Civil Eats

As supporters of sustainable food production, many of us know that finding an alternative to the industrial meat supply chain is difficult but by no means impossible.  For the typical sustainable meat buyer, when one thinks of local meat, he most likely pictures a ranch, and then a steak or pork chop.  Unless he is willing to do the work of slaughtering and processing the animal himself, his access to a local abattoir is as difficult to find as local beer without the brewery. This is the marketplace reality that many small-scale ranchers face today.

As the daughter of a former butcher, I recently asked myself how we got ourselves to large-scale meat processing and what our alternatives are. Read More

Folks across the country know something is wrong.  There’s just something about the system we’ve created over several decades that is inherently flawed. Some blame the government, others big banks, still others blame political parties, but all agree that there’s something that’s just not quite working the way it should.  People are losing homes, jobs, and health coverage at an alarming rate because of the societal turbulence in the enormous yet formless thing we call the economy.

Enter Change.org and their 10 Ideas for Change in America.  Read More

In a city well-known for hosting some of the largest conventions in the country, but not for its diverse and progressive taste in food, an experiment was born: Encourage food organizations and businesses from across Central Indiana to man information booths, and pair that “convention” atmosphere with works of art inspired by food, hands-on activities and of course, food itself.

The experiment was a success. Read More

A year ago, my business partner, Caitlyn Galloway, and I started Little City Gardens. We grow salad greens, braising greens, and culinary herbs in the heart of San Francisco, which we sell to a restaurant, caterers, and individual subscribers. Little City Gardens is a lot of things: a market-garden, a small business struggling to succeed, and an experiment in the viability of urban micro-farming. We started the business with a desire to apply ourselves to the redesign of our local foodshed. We wanted to grow produce in the city and sell it. And, crucially, we wanted to be paid for our work. Read More

Gramercy Tavern is voted the “most popular” restaurant in New York all the time. It’s a restaurant with regulars like most don’t have anymore. People go there to eat in an unfazed New York, where restaurant eating remains a polished, “Now I shall dine,” sort of affair. Popularity is an unfortunate thing to vote on, but in a city that’s brutal whenever it’s not convinced, it seems people like reminding themselves that they like this restaurant.

Like other cities’ favorite restaurants, Gramercy Tavern has a quality that can only be gotten from being liked. It’s warmth a place can’t try for because it’s a side effect of confidence. Whatever the restaurant does well, it knows it owes a good deal to how attached its city is to it: Gramercy exists in two places at once, in a gray, stone building on 20th street, and in its patrons’ memories, in versions each of them owns and tends.

How bound those two Gramercy Taverns are to each other makes changing the restaurant’s buying priorities difficult. Its executive chef, Michael Anthony, who took the kitchen over from Tom Colicchio in 2006, is trying to. He’s committed to a local food economy in the quietest, simplest way a chef ever is. Read More

The countryside is the place to go if you want to live a healthy life with clean air and water, lots of exercise, and fresh foods, right?

Wrong.  Maybe dead wrong.

That pastoral dream is a fantasy according to a report on the relative health of counties throughout the United States released last week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. Read More

February 11, 2010: I’m sitting on the terrace of my temporary home in Rio, Casa Amarelinha in the Santa Teresa neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, feeling remotely cool for the first time in over a week. It’s been hard to think much in this heat—we’ve been topping 110 degrees regularly this past week, in one of the worst heat waves Rio has seen in recent memory (to exacerbate what has been an unusually hot summer all around), with about 75% humidity. When the mercury rises to about 90 back in New York, everyone retreats into their air conditioned offices and apartments or flees to the beach or countryside. But here in Rio, life in the streets goes on in full force, despite the blazing sun. I am so grateful it does, for what life courses through the streets of this city! However, the oppressive weather has made my volunteer work challenging to bear, even for a seasoned farm gal. Read More

We’ve heard from the politicians, academics, activists, and social commentators about how to help a city like Detroit that is economically-depressed, struggling to retain residents (let alone attract new ones), and home to 500,000 food insecure residents. What has happened? Not much. People offer statistical calculations for how to reduce poverty levels but the city continues to lose residents and increase the number of vacant homes and lots. Mix in the obesity epidemic, lack of access to healthy, nutritious food and you’ve got the worst-case scenario for the city. I have a new equation to offer for how to build up Detroit. Till soil + plant seeds = self empowerment and community development. Multiply this over and over and the change is exponential. The enthralling short documentary, Urban Roots, proves this theory true. Read More

