The head of the World Food Program announced on Friday that an additional 105 million more people have become hungry in 2009, adding to the one billion plus who were already food insecure. The day before, Secretary Clinton gave a speech about hunger in the world, speaking in broad strokes: “[H]unger belies our planet’s bounty. It challenges our common humanity and resolve. We do have the resources to give every person in the world the tools they need to feed themselves and their children.”
On May 9, New York City hosted an international dialogue about healthy food, sustainable agriculture, and community engagement — but it wasn’t held at a university or sponsored by a borough president. Three grassroots community groups in Brooklyn’s most underserved neighborhoods welcomed a group of 45 UN delegates from almost 20 countries for a day of conversation and exchange showcasing examples of New York City’s innovative urban agriculture. Read More
Yesterday at Columbia University, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer hosted a conference entitled “The Politics of Food,” which he called New York’s next policy challenge. Stringer is known for his work paving the way for better health in East Harlem, and for the Go Green East Harlem Cookbook, a bilingual guide that is available free of cost to East Harlem residents. Sounding like Michael Pollan, he recognized that so many issues, from health, to energy, to environment all dealt with food in some way. So it was his goal, he said, to create a Food Charter for New York, based on community-oriented plans brought to scale. Read More
The ingredients for green collar economic renewal via food-based businesses have been stewing for a few years in the Mission at La Cocina. Entering its fifth year of operation in 2009, La Cocina was founded to provide kitchen space and assistance to food entrepreneurs – many of them low-income and all of them women – helping them in starting new businesses or grow their home-based businesses into stable ventures. Read More
In this time of watching our wallets, our good intentions about eating sustainable food could easily descend into bad habits, cutting corners and disenchantment about the food system. Instead, I’d like to offer a few ways I’ve been eating good, clean and fair on a reasonable budget: Read More
Access to food that is good, clean and fair is an issue of great importance when we talk about changing the food system. Many would argue that education is the key to changing the way people think about food, but how to reach out to people in underserved communities? Last week, we featured a video on Growing Power, the Milwaukee-based non-profit farm education program started by Will Allen, recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Grant this year. Above is another video, featuring the work happening at the People’s Grocery in West Oakland, where as you will hear on the video, there are 50 liquor stores and not one grocery store. This disparity in food access is unjust, and cannot exist if we are to have a better food system. Read More
