Archive for the ‘Deep-Rooted Thoughts’ Category
Bring Back Home-Ec!
From the New York Times here’s a great article on why we need to bring back the teaching of home economics. What are your memories of home ec? I remember making aprons and really great beef stroganoff.
NOBODY likes home economics. For most people, the phrase evokes bland food, bad sewing and self-righteous fussiness.
But home economics is more than a 1950s teacher in cat’s-eye glasses showing her female students how to make a white sauce. Reviving the program, and its original premises — that producing good, nutritious food is profoundly important, that it takes study and practice, and that it can and should be taught through the public school system — could help us in the fight against obesity and chronic disease today.
The home economics movement was founded on the belief that housework and food preparation were important subjects that should be studied scientifically. The first classes occurred in the agricultural and technical colleges that were built from the proceeds of federal land grants in the 1860s. By the early 20th century, and increasingly after the passage of federal legislation like the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act, which provided support for the training of teachers in home economics, there were classes in elementary, middle and high schools across the country. When universities excluded women from most departments, home economics was a back door into higher education. Once there, women worked hard to make the case that “domestic science” was in fact a scientific discipline, linked to chemistry, biology and bacteriology. More…
How Now Urban Ag?
Food can be grown in unused spaces.
From Seed and Cycle here’s a good rebuttal to a recent article on the negatives of urban ag.
Glaeser’s recent article in the Boston Globe provocatively suggests that urban farming does more harm than good. He argues that urban farms’ reduction of emissions due to decreased food shipping is greatly outweighed by increased energy usage. This increase is caused by large-scale urban farms displacing people and driving down population density. While Glaeser raises important questions about what the comprehensive effects of starting urban farms on a large scale would be, his model includes several fatal flaws. Here are just a few.
The biggest assumption is the simplistic (and false) choice between urban land for people and urban land for food. While land is a scarce resource, most urban ag is thriving on what was or otherwise would be vacant urban land. The amount of vacant urban land is vast in cities across the country. For example, the New York City’s Department of City Planning figures show that 6% of NYC is considered vacant. In Detroit, this figure is an astonishing 25-30% (anyone wonder why a revolutionary urban food system is emerging there?). Chicago has 70,000-80,000 vacant lots. This list goes on. Also, much of urban ag is practiced in spaces that does not disrupt nor would it disrupt urban development. Think boulevards, side yards, public parks, rooftops, and so on. These are the spaces where urban ag thrives. As an urban agriculturalist, all four of my farms are on previously vacant or underutilized land. Two are vacant lots, one is at a church, and one is in a public park. Are my urban farms displacing anyone? More…
Were the Good Old Days Really all that Great?
Just like Grandma's chicken.
There is an explosion of nostalgic longing for the joys of home grown, home cooked food like our great-grandmothers made. There is the idea that all that’s wrong with our industrialized food system would be solved if we just went back to the family farm and did things like they used to be done, the idea that Big Food has pulled a fast one by driving people off the farm and getting everyone hooked on processed food.
It’s easy to keep this vision alive as few of us live it and this golden era is far enough back that many people haven’t had any contact with people who actually lived this supposed utopia.
For the past couple of months I have been reading through my deceased mother’s diaries. As a home-ec teacher with a love of food much of the writing focuses on what she was cooking and thinking. Early entries talk about how long it took to prepare food. One entry reads: “Brother John killed a chicken today then I gutted, plucked, seasoned and cooked it. I wanted to see Cousin Betty today but didn’t get the durned chicken done in time.” In the 30’s she began writing about the difference in her life new convenience foods were making. One entry reads: ”Made Bisquick biscuits today and they were fast and so good! I had time to go for a walk with Mother and put my hair up in pin curls.”
A recent article in Lapham’s Quarterly discusses this issue at length, pulling in trends and history on American cooking that are facinating.
“Exploitation is as true in the kitchen as in the field. Women have always borne the burden of transforming the raw to the cooked in the American home. Interestingly, it was a confluence of these two inconvenient truths about our food past—its reliance on women and exploited labor—that helped set the stage for our national embrace of fast food.”
So as always it gets back to balance – how can we eat in a healthy way that’s good for us, the people who grow food and our planet without being working from dawn to dusk on getting that food on the table? What are your thoughts?
Seattle Grows Supper
Seattle Grows Supper on Friday, June 3, brought together a dynamic gathering of more than 30 chefs, farmers, food wholesalers, writers, nutritionists and others working on a community-based food system. The dinner was convened by the Seattle Tilth Advocacy Group, people who are farmers, food planners, processors and food justice advocates working to nimbly develop a more resilient Seattle.
