Chicago hip hop artist D-Nick The Microphone Misfit teamed up with B-Boy Super inLight to create “Abnormality“, a track for the opening of Graffiti and Grub, the Chicago health food store founded by activist LaDonna Redmond. Their video highlights the physical health issues brought on by artificial, processed foods and encourages us all to look at what we’re putting into our bodies.

D-Nick and Super inLight both embrace the acronym HIP HOP for “Healthy Independent People Helping Other People” and they are doing just that, using their talents to get the word out that “Eating healthy is the first step in disease prevention.” D-Nick has entered the video in The One Chicago, One Nation film contest, whose goal is to reward “videos that tell the stories of people in Chicago from different backgrounds working together for the common good.”

Please watch “Abnormality”, share it with friends, and show your support by voting for D-Nick–voting ends on May 9th:

Lyrics to “Abnormality” by D-Nick The Microphone Misfit:

Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don’t wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/
C’mon…..

I was Chillin’ with my brother Super InLight/
We were shooting the breeze getting our Mind right/
Laughing, talking, politics, and current events/
Buggin’out about a lot of things that don’t make sense/

And then Super all of a sudden got an urge from his tummy/
He looked up and said, “Yo D! I’m kind of hungry”/
“Help ya self in the kitchen there is food in the cabinet/
He opened up the cabinet and said “I ain’t having it/

There ain’t nothing in here except for junk food/
If I eat this It will put me in a junk mood/
No disrespect D don’t mean to be rude/
But Lays chips, French dip c’mon man duuude/

I had no idea you were eating like this/
Why would you ever put that on your grocery list/
This so called food ain’t meant for a human/
If I eat this then my bowels won’t be movin’/

C’mon Super don’t you think you’re jumping the gun/
I just eat this when I’m kicking back and havin’ some fun/
I don’t really need to eat nothing organically grown/
Unless you wanna make your body cancer’s permanent home/

Eating healthy is the first step in disease prevention/
It also cuts down on hypertension/
There’s a few more things I’d like to mention
If you’ll sit back and pay attention

(Chorus)

Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don’t wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/
Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don’t wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/

You wouldn’t pay your bills with counterfeit money/
So why would you put something counterfeit in your tummy/
You won’t give ya mama artificial love/
So why would you feast on artificial grub/…

Now that’s something to think about/…

While information is leaking out /
From the lies the scandal from the food pyramid/
The sucka’s who invented that need to do a bid*/

You want…

Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don’t wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/
Freedom from disease and abnormality/
Cause you don’t wanna have that stuff affecting your reality/

Originally published on Eating Liberally

As cities across the country struggle with suburban sprawl, disappearing farmland, and a dwindling population of regional farmers, one community in Chicago’s northern suburbs is doing things a little differently.

Prairie Crossing is one of those rare examples of energy efficient construction, neighborhood-oriented development, good land stewardship, and farming advocacy that is leading the way for a new kind of development. Under the visionary guidance of George and Vicky Ranney, the 677 acre property in Grayslake, Illinois was transformed from depleted corn and soybean fields back to a diverse and thriving ecosystem of native wetland and prairie habitat, 100 acres of certified organic farmland, and low density single-family housing. Add to that a coordinated regional effort to stem the tide of suburban overdevelopment and loss of farmland, and you have a nationally recognized development model that not only demonstrates environmental conservation but actually increases farmland and farmers.

After 20 years, Prairie Crossing is still working toward many of its guiding principles; continually improving its diversity and affordability, and refining a model of sustainable and profitable development while balancing the community and education programs that represent its core values. Prairie Crossing has gotten a lot of things right, gaining national recognition for its innovations in planning, community design, and sustainable agriculture. At the core of the community, the farmland is literally growing a bumper crop of new farmers and land stewards. Through several cooperating programs, people of all ages are inspired to value local farming, enjoy good food, and protect the county’s farmland.

The Prairie Crossing Learning Farm grew from a vision of providing hands-on farm experiences that integrated curriculum with the daily workings and wonders of an organic farm. Since its creation in 2004, the Learning Farm has grown to offer innovative farm-based education for hundreds of area children and youth who visit regularly throughout the year for on-going farm lessons, farm work and entrepreneurship, and service learning projects. A summer employment program, the Prairie Farm Corps, offers area youth a chance to gain farming, cooking, and job skills while earning a paycheck. This year, the Learning Farm will add a Community Supported Agriculture program, as well as a gleaning program run by the staff and youth of the Prairie Farm Corps. They will also expand their role at the Prairie Crossing Farmer’s Market. The Learning Farm’s staff itself demonstrates a growing list of career possibilities in organic farming education.

