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Imagine going to Home Depot and picking up a “1 Acre farm kit” that would allow you to convert your 1-acre yard into a highly productive suburban farm.
Researchers at Ohio State are working on a project that could have that result. They’re developing a highly diverse pest resistant farm module that would hopefully yield $10 a square foot, or about $90,000 an acre of all of the produce were sold.
Check out more info in this article:
http://www.ag.ohio-state.edu/~news/story.php?id=3379
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This article in the New York Times shows that rising gas prices are getting taken out on the farmer, rather than the consumer. My favorite part is the end, where chefs that are buying local gloat about how they haven’t seen any gas charges because their produce comes from less than an hour away.
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Bennett Konesni, one of last year’s BLAST Cadre members, is travelling around the world right now on a Watson fellowship, looking at work songs of farmers and fishermen. Right now he’s in Ghana and sent the following entry to us. You can read all about his travels over at his own blog.
Nungua, Ghana–It’s 3 a.m. in Nungua Township and I’m stretched out on a cot in a small, sticky room in front of a whirring fan. Suddenly there is a knock and a gruff voice, and I groggily swing down my legs to the floor and throw on a T-shirt. Time to go fishing, Ghana style.
Six days a week in harbor towns all along this country‚s palm-fringed coast, small teams of fishermen make their way down to wooden canoes perched and waiting on the beach. They begin their work at a time of day most people sleep, those unaccountable moments after the partygoers late-night farewells and before the shopkeeper’s pre-dawn stirrings. In that inky hour the men use two long 3” x 6” s and a log to skid their boats off the sand and into the water, and mounting a small outboard engine to the stern they shove off into the roaring surf. Click here for the rest of this entry…
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Some time in early September I phoned two TFP youth to inform them that they had been selected to attend the 16th annual Bioneers Conference held in San Rafael, California. Their response was emphatic excitement and anticipation. Geisha, the Farmers Market intern, was proud to have been chosen and could barely contain her joy. Sarah, a former BLAST intern was thankful and intrigued. There was much hype around this conference and we wanted to be experience fully what Bioneers meant.
The Bioneers mission: “the restoration of the Earth’s imperiled ecosystems and the healing of our human communities.” The Bioneers invitation to join in improving the environment by changing the world was difficult to ignore. Click here for the rest of this entry…
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Mike Azzara is the Outreach Coordinator at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New Jersey, and was a member of our 2004-2005 BLAST Cadre. This entry was originally posted to Comfood, an email list focusing on community food security.
Last night, I attended the Baum Forum on School Food (in NYC), during which we heard from some of the real leaders in movement (with a focus on the School FoodPlus Program in NYC, developed by Toni Liquori). It was a great event! But even in it’s 2 hour length, there was only enough time for a few questions after each of them had spoken. And since I had less of a question and more of a contribution, I thought I’d hold onto it and share it here.
My main thought stems from one of the audience members, who was adamant about the fact that focusing on changing school food is great but that it’s only a piece of the puzzle…we still need to reach/teach our adults/parents about the importance of cooking fresh, healthy foods for their children. When comments like these are made, it often makes the task ahead of us (truly changing our country’s purchasing, living, eating practices) seem quite insurmountable. How do we reduce obesity? How do we change the eating habits of our young people? How do we ensure healthy eating at home? How do we ensure access to healthy, fresh food for everyone? How do we…? THE LIST GOES ON.
And so, I just wanted to share my philosophy… Click here for the rest of this entry…
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Recently, a group of TFP staff and youth went to the 2005 Community Food Security Conference in Atlanta. Phallin was one of the TFP youth that attended.
Something practical I learned here was at a workshop about healthy eating. I learned a lot about the effects of unhealthy food, the barriers that created them, and solutions to the barriers and effects. I would probably try to follow the process they explained to have a healthier eating style. I could teach my parents to cook and bring them fresh local food from the farm in Lynn.
I also met my goal of learning what CFSC is and being able to explain it to people at home, by going to the workshop CFSC 101. Click here for the rest of this entry…
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Recently, a group of TFP staff and youth went to the 2005 Community Food Security Conference in Atlanta. Jared was one of the TFP youth that attended.
I learned that there are so many organizations like The Food Project and that they all are similar in some way. This is important to know because we need to know that other people are doing this all over the country. From this conference I learned that people at the CFSC Conference actually care about the youth and think they are very important. This happened on many occasions throughout the conference when multiple people connected with the youth team.
A challenge for me at the conference was reaching out and instigating conversations with strangers. My number one goal for this conference was to learn as much as I could about food security so that I could teach DIRT X about it, and I think that that knowledge will give them a better sense of the work they do, and let them know that they are all part of a movement.
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Recently, a group of TFP staff and youth went to the 2005 Community Food Security Conference in Atlanta. This is one in a series of reflections on that event.
One of the most amazing aspects of the CFSC Conference was the amount of knowledge, creativity, and energy shown by the youth team. Although a few people that I talked to showed some hesitation about what they would gain from interacting with the youth, the vast majority were aware of how much they stood to gain.
At one point, three of the younger members of the youth group even chose to speak in front of the entire conference to voice their opinions on diversity and ways to improve connections between various groups. Click here for the rest of this entry…
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Recently, a group of TFP staff and youth went to the 2005 Community Food Security Conference in Atlanta. This is one in a series of reflections on that event.
CFSC, yes another acronym, but aren’t you curious to know what it stands for? The Community Food Security Coalition’s annual conference took place this year in Atlanta, home of the Braves, the Georgia Peach, Stone Mountain, and most importantly for me, Martin Luther King, Jr. This year’s theme focused on the Civil Rights movement, which for me was something that I touched on in school, but never had a deep understanding of the struggle for rights that I now take for granted. Click here for the rest of this entry…
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Recently, a group of TFP staff and youth went to the 2005 Community Food Security Conference in Atlanta. This is one in a series of reflections on that event.
For two days before the Community Food Security Coalition Conference, BLAST ran pre-conference days for the youth delegation. With over 40 energetic people from all over the country, we came together tos hare our work, build our understandings of community food security, and prepare for the broader conference.
It’s hard to describe the exact feelings of these days to people who were not there, but the energy level was amazing as everyone met each other, learned about innovative and creative projects going on throughout the country, and learned that they are not alone in their work. If the BLAST Youth group was on David Letterman in the “Is this something” game, both Letterman and Paul would say that it was something. Click here for the rest of this entry…
