Locavore News – World by Elbert van Donkersgoed
Posted: March 23, 2010
Categories: News from Sustain Ontario
- First Lady to Corporate Food Giants: Time to Rethink…And ‘Step It Up’
- European Parliament committee votes in favour of country-of-origin labels on fruit and vegetables
- A Damascus farmer’s ideas on sustainable urban agriculture are breaking new ground
- It’s a keeper
- Firm launches £200 “Grow Your Own Ingredients” kit and monthly £25 subscription service
- Rethinking Work: Farming as Labor
- City ponders chicken plan
- The Femivore’s Dilemma
- ‘Italian Farmer’s Table’ offers sumptuous variety
- Food Among the Ruins
- Jamie Oliver’s f-word warning to Australian parents
Perspectives on good food and farming
March 22, 2010
First Lady to Corporate Food Giants: Time to Rethink…And ‘Step It Up’
Tuesday was a signal moment in the history of food politics in America. First Lady Michelle Obama gave the most pointed policy remarks she’s made to date, to an audience of the biggest corporate food makers in the land. During a keynote address to the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), Mrs. Obama challenged the food giants to join her child obesity campaign, by dramatically altering the foods they create, and doing their part to change the entrenched American desire for unhealthy foods. The First Lady called for vision, imagination, and rapid action. Obama Foodorama story
European Parliament committee votes in favour of country-of-origin labels on fruit and vegetables
The European Parliament’s Environment and Consumer Protection Committee voted in favour – 33 for and 29 against – of making it a legal requirement for food producers to put the country of origin on meat, poultry, dairy products, fresh fruit and vegetables and other single-ingredient products. Its report will now go for a “full” vote of the whole of the European Parliament in May or June (2010) Horticulture Week story.
A Damascus farmer’s ideas on sustainable urban agriculture are breaking new ground
His vision holds the power to radically alter the way the Portland region and others like it are configured. Food-producing farms, far from being excluded from urbanized areas, would be integral to them. Thompson’s own farm, a lush pastiche of open fields, gently rolling hills and tree-lined buttes, is helping break down long-enforced lines separating urban and rural uses. By the time the fledgling city of Damascus finishes crafting its plans for future development, Thompson’s will be one of the state’s only working farms situated inside an urban growth boundary. The Oregonian story.
It’s a keeper
First we had the fascinating Greenhouse, a Melbourne flash-in-the-pan that morphed into a bona fide eco-diner in Perth. Now Sydney’s The Pond, a loose but particularly likeable temporary restaurant/bar/cafe in the increasingly interesting Burton Street zone, has begat The Commons – another low-fi, hype-free, locavore kind of anti-restaurant where all the bling and trappings of the modern game are pared back, leaving just the simple elements of old-fashioned communal eating and drinking. Well, that’s the plan, anyway. The Australian story.
Firm launches £200 “Grow Your Own Ingredients” kit and monthly £25 subscription service
Dinner Party Allotments has launched the first “Grow Your Own Ingredients” kits for beginner gardeners that offer a complete package from plant to plate. Horticulture Week story.
Rethinking Work: Farming as Labor
As food consciousness hits Americans—and wealthy Global Northerners everywhere—it’s not just cooking that has seen a resurgence. Farming is experiencing a new cachet that it hasn’t seen in ages. Dirt is cool, rather like those ill-fitting thrift-store clothes—it proves that you don’t care about social status or glossy magazines… right? Raising some tomatoes in the backyard isn’t exactly new—my mother did so when I was younger, and though she hardly kept us afloat through the fruits of her labor, it was nice to have fresh veggies on the table. Sarahjaffe blog on AlterNet.
City ponders chicken plan
No one has cried foul and council members have not flocked to take sides, as this small city along Highway 200 ponders poultry. For the past month, ever since Kootenai resident Chrissi Vergoglini asked the City Council if she could raise chickens on her small city lot on Hope Street, council members have scrambled to address the issue. Answers, so far, have been scarce as hen’s teeth. BonnerCountyDailyBee.com story.
The Femivore’s Dilemma
Four women I know — none of whom know one another — are building chicken coops in their backyards. It goes without saying that they already raise organic produce: my town, Berkeley, Calif., is the Vatican of locavorism, the high church of Alice Waters. Kitchen gardens are as much a given here as indoor plumbing. But chickens? That ups the ante. Apparently it is no longer enough to know the name of the farm your eggs came from; now you need to know the name of the actual bird. All of these gals — these chicks with chicks — are stay-at-home moms, highly educated women who left the work force to care for kith and kin. I don’t think that’s a coincidence: the omnivore’s dilemma has provided an unexpected out from the feminist predicament, a way for women to embrace homemaking without becoming Betty Draper. Peggy Orenstein writing in the New York Times Magazine.
‘Italian Farmer’s Table’ offers sumptuous variety
The agriturismi (“agriculture” and “tourism”) system was set up by the Italian government in 1985 as a way to revitalize small-scale farming and preserve centuries-old farmhouses scattered across the countryside. Working farmers were encouraged to renovate farm buildings and convert them into inns, following government guidelines. The plan worked. Sacramento Bee story.
Food Among the Ruins
Were I an aspiring farmer in search of fertile land to buy and plow, I would seriously consider moving to Detroit. There is open land, fertile soil, ample water, willing labor, and a desperate demand for decent food. And there is plenty of community will behind the idea of turning the capital of American industry into an agrarian paradise. In fact, of all the cities in the world, Detroit may be best positioned to become the world’s first one hundred percent food self-sufficient city. Mark Dowie writing in the Guernica – a magazine of art and politics.
AND if You Have Time
Jamie Oliver’s f-word warning to Australian parents
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has served up a stark warning to Australians: teach children to cook, or the nation faces a “f***ing scary” future of obesity and early death. Oliver says we are too complacent about Australia’s advantages as a natural food bowl and are raising a generation of teenagers “who have never learnt to cook a f***ing thing”.News.Com.AU story. Video