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Whole wheat pizza – well it’s a start..

Students to see healthier school lunches under new USDA rules.

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KSU Research and Extension 2012 plan

Kansas State University Research and Extension

Fascinating to see the body of work that Kansas Extension has for 2012. Targets like food security, childhood obesity, climate change. An ambitious and inclusive plan that other states should emulate.

  The planning process for KState Research and Extension continues to be ongoing.
Within our seven planned programs, the plan currently includes seven strategic opportunities.
Those opportunities are as follows: Sustain Profitable Agricultural Production Systems;
Prepare People in Kansas to Thrive in a Global Society and All Aspects of Life; Ensure an
Abundant and Safe Food Supply for All; Enhance Effective Decision-making Regarding
Environmental Stewardship; Identify Pathways for Efficient and Sustainable Energy Use, Assist
Communities in Becoming Sustainable and Resilient to the Uncertainties of Economics,
Weather, Health, and Security; and Create Opportunities and Support People in Kansas to
Improve Their Physical, Mental, and Emotional Health and Well-Being. 
K-State Research & Extension files a combined research and extension plan of work with the United States Department of Agriculture. The new 2012-2016 plan lists the seven planned programs that will utilize the work of 422 extension and 266 research employees. Within each planned program, there are specific knowledge areas that define the work, states the number of research and extension personnel for that planned program and lists the percentages of time given by research and extension employees on these knowledge areas. The 2010 plan of work had four planned programs while the 2012-2016 plan has seven planned programs: Global Food Security and Hunger; Food Safety; Natural Resources and Management; Childhood Obesity and Nutrition through the Lifespan; Healthy Communities: Youth, Adults, and Families; Sustainable Energy; and Climate Change. ‘We cannot be everything to everyone; therefore, we have to focus on serving the highest priorities.’ (2012 Plan – page 1)

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Queens isn’t done yet

I look forward to hearing a response from Greenmarket about the post at the bottom, especially as I know the Greeenmarket Director lives in Queens, and is truly committed to expanding the good food revolution to every part of the city.

My response would be that,yes California is unique in so many ways, including the amount of year-round produce available. Also, there are food deserts everywhere, including California and farmers markets often stand alone in combating those with healthy food. We need others in the fight, those shops and resellers who pay a fair price for farmers goods, and understand how produce should be displayed and sold properly. This takes time and patience and I hope that every time there is a farmer selling produce that is useful for her daughter, she takes the time to be an early adapter, so that one day, Queens will be a farm paradise.
Link to story

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Stifled by corporate America, the young turn to farming

Well maybe they’re stifled, or maybe they want to farm…

Stifled by corporate America, the young turn to farming.

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Olive this.

This is a great story about someone finding growing food as a second life. Wonderful really.

olive producer

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Supermarkets feedback: “specialty market gone corporate”

An interesting view of grocery stores using “alternative concepts” as a marketing ploy. (cheat sheet-some see right through it)

Am I being whiney and ungrateful? Yes. Wegmans responds to every item on my consumer wish list. It has consistency and dependability. It won’t be sold to some large chain that will destroy its quality, as was the case with Kings and Zagara’s. But that’s the problem. It is the large chain. It’s the specialty market gone corporate. In the tradition of American cooptation of the alternative option, it has made the alternative option into standardized fare.

The Smart Set: Supermarkets
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Bakers dozen of carbon mile trips

My Toronto colleague Wayne Roberts has written an excellent piece on the miles it takes to get food to you. Even though I can imagine how many of these that most of us have seen, this one really breaks it down so “civilians” can get the enormity. Another good piece to add to your market newsletter…

Roberts

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Oysters suffer too

In 2009, I went to Puget Sound to film sustainable oyster farming at Taylor Shellfish. Those short videos are to be found on the You Tube channel of marketumbrella.org. The company works with small oyster growers like the amazing Evan and John Adams of Sound Fresh Oysters who have varieties that they only bring to the Olympia Farmers Market.
Taylor also grows their own and encourage home growers with a waterfront oyster garden kit that they sell one day a month, to help people understand how oysters develop. (Go to the Go Fish chapter and look for the oyster videos.)
YouTube channel
I have never forgotten how the Taylors (and Oyster Bill!) build the future of their ecosystem with their techniques and can only hope that some of their innovation can rub off on my own oystermen of Southeastern Louisiana so we can save our dying oyster industry here.
However, the issues are constant, and one grave threat is explained in the article link. When will environmental destruction finally hit home for humans? What amount of food will we have to lose before we address it?

