Locavore News – World
Posted: May 17, 2010
Categories: Uncategorized
- Durham Tourism to host photo shoot and networking event for farmers and chefs
- Michael Pollan Makes TIME 100 List, Alice Waters Says She Was ‘Pollanized’
- Chesterhill Produce Auction, A Rural Appalachia Case Story
- Michigan Good Food
- Let’s hear it for urban agriculture
- Lunch Debate Moves from Cafeterias to Congress
- USDA Foods Help Schools, Farmers
- A Day in the Life of an Elementary School Cafeteria
- Love Lunch Community: Berkeley School Lunch Reform Gets Its Close-Up
- Food Pyramid Gets Ethnic Flavor
Perspectives on good food and farming by Elbert van Donkersgoed
May 17, 2010
Durham Tourism to host photo shoot and networking event for farmers and chefs
Durham Tourism is hosting a photo shoot and networking event for local farmers and chefs on Monday, May 17. The purpose of the industry event is to pair farmers with chefs to create unique dishes made with Durham Farm Fresh products. Durham Tourism is encouraging registered farmer and chef duos to come up with their most exciting Durham Region-sourced recipes, for a chance to be voted on best appetizer, entrée and dessert. Members of the media are invited to attend the event at 11:30 a.m. for a luncheon, dish sampling and voting on the local dishes. Monday, May 17 at 11:30 a.m. – Ocala Winery, 971 High Point Rd. Port Perry. Media inquiries: Jennifer Santos – Communications Co-ordinator, Economic Development and Tourism 905-668-7711 ext. 2607 or jennifer.santos@durham.ca.
Michael Pollan Makes TIME 100 List, Alice Waters Says She Was ‘Pollanized’
TIME released their annual TIME 100 issue last week, naming the people who have most influenced our world, and author/journalist/food activist Michael Pollan made the cut under the ‘Thinkers’ section for invigorating the conversation on the ethics of eating. Alice Waters, co-owner of Chez Panisse and local-food champion, wrote a profile on Pollan for TIME, dubbing his fast-spreading food credo a process of “Pollanization.” Huffington Post story.
Chesterhill Produce Auction, A Rural Appalachia Case Story
“Chesterhill Produce Auction, A Rural Appalachia Case Story,” has been completed by the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs at Ohio University. Based on extensive interviews with a cross section of stakeholders, this document takes a clear eyed, well documented look at the first six years of the CPA with the social and economic contexts of the project well highlighted. Anyone with an interest in local food systems or rural development will find this document useful in revealing the confluence of events necessary to start and hold a project of this nature together. Ohio Food Shed blog.
Michigan Good Food
Michigan Good Food is an initiative to develop a policy agenda that supports Good Food in Michigan – food that is healthy, green, fair and affordable – and to inform the 2010 state and local elections. Since September 2009, summit work groups have been examining our current situation and developing future opportunities to advance Good Food in Michigan in five arenas: a) Youth Engagement in Community Food, b) Healthy Food Access for Families & Communities, c) Institutional Food Purchasing, d) Farmer Viability & Development and e) Food System Infrastructure. The Michigan Good Food Charter was rolled out at a Statewide summit on February 25, 2010, which was attended by about 400 people from State agencies, grass root organizations, legislators, farmers, and everyone in between. Website.
Let’s hear it for urban agriculture
How one NGO in the heart of sprawling Sao Paulo has taken it upon itself to feed the masses. Growing food in cities isn’t a new concept for the poor. Rural farmers forced to migrate to urban areas in the developing world in search of work have long turned to their agricultural skills as a way of feeding themselves and their families when all else fails. It is only recently that urban agriculture has garnered attention in the first world, something many attribute to the growing popularity and romanticizing of small-scale organic farming. But in the pockets of poverty in the first world and developing cities alike, urban agriculture has more to do with public health and economic development than it does with environmental trendiness. Global Post story.
Lunch Debate Moves from Cafeterias to Congress
Cheetos and ginger ale were not what Colorado schoolteacher Mendy Heaps thought her students should be eating for lunch, so she started selling fresh fruit out of an overhead projector cart. Kids, parents and teachers loved it, but the principal put a stop to it. Principal Robert McMullen told Heaps that her fruit cart had become disruptive to the operations of the school’s food services and asked her to stop the fruit cart and focus her energy on teaching language arts. While Heaps ended the fruit cart operation, she hasn’t dropped the cause. Farm to Fork story.
USDA Foods Help Schools, Farmers
Catfish, strawberries, garbanzo beans, flour and walnuts: what do they all have in common? These foods are just some of the nearly 200 USDA foods school food services have to choose from. USDA foods, commonly called commodities, are foods purchased by the United States Department of Agriculture to be used for the National School Lunch Program, Child and Adult Care Food Program and Summer Food Service Program. The USDA’s goal is to provide nutritious foods in schools while also supporting American farmers through the purchase of their goods. An estimated 1.09 billion pounds of USDA foods at a value of $844 million have been distributed this school year, according to a USDA fact sheet. Farm to Fork story.
A Day in the Life of an Elementary School Cafeteria
At 5:30 in the morning she’s waiting for the milkman. At 7:30 she gets the daily hug from Brandon. When 8:30 comes, she’s tallying lunch counts. It’s time to serve the main meal at 11 a.m. At 2 p.m. she leaves, coming back to repeat the process the next day. Karen Huffman is the cafeteria manager at Dishman-McGinnis Elementary School in Bowling Green. Huffman prepares roughly 290 lunches and 225 breakfasts for students each day with the help of Mary Cox Anthony, Melinda Shoemake, Sharon Childers and Mary Steele. Farm to Fork story.
Love Lunch Community: Berkeley School Lunch Reform Gets Its Close-Up
The film, tentatively called Open Mouths, Open Minds, looks at how a diverse community (where over 50 percent of the children qualify for federally-funded low-income school lunch assistance funds) has achieved the inconceivable. They stopped feeding students, from elementary school to high school, donuts for breakfast and frozen pizza or microwaveable chicken nuggets for lunch. Instead the students are served a hot entree cooked from scratch, a salad featuring locally grown greens and all the organic milk they can drink. The filmmakers hope to change deep-seated school institutional behaviors and develop a toolkit for use by other communities, no matter their budget or funding, so that American children can eat healthy, local and organic food, significantly opening up their quality of life, health and thinking. Huffington Post story.
Food Pyramid Gets Ethnic Flavor
The food pyramid has gone global. When the 2010 census is done, we’re expected to see just how much the country’s population has changed. But it’s already clear in grocery stores and restaurants that Americans like a lot of ethnic food. And now the dietitian’s trusty tool has been reshaped for Asian, Latino and Mediterranean tastes. A research group called Oldways Preservation Trust has even created food pyramids targeting children. NBC Chicago story.