It’s a funny feeling to wake up and, while perusing the homepage of The New York Times , stumble on what feels like your family — pics and profiles of some of the “food fighters” in the movement afoot for healthy, sustainable food for everyone.
Among the people profiled (including Bryant and me) are my dear friends who started Maverick Farms in North Carolina. The crew of Maverick Farms have created one of the most special spots in the country, and the weekend I spent there on the Grub tour was one of the highlights of my whole book jaunt. After a delicious dinner made with freshly picked everything, a reading from passages in Grub, and a rousing tour de force by Molly on the old baby grand in the corner of hte living room, we all nestled down to watch Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers on a sheet hanging down the wall. I remember falling asleep full of wine, good conversation, and sore muscles from time down on the farm: a formula for a good night’s rest.
Other profiles include workers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who we’re excited to be bringing to New York City for our special end-of-the-year fundraiser on the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Also, Severine, the awesome force behind Greenhorns, has a great pic and the most impressive fridge.
Check them all out here.
It’s a funny feeling to wake up and, while perusing the homepage of The New York Times , stumble on what feels like your family — pics and profiles of some of the “food fighters” in the movement afoot for healthy, sustainable food for everyone.
Among the people profiled (including Bryant and me) are my dear friends who started Maverick Farms in North Carolina. The crew of Maverick Farms have created one of the most special spots in the country, and the weekend I spent there on the Grub tour was one of the highlights of my whole book jaunt. After a delicious dinner made with freshly picked everything, a reading from passages in Grub, and a rousing tour de force by Molly on the old baby grand in the corner of hte living room, we all nestled down to watch Garlic is as Good as Ten Mothers on a sheet hanging down the wall. I remember falling asleep full of wine, good conversation, and sore muscles from time down on the farm: a formula for a good night’s rest.
Other profiles include workers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers who we’re excited to be bringing to New York City for our special end-of-the-year fundraiser on the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights.
Also, Severine, the awesome force behind Greenhorns, has a great pic and the most impressive fridge.
Check them all out here.
An outtake from our photo shoot on Added Value’s Community Farm in Red Hook, Brooklyn.
We’re excited to announce the publication of a new study on the media coverage (or lack of it!) about the connection between climate change and food. Led by Roni Neff, from Johns Hopkins University, the study analyzed media coverage of climate change in the country’s top 16 newspapers for their inclusion of the links between global warming and agriculture and the food system. You probably wouldn’t be too surprised to hear that despite the food system contributing to nearly one-third of the global warming effect, the media barely mentioned it, but now you’ve got the numbers.
Says research director and friend to Take a Bite, Roni Neff, PhD:
Greater public awareness could lead to consumer demand for food with lower greenhouse gas emissions. Greater awareness could also spur action from policy makers and the food and agriculture sectors toward reducing food and agriculture-related emissions. The more we know about climate change news coverage, the more effectively we can help to ensure the important facts regarding the food systems’ contribution receive the attention they deserve.
See the full press release and link to the report Yesterday’s dinner, tomorrow’s weather, today’s news? US newspaper coverage of food system contributions to climate change.
This site is about food, about where it comes from, how it’s made, and how that affects everything from our waistlines to our weather. It’s also about policies and politics, about the decisions made in cities across the world and on the national and international level that affect what (and how) food is grown.
With this in mind, I decided to head out to swingstate Ohio to help get-out-the-vote in Columbus, Ohio. Now that I’m back in Brooklyn, I want to share just a couple of the sweetest moments of working with Vote from Home. (I was connected to them through friends at Vote Today Ohio who were also mobilizing to get people to register and vote early.)
On our last day in Columbus, my boyfriend John and I were tasked with heading out to track down problem cases – missing registrations, no social security numbers, no date of birth, that kind of thing. Our first stop was at Grant Hospital downtown—the maternity ward. When we got to Room 543 we knocked and a quiet voice invited us in. A young woman was sitting up in bed, beaming. Between her outstretched legs was her 12-hour old baby, Julian, bundled in blankets. As she signed her voter registration form, we chatted with her friend, cooed over her Buddha-esque baby, and thanked her for calling us. She would be out of the hospital Monday evening at the earliest, she said, and if we hadn’t shown up, she would not have been able to register. Thank you for helping me vote, she said.