Acidification

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National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition Announces Introduction of Local Foods Bill

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Representative Chellie Pingree of Maine and 35 original co-sponsors introduced the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act (S. 1773, H.R. 3286), a comprehensive bill intended for inclusion in the 2012 Farm Bill. The legislation helps farmers and ranchers by addressing production, aggregation, processing, marketing, and distribution needs to access growing local and regional food markets. The bill also assists consumers by improving access to healthy food. The measure provides secure farm bill funding for critically important programs that support family farms, expand new farming opportunities, create rural jobs, and invest in the local food and agriculture economy.
“We applaud Senator Brown and Congresswoman Pingree for introducing this legislation,” said Helen Dombalis, a Policy Associate with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. “The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act revises and expands existing federal farm programs to ensure that they effectively foster local and regional food system development. The bill invests in communities—when consumers are connected to and invested in where their food comes from and agricultural producers meet this demand, local economies reap the benefits.”

The bill includes provisions that cut across ten titles of the Farm Bill, including proposals that address conservation, credit, nutrition, rural development, research and extension, food safety, livestock, and crop insurance. Some of the specific proposals within the bill include:

Local Marketing Promotion Program

The legislation will establish $30 million a year in mandatory farm bill direct funding for what is now the Farmers Market Promotion Program (FMPP). The newly refashioned Local Marketing Promotion Program will do everything FMPP does, but also will provide grants to scale up local and regional food enterprises, including processing, distribution, aggregation, storage, and marketing.

School Meals

The bill will improve institutional access to local and regional foods through a series of provisions regarding school meal procurement. For example, through a “local food credit program,” originally championed by Representative Pingree in her Eat Local Foods Act introduced earlier this year, School Food Authorities could opt to use up to 15 percent of their school lunch commodity dollars for making purchases of foods in their own communities, from their own farmers and ranchers, instead of through USDA’s nationalized commodity food program.

Rural Development

Funding for Rural Development programs has declined significantly in recent agriculture appropriation bills, and these programs are at risk during the farm bill reauthorization. The Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act boosts rural investment by increasing the Business & Industry Loan funding set-aside for local and regionally produced agriculture products and food enterprises from five to ten percent. The legislation will also provide authority for specific types of local and regional food system funding under Rural Business Opportunity Grants (RBOG), Rural Business Enterprise Grants (RBEG), and Community Facility Grants and Loans.

Specialty Crop Block Grant Program

Within the Specialty Crop Block Grant program, the bill proposes an annual allocation for local and regional specialty crop market development. Although the program is already in place to enhance the competitiveness of specialty crops, which include fruits, vegetables, and tree nuts, there is no explicit focus on specialty crops marketed in their local and regional areas. This legislation would change that.

For more information on the Local Farms, Food, and Jobs Act, see the entire press release
HERE
Posted on: December 2nd, 2011

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Hospitals take on local

From NCAT newsletter: A survey of hospitals was conducted in June 2011 to gather data on advances made in 2010. Eighty-nine facilities completed the survey including many that have signed the HCWH Healthy Food in Health Care Pledge, a commitment to work in a stepwise fashion to source more local and sustainably produced food among other activities. Facilities ranged in size from 11 to 1200 beds with an average size of 300. They served an average of 731 patient meals and 1650 cafeteria meals per day in 2010 and spent approximately $291 million dollars total on food and beverages.

