Good Food is Everybody's Business
Ferhan, 33, was still a young man when he dropped out of school to help his father in the family’s fields. He quit the third grade and instead of learning to read and write, he learned to plow and harvest. Ferhan’s father passed down traditional methods of agriculture to his son, techniques that Ferhan’s father had learned from his father.
Big agriculture is big business; too big, too distant, too reliant on the latest technology, and too focused on profit over good food. Expecting complex technology and genetic engineering to solve the problems of climate change, extreme weather patterns, water shortages, and dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, is not the answer. It is time to go back to the land, to restore our natural resource base and re-invest in our people.
HISTORY SHOWS URBAN FARMS CAN FEED CITIES WHILE PROVIDING ECOLOGICAL SERVICES – Perhaps the revival of urban farming will lead not just to a diet for a small planet but a diet for smaller people?
Walk into any of the nine PCC Natural Markets in Puget Sound and it’s clear your not in your parents’ (or grandparents, if you’re young enough) food co-op! No more cozy slightly run-down food markets with barrels of flour and bags of rice on the floor, around which barefoot children played tag while their parents debated politics and planned social actions against “the establishment.” Today, the PCC (as it’s fondly referred to here in Seattle) is every bit the contemporary supermarket. So what is so special about the nation’s largest natural food co-operative?
Sometimes when Samson Aberra is working in the garden, planting seedlings or replenishing his nursery, onlookers gather to watch him toil. What they don’t know is that Samson Aberra is not “toiling” — he’s barely working. In fact, he is doing what he loves: gardening. Samson’s garden lies next to the main highway running through the Ethiopian highland town of Dessie, located in the northeast of the country. The garden forms a triangle between the main road and a contaminated stream that meanders through the city in its journey to the low lying plains below.
In the face of daunting competition, an economic recession, and the unrelenting pressure by Walmart and other big box stores, small businesses continue to open and to flourish. Meet Sonia and Carlos, owners of Mendoza’s Mexican Mercado – they have the entrepreneurial drive that combines the old and the new to bring new flavors to cities like Seattle while at the same time providing familiar “food from home” for those relocated here from countries like Mexico. These family businesses are the “American Dream” – business ownership and community support.
The Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s is a perfect example of how monocropping can lead to disaster. Lack of genetic variation in Irish potatoes was a major contributor to the severity of the famine, allowing potato blight to decimate Irish potato crops. The blight resulted in the starvation of almost one of every eight people in Ireland during a three-year period. But the greatest shortcoming of monocrops may lie in the compromised quality of those foods, and the long-term effect that has on your health.
Ina Denburg, our Healthy Eating contributor, joined farmers, food justice activists, community gardeners, and others for a “re-localized” food system in a rally organized by Food Democracy Now and the OWS food justice committee.
