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Real Food Can Be Cheaper Than Junk Food |
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Food writer for the New York Times Mark Bittman reviews a blog that shows how it is possible to spend less money on healthy food than junk food.
"CookforGood.com has a compelling set of instructions for how to shop and cook inexpensively enough to live on food stamps. Well thought out and presented. This is a long and ongoing discussion — worthy of a cookbook, really — but here is a nice start."
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A Recipe for a Healthier America |
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Apr. 8, 2009
A excerpt from an article on Huffington Post by Scott Stringer and Joan Dye Gussow.
How can we get back to eating good food? American cities need to begin
identifying, developing and supplying themselves from local "food
sheds" -- their surrounding farms and pasturelands. Studies have shown
that when folks living without reasonable access to fresh produce are
provided such access -- through food stamps and WIC coupons that can be
used in farmers markets, or through membership in a community supported
agriculture program that provides them with a steady supply of farm
fresh produce, or through community gardens where they can eat what
they grow themselves -- their intake of fresh fruits and vegetables
increases.
Click here to read the full article.
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S.F.'s Scraps Bring Joy to Area Farmers |
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Apr. 2, 2009
This excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle highlights one example of an interrelationship between city and country that benefits both.
Every morning, garbage trucks swing by the Hotel Nikko, the Palace Hotel and MoMo's, picking up food left on dinner plates and in San Francisco chefs' kitchens. Green crews hit neighborhoods from the Mission to the Sunset, collecting oatmeal, chicken bones and dead tree leaves.
About 2,000 restaurants, 2,080 large apartment buildings and 50,000 single-family homes have embraced the city's environmentally friendly green bins. The scrap is turned into gold, a rich compost that boosts the region's bounty of food while curbing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Click here to read the full article.
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Berkeley School Lunch Program to Be on Its Own |
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Apr. 1, 2009
Excerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle
Three and a half years ago, Berkeley Unified School District launched the most vaunted public-school lunch program in the nation. Renowned school chef Ann Cooper was hired. Everything was made from scratch. Produce was purchased from local farms, and whenever possible it was organic.
While most districts spent between 85 and 95 cents on food for each student lunch, Berkeley spent $1.40. Every student received a free breakfast. And just to add icing to the whole-grain cupcake, the district used some of the money from a 2000 bond initiative to build a glossy, state-of-the-art kitchen and cafeteria, complete with composting station and organic herb garden.
Money wasn't an issue because Alice Waters' Chez Panisse Foundation, a private charity founded by the famous Berkeley restaurateur, was footing a good chunk of the bill. But in 2008, that gravy train stopped chugging - the foundation's three-year grant had run its course.
Click here to read the full article.
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San Francisco Urban-Rural Roundtable March 31 meeting |
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Michael R. Dimock’s Blog
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These are Michael's opening remarks to the San Francisco Urban-Rural Roundtable , a collaboration of urban and rural leaders charged with forming a market development and food access plan for the
city and its rural neighbors and to further develop the concept of
regional foodsheds. We plan to publish the final recommendation document in the coming weeks.
Good morning Mayor Newsom, Secretary Kawamura, distinguished participants of the San Francisco Urban-Rural Roundtable, and our welcome guests.
This Roundtable's work is groundbreaking. Other big cities have been focused on developing better food policy for several years now. But none of them have chosen, like San Francisco, to improve food system policy through dialog with those at the root of the solution: the rural people who produce the food and the organizations that support them. Urban and rural must be partners to resolve the food system dilemmas that we currently face.
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Local Food, Farms and Jobs: Growing the Illinois Economy |
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Mar. 23, 2009
A Report to the Illinois General Assembly by the Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force
Illinois consumers spend $48 billion annually on food. The lion's share of their expenditures leave the state. To reduce this drain on our economy, public, private, and civic sectors must work together to build a farm and food system that meets consumer demand for "local" food. The popularity of farmers markets is a measure of consumer demand that now reaches into large-volume wholesale markets. Currently, Illinois colleges and universities, corporate kitchens, schools, hospitals, museums, restaurants and grocery stores are unable to procure adequate supplies of products grown and marketed by Illinois farmers. The same is true of Illinois' "food deserts"-pockets of scarcity that extend from inner-city neighborhoods to rural communities. Meeting this demand will require construction of a supply chain that shortens the geographic distance between the farm gate and food plate, thus ensuring that Illinois food and farm products are made readily available for all consumers statewide.
This report shows how the state of Illinois can facilitate development of a local food system that complements the existing global farm and food system. It reflects the work of the 32-member Illinois Local and Organic Food and Farm Task Force which was created by the Illinois General Assembly through the Illinois Food, Farms and Jobs Act of 2007. This law authorized formation of the Task Force to develop a plan containing policy and funding recommendations for expanding and supporting a statewide local farm and food system.
Click here for the full report.
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Mar. 10, 2009
Excerpted from The New York Times.
Let’s today step out of the normal boundaries of analysis of our
economic crisis and ask a radical question: What if the crisis of 2008
represents something much more fundamental than a deep recession? What
if it’s telling us that the whole growth model we created over the last
50 years is simply unsustainable economically and ecologically and that
2008 was when we hit the wall — when Mother Nature and the market both
said: “No more.”
Click here for the full article.
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