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Food and Agriculture

Free Summit Explores The Latest In Seed Sharing, Libraries And More

January 23, 2023 Seed Library Network, Resilience. , , ,
Are you new to seeding and interested in establishing a seed bank in your neighborhood? Immersed in the seeding world and looking to connect with other folks and deepen your networks? Perhaps you’re an agriculturist interested in the intersection of seed lending and food sovereignty. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, you won’t want to miss Seeding the Future: The 11th Annual Seed Library Summit. If you’re new to seeding, you’re in luck! Seeding the Future will host a variety of sessions to get you acquainted with the basics. Our “How to Start a Seed Library” session is a great introductory conversation that will map out the time, resources, and people-power needed to start your own seed library. “Ask a Seed Librarian” is an expert-hosted panel that can act as a great follow-up. If you’re more acquainted with seeding, other sessions that might pique your interest include “Seed Saving Basics”, “School Seed Libraries”, and “Seed Exchanges”.

New Report Highlights Pesticides’ Overlooked Climate Connection

January 18, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. , , ,
As chemicals designed to kill insects and weeds, fungi and rodents, pesticides are among the most toxic and damaging substances on the planet. Their harmful impacts on human and ecosystem health are generally well understood. What receives far less attention, however, is the climate impact of these agrochemicals. Not only do pesticides directly contribute to the climate crisis, but a changing climate is likely to intensify pressure from agricultural pests and decrease plant resiliency, resulting in greater pesticide usage and therefore further greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new report.  This “vicious cycle” of pesticide use fueling climate change, and vice versa, is examined in a report published Tuesday by the advocacy group Pesticide Action Network North America (PANNA). According to PANNA, the assessment is the first in-depth scientific review of the relationship between pesticides and climate change. 

In Indianapolis, Building A Community Food Ecosystem In An ‘Apartheid Zone’

January 11, 2023 Frances Nguyen, Next City. , , ,
In Indianapolis’ Northeast Corridor, a predominantly Black area with a growing Latinx population, more than half of residents live in a food desert. One community-led initiative seeks to build a local food ecosystem, one that will not only feed them in times of crisis but will sustain their health, wealth and wellbeing for generations to come. In 2021, in the climate of the ongoing pandemic, the Equitable Food Access Initiative (EFAI) was created to address these dueling public health crises, in one of the top five cities in the country with the most people living in “food deserts,” or areas where low-income people don’t have ready access to fresh food retailers within reasonable traveling distance from their homes.

Queering The Family Farm

January 9, 2023 Bennet Goldstein, In These Times. , , , ,
Shannon and Eve Mingalone avow that their farmers market booth is “very gay.” They hang strings of pride flags and sell rainbow stickers to help pay for gender-affirming care, like hormone replacement therapy, for Eve. Sometimes, when parents and their teenagers pass the booth, the adults glance, then speed ahead. The kids pause for a second look. Shannon, 34, hopes it means something for them to see LGBTQ professionals out and succeeding. People often share stories. The middle-aged woman who confided that her daughter is transgender. The teen who stood in the middle of the Mingalones’ booth and said, “This makes me feel safe.” “That means everything to me,” Shannon said.

Sutton Community Farm And The Politics Of Community Agriculture

December 30, 2022 Rohan Rice, Grassroots Economic Organizing. ,
The UK farming sector is in the middle of an existential crisis. As a consequence of leaving the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, the Conservative government has had to draft a new agricultural support scheme to either match or replace the direct payments received by UK farmers from the EU. What will replace this scheme has been the subject of heated debate for years. Most probable is the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS). ELMS would offer ‘public money for public good’, meaning that farmers would receive payments if they could prove their farm was engaging in beneficial environmental practice, such as rewilding a section of their land.

