Good Food is Everybody's Business
The City of New York has released an 86-page, comprehensive plan that sets a bold vision for a more sustainable food system – a ground-to-garbage approach. The City of Seattle Action Plan for the Local Food Action Initiative seems to be “lost in transit.”
Growing a Garden City offers compelling photographs and personal narratives of community garden members, graduate students and first graders, a low-income senior and troubled teen, a foodie, a food bank officer, and many more. They describe their setbacks and successes involved with community gardening and show how to build on and emulate their achievements anywhere across the country and around the world.
Fifty-seven-million Americans don’t get enough to eat, and massive amounts of food go to waste. At the same time much of the world depends on American agri-business. Is going local a better way?
A special relationship forms the heart of the CSA where a farm is supported by a community of customers who become closely affiliated through weekly newsletters, farm visits, and annual harvest festivals. Isn’t there a way to harness that sense of community and personal connection in a “agriculture-supported community?”
It is believed that the first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in the US appeared in the early 1980s, although the concept had been in place in Europe and Japan since the 60s. Now we have CSF – Community Supported Fishery. Same model – different delivery!
The 21st Century farmer is not a red-necked, hayseed who never saw the inside of a college classroom. (It’s doubtful that too many of the 20th Century ones were either). In fact, he (or she) is probably fairly young, well-read, and well-educate
One in six Americans faces hunger or food insecurity; over 49 million people and 16 million children. That means many Americans have to choose between …
Many times, after I have finished a lecture on the decline of American farming and rural life, someone in the audience has asked, “What can city people do?” “Eat responsibly,” I have usually answered.
