Category Archives: food history

A Food Atlas For Everyone

March 21, 2013 – 7:30 am

Food AtlasFood Atlas by Darin Jensen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I love maps. When I travel, I study maps online to have some sense of the geography underfoot, as much to understand who the people might be as not to get lost. It’s amazing how people appreciate that bit of homework when you go to their place.
I have maps of my city (New Orleans) and of my river (Mississippi) on the wall of my house and the Slow Food RAFT map (see below) on my business card.

Slow Food RAFT map

Slow Food RAFT map


I have books of maps authored by favorites such as geographical historian Rich Campanella and activist Rebecca Solnit, whose collaborative map book (“Infinite City”) of her home of San Francisco is a thought-provoking juxtaposition of right and wrong, culture and place.

When I came across the Kickstarter campaign for this Food Atlas, I jumped at the chance to support it. It arrived last week and I have read it while sipping my morning coffee (while reading about Strong Coffee traditions in the Middle East and “Bird Friendly” coffee origins), referred to it while writing about farmers markets (the one on SNAP and farmers markets) and studied the Texas Seafood Landings map after making flounder tacos just north of Lake Pontchartrain, home of most of the seafood catch for my bioregion. It’s a very new book and so won’t be found everywhere yet, but you can buy it from them now at

http://www.guerrillacartography.net/home

It is a wealth of maps on food production, distribution, security, exploration, identities and to pick out my favorites is to shortchange the breadth of this book.
It’s not just for activists, or “foodies” but for everyone and I think it could affect (and galvanize) people just as M. Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemna” did. I grow tired of long text articles about food (Yes, I do include myself in that finger pointing!) and would hope that this sort of map project could become a new way to educate and illuminate the small world that we live on.

I can’t wait for the editors to follow up on their promise to expand the reach of this series including to add more Asian and African food maps and to get this Atlas in hands everywhere. Its a bit heavy on maps of the West Coast and of the US, so much so that it occurs to me that having a set of food maps that show the lopsided view we have of ourselves in the US versus how others see us or experience us might be a good edition. In any case, hurrah.

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By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in books, economic development issues, environmental issues, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, fishers, food insecurity, food policy, food sovereignty, food stamps (SNAP), global organizing, industrial food system, national food system work, public health, SNAP | Tagged | Comments (0)

Review of “Black, White and Green: Farmers Markets, Race and the Green Economy”

March 4, 2013 – 7:30 am

Black, White, and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green EconomyBlack, White, and Green: Farmers Markets, Race, and the Green Economy by Alison Hope Alkon
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Very well done snapshot of a piece of the Northern California local food system, especially its history. As much as I thought I knew, I learned some more about how it began from this book. I appreciated that this book was centered around these two farmers markets and their environmental and social justice leanings, which is a great lens to view multiple types of organizing, intentions and sets of outcomes.
I especially like the time she takes to link the work in each market to their larger community goals AND to the economic goals of the green economy.

here are some wonderful passages on the tensions and values of this emerging alternative system:

“One becomes an environmentalist, for example, through the consumption of green products such as organic food rather than the traditional means of voting, lobbying or attending protests. While this strategy allows supporters to inscribe their social movement goals into their everyday life practices. it also creates individuals who infuse the logic of the market into both their ordinary behavior and their desires for social change (Larner and Craig 1999)”

“The promise of the green economy is that the market can be made to value, and therefore to protect, humans and the environment.”

“In these markets, actors choose from among competing narratives to envision and emphasize the spaces where buying and selling green products leads to environmental protection and social justice.”

“Furthermore, proponents of the social change potential of the green economy attempt to redefine capitalism not as an exploitative system that must be overcome or restricted in order to protect people and the environment but as a tool to create a more just and sustainable world.”

“…Working towards these goals (environmental sustainability and social justice) becomes possible, in part, because participants in each farmers markets define environment and justice in ways that render them compatible with one another.”

“The compatibility between sustainability and justice achieved at these farmers markets is not inherent. Farmers market managers, as well as some vendors and regular customers, actively work to conceptualize strategies that speak to both goals.”
>As a community food system organizer, I believe this book is a necessary whistle stop on anyone’s travels to successful organizing around food.
Take the time to read this thoughtful book and then pass it along to your friends and comrades.

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By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in books, economic development issues, environmental issues, farmers markets, farmers/farming information | Tagged | Comments (0)

Race, Class, and Community in San Francisco’s Mission District – “A Time of Skinny Cows”

February 21, 2013 – 7:30 am

Great article about the (negative) relationship of the food movement to gentrification and therefore culture. We have to know the entire history of our movement (including its elitist characteristics) and acknowledge how our work has positive and negative implications on the less fortunate even as we continue to push its boundaries.
Some quotes from the article that I found useful:

“We think of gentrification principally in terms of real estate, race, and class, but I more often find that food is the thermometer reading the temperature of gentrification.”

