You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘local food’ tag.
photo by Amanda Dempsey, Edible Cleveland
We just got word that the Edible Cleveland magazine covered one of NWEI’s Menu for the Future courses in Cleveland, Ohio. Thanks to Noelle Celeste for this piece!
Every Monday night for six weeks Felicia Tiller and her boyfriend, Travis, talked about food with a dozen familiar strangers from the neighborhood. They were there to participate in a pilot program for Menu for the Future, an experiment that grew out of Sustainable Cleveland 2019. The idea is to inspire community dialogue around food issues by using the Northwest Earth Institute’s “Menu for the Future” course on a broad scale through faith communities, organizations, businesses or, in this case, neighbors gathered by Felicia’s friend from work.
“It was like a mini book club except we discussed how we eat and who we eat with—not just local food, but the role of food in our lives,” said Felicia. “Overall the experience made us feel more connected to the people in our community and it reminded us that every little thing you do is valid and important—even the simple habit of sitting down with your family to eat.”
Felicia was most surprised to learn that it wasn’t until the end of World War II that families shifted their eating habits and stopped growing their own food. Until then the bulk of an American’s food came from their communities and their gardens . This fact inspired her. “If they could grow it, why couldn’t I?”
So what’s changed in Felicia’s world as a result of those six Monday nights? She and her boyfriend committed to starting a balcony garden. “Originally, we were going to spend the time we would have been in the meeting each week on garden work, but instead it’s become a daily ritual: watering before bed so we don’t water our neighbors on their way to work in the morning and checking on sprouts every morning. We love watching our garden grow.”
In the Cleveland area and want to start or join a conversation near you? Call 216.264.0181 or email menuforthefuture@gmail.com.
October 24th is Food Day, a nationwide celebration and a movement for healthy, affordable, and sustainable food. If you haven’t already, consider learning more about sustainable food and taking action by organizing one of NWEI’s food focused discussion courses: Hungry for Change: Food, Ethics and Sustainability or Menu for the Future.
For more on the state of food in the United States, read Hilde Steffey’s Food Day Blog Post: This Food Day Remember Good Food Starts With Family Farms:
It is an exciting time when it comes to good food. Farmers and consumers are organizing locally and regionally, creating markets close to home via farm stands, farmers markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. Farm to school programs are found in more than 12,000 schools, in every state in the nation. The U.S. organic food market continues to outpace conventional food sales. These are signs that there is a clear and growing demand for good food from family farms.
While these trends are promising, the largest, most industrial farms are getting bigger. By 2007, just 6 percent of US farms were producing 75 percent of agricultural product. Meanwhile, our small and mid-sized family farms continue to disappear at an alarming rate. Between 1982 and 2007, USDA numbers show a loss of 40% of farms making between $10,000 and $250,000 – an average of 353 farms a week! These are the very farmers and farms best positioned to grow and strengthen local and regional markets; but they’re also the same farms most threatened by failed policies that seek short-term gains and favor large corporations at the expense of public health, the environment, local economies and community well-being…
For the full post, click here.
We recently connected with Bonney Parker of Toms River, New Jersey per her past and present involvement with the Northwest Earth Institute discussion courses (she and her group are currently doing Discovering A Sense of Place).
Bonney told NWEI staffer Rob Nathan of how she and her sister have been presenting cooking workshops at a local organic farm three times a month (she has also written a cookbook based on this venture with her sister). Bonney says, “Some of our NWEI discussion group people are faithful attendees at the workshops, which have grown over the past two years from about 5 people to 30 people coming each time!” We asked Bonney if NWEI courses had influenced the process in any way (she and her group had done NWEI’s Hungry for Change: Food, Ethics and Sustainability course earlier this year). Here is what she said:
“Some of the attendees of the workshops became members of our discussion group, so NWEI has had an influence. Our thoughts and actions regarding the workshops and the subsequent cookbook have been influenced by what we have read. For instance, we now ask folks who come to the workshops to bring their own eating utensils and cloth napkins with them. I always have a supply of forks and spoons for those who forget, but that number is very small. We usually ask the owner/farmer who is present at the workshops to talk about how he farms and what certain plants are and how they grow and are useful, etc, in addition to our nutritional information about the dishes we make.”