Young and beginning farmers who want to get even more involved in production have several options. The Farm Business Development Center (FBDC) at Prairie Crossing offers affordable leases on prime certified organic farmland, which include shared equipment, use of packing and greenhouse facilities, and mentoring among the growing network of Prairie Crossing farmers. From this “business incubator” model, at least seven thriving organic farms have been created since 2004 and have continued to thrive at Prairie Crossing and beyond.

The growing network of family farms, which is led by the exemplary Sandhill Organics, contributes a significant amount of organic produce to the Chicago area food system and offers employment and training to a new generation of beginning farmers. The FBDC, along with regional colleagues, the Angelic Organics Learning Center and Michael Fields Agricultural Institute, will expand even further in the next few years, with the help of a USDA Beginning Farmer & Rancher Development Program Grant.

Finally, to keep up with the growing list of newly minted Lake County farmers looking for land of their own, a land conservation agency created through Prairie Crossing is looking ahead to secure land for a future of local organic production. The Liberty Prairie Conservancy, is working with the community’s farm programs and area landowners to identify and preserve farmland for the next generation of young and beginning farmers who come from Prairie Crossing and other area farmer training programs in need of affordable and productive land. Through the vehicle of conservation development, Prairie Crossing has created a host of programs in farm education, organic production, and land conservation that work together toward a promising future for the historically agricultural Lake County.

Originally published on Urban Farm Hub

Chicago is the first city in the nation to ban bisphenol A (BPA) from plastic baby bottles and sippy cups for children under the age of 3. The Chicago City Council voted to approve the ban yesterday, which would be implemented early next year, and Mayor Richard Daley said he will sign the ordinance. “The F.D.A. continues to be recalcitrant and very slow about taking any action on BPA,” said Chicago Alderman Manuel Flores, one of two city officials who proposed the ban last year, after hearing concerns about the potentially harmful effects of the chemical to young children.

Recently, Suffolk County, N.Y. became the first county in the country to impose a similar ban. Late last week, Minnesota became the first state to ban BPA from plastic baby bottles and sippy cups. BPA—a chemical used in polycarbonate plastic, including some baby bottles, cups, sports bottles, food-storage containers and the linings of cans—has potential links to a wide range of serious health effects. For more about the serious health effects, and politics, of BPA, check out these previous Civil Eats posts here and here.

In March, the Suffolk County, New York legislature unanimously passed a bill to ban BPA. That bill was signed into law in April. Federal legislation to ban BPA in all food and beverage containers, the “Ban Poisonous Additives Act of 2009,” was introduced in Congress on March 20, 2009. The bills, which are identical, are sponsored by Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) and Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Six of the largest manufacturers of baby bottles recently decided they will no longer sell bottles made with BPA. In addition, retailers such as Babies ‘R’ Us, Safeway, Target, Toys ‘R’ Us, CVS and Wal-Mart are in the process of or have already phased out selling baby bottles with BPA, and chemical giant Sunoco, acknowledging the safety concerns about BPA, recently announced they would restrict the sales of the controversial chemical in baby bottles and food containers for children under three. Just this week, chemical giant Hexion said it will indefinitely idle a 190 million-lb-per-year BPA plant in Texas due to “continued soft demand for BPA.” (But, in bad news, the company said it is bringing a 310 million-lb-per-year BPA plant back online after it was down for maintenance.) It’s clear that the sea change in bans is impacting production.

Several states, such as California, Connecticut, New York and Michigan are also considering BPA bans. In 2008, the Canadian government banned its use in baby bottles. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Science Board is currently pursuing additional research on the issue.

In August 2008, the FDA reiterated its stance that BPA was safe for humans and has since come under intense criticism from the scientific community including its own Science Advisory Board. At the February 2009 Science Board Hearing, FDA tacitly acknowledged the serious health concerns regarding BPA, but the agency has not yet revised the prior position that no public health safeguards should be implemented at this time.

A study by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has shown that 93 percent of Americans excrete some BPA in their urine suggesting that exposure to BPA is likely widespread and ongoing. Moreover, new studies suggest that BPA seems to stays in the body longer than previously believed. Given the existing and growing body of scientific knowledge about the health risks of BPA to consumers, and the growing consumer and industry movement against this chemical, it’s great that Chicago is moving ahead of federal action. But, consumers will remain at risk until federal action is taken. Hopefully, new leadership at FDA will act swiftly to address this important public health concern.