About One-Third Of The Food Americans Buy Is Wasted

December 28, 2022 Brian E. Roe, EcoWatch. , , ,
You saw it at Thanksgiving, and you’ll likely see it at your next holiday feast: piles of unwanted food – unfinished second helpings, underwhelming kitchen experiments and the like – all dressed up with no place to go, except the back of the refrigerator. With luck, hungry relatives will discover some of it before the inevitable green mold renders it inedible. U.S. consumers waste a lot of food year-round – about one-third of all purchased food. That’s equivalent to 1,250 calories per person per day, or US$1,500 worth of groceries for a four-person household each year, an estimate that doesn’t include recent food price inflation. And when food goes bad, the land, labor, water, chemicals and energy that went into producing, processing, transporting, storing and preparing it are wasted too.

Sowing Doubt: How Big Ag Is Delaying Sustainable Farming In Europe

December 24, 2022 Clare Carlile, DeSmog. , ,
In the spring of 2020, the European Union announced an ambitious plan to overhaul farming practices in fields and valleys across the continent. Named Farm to Fork, it calls for less fertiliser and pesticide use, and more organic production. Veteran sustainable food and farming experts welcomed the strategy as one that just might have a genuine shot at transforming the agriculture sector and result in better public health, contribute to ending the vertiginous decline of biodiversity, and lower greenhouse gas pollution. The response from Europe’s powerful industrial agriculture sector was swift and unequivocal: Farm to Fork will result in disaster. “Lower yields”, “higher food prices”, “unviable incomes for farmers”’ are among the outcomes predicted by an army of Brussels lobbyists, who are employed by the agrochemical industry and its allies in the intensive farming sector.

Citizenship, Not Surveillance, For Farmworkers

December 23, 2022 Servando Jimenez, Labor Notes. , , ,
This week, I joined farmworkers across the country in sounding the alarm on legislation that would make us even more vulnerable. We have defeated it for now. However, the agricultural lobby has been pushing for this legislation since 2019, and we know they will continue to propose legislation that ties immigration reform to labor exploitation. I know just how grueling year-round agricultural work is and how difficult it can be to make ends meet as an undocumented farmworker. After coming to the United States from Oaxaca, Mexico, I spent years picking grapes and after that, working on dairy farms. Farm work wasn’t my first choice, but as an undocumented person, there weren’t any other options for me. In just 10 years of farm work, my body was broken, leaving me unable to support myself.

Cleveland’s Circular Economy Helps Reduce Waste And Build Jobs

December 18, 2022 Lee Chilcote, Next City. , , ,
Cleveland, Ohio - While meeting with a local farmer two years ago, Eric Diamond of Central Kitchen, a food business incubator in Cleveland, Ohio, learned that the farmer wasn’t able to sell all the carrots in his fields. Some of the carrots – while perfectly nutritious – weren’t the right size or shape for grocery stores’ and restaurants’ specifications. That sparked a question, and a business idea was born. “I said to him, ‘What do you do with the carrots?’ and he said, ‘We leave them to rot in the fields because we don’t have an end market,’” said Diamond. “So, I said, ‘What if we buy the ones that don’t meet your specifications, and we process them and sell them to school districts?’” Soon afterwards, the farmer, Wayward Seed Farm in Fremont, Ohio, began taking the carrots that would otherwise have been thrown away and dropping them off at Central Kitchen.

A Community Conversation About The Park Slope Food Co-Op

December 17, 2022 Emma Karnes, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , ,
Like any revolution, it takes experimentation, trial and error undergone at great risk, to prove the reliable, rational, and causal relationship between cooperation and economic success. It also takes a willingness to tweak, slightly, the familiar meaning of “success” in the economic sense. Alan Berger, a member of the Park Slope Food Co-op (PFSC) and panelist on the GEO Collective’s recent community conversation in reflection on the movie, describes his draw to the Park Slope Food Co-op as a manifestation of his more general interest in “alternative ways of being.” At PFSC, “success” isn’t necessarily net income, but unquantifiable outcomes, like the democratization (via affordability) of high-quality food, and the creation of a meaningful community with high levels of engagement. This is what PFSC proves about what an “alternative way of being” a consumer of food can mean.

