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In order to prepare for the upcoming Community Food Assessment, we've migrated our blog over to http://lowellfoodsecurity.wordpress.com/ Please update your feeds, and come visit us at the new site!

What if the U.S.D.A Subsidized Gardens?

Interesting infographic found via the New York Times: What if the U.S.D.A. Subsidized Gardens?

Cape Ann Fresh coming to the Lowell Farmers Market

Hey Folks,
Check out the City Manager's Blog: http://lowellma.wordpress.com/2011/05/19/new-csa-opportunity-local-fresh-and-sustainably-caught-seafood-coming-to-lowell/

New CSA Opportunity – Local, Fresh and Sustainably Caught Seafood Coming to Lowell’s Farmers Market

May 19, 2011 by Office of the City Manager

“ Want to take part in Lowell’s newest sustainability initiative?”

Send an email to lowell@capeannseafood.com

With summer right around the corner, Cape Ann Fresh Catch (CAFC)- Community Supported Fishery (CSF) is pleased to announce that it will be joining this year’s LOWELL FARMERS MARKET with a fresh seafood deliveries set to start at the beginning of July. The fish is locally caught, fresh and delicious and the price is right—this program offers a sustainable and fun way to try something interesting and new this summer! Along with unparalleled freshness and flavor, this fish also comes with an added benefit: peace of mind.
While enjoying into your locally caught dinner, you can pat yourself on the back for being green and supporting the local economy as well. CAFC fish is caught by community-based fishermen using sustainable fishing methods. Also, CAFC provides these local fishermen with a fair, higher-than-average price for their catch- helping many of them to stay in business during these tough economic times.
During its two years in operation, CAFC has been pleased to provide its share-members with such varieties as bluefish, hake, monktail, pollock, skate, whiting, and red fish, as well as staples like cod, haddock and flounder. Because of our simple and direct boat-to-consumer model, the fish is usually swimming the morning before it hits your plate- completely unprocessed and never frozen. CAFC seafood is good for the local economy, good for the environment, and good for you!
Deliveries are scheduled on a weekly or bi-weekly basis and as whole fish or fillets to best suit your family’s needs. You can pick up your fish at THE LOWELL FARMERS MARKET at JFK PLAZA on FRIDAYS from 4-6pm. Please see the CAFC website for more information on the program and to sign up for the new season: www.capeannfreshcatch.org.  The program has gained national press attention, for more see this article in Saveur Magazine.
Before CAFC can come to Lowell, at least 50 people must express an interest in signing up by emailing lowell@capeannseafood.com be sure to spread the word so this great program can come to Lowell!!!

Shelter Garden in Atlanta

Nice profile of urban ag/food security project at Atlanta Mission shelter, thought folks might be interested!

A mission of hope in an urban garden

"We eat what we get. It’s not like I can say ‘I’m going to eat something healthy,'" says Joel, a resident of a downtown Atlanta shelter.

For Joel, and other homeless people like him, having a meal does not mean choosing between an organic pear and gorgonzola salad or locally-grown arugula with artisanal cheese. Instead, food options boil down to one thing: sustenance. The food is received mostly by donation, which means it's often cheap, non-perishable, and generally less than healthy.

However, one Atlanta nonprofit, the Atlanta Mission, has recently taken the term “community garden” to a new level by adapting a vacant lot in the downtown area and transforming it into a garden filled with raised vegetable beds. It's tended daily by the very men who inhabit the shelter and whose bounty will benefit the shelter’s kitchen.

This plot is manned by the most unassuming and unlikely gardeners. Ty, a former gang member with tattoos on his face, and Joel, a recovering addict, spend half their day pulling weeds, watering and pruning the multiple-bed garden in hopes that they’ll be able to harvest a successful bounty of fresh produce by the end of the season.

These men aren’t strangers to the canned vegetables and processed starches that fill the shelves of the shelter’s kitchen, so they recognize the importance of the garden. “We get what we get,” Joel said. “This garden’s going to take a lot of the slack of eating healthy.”

Both men were a part of the garden from the groundbreaking on March 19, 2011, and both have seen the seeds that were sown grow into plants. Ty smiles as he said, “I just loved seeing it come from a seed. They’re our babies. I planted one and named it Zeus.”

For these men, the garden and the act of gardening mean a variety of things beyond the food itself.

“It’s not just about eating a tomato sandwich, but about doing something and seeing an end result. It’s just a real privilege to do something that feels like I’m a part of something,” Joel mentioned.

“I can just think while I’m out here. I look back at my life and think about where I want to go,” says Ty.

