by Worldchanging Los Angeles local blogger Jennifer Murphy Last week we adopted two more chickens from Path to Freedom. We've had backyard chickens for almost three years now. It's been a rewarding experience. They are easy, entertaining and inexpensive to keep. Like home-grown vegetables, home-raised chickens connect our family to the cycles of the earth, make us more self-sufficient, and provide delicious healthy eggs for the table. As homeschoolers, we've found many learning opportunities arising from these feathery friends running around the yard. We got our original chickens from Path to Freedom too. Those two were in need of a home after being raised by the school next door as a science project. Now the Dervaes are hatching and raising chicks themselves to sell as part of their...
A group of computer scientists and economic geographers in the UK put their heads together over the last few months to address a challenge in food systems design. As they see it, the Fair Trade movement faces obstacles to widespread adoption due to an ongoing divide between Northern consumers and Southern producers, as well as a lack of direct, specific information for customers about particular products. Their Fair Tracing Project proposes to enhance the growth of equitable global trade systems by adding digital tracing technology to individual items so that they can be tracked, and their stories recorded, as they move from farm to table. At each stage of the product’s journey, information may be added and/or edited and, if the information is stored digitally on the internet, may...
For better or worse, most people acquire eating habits as kids that remain ingrained into adulthood. Of course plenty of you out there grew up on Doritos and now live on sprouts, but the majority tend to stick with what we know. Therefore, the best way to create a healthy adult is to teach a kid to eat right. At Doors of Perception this week, we've been focused on addressing food issues through design. One great project we learned about is Kinderkookkafé, an eatery in Amsterdam where food is cooked and served by children. Debra Solomon told us about Kinderkookkafé by sharing a dining experience from the previous week, when her friend, 2.5-year-old Tula, invited her to lunch. Tula prepared a meal for Debra all by herself, having learned cutting and cooking techniques from her adult...
by Worldchanging SF local editor, Matthew Waxman: Roots of Change, “collaboratively and systemically” working to create a sustainable California food and farming system by 2030, recently launched a statewide campaign to make the vision a reality: “Our Common Vision.” The campaign has started with seven meetings across California. Meetings are open to everyone -– whether you’re a “foodie,” a food systems manager, a farmer or grower, a restaurant operator, or just someone who likes to eat food. The fifth “Our Common Vision” meeting is tomorrow, March 2nd, in San Francisco, from 1:00-4:00pm at Nextcourse, One Fort Mason. It’s recommended participants arrive 30 minutes early. And though this is a last minute notice, those wishing to attend should still RSVP (scroll...
Anna Lappé attends the first international Forum on Food Sovereignty in Mali. With more than 600 participants from 98 countries, the meeting will gather some of the most important social movements working for food rights global. If you’ve ever heard the myths that all Africans are hungry for genetically modified foods, that U.S. food aid has unilaterally helped small farmers around the world, or that indigenous farming and fishing practices couldn’t possibly provide enough food to feed the peoples in developing countries, you have heard different stories than those of the farmers, pastoralists, and fisherfolk gathered here in Mali this week. I’m writing this missive from the very dusty outpost of the foreign journalist and communications team for the mostly volunteer-led...
Does local food matter to sustainability? Ethan, in his post on food miles, asks some provocative questions about whether the carbon footprint of food raised in distant countries is really as bad or even as important as local food advocates claim. He makes some good points, and draws to our attention some interesting new research which may show that the environmental impacts of food shipment are a very small portion of the overall ecological footprint of the food we eat. In particular, one New Zealand study (PDF) has drawn a lot of attention by making a strong case for NZ lamb being less energy intensive than European lamb, even after the transportation impacts were included. This may not be the best example from which to take larger conclusions. For one thing, as I've written...
A few years ago, as Alex Steffen and I were getting to know each other, we both attended the Pop!Tech conference in Camden, Maine. One of the speakers had circulated yellow and green plastic cards to the audience, and asked us to vote on various propositions by holding up one card or another. The questions were meant to be divisive and ethically difficult. One asked whether we thought it was justifiable to introduce Nile Perch into Lake Victoria, likely unbalancing the ecosystem, but providing much-needed protein for local fishermen. I put up a yellow card to indicate that I thought it was justifiable and caught Alex looking at me, green card in his hand. We raised eyebrows at one another and went on to the next question. There are a lot of situations where environmentalists and...