Leaving the hospital, we headed out to an address on Kelton Street. From the partially filled out registration, we noticed that Virginia, the woman we would be meeting, was born in 1932. In a neighborhood east of downtown, we pulled up in front of a modest house. Through her screen door, I could see Virginia sitting on her couch. She was surrounded by stacks of opened mail, magazines, a can of soda. AMC was playing quietly on an old television. Her walker was at her feet. She called for me to come in. Visibly shaking, Virginia started apologizing for her condition –Parkinson’s, they think, she told me. Then, she gestured for me to sit down beside her and together we finished filling out her voter registration and her request for an absentee ballot. When it was time to sign, I held the clipboard, and slowly – letter-by-letter – she shakily signed: Virginia Alston. (The Vote from Home people plan to follow up and help her with her ballot).
Another favorite moment was when my younger brother Matt and I went to one of the halfway houses, this one for women coming out of jail. When we got to Alvis House, the manager said there was only one woman who wanted to get taken down to the early voting and registration center. So Matt and I piled back into our 9-seater van with a forty-something woman from the shelter named Candace—or Candy as she said we should call her. On our way to the voting center, we talked about the economy as we drove by some of the boarded up houses on Bryden Road. We waited with the van, while Candy went inside to register and vote. As we were driving back to Alvis House, I have to admit a part of me was feeling like maybe we hadn’t really done much, just clocking one vote. But that’s when she said, leaning in from the back seat: I just really want to thank you two. You just helped a first-time voter.
I suppose in an abstract way I’ve always understood that the voting laws are designed to make it hardest for poor people to vote, but I only have come to really understand it through this experience in Columbus.
Since voting registration is tied to your address, who are the people who have to re-register every election? They’re the people who get evicted, who get foreclosed on. They’re the mothers who have to head to battered women’s shelters, or the young people who bounce for apartment to apartment. They’re the men and women convicted of big crimes (and little ones) who find themselves in and out of jail. These are the people who have to re-register every year, not the families with 30-year mortgages who live in one home their whole lives.
During the whole week we were in Columbus–visiting halfway houses and barber schools, staffing community barbeques in low-income communities and going to homeless shelters–nearly 100 percent of the people we met wanted to get registered to vote. (A few took more persuading than others). Many of them didn’t realize that they had to re-register because their address had changed, and many of the rest of them thought they were already in the system and were surprised when we would check online with our iPhones and learn that weren’t.
Until we have a fundamental overhaul of our voting laws so that it’s as easy for the wealthy as it is for the rest of us to get registered (and stay registered!), this experience has made me commit to taking time every four years to help register people to vote. It seems like the least any of us could do to make our democracy less of a sham.
Elizabeth, Latham, Bryant, Ludie, and me at the What’s On Your Plate? documentary film wrap dinner.
Here at the CFSC conference at a panel on community food solutions to climate change. Heard from Deb Habib from Seeds of Solidarity, a vibrant family farm in Massachusetts. Her farm is completely solar and people powered. No fossil fuel powered machines for Deb.
“Is there enough? We always hear that question,” Deb said. “Of course there is. We on my farm are completely reliant on, and powered on, the sun. And the Earth receives more energy from the sun in one hour than the planet uses in energy in a whole year.”
Her message of abundance, if we tap into nature, is the message we need to hear. It’s the good news about nature’s ability to be resilient and that will help us address our growing climate crisis.
Over here at Bite Central, we just got a note about a new blog from Nicole Peyrafitte and decided to check it out and are pleased to report back that we liked what we saw.
Nicole Peyrafitte was born into the fifth generation of a family of restauranteurs in the South of France, grew up cooking with her grandfather, and eventually went on to intern at several top-tier French restaurants. She is also the author of of the blog Collectages:Recordings of Foods & Attitudes. Her latest post features Oeufs Cocotte à la Crème, which she cooked for brunch on Sunday.
We all wish we’d been invited to the party, and as it turns out, you could be. Since 1995 Nicole has been using the stage as her kitchen drawing crowds as a performance artist who integrates video, paintings, and voice. Often her performances involve the live preparation of a dish which is then shared with the audience. Pay her site a visit to read about her latest appearances and find out where you can see her next.
–Jeanne
This week, the Community Food Security Coalition holds its 12th annual conference.
With colleagues from around the country, we’ve created a series of workshops on food and climate change and invite you to check them out: conference schedule.
Specific workshops include:
Climate Change and Food: What are the problems, and what’s at stake?
Monday, October 6 11:15am
An overview of how the predominant global food system is contributing to climate change; how climate is in turn impacting agriculture; and why the problem won’t be solved by more of the “same old thing” (industrial-scale monocultures for agrofuel production, etc.).
Moderator: Molly Anderson, Food Systems Integrity and CFSC Board. Presenters: Peter Mann, WHY; Molly Anderson, Food Systems Integrity and CFSC Board; Marluce Melo, Pastoral Land Commission, Via Campesina, Brazil; Leticia Galeano, Popular Agrarian Movement, Paraguay
Climate Change and Food: What are community solutions?
