Civil Eats

Jordan Treakle hails from the mountains of western North Carolina and recently graduated with a degree International Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a student he was a founding member of the UNC student group FLO (Fair, Local, Organic) Food. Jordan directed the organization’s goal of promoting institutional purchasing of sustainable foods in collaboration with the Carolina Dining Services (CDS) and helped build new supplier partnerships that promoted local food purchasing and consumption. His efforts have insured that FLO Food and CDS together are developing a successful model for sustainable food to be served at a flagship, public university. His work with the Real Food Challenge, a national student-led NGO working to build the youth sustainable food movement, has helped to establish working relationships with a range of local community groups and regional non-profit organizations in the Southeast as part as the RFC’s national campaign to increase direct farm-to-university links in the food chain. He is currently organizing farmers around hydraulic fracturing issues at the Rural Advancement Foundation International.

CE: What issues have you been focused on?

JT: For the past three years I’ve focused on student and youth organizing around agriculture issues in North Carolina and the Southeast. I initially became interested in industrial hog production in North Carolina and the effects it has on the land and the people in my home state. This led to analyzing the institutional food purchasing of my university and how students can advocate for universities to invest in sustainable food systems. 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

The organizers of Terra Madre 2008, the “world meeting of food communities” that took place in Turin, Italy from October 23rd to 27th, deserve a round of toasts and raised fists. This year’s edition brought together 8,000 farmers, cooks, academics, advocates, activists, eaters and everyday people from over 130 countries. And of those 8,000, over 3,000 were delegates under the age of thirty – myself included – gathering under the new banner of the Youth Food Movement. We represented the emerging movement of young people who, defying the precedent of recent generations, are working passionately to dig back into the earth and put real food on all of our tables. That Slow Food International was able to mobilize this young army is testament to its commitment to empowering young people to continue the work our grandparents left behind. So to those who made it possible, and to the many thousands who came and contributed, Thank you—and bravo. Read More

The myth that our food is grown on Old McDonald’s Farm is true in one respect: the “Old.” In 2002, the U.S. Agricultural Census reported that the average age of American farmers is 55 years. Generations of farmers’ sons and daughters have seeped out of rural communities in search of more prosperous lives. The next food crisis is fast approaching: we need millions of new farmers, food artisans, distributors, cooks, retailers, educators, agrarians and activists. We need them all to be creative, eco-literate and socially responsible, because they’re going to have to fix our broken food system and steward our ailing planet back to good health. Read More