Last year, Alex wrote a piece about the importance of climate foresight for subsistence farmers in drought-prone areas like the Sahel. Desertification and rainfall variation, along with the resulting loss of topsoil and land productivity, pose a tremendous threat to those already living at the edge of survival on arid farmland. At the same time, significant population growth places added stress on scarce food sources and unpredictable crop yields. But in the face of these unpromising odds, Niger has in fact become more green in the last few decades, with more than 7.4 million formerly barren acres of the countryside now covered in trees, a feat "achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and...
By Worldchanging SF local blogger, Brian Smith Voted "Best Agricultural Dig" by the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2006, Alemany Farm is a 4.5 acre urban farm located next to a public housing project. The Farm serves San Francisco’s diverse communities by growing fresh veggies, offering gardening workshops, and giving youth job-training opportunities. This former dump site was reclaimed for the community in 2004. The community-supported agriculture project hopes to make big news in 2007. But they will need your help. Jason Mark is a graduate of the organic farming apprenticeship program at University of California, Santa Cruz, where he also spent a year as an assistant instructor. Jason is pouring his time and heart into making Alemany Farm live up to its potential as San...
They were told it would never work in the high altitude and cold climate of Tibet. But a Beijing-based non-profit and Worldwatch Institute partner, the Global Environmental Institute (GEI), has successfully implemented a biogas program in the mountainous Chinese province. The project provides clean, renewable energy to households and complements the region’s growing organic agriculture trade. Located in Wujinmai Village, it is the most recent outgrowth of GEI’s sustainable rural development program and mirrors a three-year-old program in Yunnan province that boosted farmer incomes 20-fold. GEI’s program, launched in April 2006, uses a three-pronged approach to address issues of pollution and poverty, according to assistant executive director Lila Buckley. The first...
Just south of San Francisco near the Pacific coast, a 14-acre working farm has grown into a powerful connector between urban communities and the land. Pie Ranch was established by three sustainable agriculture advocates who wanted not only to develop their beautiful [pie-shaped] wedge of land into a thriving food source, but also offer hands-on education for city youth in the origins of the things we eat. The name of the ranch holds significance beyond the shape of the site it occupies. Pie Ranch is one big sprawling source of ingredients for -- that's right -- pie. They grow wheat for crust, and fruit and vegetables for filling. They raise chickens for eggs, goats for milk, and bees for honey. School groups trek down from the city to try their hands at planting, weeding, and...
by Worldchanging LA local editor, Siel (Green LA Girl) Organic produce, delivered to your doorstep greenlagirlJanuary 3, 2007 3:25 PM Even if you have a hard time making it to the farmers' market on a regular basis, you can still enjoy fresh, organic fruits and veggies year-round by getting organic produce delivered to your door. Los Angeles residents are in luck, because we actually have a number of different organic delivery services to pick from. Three of the most popular ones are ParadiseO, Organic Express, L.O.V.E. (Los angeles Organic Vegetable Express). All of these basically deliver a nice box of fresh produce to your door on a weekly or bi-weekly basis for between $25-30 a pop. Most of them let you customize your box to a certain extent. You might, for example, opt for an...
by Worldchanging San Francisco local blogger, Karri Winn Ecotrust is an innovative organization based out of Portland OR in the Jean Vollum Natural Capital Building. It may seem strange to write about an Oregonian initiative on a San Francisco site – but this organization has a reach and mission that extends as far south as Baja all the way to the Yukon. That is because local for this organization is defined not by a municipal boundary, but by the historic habitat range of salmonids and steelhead, that is, the Salmon Nation. Salmon Nation is an example of a bioregion and Ecotrust is helping forge the way for bioregional planning, economics and cultural integrity by taking a whole systems approach to habitat conservation and species preservation. In October at the Bioneers...
