Food and Faith

Local Food at a Stand Still

“The local food movement is going nowhere.” That’s according to my friend Mike. Mike is an intern at a nearby sustainable, organic farm, and he told me this while we were sitting at a locally-owned restaurant eating grass-fed bison burgers raised on a different farm less than 30 miles away. I had to disagree with him.

I live in Louisville, Kentucky (which was just ranked the “10^th fattest city” in the U.S. in a very unscientific magazine survey – a big part of Mike’s pessimistic argument). If this movement is going nowhere, then how are Louisville’s 27 farmers markets staying in business?  How was Rainbow Blossom – one of many nutrition/local produce grocers in town – able to expand to their fifth location last  month?

Here’s more evidence that the local, sustainable food movement is alive and well. While I was channel surfing a few days ago, I saw a segment on Kentucky’s PBS affiliate about a biodynamic farmer from Crestwood, KY who talked about the increased demand for their products. A week earlier, I was browsing the shelves at a movie rental store and noticed a prominently displayed section full of food and agriculture documentaries like Food Inc, Fresh and King Corn. Jump back two weeks before that, and I’m in a mostly full theater listening to Will Allen of Growing Power call this movement a full-fledged revolution. If he can fill a theater for an urban gardening lecture at 8:45 AM on a Saturday morning, I’d have to agree with him.

Growing Power is an organization in Milwaukee that produces fresh, affordable and healthy food in the middle of an urban food desert. A similar project is underway in Louisville called Breaking New Grounds. Louisville is also home to the Food Literacy Project and Neighborhood House which received a grant from the Presbyterian Hunger Program to teach children about the local food system and let them get their hands dirty in the vegetable garden. Read about that grant, or better yet take a look at all of the grants PHP has awarded to dozens of similar organizations.

Maybe I’m more optimistic than my friend Mike because I’ve read all about those organizations, but I say the local food movement is on its way up… and fast. Maybe that’s because it has nowhere to go but up. Mike was kind of right, the Center for Disease Control put Kentucky as the 6^th most obese state last year (see for yourself). Minorities are the most at-risk for obesity and diabetes. The agricultural industry is now more consolidated and powerful than it ever has been before (see the Food and Faith website). Sure, things are bad now, but that’s no reason to be pessimistic.

Change starts with one person. So start buying local, find a farmers market and go to it, buy fair trade when you can’t find it close by, and stay up-to-date about food/agriculture legislation with the Washington Office. The local food movement will only go nowhere if you let it.

Good farms capture carbon!

Hearing the word 'data' may not thrill you, but this is juicy!

Data from the Rodale Institute’s long-running comparison of organic and conventional cropping systems confirms that organic methods are far more effective at removing the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, from the atmosphere and fixing it as beneficial organic matter in the soil.

Consider this fact: If only 10,000 medium sized farms in the U.S. converted to organic production, they would store so much carbon in the soil that it would be equivalent to taking 1,174,400 cars off the road, or reducing car miles driven by 14.62 billion miles.

Right now, I'm on an initial conference call of the ad hoc Interfaith Food and Agriculture group convened by Rodale. We are sorting through who else should be part of the conversation and what we might do together... 

In the meantime, check out this exciting article from Rodale!

Organic farming combats global warming -- big time

The Way of Manna

    My eldest son loves blackberries.  They have been his favorite food since he was old enough to pick them himself.  Even when he was quite young he was not deterred by the thorns, which can be vicious on the wild plants.  We would go out on long blackberry hunts, buckets tied around our waists, wading through brush and poison ivy to find these tasty treats.  When we would come upon a gold mine, I would start picking and he would start eating.  "One for me, and one for you," he would say, gently putting a berry in my mouth.  In those moments, I wondered, why is he being so generous?  Its been hard work getting here, we're sweaty and the baby on my back is crying.  Why is he not hording his favorite food?

    In the story of Exodus, God's people find themselves in the desert with nothing to eat.  They are hungry, tired, and it is not hard to imagine a lot of babies crying.  They complain to Moses and God responds with a gift--manna.  God rains bread down from heaven, providing food for God's people for their entire sojourn through the desert.  But, there are a few rules that go along with this free meal--they can't horde!  "No one is to keep any of it until morning," Moses says.  And those who do not obey this simple rule, will find it full of maggots in the morning.  Manna has not shelf-life, it requires full trust in God's provision, every single day.  Of course there is one exception.  On the Sabbath, God's holy day of rest, manna is miraculously preserved from the day before.

    The Exodus story teaches us what Ellen Davis calls "the art of sufficiency."  As she puts it, "We come to see the beauty of enough and actually prize it over 'too much.'"  In our society, we are encouraged to want more, to spurn God's gift of enough, to the extent that we are using resources faster than any other generation before us.  How can we train ourselves to see food as manna, a gift from God, and remember that there is enough, if only we do not horde?  I think I've learned a lesson from a child, who is in total wonder at found food.  This fall we moved to the mountain of North Carolina and there is a Chinese Chestnut tree in our yard.  These nuts are covered in a husk that is totally covered with very sharp spines.  Yet again, undeterred by the thorns, my son was determined to get at the delicious, crispy nuts inside.  After hours of work, he would bring them into us, and divide them evenly among us. He had learned the Way of Manna--when we see food as a gift, there is no reason not to share it.  There is always enough to go around.  