With reactions like these, it seems the garden’s aim has hit its mark, providing a space to think and belong for the men of the Atlanta Mission.

The project was dreamt up and put together by the Atlanta Mission with the help ofSkanska, a project and construction development group, after a vacant lot between the two groups’ buildings sat overrun by weeds and used as a homeless camp.

“If these guys are growing their own food, it’s still ending homelessness in a way. It’s very easy to find passion in this,” said Atlanta Mission representative Joshua Harrelson.

For both Ty and Joel, a personal mission has blossomed. “I think it wasn’t a mistake that I’m here. There’s a bigger picture and I want to be a part of it. What we’re doing here is what we’re doing with ourselves. Pulling the weeds and putting in good food,” said Joel.

Both men have high hopes for the garden and are pleased with what they’ve done for it and it has done for them so far. In calling it “our own little Garden of Eden,” Ty reminds himself that the bounty that comes from community gardens like this one is fruitful for everyone involved.

For more information on the garden itself and ways to get involved, visit atlantamission.org/garden

Boston Truck Farm!

Hello!

Attached is a flyer about the Boston Truck Farm. Truck Farm is an initiative that started a few years ago in Brooklyn and is aimed at bringing the experience of connecting with food into the hearts of cities. In Boston, like in Brooklyn, we've planted a garden in the bed of a pickup truck. This summer we'll be bringing the truck all over the Boston area to organizations, groups, and programs who want to learn or teach about food justice, urban agriculture, and sustainable healthy eating. We'd love to come visit your youth program, religious group, workplace, or anywhere else you want to have us. Check out the flyer for more information about the Boston Truck Farm and http://truck-farm.com/ for information about the whole movement. If you're interested in talking more, email us at bos.truckfarm@gmail.com and feel free to forward this message to whomever you think might be interested.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Charlie and Erin

 

Boston Truck Farm

The farm that comes to you

Who we are- We’re part of a national fleet of truck farmers, dedicated to making healthy, sustainable food accessible to everyone. We’re growing delicious fresh vegetables in the back of a pickup truck so that we can bring our enthusiasm and knowledge about local sustainable agriculture to anyone who wants to share it. We would love to visit your organization.

What we do-

As part of our visit we can:

• Teach our own curriculum about the food system to any age group or audience
• Work with you to design a personalized lesson or activity
• Bring our mobile classroom and let you take over
• Provide resources about other organizations doing similar awesome projects
• Harvest to table activities

We’re always open to and excited about new ideas about how to use our truck farm!

 

 

 

Harnessing the Power of Supermarkets to Help Reverse Childhood Obesity Public health and supermarket experts explore in-store marketing strategies to promote healthier foods.

Thanks Eileen for this great link!

http://www.rwjf.org/childhoodobesity/product.jsp?id=72145&cid=XEM_205591

RFP for Farm Fresh Coupon Program!

Hey FSC members- this could be a great project for Lowell, any interest in submitting an RFP?

Dear friends,

The Food Project is excited to have released a Request for Proposals
for Boston organizations to partner with us on our Farm Fresh Coupon
Program in the summer of 2011!

The RFP can be downloaded from our website at:
http://thefoodproject.org/blog/2011/4/28/farm-fresh-coupon-rfp

We are seeking partner agencies to work with us on this program,
distributing farmers’ market coupons as a component of a holistic,
multifaceted strategy to improve community health and nutrition. The
Farm Fresh Coupon Program seeks to partner with existing efforts to
increase the health of individuals in underserved Boston communities
and the viability of local farmers’ markets. We will do this by
providing coupons for participants of programs that encourage
increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. By mutually
reinforcing the message that fresh produce is important, accessible
and affordable, we hope to have a lasting impact on participants’
shopping and eating habits.

We request your responses no later than 5:00 PM on Friday, May 20th,
2011. Please feel free to
share this RFP with your peers and colleagues. If you have any
questions, please do not hesitate to contact us. Again, the full RFP
can be downloaded in PDF format via our website at
http://thefoodproject.org/blog/2011/4/28/farm-fresh-coupon-rfp .

