Civil Eats

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

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

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

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

“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

Sometimes change happens in the most unexpected places. When I learned that Baltimore City Public Schools was on a mission to change the way its more than 80,000 students thought about food, I have to admit, I was surprised. The cash strapped school system has long faced difficult challenges and the last place I expected to see noticeable reform was with its food services department. To top that off, you could have bowled me over when I heard that the City Schools’ new chef/dietitian, Melissa Mahoney, convinced her boss, Tony Geraci, to let her develop her own Meatless Monday lunch menus. To be honest, I doubt that Mahoney needed to do a lot of convincing. When it comes to dreaming up innovative and cost effective ways to feed kids healthy, tasty, whole foods, Geraci isn’t shy about pushing the envelope. It’s Geraci’s bold and sometimes brash entrepreneur spirit that has captured the attention of food policy experts across the country, including the White House. Read More

“Shelburne Farms!” “Oh you got to visit Shelburne Farms?” “Isn’t Shelburne Farms amazing?” “Isn’t Shelburne Farms beautiful?” “Are they still making cheese at Shelburne Farms?” This is all I heard when I got home from my very first trip to Vermont. The night of my return to San Francisco I helped run our fifth installment of Kitchen Table Talks (on Mayor Newsom’s new sustainability directive, watch for a re-cap post) and chatted with a lot of people who are very found of Shelburne Farms. And, yes, it is amazing and beautiful and they are still making cheese there. Bread too! Read More

Urban farming is not new — its been a way to feed cities for thousands of years. But in the US, it was purposely planned out of our cities, even as they grew bigger and, as a result, hungrier. Now many of our cities contain massive sprawl, which have created new opportunities in the form of abandoned lots, a consequence of the economic downturn. But we also have a mobilized movement of individuals interested in feeding people, especially those without access to healthy fruits and vegetables (many of whom reside in cities). But connecting these dots is sometimes more complicated than it seems.

As urban farming takes hold across the nation, reviving old school ways of supporting communities with homegrown food, it will inevitably bump into resistance in the form of outdated laws and legislative confusion around this up and coming issue, in addition to complaints by neighbors who don’t see the value in having a farm nearby when there are still packed shelves at the supermarket. These neighbors worry about their views, are disturbed by farm animal noises and deposits, and fear property value declines, which have more to do with economics than kale.

These anticipated problems now have a face — Bad Seed Farm is at the center of a neighborhood zoning debate in Kansas City, Missouri. Read More

When I first moved to Auburn, Alabama from Los Angeles almost a year ago, I immediately set out to find healthy, humane, local, and sustainably grown food sources. My quest was not easy. In a state where the obesity and heart disease rates are the second highest in the nation, I wasn’t sure what kind of healthy food might available, much less easily accessible. As it turns out, there is a growing local and sustainable food movement that, if nurtured, may turn into a revitalizing force for the environment, rural communities, and citizen health in Alabama.
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Organizations and activists across the country are calling for America to celebrate their Food Independence by making the choice to support local farmers by eating locally grown. Our choices as consumers have the potential to revitalize rural America and restock the produce aisle in every neighborhood grocery store with foods that meet our culinary and cultural desires. The freedom to have a variety of choices available to us must also be celebrated and protected. The democratic process helps many of our country’s residents define and protect their freedom of choice at the dinner table. But democracy has been a relatively forgotten opportunity and as one county in Colorado is discovering, the path that will redefine our role as eaters in our food and farm industry is clouded by a global agricultural industry that is marketing our choices right out of the marketplace. Read More

When Michael Jones, a chef by trade, came to Columbus, Ohio back in 1995 he was surprised there weren’t more local foods available for purchase by restaurants. Since Columbus is situated smack dab in the middle of a state whose number one industry is agriculture, he thought fresh local produce would abound. He quickly learned that commodity crops ruled just as heavily as fast food restaurants. Fifteen years later there’s been a huge shift. “People are more aware of different types of cuisine and there is more and more awareness of local food and its importance,” says Jones; and he should know. As the Executive Director of Local Matters, a non-profit whose mission is simply to build supply and demand for local food and make it equally accessible to underserved neighborhoods, he’s had a hand in supporting it. Read More

A boyfriend some 15+ years ago had the toughest time remembering how to pronounce Spokane. Knowing it really got under my skin, bless him, he figured out a little trick and never said it incorrectly again… “Spo-can-of-tomatoes.” To this day he has to say the whole thing to say it at all, but he gets the key part right and I’m good with that. The rest of the world better adopt whatever trickery it needs to get it right as well – Spocanoftomatoes (SCOT) is on the rise.