FolkPsalm is currently working on a cd/booklet entitled The Way of Manna and I am indebted to Charles Pettee for this title.  To learn more about our band and our current project visit www.folkpsalm.com

Dry and important? Yes.

Olivier De Schutter, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, preempts the World Summit on Food Security coming up in Rome with important recommendations. Spending 9 minutes with Olivier, who has a lovely accent, will give you a grasp of the directions we need to go to ensure that all are fed and can feed themselves! Days ahead of the Summit, the negotiations on the Draft Declaration of the Summit are entering their final stage. 

What is at stake is our ability to take the necessary steps towards a global food system that will make decisive progress towards realizing the human right to adequate food and building our resilience against the risk of future economic shocks and increasing volatility of food prices. 

The Declaration coming out of the Summit should be coherent, ambitious and unambiguous on five issues: the right to food, governance, sustainability, trade, and the strengthening of international cooperation. From the Special Rapporteur's website

Liquid Justice

While it may be obvious to say this, it's sometimes hard to remember: Our food, everything we eat and drink, comes from somewhere, not just the back room of the local grocery store. Coffee, in particular, has to get from the coffee tree somewhere else in the world to my coffee cup every morning or my day doesn't go well. Yet, like everything else in my life, the liquid in my cup is connected to more then just the start of my day but to the lives of people I'm never going to meet. The choice I made last week to buy a pound of coffee for my morning has implications for the people who grew it, harvested it, shipped it, roasted it, bagged it and placed it on the shelf in the store. Out of all the people in that supply chain, my choice effects the farmer most of all.  

My morning coffee may come from one or several several different places in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, or the Caribbean. Coffee grows on a tree that is indigenous to Northern Africa. It was imported to the Americas as part of the European Colonization in the 18th Century and became a major crop in Nicaragua in the 1870’s. It is one of the primary Nicaraguan exports and a critical source of income for the farmers who grow and harvest it.  

Got food? Check for bees

Albert Einstein said that if the bees disappeared, "man [sic] would have only four years of life left."  Not to panic anyone, but no bees, no food. Could bees one of the canary species in the mine shaft of our global ecological health?

Learn why they are vanishing and maybe we can work together to see if we can turn this around.

Whilst The Co-operative and others are investigating what could be causing the disappearance of bees, here are some simple (and fun) things you can do to learn more and help save the bee.

1) Call for pesticides research Help secure funds for a systematic review of the impact of pesticides on our most important pollinators.

2) Bee-friendly gardening Each and every one of us can make a difference, by encouraging bees into our own back gardens, patio pots and even window boxes.

3) Take up beekeeping There’s an estimated 40,000 beekeepers in the UK. The majority of these keep bees as a hobby – it’s much easier to do than you’d think! So, if you’re really interested in helping bees, why not think about becoming an amateur beekeeper

4) Sign up to Plan Bee There’s so much going on with The Co-operative’s Plan Bee campaign. Register to be the first to hear about campaign news and how to get more involved.

5) Become a Co-operative Member There are lots of other ways to get involved with The Co-operative. Find out more about what we do and how you can become a Member. Learn more...

Other posts from Food and Faith on the disappearing bees --

• Why are the bees are dying? They call it Colony Collapse Disorder
• Bee deaths linked to Bayer pesticides

World Food Day update: Monsanto monopoly, peasants fight back

On World Food Day, we were forced to admit that the global food system is not working for people. Why? Because since the beginning of the global food crisis, 150 million more people are hungry--now totaling one thousand million hungry people.

Family farmers and rural groups worldwide, through the global Via Campesina, have identified Monsanto and its corporate kin as the culprits perpetuating food and agricultural systems that produce unprecedented profits and poverty. Via Campesina, winner of the Food Sovereignty Award last week, is featured in this press release from Mexico.

Peasants Worldwide Rise up Against Monsanto, GMOs

La Via Campesina carries out Global Day of Action against Monsanto

(Mexico, 16 October 2009) Today, International World Food Day, as declared by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, La Via Campesina is mobilizing globally along with allies in an overwhelming expression of outright rejection of Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), in the name of food sovereignty.

In the United States today, protests and teach-ins against Monsanto are taking place in Maine and Wisconsin. In Brazil, Via Campesina members are carrying out actions in the headquarters of Monsanto and Syngenta. In Europe, where nine countries have prohibited GMOs, Via Campesina organized an anti-Monsanto brigade traveling throughout the region. In India, thousands of farmers and allies are carrying out hunger strikes and occupying lands. Actions are being carried out in at least 20 countries and all nine regions where La Via Campesina is present.