Best regards,
Max Gitlen
The Food Project
10 Lewis St.
Lincoln, MA  01773
Phone:  781-259-8621 x31
Fax:  781-259-9659
mgitlen@thefoodproject.org
http://www.thefoodproject.org

Farming Concrete: NYC's community gardens

Hey FSC folks,
This is such a neat report on how much food community gardener's in NYC produce, a great way to see the impact of local growing. 
Check it out: Farming Concrete

Hi all,

The Farming Concrete team is pleased to present the results from our first year of measuring food production in NYC community gardens! Check out the report and article here. In 2010, 110 community gardeners weighed their harvests and crop inventory was conducted in 67 community gardens as part of the project (out of 500 community gardens in NYC). We used the average yields from the gardeners who weighed their harvests to estimate that in those 67 gardens, 87,700 lbs of fresh produce was grown on just 1.7 acres, worth more than $200,000. This year we hope to scale up and, if we're lucky, reach for an estimate for the whole city. Explore the results in more detail using our interactive webmap.

If you're in NYC and interested in signing up for this year's count, click here and we'll get you going right away! School gardens are invited to participate this year - in fact we've already delivered our first scale to a rooftop school garden in Brooklyn. More info on the different ways to participate here. If you're not in NYC but would like to get something like this started in your area, contact us directly - gardens@farmingconcrete.org.

HUGE thank you to all the record keepers who helped make last year a success! We're excited to get going again this year. Feel free to contact me with any questions you might have.

Best,
Mara

-- 

Mara Gittleman
908.787.2711

Farm Assistant, Adjunct Lecturer

Kingsborough Community College

Project Director, Farming Concrete
www.farmingconcrete.org

www.foodcensus.org

www.gardenmaps.org

Kansas City: Center for Urban Agriculture!

Do you grow veggies in your backyard?  Has your neighborhood started a community garden that you grow in?  Are you an urban farmer that goes to market?  The number of people farming and gardening in our city has skyrocketed over the last few years in Kansas City, with more land than ever growing good food for individuals, their families, and the community.  We are setting up an ANNUAL GET GROWING KANSAS CITY MAP to keep track of how many new gardens and farms get started every year because we want to know HOW MANY OF YOU are growing and HOW MUCH LAND you are growing on and WHERE all this great activity is happening in our metro area. We ask ALL gardeners, farmers, and anyone with a tomato in a pot on the porch to be counted in an annual survey to show the progress our city is making toward a stronger and healthier local food system.  Haven’t started growing yet?  This is your call to hoes!  Get out in the dirt, plant some seeds, and get your growing counted! This mapping project is part of a new initiative, called Get Growing Kansas City, led by the Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, Kansas City Community Gardens, and Lincoln University's Innovative Small Farmers Outreach Program.  Over the next 2-3 years, the Get Growing KC Outreach Team will engage in a campaign to encourage and support our city to GET GROWING through: Home Gardening – you just can’t beat the pride and flavor of eating fresh picked tomatoes from your own backyard! Community Gardening – no land at home?  Find an empty lot and engage your neighbors to grow more than just food – you will grow relationships and strengthen community ties. School- and faith-based gardening/farming – schools and churches often have land and people available – what better way to use the resources than growing good food for kids or charity? Urban Farming – Soaring interest in eating fresh, local food means we need more urban farmers growing for markets, Community Supported Agriculture, restaurants and grocery stores. The team will also work to increase access to locally grown food- through farmers’ markets, on-site stands, and other community-based food projects.  If ever there was a time in history when we needed, as a society, to be taking more control over our food system and the food we put on our plates, it is now!    We hope you’ll pass this along to other growers you know – we want a true picture of what is growing in Kansas City! Please contact katherine@kccua.org with questions or comments about the mapping project.    Thank you for taking the time to fill out our survey and for all the work you do to Get Growing!

This message was sent to jennifer.hashley@tufts.edu from:

Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture | 4223 Gibbs Road | Kansas City, KS 66106, USA

Agriculture on institutional lands

FYI: Thanks Francey for sending this in from the COMFOOD listserve
Hello again,

Thanks very much to everyone who contacted me in regards to my request a few weeks ago for examples of commercial agriculture taking place on institutional lands. Below is a summary of responses I received. 

Caitlin

-----------------------

• st. joseph’s hospital in Ann Arbor. They have a farm onsite, horse drawn ploy, etc
• Baltimore - ag projects on land owned by the city's school system. Non profit but they both sell food: http://www.greatkidsfarm.org/ and http://real-food-farm.org/

