From the category archives:

Politics

Will Obama Walk His Talk on Organics?

November 13, 2009

Will Obama Walk His Talk on Organ­ics?
“I was just read­ing an arti­cle in the New York Times by Michael Pol­lan about food and the fact that our entire agri­cul­tural sys­tem is built on cheap oil. As a con­se­quence, our agri­cul­ture sec­tor actu­ally is con­tribut­ing more green­house gases than our trans­porta­tion sec­tor. And in the mean […]

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The White House Heirloom Garden

September 19, 2009

I didn’t know that the cur­rent White House veg­etable gar­den is the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s vic­tory gar­den in WWII. They’re using seeds from Mon­ti­cello which Jef­fer­son col­lected from around the world. I really enjoyed this mini-documentary about the White House gar­den with chef Sam Kass:

Tagged as: whitehousegarden gardening michelleobama

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Know your Farmer; Know your Food. A new era of US ag policy?

September 17, 2009

Ag sec­re­tary Vil­sack has announced a new USDA ini­tia­tive called “Know your Farmer; Know your Food” (#KYF2 on twit­ter.) The project aims to sup­port small and local farms while boost­ing con­sumer aware­ness of what they’re putting in their bod­ies. And this appears to be more than mere lip ser­vice. At least $65 mil­lion dol­lars of […]

Tagged as: agpolicy, kyf2, michelleobama, usda, vilsack, whitehouse

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Food and Power

September 13, 2009

This arti­cle by Chris Hedges, titled “Food is Power and the Pow­er­ful Are Poi­son­ing Us” high­lights how:
Our most potent polit­i­cal weapon is food. If we take back our agri­cul­ture, if we buy and raise pro­duce locally, we can begin to break the grip of cor­po­ra­tions that con­trol a food sys­tem as frag­ile, unsafe and des­tined for […]

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Flex Food versus Slow Food

September 12, 2009

How about the term “Flex Food” as a replace­ment for the rather dowdy term “Slow Food” — I’d rather imply a show of force; a tak­ing back con­trol over our bod­ies; our com­mit­ment to flex­ing our con­sumer dol­lars back into our local com­mu­ni­ties and farms.
Flex­ing is a show of power– food is under­go­ing a REAL revolution, […]

Tagged as: activism, cultural, political, slowfood

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Future Gardens of Mycological Mindfulness

September 10, 2009

This video gives me so much hope– it’s long (at about 17 min­utes), but worth the time. Besides inspir­ing you to think about mush­room mycelium as being like a huge under­ground brain net­work that com­mu­ni­cates with and man­ages resources for var­i­ous plant species, it will also explain how mush­room mycelium can be used to clean […]

Tagged as: activism, cultural, mushrooms, mycelium, mycoremediation, political

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Obama speech to children missing critical element

September 7, 2009

While Obama’s speech to stu­dents is bril­liant, and hope­fully inspir­ing to mil­lions of young chil­dren in this coun­try– I can’t help but think he is miss­ing an oppor­tu­nity to address a very crit­i­cal issue that is affect­ing stu­dents abil­ity to focus and do well in school– THE WAY THEY EAT.
Pres­i­dent Obama nearly gets there when he […]

Tagged as: obama politics education activism

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Food. Connect the Dots. Creeps.

September 6, 2009

“Eat­ing is an agri­cul­tural act.” Michael Pol­lan quotes Wen­dell Berry in this excel­lent arti­cle about con­nect­ing the dots. Also, an Ore­gon Farmer’s Mar­ket goes mobile. Food. Is. Hope.
Below is a  list of com­pa­nies to ACCUSE of crimes against human­ity. Read this arti­cle about the absurd new “Smart Choices” pro­gram endors­ing sugar-laden, and mis­spelled cereal Froot Loops, […]

Tagged as: food pollan slowfood political activism cultural farming mobile agriculture

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Eat-In an important Labor Day event nationwide!

August 31, 2009

Check out Slow Food USA’s web­site here to find out where you can attend the nation­wide Eat-In on Labor Day. We need to bring national atten­tion to the unac­cept­able food served to school­child­ren on a daily basis.
Here is a list of the key ideas of the Eat-In:

We’re call­ing for Con­gress to pass a Child Nutri­tion Act that […]

Tagged as: activism, event, political, slowfood

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