As people made their way from table to table in a World Café-style potluck dinner, ideas bubbled up, were quickly reviewed, and refined.
Some fun, unique, and important ideas emerged from Seattle Grows Supper:
- Create an on-line Farmville-style game called “Farm Bill”
- Put recipes in CSA boxes that chefs develop unique to each neighborhood
- Provide spaces at farmers’ markets for very very local producers
- Permit farm stands in very small places, parking lots, corner stores
- Focus on mothers as change agents: Snacks, school meals, family dinners, are family-values issues we can all support
- Pay attention to the commons, particularly be aware of privatizing water rights
- Find stories and learn clear language that speaks across many cultures: food as medicine
- Develop achievable food system metrics and goals. Seattle can set a goal to grow and process 30% of what its people eat in the next five years — and we can compost 90% of our food waste!
People left the three-hour dinner “hungry for more”. Another Seattle Grows Supper over the summer seems likely. Stay tuned!
The State of Assery
By Andrew Plotsky
I’d like to make the case for making an ass of yourself. Not the kind of ass where you shriek in the face of armed palace guards in a forged British accent, nor the kind of ass where you invariably mistake sarcasm for humor. This ass, the kind for which I am going to advocate, is a different kind. It’s the kind where you invest yourself in an idealistic or ideological pursuit. A question or a phone call, or a request to hang out or looking up the spelling of turmeric when you’re sure there is only one ‘r’ and have vehemently declared the proper spelling to your friend. The kind of ass where that pursuit goes smoosh in your face. I believe that this kind of assery is crucial to a productive and critical progression as a human being.
Let’s take a step back, then, to the afternoon of august 31st, 2010. I am sitting in a rocking chair, watching the glass laketop from Suzy’s deck in Camden, Maine. There is a cellular telephone pressed to my ear and furious beats in my chest. Beads of sweat gather on my forehead. I begin reciting, replaying my opening line in my head. With each subsequent brrrrrririiiinninnninggg, I recite faster, ensuring that I won’t sound like a fool. Like a kid. A stranger with no basis for soaking up their precious seconds of their busy day at their excruciatingly cool bakery collective and farm. “Hello…”
This moment was, in retrospect, the precise beginning of what turned into a four month documentary trip, a Farmrun. DC to Maine to Seattle to San Francisco. Searching for innovative agriculturists, urban and rural. By Michigan, I was a cold-calling pro, knocking them out left and right. Picking blackberries in July. But on that August afternoon, with those clammy hands and crackly voice, I was apprehensive, to say the least.
Another Voice from the Puget Sound Food Movement
Building beds
By Edward B. Hill
The only way to begin is to start. Without an end in sight or a final thought to describe, my goal today was to start this article about my personal thoughts and reflections on last year’s 2010 Year of Urban Agriculture in Seattle.
I will preface my thoughts with full disclosure that I am an active participant in the current regional food movement at a scale and range that is probably not personally sustainable, nor healthy, which is ironic under the general principals and goals of the movement itself; better health, better nutrition, accessibility to healthy activities, improved lifestyle, etc. None of these things have been personally applied for about a year and a half and I am now sitting quietly recovering from probably the worst case of flu I have ever experienced in my adult life.
With this pause, a full week so far, I am finding the time I badly needed to reflect on this work and the past year and half of traveling, training, listening, making mistakes, conferences, meetings, and work-parties. Also, as I found out, a good time for reviewing the work I have been doing with other key leaders, community advocates in this movement.
As the input and influences from other national food systems based programs, key note speakers, personal mentors, detractors, unsuccessful attempts, and raving successes provide my current direction with some guidance, I am also trying to monitor the steady work of our regional leaders and change agents trying to answer some critical questions on the viability and scale of impact of current urban-suburban-rural food system improvement efforts.
Can this effort really work as a community and economic development tool? Meaning, outside of the researchers and administrative offices that channel funding to study, project, and develop potential plans, can urban agriculture actually create living wage employment for people that do not have higher degrees and letters?
It is a national issue facing the existing farm workers and production/processing line positions that has not been solved, so what about the work that I profess and practice in the city makes it easier to secure living wages with good benefits? I am not sure yet, that is what I am trying to discover. And a very important part of this work is staying close and working with experienced, down-to-earth, and sincere individuals with far more experience and time in the fight than I.
Ok, so on top of all this employment has to be secured, wrapping up degree work (two classes and thesis defense), trying to learn and evolve business skills and strategy skills necessary to sustainably and equitably participate in this movement, and honestly to find out if what we are doing is not setting up another “usual suspects” of outcomes that marginalize successful efforts, limit broad impact, and spread too thin the resources, time, and mental stability of passionate, well-meaning folks in our local communities.