“Much of what we call food politics today—buying local, farming organic, eating vegetarian—originally came from collectives that wanted to raise awareness about industrially produced food. The People’s Food System of the mid-’70s was a network of community food stores and small-scale food collectives that organized to take back control of food from large agricultural and chemical companies; they built direct connections to farmers to establish the first farmers’ markets. Meanwhile, the Black Panthers were hosting free community breakfasts in their neighborhoods, and Alice Walters opened Chez Panisse partly as a space to talk about politics. Various collectives shared the urban farm known as the Crossroads Community (The Farm) on Potrero Avenue at the edge of the Mission.
All this activity resulted in a paradox: as radical food politics succeeded, healthy food became commodified as elite food, proving that successful social movements can be gentrified, just like neighborhoods. The best farmers’ market in San Francisco, at the Ferry Building, is also the least affordable, and Waters’ Chez Panisse, the standard-bearer of locally grown, seasonal food, has become one of the most expensive restaurants in Berkeley.”

Read more: http://www.utne.com/arts-culture/san-franciscos-mission-district-zm0z13mazwil.aspx?page=5#ixzz2LGcdfe6r

Read more: http://www.utne.com/arts-culture/san-franciscos-mission-district-zm0z13mazwil.aspx?page=2#ixzz2LGakVDbL

Race, Class, and Community in San Francisco’s Mission District – Arts & Culture – Utne Reader.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, economic development issues, governments, immigrant issues, Main Street, racial equity, social cohesion | Tagged , | Comments (0)

SNAP Redemptions at Farmers Markets Exceed $11 Million in 2011

January 4, 2013 – 7:30 am

Last year, I posted the original graph that FMC and CFSC created to show food stamp (SNAP) redemption at markets since the 1990s.
This is the most updated published graph:

Farmers Market Coalition» Blog Archive » SNAP Redemptions at Farmers Markets Exceed $11 Million in 2011.

By the way, 2012 redemption was over 16 million. FMC will have an updated story this week or next.
Great job folks.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in farmers markets, farmers/farming information, FMC, food policy, food stamps (SNAP) | Tagged | Comments (0)

Bees Aware

December 31, 2012 – 7:30 am

How Dying Bees Affects Food Supply

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, environmental issues, global organizing, useful websites | Comments (0)

History of Food Stamp Usage at Markets

December 17, 2012 – 7:30 am

I often refer to the 2010 report “Real Food, Real Choice: Connecting SNAP Recipients With Farmers Markets” that was done by CFSC and FMC. The page that I refer most to is this one, so thought I’d post it here.

20121213-111403.jpg

Link to the entire report

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in case studies/research, CFSC, FMC, food policy | Comments (1)

Food as an organizing tool…

October 8, 2012 – 7:30 am

In an email today, I referenced the birth of the New Orleans sandwich that we call the po-boy, so I thought I would share the story more fully. The po-boy is a french bread sandwich loaded with seafood, meat or believe it or not, potatoes and gravy inside. The origin of this sandwich has to do with the streetcar strike in New Orleans in 1929: baker John Gendusa and restaurant owners Bennie and Clovis Martin made this sandwich and sold it as cheaply as possible to its customers and gave it for free to the “poor boys” on strike.
The telegram that the Martin Brothers sent the strikers is legendary in New Orleans:

Remember how the food world can support larger issues as an inspiration or simply as an economic haven for those on the front lines. Lucky for me, po-boys are still available everywhere in New Orleans, although the Martin Brothers restaurant closed in the 1970s: however, the Gendusa Bakery remains one of our beloved French bread bakeries in the city still.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in articles, New Orleans food | Comments (0)

New campus HQ OK’d for Nicholls culinary school

August 2, 2012 – 8:22 am

Believe it or not, my food obsessed city of New Orleans is NOT the home of a dozen first-rate culinary schools; well, actually zero would be the number that we currently have. There has long been talk of Johnson and Wales putting a school in the NOLa area, but this program and school in a new campus headquarters along the Mississippi River Delta of Louisiana (about 50 miles outside of New Orleans) appeals to me more.
Chef John Folse has been extremely dedicated in building this program and his deep commitment to finding homegrown food professionals is commendable, as has been his long time support of the region’s farmers markets. On top of that, he has the encyclopedia on Cajun and Creole cuisine, a highly regarded reference book: Folse Encyclopedia and his cheese making operation is also excellent and one of the few artisanal cheese operations at this level in our state: Bittersweet Plantation

So, to wrap up, a good guy who has done as much as he can to build food systems in his home state. More like him are always welcome.

New campus HQ OK'd for Nicholls culinary school.

By Darlene Wolnik | Also posted in agricultural tourism, entrepreneurs, farmers markets, farmers/farming information, New Orleans food, University/college initiatives | Comments (0)
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