Archive for the ‘Organizations’ Category
Fighting for Sustainable Food One Mouth At A Time
Marra Farm harvest, photo by Steve Tracy
The following is an article from the Civil Eats blog by Helene York who is responsible for enforcing the purchasing policy of food service company Bon Appetit. Not only must she make the difficult decisions about what “sustainable food” actually is, she also has to defend that position tooth-and-nail against skeptics and at least one of the company’s gourmet chefs who has an affinity for bluefin tuna (a fish population that’s rapidly spiraling into extinction).
Bon Appetit’s stringent purchasing policy and campaign for low-carbon diets demonstrates the company’s commitment to sustainable food. And those decisions matter. Feeding thousands per day, the company is helping consumers make more responsible choices. Just imagine what would happen if other large food suppliers held the same standards and what impact that would have on our food system. More…
Seattle Farm Co-Op
Have you been looking for a source for local feed or a forum to discuss more urban ag topics? The Seattle Urban Farm Co-op is a great resource.
The Seattle Urban Farm Co-op is a community-based organization that purchases supplies for urban farmers in the Seattle area. They get supplies such as animal feed, fertilizers, mulch, seeds, etc., from local and sustainable sources as much as possible, and save money through co-operative purchasing. They also support the growth of urban agriculture by providing a place for tools and resource sharing, educational classes, community information, etc.
You can get more information from their Yahoo homepage or contact them through their group’s email address at: seattlefarmcoop@yahoogroups.com.
Growings On at the Danny Woo Garden
Jonathan Chen
“We have a new flock of chickens and they are amazing at composting garden waste,” said gardener Jonathan Chen as he looked at the new coop at the Danny Woo community garden. ”The other day there was a grandmother here with her grandaughter. She picked some grass and showed the little one how to feed the birds. This garden is all about positive energy and elders teaching the next generation where food comes from and how to raise it.”
The Danny Woo International District Community Garden is the largest green space in the Chinatown/International District and is managed by InterIm CDA. The garden was named after a member of the Woo family that has leased the property to InterIm CDA since 1975. It is home to more than 100 community garden plots where elderly Asian gardeners tend to vegetables such as bok choy, bittermelon, daikon and watercress. Younger gardeners experiment with strawberries, squash and other fruits and veggies. More…
Cultivation, Cuisine and Climate Change: Tips on Reducing Food Waste
As mentioned in an earlier post, when food is wasted, so is energy. By making the best use of your foodstuffs, you could be reducing the more than 90 billion pounds of food tossed in the trash every year, which uses up to 4 percent of all U.S. oil and more than 25 percent of our fresh water to produce and transport to consumers.
Sometimes it’s hard to eat a fresh, “mostly plant“-based diet without wasting food along the way because, unlike burgers from fast food joints, real food spoils. So here are some tips to help you prevent perfectly good food from going bad:
- Draft a menu – Plan what your family will eat for the week. Focus first on ingredients you already have in the house that are getting close to their expiration dates, and buy the ingredients you need to turn it into dinner.
- Make a grocery list – Making a list while you’re at home will help ensure you don’t buy what you already have lurking in the back of the pantry. And sticking to a list ensures you won’t spend extra on impulse purchases that may not be on the menu that week. More…
Urban Foraging: A Look at the Deep Connections Between People and Ecosystems in Seattle
Do you fancy a little wild fennel? Pluck juicy berries from nearby shrubs? Gather fallen figs, apples, plums, walnuts and chestnuts? Harvest stinging nettles, dandelion, chickweed, watercress or other edible greens? Use Oregon grape or woodland fungi to dye textile fibers? If so, then you just might be an “urban forager.”