Tuesday, October 7, 11am
How can we tackle climate change and build sustainable food systems at the same time? What models and tools exist for building food and energy sovereignty, starting at the community level? How do we spread the word that community food security is part of the solution to climate change? Participants will hear about a diversity of approaches and models from the U.S. and around the world and will leave this workshop empowered to take action.
Presenters: Maria Aguiar, Grassroots International; Deb Habib, Seeds of Solidarity; Ken Meter, Crossroads Resource Center; Marluce Melo, Pastoral Land Commission, Via Campesina, Brazil; Jac Smit, Urban Agriculture Network
Taking a Bite out of Climate Change: Campaigns Addressing the Food and Climate Change Connection
Tuesday, October 7 2:15pm
With concerns about global warming escalating, movements around the world are embarking on creative campaigns to address the links between climate change and food. We’ll hear from leaders from some of these innovative campaigns who will engage us in spirited conversation and ideas or action. Among the questions we’ll talk about: What are strategies and entry points for action? What can we learn from the successes and setbacks of these campaigns to date? How can we better work together to promote a just and climate-friendly food system?
Moderator: Anna Lappé, Small Planet Institute. Presenters: Ben Burkett, National Family Farm Coalition, President, and Via Campesina Food Sovereignty Commission; Stephanie Demmons, Oxfam America; Danielle Nierenberg, Humane Society of the United States; Meredith Niles, Center for Food Safety; Andrea Samulon, Rainforest Action Network
Climate Change and Food: What are the next action steps for CFSC?
Wednesday, October 8 10:30am
A facilitated discussion among plenary speakers, participants from prior workshops in the climate track, and additional participants (all are welcome). Representatives of all CFSC committees are strongly encouraged to attend.
Co-facilitated by Stephanie Demmons of Oxfam America and Christina Schiavoni, WHY
If you can’t join us at the conference, please e-mail info@takeabite.cc and we’ll be happy to send you a write-up of the panels.
Maybe it’s because in the wake of the biggest financial crisis in our lifetimes it seems even more weird to pay for anything you can get for free (especially water) or maybe it’s because environmentalists and public health advocates have helped to spread the word, but for whatever the reason, sales are slipping for the bottled water industry.
Jenny Wiggins reports for the Financial Times:
“In the UK, bottled water sales volumes have slid 4.7 per cent and sales revenues have fallen 5.1 per cent in the 12 months to mid-August, according to research group Nielsen. This includes a 2.5 per cent drop in sales volumes of Evian and a 7.4 per cent drop in sales volumes of Volvic, both owned by French company Danone. In the US, where bottled water consumption is higher than in any other country, supermarket sales are at their slowest rate since bottled water became popular a decade ago.”
Check out the Take Back Your Tap campaign at Food & Water Watch to learn more and get involved.
In case you missed the Climate Change and Food panel at Slow Food Nation over Labor Day weekend, Fora.tv has posted the discussion moderated by Mark Hertsgaard.
Panelists included: Carl Pope, Executive Director of the Sierra Club; Wes Jackson, Ph.D., author and President and Founder of The Land Institute; Aaron (Ari) Bernstein, MD, co-author of Sustaining Life with Eric Chivian, MD; Patrick Holden, Director of the Soil Association; and me — Anna Lappé. Check it out and let me know what you think by writing to me here at Take a Bite.
9/26/08 - Fora.tv - Mark Hertsgaard
Climate Change and Food Panel at Slow Food Nation
The peppy editors over at Cookthink.com just asked me to give my take on their culinary quiz. Check out my responses here. And while you’re over there, take a look at the site’s recipes, searchable by that one ingredient you happen to have a hankering for.
Over here at Take a Bite we’re encouraging people to think beyond their collective and individual carbon footprints, and consider their carbon “foodprint,” too.
Cookthink can help you make a positive impact by choosing locally grown and organically produced food. For a wee preview of my personal foodprint, here you go:
Post-the Slow Food bash, TIME magazine published an article from Bryan Walsh: “Can Slow Food Feed the World?” In it, he repeated the now outdated claim that organic farming can’t feed the world. I wrote a response and much to my surprise (because they didn’t contact me), the mag printed it! Here’s what they published (and below what I sent them):
The Case for Slow Food
Thanks for your coverage of the Slow Food Movement [Sept. 15]. It is misleading, though, to claim that industrialized food “is the only way to economically feed a global population.” There is nothing economical about a system contributing a big chunk of our greenhouse-gas emissions. The drivers of global deforestation are large-scale agribusiness–not Sunshine heirloom-tomato farmers from Sonoma.