Continuing with the farm-talk analogies, this quite historically conservative town sits ready to bloom as the country’s prime example of the President’s message of change and just plain doing it right. The pieces have been in place for a while. A history of agriculture, a present of agriculture (still with some strong small acreage operations, both crop and meat production), the Spokane River running through the center of town, a reminder of the whole plate when migrating salmon competed with foam to be the primary spotting over the falls. Slowly (you’ll see more of that), surely, our foundation has recently been transforming. Welcome to 2009, and the city stands ready to show the country what can be done. Read More

Around the state of Montana, people are taking action to make a sustainable, local food system a reality. From the legislative level to the grassroots level, volunteers and institutions are demanding Montana-produced food. Montana’s food system, like many others, is largely resource and energy dependent. However, the vision for a community-based food system, one where affordable and consistent access to local, nutritious food is available is coming into clearer focus. Read More

Last month I reconnected with my southern roots and traveled to my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia for a week’s immersion into the current developments around the local food movement and school garden education, particularly with my family’s organization, Seeds of Nutrition. My trip, however, was filled with much more than a visit to a few school gardens. I would soon be surprised by the South’s progress in the sustainable food movement. Read More

Northfield has a rich agricultural history. The town’s motto, “Cows, Colleges, and Contentment” evokes agriculture’s influence on Northfield’s fields, factories, and culture. Founded in 1855, the Minnesotan town was central to the wheat industry. A sawmill for processing lumber and a gristmill for processing flour were both powered by the Cannon River flowing through town. As the wheat frontier moved westward during the 1950s, diversified farms and dairy operations become the town’s principal source of income. Read More

Growing up in Kansas, I was surrounded by wheat and corn fields. Driving from my hometown of Wichita to visit my grandmother in Kansas City, I waved and shouted hello to the cows along the freeway. I never gave much thought to where my food came from because when I looked around, all I saw were farms. No one talked about food miles or supporting local farmers. I had a romanticized notion of big red barns, farmers getting up at five a.m. to plow the fields with their dog by their side and sitting down to dinner each night with food from their garden. I had no idea that most of the farms in my home state grew rows and rows of genetically modified wheat, corn and soy. It saddens me when I think about all the times I drove past, waving to the cows because I now realize that those were confined feeding animal operations (CAFOs). Ironically, it took my move to the San Francisco Bay Area to develop an interest and passion for sustainable agriculture. When I was asked to write about the local food scene in Kansas, I wondered if anything had changed. In a state were Monsanto reigns, does anyone care about local food? Read More

When I think of Petaluma, California I think of a tiny little town 30 minutes or so north of San Francisco home to antique and outlet stores, many a poet and artist, dairy cows and rolling fields nestled next to quaintly rusted industrial-scapes. I have never really given much thought to the families and seniors in line at the free food pantries. The fact is though that Petaluma has changed a lot in the last five to ten years. In 2007 there was a 30% increase in the number of seniors visiting food pantries and a similar 30% increase in the number of children enrolled in the free or reduced price meal program at school. That’s one in three kids and a reminder that all is not as it may seem.

A job-hunting informational interview led me to Petaluma Bounty and Grayson James, the Executive Director of the non-profit dedicated to transforming the way the hungry get fed in Petaluma. Read More

Omaha is a quintessential Midwestern metropolis.  It is a bustling city nestled among a sprawling rural landscape.  However, if you look you will find something changing and growing.  It is the local food movement! Read More

Five years ago when I first told my friends in D.C. that I was moving to Minnesota, they were aghast. “But it’s so cold there, what kind of farmers’ market will they have?” I calmly reminded them that not only was there a whole other country to the north of Minnesota but that before modern appliances people all over the Upper Midwest grew their own food and survived just fine. But my confidence belied a secret fear that the shorter growing season would seriously limit offerings at a Minnesota Farmers’ Market. Read More

Seventeen years ago, I left a great job teaching at a prestigious northeast culinary school to move back to Iowa and be an executive chef at a Holiday Inn. It was difficult to find people, in Vermont or Iowa, who did not think I was certifiably insane. Those who thought they knew Iowa claimed, “There’s no there, there!” And those who did not asked, “Iowa? Isn’t that where they grow potatoes?” Read More

Chef Tory Miller of Madison, Wisconsin’s L’Etoile Restaurant told me “people [should] understand how important food systems are to our communities. Many restaurants in Madison are using the local farmers market. The more we champion it, the bigger and stronger it gets which is especially important in this economy. We’re keeping each other in business.” Read More

Over this last year, I’ve noticed a subtle shift in the Indianapolis food scene. New markets and restaurants touting local and seasonal foods, local business, community and economy reminded me that there are cities and towns beyond those on the coasts engaging in the conversation about the food system. I also noticed that these new endeavors are inspiring new generations of Hoosiers to be more conscious of the food they eat. Read More