So again, where do I start? I will start with how I got here. Then, where we might go from here, and how we will find out together where we are going.
Start
In August of 2009 Judith Kilgore, former Seattle Housing Authority Yesler Terrace Redevelopment Project Manager and Peter Dobrovolny from Seattle’s Department of Planning and Development asked me to improve on a concept to promote the urban agriculture conversation occurring regularly at City Interdisciplinary Team (IDT) meetings being facilitated by Gary Johnson (DPD), a “Green Team” including Joel Banslaben (SPU), Andrea Petzel (formerly DPD), and a party of other quiet and not so quiet “shapers” of early policy and practice evolution. Private market influences came from a team with Lucia Athens, Harold Moniz, and Tom Hudson from CollinsWoerman.
I was in the room because I was graduate intern at SHA working, for two years, under Al Levine and was assisting in the development and activation of the redevelopment engagement process with the ethnic/language communities at Yesler Terrace.
The reason I got the job was my recently accepted status as a graduate student at the Masters of Urban Planning program at the UW College of Built Environments, having been recruited and advised by Dr. Hilda Blanco and Professor Brandon Born (local food system leader) in 2007 after he inquired about my local work in the food movement with a former friend and mentor Melvin Cloyd, a master organic small farmer from Chicago that got me started organic farming when I moved to Olympia in 1994.
It should also be noted that during the same time efforts by Professor Born, UW students, Erin McDougal at King County Health, King County Food and Fitness participants, Viki Sonntag, Solid Ground staff, Ken and Gail Kailing, and a vast array of others were conducting corner store food quality and accessibility surveys (in which I was participating), research, lobbying Olympia, writing articles, working City offices, grant writing, and doing the work of building a formal “whole systems based food shed”.
Also let it be mentioned that Sno-Valley Tilth, other long time advocates too many to mention, and hard-working community members on the ground across the region had been pushing, moving, testing, conceptualizing, strategizing, and creating possible paths to change for decades prior and laid the work for this culminating phase.
Will Allen
The Urban Food Summit was the initial title, however Department of Neighborhood’s staff member Sujin Chon was trying to hold that name for a planned event the City was planning on leading later in the year, which never manifested, so we went with the People’s Food Summit as a two day event featuring Will Allen of Growing Power held at various locations in Seattle providing access to municipal, NPO and NGO orgs, and community groups to meet, hear, and interact with each other around taking the urban food system to another level.
Part of the issue, as it was determined by a group of professionals far more experienced and lettered than I, was that Seattle habitually functioned in a silo and tended to try to develop policies and practices without humility or submission to other examples of success; Portland’s regional transit planning, Vancouver’s planning BMP’s, Jim Diers’ Department of Neighborhoods management style, etc.. Food policy development was highly subject to falling the way of highway planning, transit development, TOD proposals, density planning, seawall design, the tunnel plan, it goes on.
What I considered to be good factors presented themselves; Growing Power has a successful model of community to government engagement, Will is African-American, Growing Power works on both sides of the tracks (academic research, government, community, corporate partnership, public access, class crossing, etc.), a fusion of public-private non-profit for sustainable profit modeling, etc.
Plus a food group in Bellingham had come up short on funding to bring Will on those dates and helping to cover someone else’s plan felt good and like the right thing to do. Some of them came to Mercer Middle School to hear Will speak.
Because of political and silo battles that were being sparked by DPD’s work on food and green development policy changes, a lengthening SHA redevelopment planning process, and hesitation to officially “take positions” I was asked to use my newly started consulting group, Creatives4Community, to lead the effort and bring the message and the message-bearer to the community.
Will Allen
A few days prior to the event we were contacted quietly by the Mayor’s Office and City Council to insert a break into Will’s day on February 3rd to announce the Year of Urban Agriculture. I declined at the time prompted by my cohorts to “not interrupt the event” and have the announcement later or earlier WITH Will at City Hall or Council with the politicians.
Scheduling was cited as a primary barrier and a press release was opted for at the last minute. Councilmember Conlin attended and met with Will at a planned meeting at the newly formed Program of the Environment with UW representatives, professors, candidates, students, and staff.
On February 2nd, 2010 we picked up Growing Power’s Will Allen and his wife Cindy from SeaTac Airport, showed him our work, got my mom and female staff to take Cindy shopping and eating, toured UW Farm, met Richard Conlin with Will, spoke to 100 plus City reps, organizers, and urban farmer advocates, toured Yesler Farm, Atlantic City Nursery, and Marra Farm to help friends get their ideas highlighted and finally had a small family dinner at Anadaluca at the Mayflower with Will and Cindy just before he asked me to fly to Milwaukee to train and become part of Growing Power’s family.