Anna Lappe, Brooklyn, NY
What I sent:
Dear Editor,
Thanks for your coverage of the 50,000-person strong Slow Food Nation pow-wow in San Francisco (“Can Slow Food Feed the World?” September 4, 2008), but let’s be clear: with all of the evidence about the environmental and human consequences of industrial farming, it is dangerously misleading to claim that industrialized food “is the only way to economically feed a global population nearing 7 billion.” There is nothing “economical” about a food system that is contributing to one-third of the devastating – and did I mention costly? – greenhouse gas emissions driving the climate crisis. Nor is there anything “economical” about the polluted waterways and impacted lives from the chemical contamination of the billions of pounds of active ingredient pesticides used every year in the United States and abroad.
Furthermore, Walsh takes another disingenuous jab at organic farming by claiming that the “Slow Food initiative might lead to turning more forests into farmland.” The drivers behind deforestation are large-scale agribusiness pushing into wetlands in Indonesia and rainforests in the Amazon, not Sunshine heirloom tomato farmers from Sonoma.
Anna Lappé
Take a Bite out of Climate Change
Brooklyn, NY
www.takeabite.cc
Maybe you’ve noticed one opening up in your neighborhood, maybe you spent last weekend visiting one. If so, you’d be joining the ranks of the tens of thousands of Americans who now live near farmers markets and get their straight-from-the-farmer food fresh there every week.
Amidst all the bad trends – from climate chaos to financial chaos – it’s great to celebrate a positive trend: The USDA just announced that the number of farmers markets across the country continues to blossom, reaching 4,685 in August 2008, up 6.8 percent from the last official count two years ago. The Department’s Agricultural Marketing Service only started officially tracking farmers markets a little more than a decade ago, and since then the number of markets has jumped by more than 3,000. What that means for you and me is that more and more of us have the chance to directly support our local food economy and get access to the healthiest foods at the same time.
“More and more consumers are discovering the wide array of fresh, locally grown produce available at farmers markets,” said AMS Administrator Lloyd Day.
Over the weekend, I got to meet a founder of one of these farmers markets, Maritza Owens. She started her market in East Harlem fifteen years ago. Back then, it was such a strange thing to be doing – a farmers market in Harlem! “Now, people are flocking to the market,” she told me. Her markets are now part of a broader effort to help improve food access for East Harlem residents, including the Go Green East Harlem cookbook. Guess who’s the cover model?
We know that to revolutionize our food system we must reconnect people, especially those billions of urban dwellers, to the food that nourishes them. There is no better leader in this movement than Milwaukee’s Will Allen. And now, that’s not just my quirky opinion, it’s a view that’s been confirmed by the mucky-mucks at the MacArthur Genius Fellowship who chose Will among this year’s honorees. Congratulations Will!
From the 2008 MacArthur Fellows description:
Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization Growing Power, which he directs and co-founded. Guiding all is his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Rather than embracing the “back to the land” approach promoted by many within the sustainable agriculture movement, Allen’s holistic farming model incorporates both cultivating foodstuffs and designing food distribution networks in an urban setting. Through a novel synthesis of a variety of low-cost farming technologies – including use of raised beds, aquaculture, vermiculture, and heating greenhouses through composting – Growing Power produces vast amounts of food year-round at its main farming site, two acres of land located within Milwaukee’s city limits. Recently, cultivation of produce and livestock has begun at other urban and rural sites in and around Milwaukee and Chicago. Over the last decade, Allen has expanded Growing Power’s initiatives through partnerships with local organizations and activities such as the Farm-City Market Basket Program, which provides a weekly basket of fresh produce grown by members of the Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative to low-income urban residents at a reduced cost. The internships and workshops hosted by Growing Power engage teenagers and young adults, often minorities and immigrants, in producing healthy foods for their communities and provide intensive, hands-on training to those interested in establishing similar farming initiatives in other urban settings. Through these and other programs still in development, Allen is experimenting with new and creative ways to improve the diet and health of the urban poor.
9/19/08 - Grist - Tom Philpott
Bottled Water Everywhere
Spent a sunny midday talking about how to “be green” in the city. High above the city’s energy-gobbling sky scrapers it wasn’t always a message that was free from its contradictions, but the gathered crowd, including folks from the city’s eco-orgs and eco-media as well as Fashion Weekfashionistas who paused from plotting the next party asked great questions and seemed genuinely interested.
The moderator was great and represented for GOOD, one of my favorite magazines.
Last week the Los Angeles Times opined about Rajendra Pachauri’s statement as chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that cutting meat from our diets is the most effective personal act we can take to combat climate change.
We’re glad to see the message is getting out there.
Now, for the backlash.
This site 
Raj Patel.
Join the Facebook group.