• CSA on a school property in Portland: Singer Hill Gardens www.singerhillgardens.org
• Brooklyn: 1 acre youth farm on front lawn of a public high school www.bkfarmyards.com
• City of Columbia, Missouri - Columbia Regional Waste Water Treatment Plan has a 125 acre parcel leased to a farmer to cut, rake, and bale hay, as well as a 65 acre tract leased to a farmer to grow soybeans and corn
• NYC - Mount Sinai hospital has a farmers market 
• Rodale Institute maintains a list of colleges with farms: http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/ffc_directory
• Virginia Tech 3,200 acre farm http://www.vaes.vt.edu/college-farm/index.htm - recommendation to check any university with a cooperative extension
• Appalachian Staple Foods Collaborative - study about the feasibility of farming on wellheads, as well as other agricultural uses of public land
• a few responses about prison farms: report on their phasing out  http://www.cga.ct.gov/2008/rpt/2008-R-0081.htm (unfortunately, this is also a trend we've seen in Canada: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/story/2009/02/25/prison-farms.html); but also info about a group that is working to revive this http://blogs.evergreen.edu/sustainableprisons/about/
   
• finally, this article from Toronto http://www.agdevjournal.com/volume-1-issue-2/139-could-toronto-provide-10-of-its-fresh-vegetable-requirements-from-within-its-own-boundaries-matching-consumption-requirements-with-growing-spaces.html?catid=62%3Aurban-agriculture-call-papers 

--

Caitlin Dorward

Research Associate, Institute for Sustainable Horticulture

Kwantlen Polytechnic University

604.365.0336

Exciting News about Minneapolis Local Food

Sent via Jennifer Hashley

FYI

Good news –

The Homegrown Minneapolis Urban Ag Policy Plan was passed by the Minneapolis City Council this morning! 

The plan is rooted in a two+ year process with extensive community input and close collaboration with the Minneapolis Departments of Health and Community Planning and Economic Development and the Homegrown Minneapolis initiative.

As Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak put it, “This plan represents hundreds of hours of work of volunteers and City staff, and it’s paid off.  The plan makes it easier to be part of the local, healthy, sustainable food movement and is a giant step toward helping our city and state move closer to food independence.”

Efforts here in Minneapolis were informed and inspired by the many communities around the country who blazed the trail on urban ag.  Thanks for sharing your sage advice and helping us make this a reality here in the Heartland!

You can see the plan itself at:  http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/dhfs/homegrown-home.asp

Reminder: Meeting 4.19 12pm

Food Security Coalition Members,
Our regularly scheduled meeting has been changed to Tuesdays @12 noon.
Tomorrow is our first meeting in the new time slot, same place (City Hall-Mayors Reception Room)
Hope to see you all there!

Nobody should have to cry because they can't afford real food.

The omnivore’s other dilemma: expanding access to non-industrial food

After a moment, still with tear-filled eyes, she said, "You know, I want ... ," she wiped another tear away, " ... I want so badly to stop eating grocery store meat. It's terrible. Terrible for you. It tastes terrible. It's all full of crap, hormones, drugs, and God knows what."

I nodded.

"But this," she said, sweeping a hand over the meat case, "I just can't afford it, any of it."

Equally heart-wrenching and uplifting, this is a personal story from farmer Bob Comis about his experience selling his pasture-raised, local pork at a farmers' market. Via Grist.

NYT Article

Here is a great, uplifting article from Mark Bittman about some GOOD things that are happening in our country in the food and health arena. While each of these "six things" are areas we, the Lowell Food Security Coalition, can get involved in, numbers 3 - 6 seem to be the most within our reach as a group of local organizations and citizens. I am particularly interested in #4, bringing the conversation of zoning and land use policy to the table in Lowell. Which one interests you the most?

March 22, 2011, 8:30 pm

Food: Six Things to Feel Good About

By MARK BITTMAN

The great American writer, thinker and farmer Wendell Berry recently said, “You can’t be a critic by simply being a griper . . . One has also to . . . search out the examples of good work.”

I’ve griped for weeks, and no doubt I’ll get back to it, but there are bright spots on our food landscape, hopeful trends, even movements, of which we can be proud. Here are six examples.

• Not just awareness, but power | Everyone talks about food policy, but as advocates of change become more politically potent we’re finally seeing more done about it. Late last year, public pressure enabled the federal government to reauthorize the Child Nutrition Act, which will improve school food, and the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will make food safer. (Gripe alert: Neither is perfect, and it’s easy to be critical of both — the child nutrition bill, for example, may be partially funded by a cut to food stamps — but they mark real progress and increase the possibility of further reform.) Combined with increasingly empowered consumers and a burgeoning food movement (one that Time magazine’s Bryan Walsh suggests has the potential to surpass and save the environmental movement), guarded optimism is called for, especially with the farm bill up for renewal in 2012. If the good guys fail to make some real gains there I’ll be surprised.