A spinning whirlwind of connections that ended up providing me no job offers in Seattle, program grants (from Seattle Public Utilities) for our GroundUp and Growing Green teen green job programs at Yesler Terrace, a not-so-well-paying job (but honored and blessed) next to Will and working with his daughter Erika in Chicago on the Iron Street and Chicago Avenue Farm Projects.
In a few short months I was returning home due to lack of family relocation funding, back to struggling to get local support for off-the-grid program models (at least in the Northwest), and the reality bite that being a minority (non-Asian) male in a sea of well-educated, well-intentioned white females (and males) in the established food movement, was going to be a long challenging road. Or maybe not.
So I kept going. I found new partners; Seattle Tilth, Cascade Edible Landscapes, Seattle University, Alley Cat Acres, Seattle Parks Department, Homegrown Organics, Sustainable Seattle. I stayed close to old partners; GroundUP at Yesler Terrace, Solid Ground, Marra Farm, Umoja Fest PEACE Center, Hidmo, many others. Spending more time with others than with my own family, working 12 hour days nearly seven days a week, writing, developing programs, writing grants, etc.
It should be mentioned at this point that none of this was done unwillingly or without the understanding that within any movement there is sacrifice that goes far beyond equal wages, a person’s realistic capacity or time availability, or a variety of other factors that need attention as a person (with limited income and access) finds themselves “representing” community in a “movement”. This is NOT easy work and farming doesn’t make you economically successful, and there is no short answer to making all of this work.
Still, here I am realizing that this too will have to change immediately and does not mirror the principals I promote. Health, sustainability, cleaning up my own yard, taking care of my immune system with sleep, downtime, and walks with friends (to happy hour).
So where am I now?
I am currently an employee of Seattle Tilth, as Program Manager of the Immigrant, Refugee, and Low-Income Farmer Education Program or FIP-OFEP, not because I am a master farmer or agricultural expert, but because I know a little bit about a lot of things and know how to connect those that “know” to those that “need”. Andrea Dwyer, the relatively new Executive Director, is expanding programs, increasing staff, improving performance, and connecting with communities of color, the food justice movement, and small farming efforts.
Building the hoop house at the Red Barn Ranch.
I am also one of two minority men hired recently by Dwyer; the other is Robert Servine, a First Nation brother managing the newly transferred Seattle Youth Garden Works Program now at home within Seattle Tilth and housed at the UW Horticulture Center lands. Things are changing.
I am actively taking part in this CHANGE, both as an agent of change and provider/supporter of examples of what change looks like. Tilth is radically changing its historical profile and activities in the region. The Puget Sound now has a Food Council. City Council is changing its profile and taking a 2012 Farm Bill position, King County is opening up its land for P-Patch styled community gardening.
There are more diverse (ethnically, economically, socially, orientation, etc.) people stepping up and taking leadership roles, a line of communication is happening that is bringing a real diversity of partners and parties to central tables that are actually DOING the work required to create a sustainable, equitable, inclusive, economically just system that will provide, if nothing else, a national example of a city that tried harder to make success happen.
Here I am working with new starts for the farm.
My plan for this column is to record, report, and transmit my personal experiences being a participant in this movement or “food revolution” as Will Allen calls it, as well as reviewing and critiquing efforts locally and their impact and influence on communities that are traditionally left out or forgotten in large “movement” styled approaches to trying to solve grand social ills. Example; the lack of 1st Nation leadership being at the front of the local and regional movement? The challenges of 20th century political and social action practices in a 21st century post-“fill in the blank” world? Food as a infrastructure like electricity or sewers and who benefits and profits, how do we fund it?
I hope that we can find answers together, as a whole system of thinkers, planners, designers, farmers, community activists, teachers, foodies, gardeners, and believers that things have to change faster than we are accustomed in ways that establish a working demonstration of social, economic, and political synergy and solutions that are generally not accepted as possible or practical by those currently in power and position.
This is just the start of looking at ourselves and our ideas, who they affect, who they leave out by design or habit, who they forget, recalling the past to not repeat mistakes in our very at-risk future. Recent events in Japan, the economy, stresses and challenges of everyday life are all calling us to work together and work quickly and efficiently to show our strength. If we are really interested in doing what we say we are promoting, regardless of the challenges.