The city government of Seattle has declared 2010 the Year of Urban Agriculture. The program, developed through the Department of Neighborhoods, aims to make locally-grown produce affordable and available to as many of Seattle’s diverse residents as possible, while supporting the urban and exurban farmers who grow it. New zoning laws will allow backyard farmers greater flexibility in what they grow and raise on residential property, and a bold pilot program is in place to create ten urban farms inside Seattle city limits. Read More

In Sunday’s New York Times, Damon Darlin has now weighed into a debate which I am suddenly making a career of noticing, that of publicly lambasting locavores. Normally a tech writer (and perhaps better suited to it), Darlin has wheeled out some of the same tired points that others have recently, making them officially clichéd.

It takes only 12 words before he drops Michael Pollan’s name, whose best-selling books argue eloquently for a better food system, and in the next paragraph he mentions Michelle Obama’s organic garden at the White House, though he makes no mention of her new “Let’s Move!” campaign against childhood obesity, for which this garden is a tool.

I was going to dismiss Mr. Darlin’s piece as not worthy of notice despite its prominent placement in the Paper of Record and thus avoid writing my third column lamenting this misplaced disrespect for eaters who care what they eat (I swear I do have better, more enjoyable things to write about), but then he said this: Read More

I took what is called January Term (J-Term) at University High School this year. The focus of the term was the importance of sustainable food and understanding our current food system. I feel that what I learned about the food movement, and slow food, has inspired me to one day develop my own farm and grow vegetables. Read More

Causing no end of difficulties in our national discourse is the steadfast belief held by both the right and the left that everything is either right or left: bad or good, strong or weak, despotic or patriotic.  You’re either with us or you’re against us.  President Obama addressed this very effectively before both House Republicans and Senate Democrats in recent days.  It is media driven to a large extent because the media need controversy to sell papers, or bytes or views or whatever it is they’re selling these days.

The most common form this takes is the old build’em-up-then-tear’em-down routine.  Perhaps the only thing many Americans enjoy more than the uplifting emotion of a success story is the schadenfreude of watching that success come tumbling down.  So when an idea comes to the fore, the critics ooze from the woodwork and their primary tactic is divide and conquer.  Label it, frame the debate, and the fight is won or lost before the story is even told.

For a long time in the circles I travel in this was not a problem because the ideas embodied in what some have come to call SOLE food (Sustainable, Organic, Local, & Ethical) were not perceived as a threat to the established paradigm.  Recent successes such as Michael Pollan’s work have, however, shined a very bright spotlight on advocates of real food.  As a result, people who have been toiling at these ideas for decades are becoming targets of powerful interests in the Big Food lobby.  Such is the case this week at WeeklyStandard.com, where Missouri Farm Bureau vice president Blake Hurst has found his most recent audience. Read More

In Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack’s op-ed this week in the Des Moines Register, he recognized that hunger could not be solved by raising production, because production is in fact at record highs. Grappling with how these increases in productivity have not led to increases in profit, he explained that even though we’ve lost a million farmers in the last 40 years, “income from farming operations declined as a percentage of total farm family income by half.” He continued, “Today, only 11 percent of family farm income comes from farming, which may explain why fewer young people go into farming and why many families rely on off-farm income opportunities to keep their farms.” Vilsack gets the situation right, but his remedy is wrong. Instead of encouraging diversity and altering the pattern of overproduction which pits large farm owners against small by shrinking margins, the Obama administration’s way of dealing with the discrepancy in rural America is through increasing trade.

Read More

Kitchen Table Talks is excited to announce its new partnership with the Center for Urban Education About Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA). We’ll be co-hosting some events together and starting off with a great panel on Tuesday, March 2, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. to discuss, “Produce to the People: New Ideas for Local Distribution.” The conversation will focus on alternative models for local produce distribution and will be held in the Port Commission Hearing Room on the second floor of the Ferry Building. The event is free and open to the public. No RSVP is required.

The Bay Area is fortunate to have abundant local produce available at multiple farmers’ markets and stores. But not everyone has access to, or can afford, farm fresh produce. Many restaurants and businesses also want to buy local, but don’t have the time or staff to shop locally. The conversation will tap into best practices and lessons learned from three of the Bay Area’s most interesting initiatives and address the creative ways these organizations are getting local produce to more people, including those in underserved and neglected communities. Read More

Care to sample a strawberry or scoop up salad greens for supper when you pick up your child from school? Since school went back last September you can do just that every Tuesday at Glenview Elementary School in Oakland, California.