• Moving beyond greenwashing | Michelle Obama’s recent alliance with Wal-Mart made even more headlines than the retailer’s plan to re-regionalize its food distribution network, which is if anything more significant. The world’s biggest retailer pledged to “double sales of locally sourced produce,” reduce in-store food waste, work with farmers on crop selection and sustainable practices, and encourage — or is that “force”? — suppliers to reconfigure processed foods into “healthier” forms. (Yes, I think this last is ridiculous, but today I’m all sweetness and light.) Not to be outdone, just last week, McDonald’s made a “Sustainable Land Management Commitment.” We can and should be skeptical of these pronouncements, but the heat that inspired these two giants to promise change may ensure that they follow through. As for the First Lady: “Let’s Move” has helped insert food squarely into the national conversation: everyone from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh to Stephen Colbert talks about it, and even Ms. Palin’s nonsensical comments provoke sensible reactions. And it’s difficult to find a school where someone isn’t gardening.

• Real food is spreading | There are now more than 6,000 farmers markets nationwide — about a 250 percent increase since 1994 (significant: there are half as many as there are domestic McDonald’s), and 900 of them are open during the winter. They’re searchable too, thanks to the USDA. (Community Supported Agriculture programs — CSAs — and food coops are also searchable, courtesy of localharvest.org.) Furthermore, serious and increasing efforts are being made to get that food to the people who really need it: Wholesome Wave, for example, began a voucher program in 2008 that doubles the value of federal food stamps (SNAP) at participating farmers markets; that program has grown more than tenfold in less than three years.

• We’re not just buying, we’re growing | Urban agriculture is on the rise. If you’re smirking, let me remind you that in 1943, 20 million households (three-fifths of the population at that point) grew more than 40 percent of all the vegetables we ate. City governments are catching on, changing zoning codes and policies to make them more ag-friendly, and even planting edible landscaping on city hall properties. Detroit, where the world’s largest urban farm is under development, has warmly and enthusiastically embraced urban agriculture. Other cities, including Pittsburgh, Philadelphia (more on Philly in a week or two), New York, Toronto, Seattle, Syracuse, Milwaukee and many more, have begun efforts to cultivate urban farming movements. And if local food, grown ethically, can become more popular and widespread, and can help in the greening of cities — well, what’s wrong with that?

• Farming is becoming hip | The number of farms is at last increasing, although it’s no secret that farmers are an endangered species: the average age of the principal operator on farms in the United States is 57. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently noted that our farmers are “aging at a rapid rate,” and when he asked, “Who’s going to replace those folks?” it wasn’t a rhetorical question. But efforts by nonprofits like the eagerly awaited FoodCorps and The Greenhorns, both of which aim to introduce farming to a new generation of young people, are giving farming a new cachet of cool. Meanwhile, the Nebraska-based Land Link program matches beginning farmers and ranchers with retirees so that the newbies gain the skills (and land) they need.

• The edible school lunch | The school lunch may have more potential positive influences than anything else, and we’re beginning to see it realized. The previously mentioned child-nutrition bill sets better nutrition standards for school meals and vending machines and increases the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price meals. U.S.D.A. is also behind the “Chefs Move to Schools” program, which enlists culinary professionals to help revamp nutrition curricula and the food itself; around 550 schools are participating. Independent of the Feds, many chefs have been moving to schools on their own. Bill Telepan’s Wellness in the Schools, for example, is working with public schools in New York City, while “renegade lunch lady” Ann Cooper, who remade Berkeley’s school lunch, is taking on the much more challenging program in Boulder, and succeeding. There are scores of other examples, and we’re finally seeing schools rethinking the model of how their food is sourced, cooked and served, while getting kids to eat vegetables. That’s good work.

Shortage of Grocers

For those of us in the Lowell Food Security Coalition, this article from the Boston Globe is not news. However, it just confirms what we are working towards with the community food assessment.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/03/07/shortage_of_grocers_plagues_mass_cities/?p1=Local_Links

Welcome

Nice Idea. Remember Community Gardens Greenhouse 5th FREE Annual Earth Day Festival is April 17th, 12-4pm, 220 Aiken St, Lowell, MA

Check out San Diego's Food Assessment

http://sandiegofoodsystem.com/
This is a great case to follow.  The publication will be very useful for our work.  I encourage you to check it out!
San Diego CFA

How can a blog be useful for the FSC?

Dear FSC members,
This blog is one tool that we can use to share information, post interesting articles, and communicate between meetings.  Please let me know if you think that this is useful for the group.