by Worldchanging San Francisco local blogger, Holly Pearson Winter solstice may be the longest night of the year, but it also marks the return of the light – from now on the daylight hours will be getting longer by a few minutes each day. What better way to start preparing for spring than to start planning your own garden? Gardening is more than a hobby or a way to put fresh and delicious food on the table for our families. Urban gardens are an important component in creating local food systems. Securing land within and near large urbanized areas – near where the greatest concentration of people live – is a fundamental element of having a viable, localized system of sustainable food production. Of course it’s essential to preserve agricultural lands close to cities and to...
by Worldchanging Austin local blogger, Gary Moore Aunt Penny is quite indignant. She does not consider herself livestock. She’d prefer you think of her as a member of the family, or at the very least, a pet – but livestock? Never! Aunt Penny is a hen of course – but more importantly she’s a leader in the ever-growing sustainability movement. And best of all, she lives right here in the live music capital of the world – on the farm of Larry Butler & Carol Ann Sayle on the beautiful east side of Austin. Boggy Creek Farms is a USDA Certified Organic farm, but that by no means provides an accurate description of what’s going on this 5 acre plot of ground, smack in the middle of a rapidly growing and changing community. Elsewhere around the country “organic” may be defined...
by Worldchanging Chicago local blogger, Megan Milliken You’d be hard-pressed to find a Chicagoan who doesn’t appreciate the occasional Italian beef, hot dog, gyro or sausage-lover’s deep-dish pizza garnished with fried bacon. It would be equally as difficult to find a person in this city who didn’t care about making it a better place. In a recent 400-page report entitled "Livestock's Long Shadow", the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations presents an inventory of side effects produced from the world’s meat industries. A nice write-up by Geoffrey Lean, the environment editor for The Independent, can be found here. The long-short of it is that the infrastructure and its resulting effects to support the world’s 1.5 billion cattle - burning fertilizer to...
by Worldchanging Los Angeles local blogger, Anna Cummins About now, your New Year's resolution wheels are beginning to spin. And like countless other Angelenos, one of yours may be to lose a few pounds in ’07..... I’m talking carbon pounds. You read Worldchanging, you’re well aware that we’re cooking in our own carbon emissions, and you’re ready to watch your fuel intake. Fortunately, there’s a tried and tested, low stress plan to shed some unsightly emissions: bike commuting. An average four-mile bike commute jaunt prevents nearly 15 pounds of polluting emissions from entering your breathing-sphere! If saving the planet's not your thing, how about your bank account? By NOT driving just a few days each week, you’re spending less $ at the pump, extending the lifespan of...
A bit late getting round to this, but I think it’s worth pointing out. In its article generally slagging off Fairtrade, farmers markets and so on, The Economist wrote:
But perhaps the most cogent objection to Fairtrade is that it is an inefficient way to get money to poor producers. Retailers add their own enormous mark-ups to Fairtrade products and mislead consumers into thinking that all of the premium they are paying is passed on. Mr [Tim] Harford calculates that only 10% of the premium paid for Fairtrade coffee in a coffee bar trickles down to the producer.
Sounds like producers don’t do particularly well out of Fairtrade, right? Well, let’s see what Tim Harford actually said.
Cafedirect promises to offer good prices to coffee farmers in poor countries. Fair...
by Worldchanging DC local blogger, Daniel Lobo
Approaching the last FRESHFARM open farmers' market of the season at the Penn Quarter - which advertises locally grown foods, bringing the blessings of healthy local food to our communities and sustains the working landscapes that feed us –the contradictions of an elite service in the name of a sustainable community market can take main stage.
Balancing a dense debate that will require much more scrutiny there is room to see positive effects in its promotion.
In a tired and maybe irrelevant dichotomy between what is urban and rural, city farmers’ markets facilitate a healthy conversation about community relationship between the population of Washington DC and its rural surrounds. In fact, farmers’ markets not only introduce...
