Learning to Live Sustainably On a Local and Global Scale
It's time to learn to live sustainably on a Local and Global Scale.
Attend the 2010 Cultivating Food Justice Conference
8 am-5 pm (or more--stay around to network!),
April 24-25, 2010. This free conference will
will address issues of Food and
practical solutions, local and global. Raj Patel,
author of "Stuffed and Starved" and "The Value of Nothing"
and Barry Logan, La Milpa Organica Farm community member,
will be the keynotes. Many Food Justice 101 practical workshops,
and introductions to food Justice Issues will be covered.
Date: 3/31/2010 6:05:26 AM ( 14 y ) ... viewed 1653 times
WHAT TO DO NOW
As I write now it is 3:51 AM
March 31, 2010
The DMV is closed today.
It is César Chávez's birthday.
César Chávez (March 31, 1927 – April 23, 1993)
is a man who pointed out the errors of
our ways while he was alive. He looked at Food
Injustice Issues among the farmers of his California region.
He concluded that too many were dying from
contact with pesticides and other
unsustainable farm practices. His life
was more than about sour grapes, bitching
about issues. César Chávez did more than point
out "The Grapes of Wrath," the injustices
between rich and poor. By the time
he died, he had taken an interest
in organic food issues. He understood things
about nutrition. He had allies in what we
now call Alternative health. He had friends
among the leaders of the macrobiotic food movement,
that details how to grow and bidiverse grains.
Chávez became a great community spokesperson.
He and Delores Huerta, founded the United Farm Workers.
Huerta was the keynote speaker at the
Cultivating Food Justice Conference 2008.
WHAT IS YOUR HOME WORK NOW?
Sign in to let us
know you will be at the upcoming 2010
Food Justice Conference, April 24-25.
Take time now. Alert at least four of your friends
today and ask them to sign in. One
month from now, this conference will
be history. What you do today and this week will
reflect on the quality of our message
that videographers will record.
What you do today can and will inform
your neighbors, your local elected reps,
national leaders, and their international
friends. There are people
who we have not met personally this moment
who are dictating what we eat and do not eat,
what we grow, do not grow, and how we
each grow. Now is the time that we each
enter into dialogue. Now is the time
to get educated about Food Justice
and know in 30 words or less how to tell
someone else what this means.
HERE IS WHERE YOU GO TO SIGN IN
These are sites where you can become
part of our local sustainable Food Community
and become a part of the active coalition
that is now forming. It is Spring. This
is the month when we celebrate Earth Day.
The time of slumber is over. All seeds
are sprouting now, and trees are turning
green.
SIGN IN NOW
FOR THE
2010 CULTIVATING FOOD JUSTICE
FACEBOOK SITE.
"Shiow me the movement," says
President Barack Obama.
Be the movement.
Be part of the pulse
that brings San Diego to its roots.
One beat. Many pulses. Join us now.
Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved"
and ""The Stuff of Nothing" and local organic farmer
Barry Logan of La Milpa Organic Farm Community will be the
keynote speakers at the upcoming 2010 Cultivating Food Justice
Conference at April 24-25 at San Diego State University.
The Conference is free and will feature many workshops
from Cultivating Food Justice 101 to introductions
to local and grobal food justice issues.
The conference will point out issues
of Food Injustice as well as cultivate the solutions.
Many of the workshops, such as growing chickens
in your own back yard and having more community gardens,
depend on a movement coming together and an informed
public. A pressing need is to further inform local as well as
national elected officials. It is time now for all of us to understand
what sustainable economic living is all about
and take steps in this direction.
Raj Patel speaks out on our global food crisis
from both a global as well as local perspective.
For an introduction to his work, watch this video:
"If you pay taxes, care about the
nutritional values of school lunches,
worry about the plight of biodiversity or the loss of farmland
and open space, you have a personal stake in the tens of
billions of dollars annually committed to agriculture and food
policies." --Daniel Imhoff, from this article
A genetically modified organism (GMO) is the result of a laboratory process that takes genes from one species and inserts them into another hoping to obtain a desired trait or characteristic. The US does not require that GM foods be labeled even though most processed foods in the US have GM ingredients.
RAJ PATEL SPEAKS ON STUFFED AND STARVED
labeling of Organic Foods...
issues...
Raj Patel speaks about soy toward the beginning about soy at the beginning of this video
but does not mention that most soy is GMO
Grown, and is allowed to be classified as Organic Food by the USDA.
If it does not say Organic Soy, you are eating GMO
Soy.
these issues were pointed out by Roberta Baskin in
her reports from 2008.
ABOUT THE FOOD SAFETY MODERIZATION ACT
s-510 Soon before the Senate
"My biggest concern today is that if Hippocrates,
the father of wesern medicine were practicing
today, he would likely be arrested for practicing medicine
without a license. Current food legislation, #US BIll 2749
that passed the House in July, and #s-510, the Food
Safety Moderization Act, soon to go through the Senate
some time in April or May, extends FDA control to the farmers'
Market level. I clearly understand the need for increased
Food Safety, yet in our currently established Agricultural
system, contamination goes with the territory of taking
food production farther and farther from the local level.
when we have local organic farmers eating their foods themselves
and knowing their customers by name, we have less
poisoning of our food supply. The FDA has a clear
bias in favor of a drug approach to health as well as
farming. Their eyes are aimed at harmonizing US law
with the international Codex Food Rules that designate
nutrients as toxins, and pharmaceutical drugs as the
way to mitigate disease. The new laws, if not carefully
tended to support local farming, take us farther
from Food Safety and True homeland Food Security.
I am not opposed to Biotechnology and its applications
where appropriate. Dialogue is needed now between
GMO and Organic Lovers and all Voices in between.
Together, we can plan and develop an agricultural
model, and a health model that will return
true health to America and restore us us the
our beat with nature. We are intended to be a
national of gardeners living on a planet that
honors small farmers everywhere. Biodiversity
is the name of the game for Planet Earth.
Put your money behind this--behind the Bank
of Compost and you will return Main Street
to prosperity. Send Wall Street to the Farmers'
Markets of San Diego. Get some common sense
going and our financial underpinnings will once
again have roots."
This is what you, who are reading this now,
are being asked to do if you choose this:
Discover what you are intended to do with your life.
Find your voice. Plant your dream.
Find out how food can support your full
expression. Be an individual pulse
adding up to one beat. Be a movement
that shapes the future of food as we know
it today.
Aaron French’s commentary yesterday on the Civil Eat’s blog raises this issue of how prepared the sustainable food movement is to take its seat at the table in Washington. An important question given the receptivity the current administration has shown of late. It seems some more organizing is necessary. Case-in-point: a statement from Obama, as quoted by Michael Pollan at the Georgia Organics conference (where I was on Saturday), in reference to taking action on sustainable food:
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