Thanks Bonney for your continued involvement with NWEI, and for sharing this inspiring story with us – and for sharing an example of connecting to place and fostering sustainable food choices. Bonney notes that for the workshops her sister Maureen (pictured above at right) picks the seasonal produce with the farmer for that night’s workshop.
If you’d like to order the cookbook, or learn more about Bonney’s grassroots efforts, you can contact her at bonnpark7@aol.com.
Its that time again! October 1-15th brings NWEI’s 5th Annual EcoChallenge: an opportunity to change your life for good. For two weeks every October, we challenge you to change one habit for Earth. You choose your challenge, we connect you with other EcoChallengers, and collectively we prove that small actions create real change.
Check out this EcoChallenger Profile Video for ideas and to learn about NWEI volunteer Elise Lind’s Challenge from last year: to eat only food produced in Oregon and Washington. Then, choose your own challenge and sign up to participate now.
We look forward to your stories of change to come!
For those of you following NWEI’s blog, you may recall that local food is a buzzing topic in Oregon and Washington’s Columbia River Gorge region, where nine groups recently met to participate in NWEI’s Menu for the Future discussion course. This week we have an update from Gorge News:
Starting the week of Feb. 20, nine different groups of eight to 10 people met once a week for six weeks in towns across the gorge including Goldendale, The Dalles, Hood River, White Salmon-Bingen, Stevenson-Cascade Locks and Mosier.
On Sunday, April 29, at 5:30 p.m., the Mosier group (hosted) one big community potluck at the Mosier Grange with all 80 participants from each of the individual groups.
Using the Menu for the Future discussion course book (created by the Northwest Earth Institute), these groups of diverse citizens explored the confusing number of food choices and contradicting information around health, fair trade, industrial agriculture, organics, family farms, sustainable food systems, GMOs and other juicy topics related to the food system.
The Mosier group of around 10 volunteers facilitated and organized the Let’s Talk Food Discussion groups because of their enthusiasm for the Menu For the Future curriculum. After the Mosier Group participated in the discussion course last winter, they were inspired to take action. They started their own Farmers’ Market in downtown Mosier last summer and have now organized the food discussion groups this spring with hopes that other communities will also become active in their food system.
A number of local establishments helped by providing a place for the groups to meet including 10 Speed East in Mosier, JoLinda’s in Stevenson, Solstice Pizza in Bingen, Presbyterian Church in The Dalles, Grow Organic and Dog River Coffee in Hood River.
Scholarships for the course books were available from Gorge Grown Food Network, which made it possible for anyone to participate regardless of income.
For more information call Emily Reed of the Mosier group at 503-360-3532.
This article just in from Axiom News per the effects of Northwest Earth Institute’s programs and the work of Clevelanders in creating more sustainable local food systems. Thanks to all the people taking part in this inspiring effort! Read on to see what Clevelanders are doing as a result of participation in Menu for the Future.
With its array of homemade goat cheese, pasta made with basil pesto grown onsite, chili with local venison and spicy collard greens, a local food potluck last night captures the difference a growing underground movement around local food is making in Cleveland.
The potluck’s location, Gardens Under Glass, is a story in itself. Situated in Cleveland’s downtown Galleria mall, the core of Gardens Under Glass is a demonstration greenhouse with food grown there now used in some of the food court businesses…Then there’s the fact the potluck was held at all.
 |
| Clevelanders talk local food. |
Capping off six weeks of small group conversations around food, it was intended to be a celebration of what the more than 30 people engaged in these conversations have learned, and the new micro-communities they’re beginning to create.
Perhaps most powerful is how these conversations are sparking change at the citizen level, as people shared at last night’s event, says champion for the effort Nancy King Smith.
A young couple has been inspired to start growing some food even though they don’t have any garden space. So they put buckets of dirt on their balcony and have planted several vegetables.
Someone else has learned more about CSA’s (Community Supported Agriculture), and now he and his family have joined one.
A woman noted that in spite of her busy schedule, she has a new commitment to put time into her food choices and preparation because that’s what’s important to her.
The owner of a local business is now committing to become a City Fresh stop and provide fresh, local, sustainably-grown produce in the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood.
One urban farmer noted that through these conversations he could “see the light bulbs” of understanding going off for people.
Based on a curriculum developed by the Northwest Earth Institute, called Menu for the Future, the conversations spin out of handbook readings and a set of questions. They have been credited with changing the nature of the food conversation in the community of Port Townsend, Washington.