Led by garden coordinator and parent Delana Toler, a small core of volunteers — some without kids at the school — work a PTA-initiated produce stand for two hours after classes are dismissed in the front yard of this public school, which serves a diverse group of families in the foothills east of Lake Merritt. Read More

School gardens are an excellent way for children to get to know fresh fruits and vegetables, supplement classroom instruction, and just plain spend more time outdoors. Alice Waters created the model for the Edible Schoolyard over a decade ago and dozens of school gardens have followed suit. With a recent critical article in The Atlantic getting people talking about the value of school gardens again, it seemed an opportune time to take a peek into eight programs that are teaching kids a love of gardening and cooking and then share some resources for starting program to your own school. Read More

Urban Agriculture has become one of the hottest movements in the sustainable design world. During a recent Re:Vision Salon conversation, Josiah Raisin Cain—Chief Design Officer with Design Ecology and Urban Re:Vision—presented some interesting models proving that urban agriculture design “is close to exploding” given recent media, products, planning, and focus.

Urban edible gardens solve many design problems simultaneously. They help reduce gas, cost, water (depending on which system is used), while increasing food access and security and community connection. During the discussion, Josiah noted that challenges for designers typically include space and scale, but that there are alternative ways of imagining and planning our cities. Josiah showed projects with successful green roofs with edible gardens like this one at Trent University: Read More

“Community food enterprise” is the term Michael Shuman, author and Director of Research and Economic Development at BALLE (Business Alliance for Local Living Economies), has coined to describe locally owned food businesses, which he argues are emerging as vital economic stimulators worldwide. His new report, Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in A Global Marketplace, illustrates how these businesses are becoming more competitive, scalable, and critical to global economic-development strategies. The work is the result of a multi-year partnership with a half-dozen analysts at the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and the Wallace Center at Winrock International.

Recently, I talked to Michael about what why community food enterprises (CFEs) are so important, and why local food advocates should pay attention. Read More

Last week, 200 young farmers gathered at the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Tarrytown, NY for a conference with the aim to provide education and support to sprouting farmers. This was the second year of the Young Farmers Conference, filled to capacity and begging the question, will the conference go national next year, or stay local?

The feeling in the air was one of excitement; despite the obstacles, these twenty- and thirty-somethings were eager to better their skills and be a part of the revolution in how we feed ourselves. Workshops included those on composting, poultry processing, creative ideas for accessing land, navigating Farm Bill programs for beginners, soil nutrition, agroforestry and tree crops, farming through the winter, permaculture, bringing meat to market, and more. Read More

An open challenge to rethink suburbia put forth by Dwell and inhabitat.com a few months ago got me thinking about the possibilities of suburban farming. Urban farming helped renew the inner city. Suburban farming can revise sprawl. Read More

Each year, between November and February, slowly and intently, hachiya persimmon altars begin to take root in my North Oakland apartment. They form on my kitchen window sill; on my bedroom dresser; on my dining room table; on my office desk. I fall into the familiar habit of always having one or two persimmons in my bag in case, in the course of the day’s travels, I meet a neighbor to whom I’d like to bestow a persimmon. Read More

First Lady Michelle Obama and White House Chef Sam Kass set a great example this spring when they planted their vegetable garden on the White House lawn. The garden has taught D.C. kids where their food comes from, fed heads of state from around the world, and hosted last month’s Healthy Kid’s fair. Most importantly, the garden has shown families across America that you can eat healthy, affordable, responsible food right out of your own backyard.

This winter, the First Lady can take it one step further. Eating from the garden doesn’t only have to be limited to March-October. Michelle Obama is in a perfect position to show us that local food is possible outside of the summer months, no matter where you live. She can bring the country’s attention to the creative ways that people like Eliot Coleman and Will Allen manage to grow food in all four seasons. Read More

It’s obvious that Tricycle Gardens is the beating heart of Richmond, Virginia’s sustainable food movement. The 501c(3) touches every area of the local food system. Community gardens rise up out of vacant lots. Teachers appear at schools and community centers to teach kids about gardening and eating veggies, and classes on gardening and food preservation for adults are held regularly. Potlucks bring Richmonders together to eat local, seasonal produce. The success stories are numerous, with many more to come. So how and why has Tricycle Gardens succeeded in a city whose history and social landscape provide significant obstacles to progress in food justice? Read More

One of the most logical ways to eliminate food deserts – those places that don’t have adequate access to fresh fruits and vegetables – is through urban agriculture. In Brooklyn, New York, residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant are fighting to keep their urban farm – which produces 7,000 lbs of fresh produce per year – alive in the face of development. Read More

The discussion on American agriculture is evolving every day, and as a result, agribusiness has been stoking a backlash against those pushing for a change in how we grow our food. Notably, Michael Pollan has been a target at recent university speaking engagements; a few weeks ago at Cal-Poly, when a feedlot owner threatened to rescind a donation if Pollan was allowed to speak solo, the university caved, making his talk a part of a panel discussion. This is all an indication that the conversation on fixing our broken food system is gaining traction, as the discussion grows more nuanced, more solutions-oriented and more threatening to the status quo.