In Tucson, Arizona, there's an astonishing amount of edible fruit ripening into waste on people's trees. It happens everywhere; on my walk to farmer's markets in Palo Alto and Berkeley, I used to pass beneath perfect produce hanging overhead on my way to pay $5/lb for the identical item. Local as the farmer's market may be, there's nothing more local than our own yards, but too few people regard the goods that grow there as a source of food.
Of course, for residents who can't afford market prices (and who don't have their own tree-filled yards), a fruit tree does equal food, but it's not always easy to locate and obtain things that are growing on private property, and even in public space, it can be hard to know what's what. That's where Barbara Eiswerth comes in. Eiswerth is trained...
Nothing says hippy like a countertop full of sprouts. But like most things that were once "crunchy," sprouts are gaining an urban edge. At least, that's the hope of food culture/art activist, Debra Solomon, who runs culiblog, a site about "food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food." Solomon recently opened an art installation-as-restaurant in Amsterdam called Sproutstaurant, where for two months, where visitors can dine on more than thirty-one flavors of sprouts and microgreens, served with traditional Dutch stamppot. Microgreens have been a fashionable food accent in haute cuisine for some time, but the message with Sproutstaurant is not so much about style (although the presentation is essential), but rather that no matter where we are, we can grow at...
Last spring, Emeka Okafor wrote a guest piece for us highlighting the importance -- especially in the developing world -- of gardening with native vegetables as a sustainable way to improve nutrition and maintain good health. He's just written a short follow-up at his own blog inspired by a recent report on research into "underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply." There's a short overview of the findings here, with descriptions of the eighteen indigenous vegetables the study covered, which include amaranth, baobab, cowpea and locust bean. There is apparently also a companion report on native African fruits.
The resurgence of indigenous food sources in rural and urban gardens has numerous benefits, both immediate and long-term. It's...
A few years ago when I was doing a lot of work in the sustainable food world and "local" was becoming as much of a buzz word as "organic," I found myself frequently asking people which of the two they felt was more of a priority. From a whole-systems perspective, it makes sense that an organic apple flown in from New Zealand and sold at Whole Foods ultimately has a much higher impact on the planet than a conventional apple from a nearby orchard sold at the farmer's market.
While most people reading this are probably inclined to think of the fossil fuels and carbon emissions (and compromised freshness) implicit in an imported apple, the majority of consumers still don't. The majority of consumers also don't consider the farmer's market a staple food source, and even if they did, many...
For once, I agree with Tim Worstall: rich countries are more resilient, because they are more diversified, intraconnected and wealthy. Look at the different impact of a drought:
we appear to be having (despite the interruptions to Wimbledon) something of a drought in SE England this year. People using standpipes is hardly the same level of catastrophe as when the rains fail in poor rural peasant societies and a significant portion of the population die as a result.
All true, so I’m surprised that Tim goes on to dismiss the danger posed to the same poorer, less resilient societies by global warming:
This is the rationale behind one set of suggested actions to deal with climate change: do nothing. As the IPCC Third Report assumes, in 2100 the entire world will be at current US...
Two recent reports on Africa paint an apparently contradictory picture. Firstly, the OECD’s African Economic Outlook says that “recent economic prospects for Africa are looking more favourable than they have for a number of years”, with growth highest in eight years and projected to carry on that way in the short term. But on the other hand you’ve got the findings from the Afrobarometer survey, which interviewed tens of thousands of people from 14 African countries in 2005 and found that perceptions of poverty were no lower and more people than ever cited the lack of food security as their top concern:
In sum, the incidence of poverty in the African countries surveyed is more likely to be increasing than decreasing. People report that reliable supplies of cash...
Land reform in Africa is one of those tremendously important but dauntingly involved and complex subjects I really don’t know enough about to comment on, so I’ll just pass on a link to some interesting new work from the International Food Policy Research Institute, which they summarise as follows:
Land is one of the most important assets for millions of poor people in Africa. Equally critical are their rights to this land, which provide social and economic security and an incentive to use natural resources in a sustainable manner.
More than 30 percent of the land in Africa is jointly held by members of a group or community, making common property rights as important as individual rights. In many developing countries, giving individuals title to land has worked well. In...