The goal for the budget-less Cleveland project, relaying entirely on word-of-mouth, is that 50 groups have met by the end of the year, with a farmers’ potluck in the fall to celebrate and share experiences.
“They had a fall potluck in Port Townsend, and people did share some pretty exciting things that they were motivated to do as a result,” says Nancy, noting she’s hoping for a similar experience in Cleveland.
The Menu for the Future movement was sparked at last year’s Sustainable Cleveland 2019 summit, an initiative to turn the city into a world-leader in sustainable practice.
For the initiative, a theme is chosen for each year, with events, education and activities all lifting it up. Local food is the 2012 theme.
The city’s chief sustainability officer, Jenita McGowan, who is the lead connection point on this citizen-driven project, points to Menu for the Future as a favourite example of several highlighting the growth of the local food ecology in Cleveland.
It certainly aligns with what she sees as the greatest possibilities for the local food movement in the city in 2012, which is “lots of unsolicited comments from regular Clevelanders around the fact that their city is a leader in local food, that they’re proud about it and know how to participate in it.”
For the full article, please click here.
NWEI Curriculum Director Lacy Cagle just passed along this article from NPR, which states that every million dollars in sales through local markets supports thirteen jobs, versus the three jobs generated from every million dollars in sales by agricultural operations that don’t have a local or regional focus. All the more reason to get behind the local, sustainable food movement! For the full article by Allison Aubrey, click here.
“When we think of the farmers we know, we can count a lot of locally-produced food we’ve reported on, from unusual greens to pawpaws.
And when the Obama Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture promotes their Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, what do they count? Jobs.
“Every million dollars in sales through local markets supports thirteen jobs,” USDA’s Kathleen Merrigan said in a conference call with reporters. This compares to three jobs generated from every million dollars in sales by agricultural operations that don’t have a local or regional focus.
To tout the growth of the local food movement, USDA has launched a slick, new, multimedia website that includes videos, photos and a map showcasing all the USDA-supported projects (think: loans and grants). Many are aimed at helping communities coordinate the sale of locally grown fresh food products from small and mid-scale family farms. Another goal is to support regional food hubs.
By positioning the initiative as a “jobs-creator,” Merrigan may be hoping to assuage detractors on Capitol Hill who have criticized Know Your Farmer as a program for the foodie elite that promotes organic and niche farming over conventional, larger scale operations.
“In the name of promoting local food systems, [USDA] appears to be prioritizing Rural Development grant and loan programs for locavore projects in urban areas, apparently at the expense of rural communities,” complained Senators Pat Roberts (R-KS), Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) and John McCain (R-AZ) in a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in 2010, after the program was created. The lawmakers point out that the vast majority of the nation’s food supply comes from these conventional, large-scale operations.
In an early version of the 2012 Appropriations bill, lawmakers in the House moved to de-fund marketing of the Know Your Farmer initiative. Even though there were similar concerns in the Senate, ultimately the program kept its funding. But USDA was told to give a status update. That’s part of what USDA accomplishes with this new, web-based Compass.
Even so, local food advocates are concerned the program could be cut out of the farm bill, set to expire this year.
The goal of Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, according to USDA, is in part to strengthen the connection between farmers and consumers. That’s us! What do you think, do small scale farms deserve financial support, a piece of the federal pie? Is the local food movement in your community changing the way you eat or shop?“
Late last month citizens throughout Oregon and Washington’s Columbia River Gorge area began participating in a series of Menu for the Future discussion groups as part of the “Let’s Talk Food” initiative, hosted by the Gorge Grown Food Network, a citizens’ and farmers’ initiative working to build a regional food system in the rural Columbia River Gorge region of Oregon and Washington.
The Mosier, Oregon group of Gorge Grown kicked off an ambitious project this winter: they’d like to help set the record for the largest number of food discussion groups running at the same time. Groups began convening the week of February 20th and are now in full swing, with groups running from Goldendale to Parkdale, Oregon.
Using the Menu for the Future discussion course books, the groups are exploring the confusing number of food choices and contradicting information around health, fair trade, industrial agriculture, organics, family farms, sustainable food systems, GMOs and more. At the end of the courses, the Mosier group will be hosting a community potluck with all participants from all of the individual groups.
If you are in the Gorge and would like to be involved in the future, contact Emily Reed at 503.360.3532 or learn more at the Gorge Grown Food Network’s website.
