Good Food is Everybody's Business
Notice how the retailers’ pledge initiative recounted in Big Retailers Make Pledge of Stores for ‘Food Deserts,’ (The New York Times, July 20, 2011) is entirely top-down and makes no mention of empowering local neighborhoods to support their own independent grocers?
In the Andes, there have been fundamental changes in production patterns as a result of the different processes of land reform in the region and “agricultural modernization.” Today, the environmental context and local culture are no longer the main determinants of production systems, but rather the habits of unknown consumers and their food demands are determining what farmers grow and when and how they grow it.
This will be the first of several columns and interviews resulting from a recent 4-day Congress for New Urbanism Conference, otherwise known as CNU 19, held this year in Madison, Wisconsin, home of dairy, bicycles, and wacky politics. How many other states have a quarter of their state senators up for recall or host tractor protest rallies around the state capitol, have 6 months of winter, and a burgeoning organic foods industry?
(Click on the first thumbnail to start the slide presentation.)
Starting over can mean different things to different people, depending on the nature of the change. It often entails a journey: physical, emotional or both. For a group of Somali Bantu refugees who have settled in the South King County part of Washington, it has been nothing less than an odyssey.
This past weekend I attended the sold-out first-ever national conference on local and state food policy organized by the Community Food Security Coalition. I came hoping to find ideas to bring back into my own rural community about food justice, food security, and food sovereignty issues.
Intuitively, the benefit of spending food dollars locally is fairly obvious – right? More dollars circulating locally means greater support to local businesses for a healthier community economy. Simple enough, but in explaining the local multiplier to local food advocates and policy-makers, things can get complicated fast.
Fatou Batta, Co-Coordinator for West Africa from Groundswell International, spoke recently in Seattle about the causes of food insecurity in Africa, particularly in Burkina Faso; the role of rural women in agricultural production and food security; the challenges rural women face; and some of the solutions they have developed.
