Civil Eats

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

The USDA has released its data for hunger [pdf] in the United States, and the numbers aren’t good.

In 2007, 36 million people were classified ‘food insecure’. In 2008, the figure was 49 million — an increase of 13 million.

Children were badly affected, though older children took the hit if they had younger siblings. Those in the front lines were, of course, women. The graph shows the differences in US hunger between 2007 and 2008: single mothers and women living alone were worst hit. Read More

If you eat, you rely on farmers, but you also rely on the labor of 2.5 million farm workers in the United States who earn wages below the poverty limit ($10,000 per year) while risking their lives in the harshest conditions in order to bring us most of the food we eat on a day to day basis.

Photographer and writer Rick Nahmias and the California Institute for Rural Studies have created a multimedia project called “Fair Food: Field to Table,” allowing farm workers to tell their own stories, and featuring the voices of farm worker advocates and producers who are pursuing solutions to creating socially just conditions on the farm and in food businesses. Read More

Through the end of today you can become a member of the organization Slow Food and pay whatever amount you wish.

The organization began in Italy as a political stance against the way fast food was changing the local eating culture, and has since grown to 100,000 members in 132 countries, all interested in building a food system that is good, clean and fair. There are groups, called conviviums, in cities across the US that meet to discuss and enjoy food together. Much of the focus of Slow Food has been on protecting biodiversity: their program Ark of Taste promotes plants and animal breeds that have been dying out as industrial agriculture spreads a handful of species through standardization. But now, they’re rolling back their sleeves and setting their sights on food justice. Read More

I recently had the opportunity to attend a panel discussion put on by the Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) about farmworker justice entitled, “The Fruits of Their Labor.” (Listen to the audio of the event here) We’ve read about modern slavery in the tomato fields in Immokalee, Florida. You might ask why the situation in Florida would be any different than, for instance, the large farms in California’s Central Valley.

Turns out, what happens in Florida isn’t unique. Sexual harassment and abuse, non-payment, being forced to drink water from irrigation ditches, having no access to the fresh food harvested for others’ consumption, constant pesticide exposure, heat-related deaths, 12 to 14 hour work days and child labor are all routine in our agricultural system. Read More

Tomorrow, September 16th, the nonprofit organization Just Food is hosting an event bringing together some of the best sustainable food in New York City for a delicious tasting — an extension of the work they’ve been doing for fifteen years to raise awareness in the city about sustainable agriculture and connect city residents with farmers.

This event will be a chance to raise funds for the great work Just Food is doing, including facilitating Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs) in New York City, providing support to urban farmers, conducting workshops and hands on training, cooking demonstrations and food justice advocacy work. Read More

On a recent Saturday, I took a trip out to rural Oregon with about 20 other Slow Food Portland members. We woke early and drove through the dreary morning rain, leaving behind the streets of Portland for the vast agricultural fields of nearby Marion County. We were seeking the origins of our food. Read More

Let me say from the outset that I eat well. Not well in a maternal, “please finish your broccoli, dear” sense. I mean very well. I cultivate a large organic garden, buy grass-fed beef from a local rancher, and when I’m feeling particularly flush with cash, frequent my local Whole Foods. Read More

To many of us in the food and wellness communities, having a food supply based on local, sustainably-raised and organic foods should be nothing less than mandatory – it should be our right. But for many Americans, these terms remain elusive and even far-flung. Read More

The United States food justice movement has many facets spanning the issues of production and consumption.  It has been a movement that has at least tried to demonstrate the importance of developing a food system that is sustainable economically and environmentally, and is still socially just. Read More

Is it possible for a fast food chain, beholden more so to its corporate number crunching than its customers’ waistlines and heart valves, to be socially responsible, or dare I say, sustainable?

My gut is telling me no. Read More

When I was much younger I would take solo backpacking trips in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. On one occasion I found myself at a very remote campsite deep in the forest. My original plan was to commune in some vague, Thoreau-like fashion with nature, and with a congenial assist from the Almighty, discover heretofore unseen truths. Read More

Within hours of former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack’s nomination as agriculture secretary, the web was humming with well-documented critiques of his troubling affinity for genetically engineered crops, Monsanto, and other agribusiness interests. Some expressed outrage, others surprise, after mounting a vigorous, 55,000-plus strong online petition effort to nominate a more progressive pick who would promote sustainable food and farming.

Obama’s pick of Vilsack offers more proof of the incoming administration’s unwavering centrism – meaning they’ll need to hear from sustainability and food justice advocates, and other progressive forces, early and often. 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

Rick Nahmias doesn’t equivocate when he talks about our cultural response to farm workers. “There’s something about our society…we don’t value or respect the people who are harvesting our food,” Nahmias told me over the phone recently from his studio in Los Angeles. “It’s not just that they’re sleeping on uncomfortable beds. These are people sleeping on cardboard mats under overpasses for three months at a go, and that’s so we can buy our grapes for 98 cents a pound. What are those grapes worth if that person has had to do that? I can’t see that. It doesn’t add up for me.” Read More