Today we are checking back in with Sustainable Together, a blog by Shelly Randall (our guest blogger at NWEI’s bi-annual conference last year). We also wanted to see what was going on in Port Townsend, WA several months after our sustainable food conference. Read on for a host of tips from Shelly on eating locally and affordably!
…When I launched Sustainable Together as a personal/professional endeavor, I made an ancillary pledge: to make food my main hobby.
I have other hobbies, many of which have fallen by the wayside as I raise a young child (pleasure reading, scrapbooking, kayaking, the list goes on!). Thankfully, I also enjoy cooking, baking, gardening, and shopping at farmers markets. At some point in my sustainable transition, I realized I wouldn’t be able to consistently feed my family seasonal, local, fresh, homemade meals unless I embraced sourcing and preparation of the food.
This takes time, so it helps if you enjoy it.
It also takes a financial commitment. We in the U.S. are conditioned to expect cheap food, year-round. But learning to shape your food budget around seasonal and local foods has many levels of benefits, both for your health and your community.
“With our food dollars, we create the future we want to have,” says Malcolm Dorn, co-owner of the new Chimacum Corner Farmstand, which proactively sources its offerings from local farmers and producers. “The dream is beautiful farmland, healthy people and a healthy habitat.”
Money tight? It helps if you follow the three simple rules the (Port Townsend) Food Co-op brochure lays out for “eating better on a budget”—with some of my own additions:
1) Eat food. (Not junk!) Avoid highly processed foods and consider the nutrient value of foods you ingest. (I found these handy charts of fruits and veggies with the highest nutrition for the least cost at the Sightline Daily blog).
2) Cook. Meal plan. Make it once and eat it twice or thrice (leftovers!). Prep your produce for longer life. Preserve the harvest bounty. Use a whole-foods cookbook. Share recipes, try new ones, get inspired!
3) Shop smart. Make a shopping list and stick to it. Buy produce in season. Definitely buy organic if it’s on the Dirty Dozen list. Buy direct from the farmer. Buy in bulk. Join a buying club. Special-order your regular buys for 15-20% discounts (a co-op member benefit). Shop sales. “Shop” from your garden, i.e., grow your own groceries. Shift your budget to spend less on luxury items and more on good food. Etc.!
I learned a lot about our county’s food system at the affordable food forum, and I was so impressed by the wealth of knowledge and experience represented by the seven panelists that I wanted to know what personal steps they had taken to eat local foods more affordably. So in the Q&A period, I asked each of them to share a tip. Here’s what they had to say.
Seth Rolland of Quimper Community Harvest (a gleaning network) said he picks “free food” from his neighbor’s apple tree and has built a rodent-proof box on his porch for outdoor storage of apples.
Malcolm Dorn of the Chimacum Corner Farmstand said he worked out a trade with a farmer to plant an extra row of pickling cukes for him. He harvested them himself and preserved them with a friend, resulting in a stockpile of one of his favorite foods: pickles!
Al Latham of the Jefferson LandWorks Collaborative said he built a greenhouse to extend his garden’s growing season. He claims six millimeters of plastic added 600 miles of latitude to this indoor climate!
Judy Alexander of Citizens for Local Food (for more, see cover story of Nov./Dec. 2011 Food Co-op newsletter) said she bakes her own bread every week. She’s still using the 100 pounds of wheat she received as her share for volunteering for two years with Jefferson County’s dryland wheat project.
Candice Cosler of the Farm-to-School Coalition said she increased her garden’s production by adding “loads of compost”–which boosts the food’s nutrient content as well.
Irene Marble, a dietician at Jefferson Healthcare (our rural hospital) said she grows her own winter squash and preps them for storage by dipping their shells in a bleach solution.
Brwyn Griffin of The Food Co-op said she simplified her diet to be plant-based with little to no processed foods.
My tip is to start my weekly grocery shopping at the farmers market. (I am fortunate that there are twoweekly farmers markets in my neighborhood that run April-December.) With fresh produce, local meat, eggs, and a few value-added goodies (cheese, salsa) in hand, I go home and meal-plan, creating a shopping list of necessities for the Food Co-op. This one-two punch works well for my family, and I miss it in the winter-time!
For the full blog post, click here.