Some survey results:

Many facilities are choosing to purchase and serve more locally sourced and sustainably produced food and beverages—
• 94.1 percent purchased and served local food or beverages
• 80 percent purchased sustainable dairy products
• 45 percent purchased sustainable beef
• 36 percent purchased sustainable chicken

Build direct relationships with local farms
• 81.8 percent of respondents host a farmers’ market, farm stand or community-supported agriculture (CSA program on-site)
• 60 percent purchased directly from a farm, ranch or farm cooperative

Waste Reduction
• 66.2 percent of respondents used bio-based non-reusable food service ware and takeout containers
• 50 percent use a room service model for patient food delivery
• 39.5 percent had a program in place to compost organic materials (food waste and compostable paper and plastic food ware items)
• 37.7 percent had a usable food donation program in place

“This Menu of Change report is an excellent introduction for anyone seeking to begin a sustainable foods program at their hospital,” said Marie Kulick, MSEL, HFHC Sustainable Procurement advisor and report co-author. “In addition to the survey data which can be used to set goals, the report includes lively, informative anecdotes from peers, cost cutting strategies, profiles of leading institutions and more.”

The 2011 Menu of Change report also summarizes major HFHC activities taking place in nine states; and describes the HFHC initiatives, including Balanced Menus, Non-Therapeutic Use of Antibiotics Prevention, the HFHC Pledge, the Green Guide for Health Care Food Service Toolkit, and recent efforts to reduce or eliminate Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, among other initiatives promoted by the HCWH. It also contains a listing of contacts for hospital and food service directors or activists to reach out to HFHC program staff for assistance.

“Hospitals are increasingly being seen as anchor institutions that are needed to support healthier communities and a healthier local economy,” stated Gary Cohen, President of HCWH. “If we are to solve the epidemic and escalating costs of obesity in American society, hospitals need to be critical partners in redesigning sustainable food systems and modeling the kind of food choices that the rest of us need to adopt. The Healthy Food Program is creating these models and pointing the way toward this systemic transformation.”

The 2011 Menu of Change report was co-written by Sirois, Kulick and Alyssa Nathanson, MD, RD, HFHC Vermont coordinator. Results of the survey were used to determine the HCWH HFHC awards given at the organization’s 2011 FoodMed. And award winners are profiled in the report.

The HFHC Program is a national initiative of HCWH, developed in conjunction with its member organizations, which mobilizes advocates to work with hospitals across the country to help improve the sustainability of their food services. For more information about the HCWH Healthy Food in Health Care Program, visit http://www.healthyfoodinhealthcare.org.
Report Press release

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Food Swap

Another way for small markets to grow their social time might be to encourage a small (member-only) food swap once a month. If controlled well, it could be a boon to community markets that lack the critical mass of shoppers so far.
Food Swap Network

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Heavy shopping bags weigh on your psyche

Turns out, those people who have wheels for their food are the smart, happy ones.

Heavy shopping bags weigh on your psyche.

Maybe this explains Josh’s Slow Food missive over the summer…
heavy bags

So maybe this is a benefit that markets can handle happily and with some flair?
Hollywood wagons

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Food app for kids

Taggie, a smartphone app developed by recent Dutch design school graduate Niels van Hoof, allows users to direct a smartphone camera at the barcode of food items to learn about their origin, growth process, and different varieties. After recognizing the scanned barcode, Taggie launches a 3D augmented reality animation to engage children with a short, fun lesson about the food.Van Hoof developed the app as a graduation project for the Design Academy in Eindhoven, Netherlands after being inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. “He went to schools and tried to find out if kids know where food comes from,” van Hoof says. Perhaps needless to say, most of them didn’t—which set van Hoof’s wheels in motion. Van Hoof hopes that by using the app, children will “discover more about fruits and vegetables and [will not be] afraid of the product anymore, which results in living healthier.”

Untitled from Niels van hoof on Vimeo.

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From Fighters to Farmers

The mission of the Farmer-Veteran Coalition (FVC) is to mobilize veterans to feed America. Their motto is “Farmers Helping Veterans-Veterans Helping Farmers.”

FVC was started by experienced farmers who share their experience with recent military veterans and help them use their skills to create a new generation of innovative, ecological and financially successful young farmers.  They do this through direct assistance, and training and mentorship programs.

Read more

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