Good Food is Everybody's Business
Take a drive north on Highway 97 and you will pass along the Columbia and Okanogan Rivers between tiers and tiers of orchards growing all kinds of fruit, from stone fruit – apricots, nectarines, and peaches – to apples, pears, and cherries, and the occasional quince. Just a few miles north of Tonasket WA you’ll find River Valley Organics. What’s is it that makes River Valley Organics so special? A unique combination of karma and heart.
In recognition – and celebration – the NW Cooperative Development Center, the Alaska Cooperative Development Program, and Mission Mountain Food Enterprise and Cooperative Development Center, are partnering to present “Celebrating Our Food Community,” a conference to consider how cooperative business models will contribute to the future of our local and regional food systems. We spoke with Jan Tusick, Center Director for Mission Mountain Food Enterprise Center, about her organization’s part in establishing and supporting co-ops in western Montana.
Ina Denburg went to New York City with sign in hand to stand with others in solidarity against the use of unsafe GMO technology and the horrific practices of its most powerful progenitor, Monsanto. She was anticipating a robust turn out for the Occupy Monsanto demonstration; so how many showed up?
Now I’m not new to eating healthy real food, and I know good food ought to cost more, but I admit my knee-jerk response to local blueberries was not to be paying $5. I’d expect that in winter when they’d come from South America perhaps (I don’t buy them then), but from my home in the Garden State? What’s up with that?
In an effort to bring back a connection between small local producers and their wholesale customers, particularly by urban and land use planners, the concept of a “food hub” has been introduced. Or some would say, “re-introduced.”
Until the day comes when we can teleport physical products from one point to another, we will have to depend on distribution networks that include trains, planes, and automobiles (or trucks). You can download an e-book or a movie, but you just can’t download a shirt or dozen eggs.
When he was a child, George DePasquale’s quintessential (and large!) Italian-American family gathered every weekend to make food for the coming week – for the whole family. Fresh pasta hung drying over the backs of the sofa and chairs and lay curled on the beds, pots of sauces simmered on the stove, and piles of fresh fish were cleaned and frozen. And Mama always baked bread for the family. It was the homemade bread and exposure to the bakery down the street that made those years so important to George. He literally grew up with “flour in his hair;” baking bread all his life.
Your GoodFood World publishers are farmers one afternoon a week at Jubilee Biodynamic Farm in Carnation WA and it has rained every week since the end of April! A little mud never hurt anyone!