The year 2010 is over, the Year of Urban Agriculture is not a finished task, and we are now collectively working on the “On-Going Decade of Urban and Rural Food System Building”. And I feel that since we all have to eat and we all have to live together in this region, it is time to step out of our limitations and move beyond our hesitations and fears into a place where few of us have been before; a place of sharing, communicating, being fearless, and unified in addressing an issue that is important to every living being on earth – sustainable, equitable, and healthy food security.
Seed Lending Library
Is this a cool idea or what? Does anyone have the energy to see if the Seattle Library would be interested in doing something similar? From PR Web here’s more:
Seed Lending libraries are sprouting up across the state with at least six in Northern California and one coming soon in Los Angeles. With the recent opening of two branches in San Francisco, community members are bringing food safety, biodiversity protection, and urban farming back into their own hands. The first two branches of the San Francisco Seed Library, a project of Transition SF and the San Francisco Permaculture Guild, are open for lending at Hayes Valley Farm and as a pilot project at the Potrero Branch of the San Francisco Public Library; the next seed saving class is on June 4 at 3:30 in the Potrero Branch Program Room.
The process is simple; residents choose from a list of vegetable seeds available in the Seed Library collection, borrow them, and plant their seeds. After they have harvested their crops, they save the seeds from the heartiest and healthiest of their harvest and return the seeds to the same branch. Over time, each SF Seed Library branch will include a wide selection of seeds that are best suited to each micro-climate since they have grown to full fruition, responding to the local soil, climate, and plant/animal diversity.
“It seemed like a natural fit for Potrero Branch to pilot a seed lending program at the library,” states Lia Hillman, Potrero Branch Manager of San Francisco Public Library. “Potrero Hill residents love gardening, and there are a number of burgeoning private and community gardens on the hill. The Seed Library offers the library the opportunity to promote urban sustainable organic gardening in our neighborhoods by disseminating seeds. The library actively seeks ways in which to participate in the greening of our city and promoting the health of our communities.” More…
Derek Denckla, NYC Urban Ag Superstar
Via City Farmer here is a great interview with Derek Denckla by nonabrooklyn.
Let’s talk a bit about urban agriculture, particularly here in Brooklyn. What excites you about it? What does it all mean?
There’s a lot of excitement. I think urban farming is exciting in part because it’s one of the most provocative things you can do in a city. Urban farming is sort of an oxymoron. Farms are supposed to exist outside of the city. But by joining them together or juxtaposing them, you provide the most radical stimulus for thinking about how you alter the food system. That’s why I’m attracted to it and I think that’s why the media is interested in it. It’s provocative – something you just want to understand.
So people ask me all the time – “You support urban agriculture…do you actually think you’re going to be able to feed the city with this food?” More…
Is the Green Revolution Coming Unglued?
From Citiwire here’s a summary of some of the innovations and challenges modern cities now face in the effort to ensure their populace gets fed.
America’s first full-scale urban agriculture program is sprouting in San Francisco, a prime initiative of former Mayor Gavin Newsom (recently elected California’s lieutenant governor).
Newsom began by ordering city departments to audit any scraps of unused land that might be turned into gardens, from empty lots to window sills to rooftops. More…
Winona LaDuke Promotes Native Crop Diversity
This is Ivan, a member of the White Earth Anishinaabeg people, holding a Lakota squash. Lakota squash are one of the foods Winona LaDuke spoke about February 3, 2011 at a John and Jesse Danz Lecture at the University of Washington.
LaDuke, who may be best known as the VP Green Party running mate of Ralph Nader in 2000, is a Harvard-trained rural development economist in northern Minnesota. She’s been actively promoting schemes to address climate change, peak oil, and local resilience: wind farms, solar panels, and most relevant to Urban Farm Hub, preserving seed genetic diversity.
Which gets us back to that Lakota squash Ivan is holding. LaDuke favors this species because it is drought tolerant, high in anti-oxidants, tastes good, and most significantly, stores unrefrigerated for six to eight months.
LaDuke has led the charge to protect wild rice and other crops from depredations of genetic modifications through her non-profit Honor the Earth. “Seeds are our history. We used to grow a lot of food here people,” LaDuke said.
These days LaDuke focuses on crops that are adaptable in the face of climate change. “It’s not just growing locally, it’s what you choose to grow.” Like that squash.
Corn species – Blue Island Flint, beautiful Seneca Pink Lady Flour, Pawnee Eagle – are selected by LaDuke for resistance to the frost and heavy winds we are starting to see our increasingly unstable climate. “Change is inevitable. It’s a question of who controls the change. We need to plan our change with moral outrage and hope.”
LaDuke began and ended her talk with blessings and some sage advice: “We need to pray hard, savor the wins, and tell the stories. These aren’t the stories you are going to see in People magazine, but stories about us that we are longing to hear.”
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