As you know, NWEI staff, board, volunteers and hundreds of individuals and organizations throughout North America are gearing up for the two week EcoChallenge starting on Saturday October 1st! Bill Gerlach has been blogging about his 125 Mile Local Food Challenge. Below is an excerpt. For the full post, please click here.
Every once in a while you have to put what you believe in to the test. And for those who have been reading TNP (The Next Pursuit) for a while or know me “off screen”, you know that I’m a huge supporter of the local food movement as a vehicle for building community, local economies and sustainable living. So with that backdrop, I’m excited to launch this new series of posts chronicling our family’s participation in the 2011 EcoChallenge sponsored by the Northwest Earth Institute.
The annual Challenge allows individuals and groups to identify areas in their life where they can make positive changes that benefit them, their communities and the environment as a whole. Participants can choose the area(s) that best fit with their situation, including water conservation, energy efficiency, sustainable food options, alternative transportation and trash reduction. After a quick sign up — which allows you to participate as an individual or team — you are up and running. I am doubly-excited because NWEI has asked me to be a feature blogger for this year’s Challenge, sharing posts and updates with the entire NWEI community.
Our challenge is straightforward: For the two week period of October 1 through October 15, eat and drink only what is grown and/or produced within a 125-mile radius of our home in Rhode Island.
While straightforward, this challenge is far from simple. Though the local and regional food infrastructure has been built up in recent years, it is far from complete — as is evidenced by our research and planning. Our particular challenge is also complicated by the fact that our family of five is vegetarian, has three young children running around and geographically speaking, we are headed into the tail end of the primary growing season.
Measuring Our Progress
In thinking about how we’ll “score” our progress, we’ve decided that we will “grade” our food consumption by where it falls on this very non-scientific scale:
- Tier ONE — Food (or ingredients) is grown and produced within 125 miles (e.g., vegetables, milk, flour)
- Tier TWO — Food (or ingredients) is grown outside the 125 mile radius but produced within the 125 radius (e.g., our favorite local brew)
- Tier THREE — Food is grown/produced outside the 125 mile radius (e.g., well, we’ll have to see)
In chronicling our efforts, we believe we can help shed some light on both the great work that has been in play to create local/regional food systems as well as identify the gaps when it comes to the practicality of trying to eat locally/regionally. Think about it: If something were to happen overnight that rendered cheap energy and the ability to ship in food (raw, processed or otherwise) from hundreds or thousands of miles away obsolete, would your local food system be able to support its surrounding population? For the vast majority of us, I am going to say ‘no’. In a very small way, participating in this Challenge will help me bring some real-world experience to the table — literally and figuratively — allowing me to help spur the right kind of system growth.
It’s All About Planning
Since deciding to participate in the Challenge, we have been doing our homework and figuring out what we’ll eat and where we’ll buy the food/ingredients. Truth be told, my wife, Sara, has been doing the heavy lifting in this department — mapping out our eventual menus, trips and budgets. Here in Rhode Island, we’re fortunate to have a great non-profit called Farm Fresh RI. Their maps and databases of locally-grown and produced food have been a big asset. When we’ve emailed them with questions about hard to find things like flour, grains and beans, their staff have been extremely helpful.
We plan to take this as granular as possible — all three meals, beverages, snacks, treats, etc. So that means I’ll be foregoing things like coffee, tea and chocolate (thank goodness for our local dairy farm, brewery and winery!). Beyond that, we’ve had to have discussions around just how far to take this: Do we not use base ingredients like sugar and salt (we think we have flour covered so Sara can make her breads)? What about other spices and herbs we can get fresh? Can apple cider (it’s apple season here) make it as an orange juice substitute?
And then there are the kids. Three strapping youngsters who (fortunately) are very open to pretty much anything you put in front of them. As an adult, you could probably tolerate eating greens and hefty salads three nights in a row. I’m not sure about the kids. We’ll have to see. (Full disclosure: Writing those last few sentences makes me extremely sensitive to the reality that so many kids here in the U.S. and across the globe are food insecure and I’m sure would not bat an eye at having fresh greens three nights in a row. I feel extremely fortunate that we are in a position to even take on this “challenge” when so many are challenged just to survive.)
Haven’t signed up yet for your EcoChallenge? You can do so here: www.ecochallenge.org!
Deborah McNamara
Kerry Lyles
Lacy Cagle
Mike Mercer
Ryan Harper
Rob Nathan
scootdog
nwei.wordpress.com 