Locavore News – World
Posted: May 10, 2010
Categories: News from Sustain Ontario
- Distributors Slow To Embrace Local Food Movement
- Local food council develops big plans
- Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition
- Cleveland adopts local food incentives
- Nutritional Information on the Front of Packages
- New Social Networking Site Established For Gardeners — Digthedirt.Com
- Locavorism Grows Up
- For backyard-farmer companies, business is bountiful
- My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm
- Attention Whole Foods Shoppers
Perspectives on good food and farming by Elbert van Donkersgoed
May 10, 2010
Distributors Slow To Embrace Local Food Movement
Local produce and meat are projected to be the two most popular items on restaurant menus this year, according to the National Restaurant Association. But as more institutions like schools and hospitals look to “buy local,” they’re finding themselves in a bind — large food distributors may not carry items those customers are looking for. And fragmented networks of local farms don’t know how to distribute the food efficiently. National Public Radio story.
Local food council develops big plans
The Knox County Board has officially established a local food council that will work to strengthen and develop local food networks. The 15-member council will become a non-profit foundation and will work with local growers to help them reach markets for their products and add value to them. County officials hope that over time growth in local food production could create hundreds of sustainable jobs. A new state law will require state-funded institutions to obtain part of their food supply from Illinois growers. The local food council hopes to exploit the opportunity the legislation creates. Most fruit and vegetables consumed in Illinois come from outside the state but the Illinois Local Food, Farms and Jobs Public Act is aimed at reversing that trend. The Galesburg (Illinois) Register-Mail story.
Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition
The Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition is an alliance of individuals, organizations, businesses and government representatives representing all critical components of our local food system, including health care, agriculture, education, social services, food distribution, government, private business, nonprofit agencies and others. But most importantly, we are consumers. We want the food eaten by our families, our children and our neighbors to be the best for our bodies, our environment and our local community. Website.
Cleveland adopts local food incentives
Today’s Cleveland-Cuyahoga Food Policy Coalition meeting shed light on Cleveland’s new policy to attract and create local, sustainable business. New legislation allows the city to offer a 5% discount to local food businesses bidding for city contracts. Since most bids are decided by 5% or less, a discount for being a certified Local Sustainable Business—a process that will be determined by the Cleveland Office of Sustainability—will offer a ‘huge’ advantage. Sustainable Cities Collective story.
Nutritional Information on the Front of Packages
The FDA wants to develop a front-of-pack nutrition label that consumers will notice and that is driven by sound nutrition criteria, consumer research and eye-catching design, said FDA spokeswoman Siobhan DeLancey. The labels will enhance nutritional awareness but will not replace the nutritional facts panel already on products. Market Watch story.
New Social Networking Site Established For Gardeners — Digthedirt.Com
Cliff Sharples, founder of Shop.org and Garden.com has announced a new site, DigtheDirt.com, a social networking site optimized for people who love gardening. Just in time for Spring, the site includes an easy-to-use plant database with thousands of the most popular plants for home gardens, plus the ability to filter and search for plants based on over 100 attributes. Home gardeners can also easily find suppliers for the plants they wish to purchase. Website
Locavorism Grows Up
At ABC Kitchen, Jean-Georges takes local-and-seasonal dining to a higher plane. ABC Kitchen—which opened more or less simultaneously last month with the Mark, Jean-Georges’s more-classic uptown venture—is the chef’s most overtly gimmicky undertaking yet. As you may have heard, it’s located at the ABC Carpet & Home department store, on lower Broadway, which means you can browse for Scandinavian chandeliers and trendy Ganesh statuettes before repairing to the bar for a drink. The stated theme is locavore “sustainabilityâ€: Most things on the menu, “whenever possible,†come from local suppliers. The menus are made from recycled paper and affixed to pieces of cardboard righteously repurposed from ABC’s delivery boxes. The dun- colored place mats are compostable, and after closing time, all the leftovers are sent off to the compost heap too. The waiters wear casual “Converse-style†sneakers; the clay dishware has been fired by a local artisan in Connecticut (it’s available for purchase at ABC Home, of course); and the tables are set with wildflowers, plucked, presumably, in the hollows and dells of suburban New Jersey. New York Magazine story.
For backyard-farmer companies, business is bountiful
Lininger calls himself a farmer, though he doesn’t ride a John Deere and never sees a sun set over the fields. Instead, he tends a succession of peewee suburban plots as if they were the sprawling ranches of the Central Valley. “The sign of success used to be who had the best lawn,” said Lininger, 41, as he pinched the dead leaves off the plot’s lone beet. “Now, it’s all about how much food you can grow.” Los Angeles Times story.
My Empire of Dirt: How One Man Turned His Big-City Backyard into a Farm
For seven months, Manny Howard—a lifelong urbanite—woke up every morning and ventured into his eight-hundred-square-foot backyard to maintain the first farm in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in generations. His goal was simple: to subsist on what he could produce on this farm, and only this farm, for at least a month. The project came at a time in Manny’s life when he most needed it—even if his family, and especially his wife, seemingly did not. But a farmer’s life, he discovered—after a string of catastrophes, including a tornado, countless animal deaths (natural, accidental, and inflicted), and even a severed finger—is not an easy one. And it can be just as hard on those he shares it with. Manny’s James Beard Foundation Award–winning New York magazine cover story—the impetus for this project—began as an assessment of the locavore movement. Barbecue Loverblog.
Attention Whole Foods Shoppers
From Whole Foods recyclable cloth bags to Michelle Obama’s organic White House garden, modern eco-foodies are full of good intentions. We want to save the planet. Help local farmers. Fight climate change — and childhood obesity, too. But though it’s certainly a good thing to be thinking about global welfare while chopping our certified organic onions, the hope that we can help others by changing our shopping and eating habits is being wildly oversold to Western consumers. Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion. Robert Paarlberg article in Foreign Policy
AND if You Have Time
There are bloggers taking pictures at that table, be careful of them
On a typically high-powered night at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new restaurant, the Mark, Martha Stewart sat at a prime table with a couple of friends. While the conversation stalled, she methodically photographed her food and tweeted about what she ate. New York Magazine story.