Foraging is a deeply interactive nature practice that links urban residents to the intricate web of urban ecology while improving overall health and well-being. Urban ecosystems yield a bounty of edible, medicinal and useful plants and organisms important to the diverse communities. Forested woodlands, parks, alleys, parking strips, vacant lots and other areas outside the garden provide habitat for well over 250 native and introduced species of plants and mushrooms in Seattle, some which are foraged year-round. Gathering vegetative material serves many purposes, including: providing food, medicine, and raw material, strengthening social ties, and maintaining cultural identity. More…
Sustaining an Urban Fruit Gleaning Program
The question that gets raised over and over with programs aimed at getting food into people’s bellies is how to sustain these programs in an era when grants and charitable donations are vanishing. To keep these vital programs going, innovative strategies need to be developed, and our friends at City Fruit have come up with a good one.
One of the main reasons we started City Fruit was to develop ways to become more financially sustainable, rather than depend on an ever-shrinking pool of grant money for funding. More…
Gleaning from the Trees: Community Harvest Update
This summer pears and apples are the darlings of Lettuce Link’s Community Fruit Tree Harvest. We’re missing the Italian prune plum mania of 2009, but love to harvest and donate nevertheless!
Since 2005, volunteers with Lettuce Link’s Community Fruit Tree Harvest have been harvesting urban fruit. Our volunteers make the harvest happen year after year. Thanks to their efforts, tens of thousands of pounds of fruit make it to people rather than rotting on the ground.
This season, we have volunteer harvest leads in Seattle neighborhoods along with fruit harvesters around the city. We’ve been busy harvesting and donating in Ballard, Central Seattle, Capitol Hill, NE Seattle, South Park and Wallingford. More…
Working to End Hunger
Starting back in 2005 with three gardens, Urban Farming is now an international organization that grows food on underutilized land in order to solve hunger. One program they have that’s especially interesting focuses on building edible walls in Los Angeles. To learn more read on:
Urban Farming is an international 501(c)3 organization headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. We bring people together in communities throughout America and abroad to plant food on unused land, space, rooftops and walls, with the intention of ending hunger in our generation, while greening the globe. More…
A Garden for Every Six Americans
The Dinner Garden is a program based in Texas that aims to have one garden for every six Americans. To reach this goal they provide free seeds, garden supplies and loads of great advice. Here is how they got started:
The concept of home and community gardening is not new. However, this kind of gardening has fallen out of practice. The inspiration for this project grew out of two things. First, the economy is in bad shape. We know many people who have lost their jobs and are struggling to make it. They are cutting costs wherever they can. When they’ve stripped their budgets as far as they can go, they are left with deciding between food and rent or food and medicine. More…
Financiers Seeking Sustainable Farms
A conscientious finance firm is taking a look at agriculture, and telling its investors to do the same. RSF Social Finance believes that investing in sustainable farms or food groups focused on community have a lot to offer and will be around in the long run.
This is a good omen for farmers who are putting their heart and soul into working the land now, who may not be seeing frequent paydays.
Here’s some more information from the Civil Eats blog:
RSF Social Finance, a non-profit financial firm focused on using money as a force for good in the world, has announced the launch of a new Food & Agriculture Program-Related Investing (PRI) Fund. The idea is to encourage investors to support elements of the agricultural and food sectors that look beyond the bottom line to take the health of our environment and communities into account. More…
Current Sponsor:
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Categories
News Aggregator
- Why does a posh agricultural college open its doors in summer to urban teenagers? September 7, 2010 Michael Levenston
- The safe use of wastewater in agriculture – Reduced costs for farmers and cities and improved water quality September 7, 2010 Michael Levenston
- USDA Announces Next Steps on Sugar Beets September 7, 2010 Taylor
- Register now for ‘Sheep School’ in Massachusetts September 6, 2010 Taylor
- Urban food garden installations in Bangalore September 6, 2010 Michael Levenston
- Job: Sustainable Agriculture Educator, Garden Manager September 5, 2010 Taylor
- City offers soil-cleaning tips to promote urban gardening September 4, 2010 Michael Levenston
- Michelle Obama in the garden September 4, 2010 Michael Levenston
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