Meanwhile, world leaders are preparing to meet at the FAO World Food Summit in Rome in November, where the powers of global governance and agribusiness will utilize the desperation of starving nations to accelerate the expansion of GMO-based agriculture throughout the world. The Obama administration’s proposal to dedicate over a billion dollars of emergency funding to developing countries for agriculture, and the U.S. government’s Global Food Security Initiative are thinly veiled efforts to this end.

Peasants, landless workers, migrants, indigenous peoples and consumers, identified transnational corporations, especially Monsanto, which, together with Syngenta, Dupont and Bayer control over half of the world’s seeds, and are thus the principal enemies of peasant sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty for all peoples. La Via Campesina is in a daily struggle to protect native seeds, patrimony of humanity, from corporations and patents.

Today, October 16, the strength of the movement is pushing the public opinion to reject Monsanto’s take-over of the food system.

“It’s time for all civil society to recognize the gravity of this situation, global capital should not control our food, nor make decisions behind closed doors. The future of our food, the protection of our resources and especially our seeds, are the right of the people,” said Dena Hoff, a farmer and coordinator of Via Campesina North America.

USDA Secretary of Agriculture "preaches" on the loaves and fish

I'm here listening to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack's address to the 600 folk gathered here at the Community Food Security Coalition Conference in Des Moines. He uses the story of the feeding of the 5000 to make his point about the culture of sharing that needs to be cultivated in this country.

Some were against his appointment but the efforts they are making to support community food programs and better nutrition for kids are impressive.

Jill Richardson, on the La Vida Locavore, reports how he avoided answering questions about the paradox of supporting community food programs and large-scale, mechanized agriculture by going on and on about Afghanistan - "Vilsack filibusters - then gets booed and hissed"

=========

Yesterday, I was very encouraged and, frankly, surprised. The Food and Faith Committee, which I helped establish back in 2002, had the best turn-out ever with close to 60 energized people who talked about ways they are linking their faith and faith communities to the building a just and sustainable food system. In addition to bringing a strong food/faith dimension to next year's conference in New Orleans, we determined to come up with faith-based principles around food and agriculture that will help determine legislative platforms.

Farmers tell it like it is

Jill Richardson, who is here at the Community Food Security Coalition Conference in Des Moines, wrote a great piece with lots of photos on the Farmers Tell It Like It Is Tour that we went on. Here is conventional (non-GMO) corn and soybean farmers, George Naylor.

"...the roots go down 8-12 feet! These plants are what made all of the wonderful topsoil here in Iowa - the topsoil that makes it possible to plant monoculture using soil-depleting practices year after year without running out of soil (yet)."

Today, Secretary Vilsack just spoke to us about community food security and child nutrition. A short video from that is coming.

 

It's October 12th: What are you celebrating?

Today is known in many countries as "Columbus Day" to celebrate Christopher Columbus' voyage to the Discovery of the Americas.

But this "discovery" of a continent of people (with thousands of years of previous existence) is not a celebratory event in many parts of the Americas. Columbus, in Spanish "Cristobal Colón", represents "Colonialismo", that is, colonialism. The beginning of over 500 years of economic, cultural, religious and social repression, not to mention the deaths of millions of what were considered sub-human, heathen, indigenous people.

This legacy of foreign domination and economic exploitation lives on, much like the legend of Columbus. It lives on through unjust trade policies like NAFTA, CAFTA and the US-Peru Free Trade Agreement. These agreements crush small farmers, impede food sovereignty, weaken local governance, and perpetuate dependency.

This October 12th, join PCUSA and other justice organizations throughout the hemisphere to re-make history. Celebrate International Trade Justice Action Day. (There are events near you!)

President Obama promised during his campaign that he would re-assess the Free Trade Agreements like NAFTA. So far, he has missed critical opportunities to reform these policies. A new bill in Congress, however, proposes just that. And we need your help.

Called the TRADE Act (Trade Reform, Accountability, Development and Employment Act), it is a way of ensuring that everyone benefits from a trade relationship. It takes a new look at existing trade treaties and sets up structures to enforce labor rights, environmental protections, community development, and local government sovereignty. It is a step closer to a national policy of Fair Trade, of which over 72 US Congress people are vocal sponsors.

Please take a minute to send this letter from the PCUSA Washington Office Action Center to your representatives TODAY! We are hoping that thousands of constituents use October 12th to speak up about Fair Trade Policies to end the "Colonialismo" that Colón brought to the Americas over 500 years ago.

Take part in prayer/service this whole week with the PCUSA Food Week activities. 

 
Alexandra Buck is the Fair Trade Facilitator for the Bridge of Hope Fair Trade program, an element of the Joining Hands Peru Network campaign for trade justice and local economic development. She would appreciate everyone using this Columbus Day to improve international trade relations. She also appreciates llamas, sunny days in the Andes, ceviche, and Incan ruins.