince consumers that their methods are humane when in fact they are far from. They included a link to some videos that undercover investigators have taken in various factories around our country. They are animal rights activists who accepted jobs at these factories to secretly take video of conditions for animals and workers. The link for some of these videos is http://www.veganoutreach.org/video/, they are incredibly graphic and show animals being tortured, beaten, killed without euthanasia. For any of us who eat meat from many of the big companies in our nation, like I have, it is incredibly eye opening to see what we are actually eating.

-Ryan Sharnbroich

Food Security vs Food Justice

I was talking to Prof. Battisti, my Global Warming professor one day, and he is a specialist on Food security. I have always wanted to know the difference between Food Security and Food Justice, and Prof. Battisti gave me a definition of Food Security:

“a situation that exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social
and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their
dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life” (FAO 2001).

I found something online about this topic as well:

http://peoplesgrocery.org/brahm/peoples-grocery/why-we-call-it-food-justice

Through my conversation with David (our TA), the answer became clearer that Food Security is more passive while Food Justice is trying to help the people gain the initiative in the access to food. So even they all emphasize on people's access to food, we can see Food Security as a more science point of view while Food Justice a more anthropological one. I'm looking forward to Prof. Pena's lectures on Food Justice :)

--Xiyue Sally Zhang