Last month in New York, Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, hosted just such a nuanced discussion on the current state of agriculture featuring Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times writer whose column is called “The Rural Life,” farmer Fred Kirschenmann, Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, and farmer Mary Howell Martens, who grows 1400 acres of organic corn, beans and other grains with her husband and three children in Penn Yan, New York.

The panel focused on assessing the situation farmers are now caught in, and discussed solutions, including focusing on improving the foodshed, rebuilding rural communities and strengthening “ag in the middle” through trade partnerships. Read More

As I entered the gymnasium of Lakeview Union School for Harvest Dinner, students buzzed busily around tables piled with plates of food – quinoa salad, beet and apple salad, pita bread, local Jasper Hill Farm cheese, turkey, squash, corn and mashed potatoes. Many are dishes that these students made themselves in the classroom using local ingredients, and most of the rest was grown in the school garden. A third-grader takes a bite of the pita bread made by the fourth graders and chews thoughtfully. Then he checks a box underneath a smiling face that proclaims, “I liked it!” Read More

I’ve always thought of myself as a farmer and I’m not really sure why. Technically speaking, I’ve never lived on a farm. Maybe it has to do with the fact that almost 50 percent of Americans lived on farms around the turn of the 20th century and that we are all a mere stone’s throw away from our agrarian forefathers. I suspect it probably has more to do with where I grew up: a small town in Nebraska. When you live in one of those Midwest plains states, everyone just assumes you are a farmer.

My childhood home did sit on a rural mail route, bordering the very edge of town where an alfalfa field separated my house from the high school I attended. And as a youth, I trespassed on many a farmers’ properties, leapt across giant rolled hay bales with great abandon, got liquored up in more than one cornfield, and went to work in those same fields at the tender age of 12 detasseling corn.

A further reinforcement of identifying with farm life comes from being a descendant of a long line of Swiss dairy folk. My mother spent her formative years on a Southern California dairy with her Swiss immigrant father who milked 40 cows, twice a day, by hand. Though my parents did not own acreage, farm lore was most definitely a part of our family consciousness. Consequently, my decision to actually “farm” wasn’t a huge conceptual shift for me. Read More

“Friends don’t let friends eat imported shrimp.” As a homegrown New Orleanian who grew up on a steady diet of the freshest, local seafood from the nearby waters of Lake Pontchartrain and the Gulf of Mexico, this has long been my mantra.

The culinary culture of New Orleans has become increasingly threatened by the flood of cheap, imported shrimp. Yes, even here it’s necessary to ask where the shrimp came from, despite the fact that we are blessed with two shrimp seasons making freshly caught shrimp available virtually year round. Read More

My kitchen has been whittled down to about 50 square feet.  Standing room only to say the least is our new cooking protocol, making collaborative meals a thing of the past. The kitchen counter is rapidly shrinking as more and more household items get piled onto the rare space, along with the dirty dishes in our bus tub that have to get washed outside. My elbows tuck in closer when chopping and I have to set the toaster oven on the floor by the power strip that reaches the single outlet in operation. The large vintage Viking range, a mere foot away, makes for a hot and sweaty prep station if cranked up during the dinner hour, so even on these chilly autumn evenings our faces flush with any kitchen task. What has restricted our game, you might wonder? Read More

In neighborhoods around the globe people gather on their front porches to commune, but our busy street, while friendly, is not like that. Yet a landscape change Blue and I made for environmental reasons brought us unexpectedly closer to our own community.

A few summers ago we took out our front lawn, and by removing the weed and gopher-ridden turf and disabling the sprinkler system, we started saving 18,000 gallons of water a year. We put in a drip system whose sprinkler heads consumed a couple of gallons per watering, versus the hundreds per watering of conventional sprinklers.

We replaced the lawn with vegetable beds that soaked up the sun bathing the front of our house. Read More