Eat, Grow, Share: Communities Building Food Resilience

December 14, 2022 Chris McCartney, Resilience. , , ,
Food can be a great social and cultural leveller. But as the cost of meeting this basic need rises fast for all, the impact is anything but level. Access to nutritious food is uneven and people’s resilience to price rises and scarcity varies massively. Food campaigner and chef Jack Monroe highlighted how rising supermarket prices are not impacting all shoppers evenly. In January, they calculated some basic food items rose by over 300% while the official inflation rate was 5.4%. Meanwhile, the Food Foundation reported that those on the lowest incomes need to spend 47% of cash to meet the government’s healthy diet guidelines, compared with 11% for those with highest incomes. This isn’t a “cost of living” crisis; it’s a cost of inequality crisis.

Sutton Community Farm And The Politics Of Community Agriculture

December 12, 2022 Rohan Rice, Resilience. , , ,
The UK farming sector is in the middle of an existential crisis. As a consequence of leaving the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, the Conservative government has had to draft a new agricultural support scheme to either match or replace the direct payments received by UK farmers from the EU. What will replace this scheme has been the subject of heated debate for years. Most probable is the Environmental Land Management Scheme (ELMS). ELMS would offer ‘public money for public good’, meaning that farmers would receive payments if they could prove their farm was engaging in beneficial environmental practice, such as rewilding a section of their land. The scheme has its detractors across the political spectrum, yet to-ELMS-or-not-to-ELMS is a sideshow for much of the British public.

1,000 Days Of Compassion

December 7, 2022 #lnf, Anarchist Cook. , , ,
Santa Cruz, California - The streets went silent that misty March 14, 2020 morning.  I passed only two other vehicles on my way to prepare the meal at the Veteran’s Hall. News that the indoor food programs had been ordered shuttered meant our unhoused friends would have to go without food if we didn’t step up and fill the void. Eight of us Food Not Bombs volunteers gathered at LuLu Carpenters that cold Saturday to discuss our plans. I think all of us were in a state of shock at the mystery that lay ahead. A medical social worker who had just been trained in the COVID-19 safety protocols at Good Samaritans Hospital detailed what she had learned the day before. We moved our meal to the Town Clock from the Post Office so our line of guests would not be standing near the dozen or so people camping along the Water Street sidewalk.

Black Market In Broad Daylight

December 7, 2022 Lauren Smith, Covert Action Magazine. , , , ,
Operating in the shadows is easy in the United States secondary food market, as few question what happens to food that exceeds its expiration date in leading supermarket chains across the nation. Well, truth be told, expired food gets reprocessed, repackaged, relabeled, and resold to institutions, discount retailers and restaurants. With scant regulations in place for repurposed food, and institutional purchasing specifications silent, food liquidators underbid their competitors and win contracts nearly every time. In the secondary food market, you get what you pay for, and never has the saying “garbage in, garbage out” been more appropriate. No matter how much hot sauce or gravy is added as camouflage, spoiled food products are unfit for human consumption and cause foodborne illness. Here, what you don’t know can kill you.

How Co-ops Are Transforming Quebec’s Food Deserts

November 30, 2022 RuIrene Pratka, Resilience. , , , ,
Montreal, Québec, Canada - In French, the word for food processing is the same as the word for sweeping social change: transformation. Alex Beaudin dreams of doing both. Beaudin, 25, is the coordinator of Le Grénier Boréal, an agricultural co-op in Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, a village of around 450 people in northeastern Quebec, 550 miles northeast of Montreal. Longue-Pointe is one of about 20 villages strung like beads on a necklace, between Route 138 and the vast St. Lawrence River. The highway and the river are the villages’ lifelines, and depending on either one for supply shipments — as the Nord-Côtiers do — can be maddening. Ferry service is unreliable; a damaged ship can cause weeks of disruption.
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