Locavore world news by Elbert van Donkersgoed
Posted: December 22, 2009
Categories: Food in the News / News from Sustain Ontario
White House plants winter garden under row covers
First, he was profiled in Men’s Health magazine. Then it was People. Now White House assistant chef Sam Kass has taken the first step to small screen stardom. And by small screen, I mean YouTube. The White House has released a video of Kass and Department of Agriculture officials readying the South Lawn garden for winter. A group of what appear to be a dozen volunteers set up hoop houses – a kind of temporary green house – in which staff will grow cold-weather greens for the White House table. Washington Post story and video.
A New Health Care Prevention Agenda: Sustainable Food Procurement and Agricultural Policy
Health care leaders are broadening their awareness to include the need to address the food system as a means to individual, public, and global health, above and beyond basic nutritional factors. Key voices from the health care sector have begun to engage in market transformation and are aggregating to articulate the urgency for engagement in food and agricultural policy. Systemic transformation requires a range of policies that complement one another and address various aspects of the food system. Health care involvement in policy and advocacy is vital to solve the expanding ecological health crises facing our nation and globe and will require an urgency that may be unprecedented. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutritionarticle.
Tides Top 10 for 2009
They are Canada’s most innovative and forward-thinking organizations. They inspire people to take action, to think in new ways and to make the world a better place. Website explains why Tides chose these amazing initiatives. Included is Local Food Plus because….
“A New Frugality?†Consumption Ain’t Dead Yet
But are these current reports of increased thrift behaviors really indicative of longer-term shifts in ideology regarding consumer spending? Or, alternately, could these reported behaviors merely be a heightened enactment of our culture’s symbolic orientation to thrift? Just to be clear, we do believe that shoppers are actually engaging in heightened thrift behaviors in the short term. What we are questioning are shoppers’ underlying motivations across a longer term time horizon. Hartman GroupBig Ideas for 2010.
The Education of an Urban Farmer
I have a farm on a dead-end street in the ghetto. My back stairs are dotted with chicken turds. Bales of straw come undone in the parking area next to my apartment. I harvest lettuce in an abandoned lot. I awake in the mornings to the sounds of farm animals mingled with my neighbor’s blaring car alarm. I didn’t always call this place a farm. That didn’t happen until the spring of 2005, when a very special package was delivered to my apartment and changed everything. NPR excerpt from Farm City:The Education of an Urban Farmer by Novella Carpenter. Copyright 2009 by Novella Carpenter. Published by Penguin Press.
KFC launches penny-per-calorie promo for grilled chicken
KFC is rolling out a new “penny-per-calorie†holiday promotion for its Kentucky Grilled Chicken combo meals. The meals, which contain a grilled chicken drumstick and thigh, green beans, and mashed potatoes and gravy, are now on sale at participating restaurants for $3.95. Louisville-based KFC Corp. said in a news release that the meal is rated at 395 calories. In addition to the marketing campaign, KFC has launched an advertising component, comparing the calorie count of the grilled chicken meal to other fast-food items. Business First story.
Empowering Teens to Green the Food Desert
This Thanksgiving, when you dashed into your local convenience store Thursday morning to buy the inevitable forgotten ingredient in your annual feast, you probably wondered how you ever missed them before. The Great Wall of Doritos. The Leaning Tower of Snickers. The Mountain of Dew. My favorite is the Hostess Blockade, a hulking mass of Twinkies that stands at a 45-degree angle to the entrance of the convenience store on my corner, making my walk to anything else inside the store less than convenient. Sure, I live in a corner of Los Angeles with an artisanal cheese shop and there’s farmers’ market nearby once a week. But most of the stores—and many of the restaurants—in my neighborhood suffer from a severe lack of nutritional value. It’s called a food desert. Good.is/Design is a Verb story.
Company to Begin ‘Rental Goat’ Weeding Service
Mikuni Construction Co. in Kitakyusyu City, southern Japan, announced in August 2009, that it would be launching a new service to rent goats for weeding grass starting in April 2010. This unique weeding method does not require any machinery, and is drawing attention as an environmentally friendly technique. Goats eat various types of weed. They eat all aboveground stems and leaves, and prefer to graze on slops, which people often find it difficult to weed. Furthermore, weeded material does not require disposal when using this method and the goat dung produced simply decomposes and is returned to the soil.Japan for Sustainability story.
Beef and lamb road map report: Change in the air: the English Beef and Sheep Production Roadmap – Phase 1
The English Beef and Lamb Executive have published their roadmap, setting out how they can reduce the GHG and other environmental impacts of their industry and how they can promote the positives. This roadmap just published is the first of two – this one deals specifically with GHG emissions while the second roadmap, which will be published in 2010 will look at other environmental challenges including water, carbon sequestration, land use and biodiversity. The focus is on England but the roadmap should be replicable in other parts of the UK. Report (3.5 MB PDF)
Cities, Food and Agriculture: Challenges and the way forward
This policy briefing resulted from the international expert consultation organised by FAO-Food for the Cities (FAO-FCIT ) and RUAF Foundation (24-25 September, 2009, in Rome), attended by some 25 experts on urban food security and urban agriculture from international organisations, including senior staff of FAO, RUAF Foundation, IDRC, CGIAR-Urban Harvest, UN-HABITAT, World Bank, IFAD, Rockefeller Foundation, IWMI, CIRAD, IFPRI, ICLEI, GTZ, Heifer Int., Biodiversity Int., WFP and Milano 2015. The document discusses urban agriculture in view of the recent food and economic crisis and debates on climate change. Report by Henk de Zeeuw and Marielle Dubbeling posted on the website of the RUAF Foundation. (1MB PDF)
AND if You Have Time
Tryvertising
Spanish consumers interested in testing out the latest products need only pay EUR 5 every six months for the right to try five new products at Esloúltimo every two weeks. There is no other charge for the samples, and there’s also no lengthy questionnaire to fill out. Instead, consumers are simply asked to indicate why they chose the particular samples they did. Available for the taking at Esloúltimo are a variety of food, cosmetic and household goods as well as technological innovations for in-store testing. From Springwise newsletter.