The fruit of early morning farm work.
Weekly Food Roundup - More tomatoes, Federal Loans and Secretary Vilsack
*Weekly Food Roundup is a weekly recap of local, national and global food issues as they play out online, in print and in our everyday lives. Check back every Friday for new installments.*
Every morning of this week a handful of VISTAs and Monte continued the inevitable college farm task: picking sweetcorn and tomatoes. Though we thought the corn was all picked-through and finished last week, this morning Monte drove us back to a swathe of untouched sweetcorn planted amid the grain crop on one of the college's land parcels.
We picked 100 dozen ears before moving to the tomatoes, which are ripening faster than many community groups can distribute them. We stopped after picking 150 lbs. today, even though another 100 lbs. could easily have been picked. The two organizations we delivered to today, Sugartree Ministries and Clinton County Community Action, simply can't process any more than that. I suppose that's better than the alternative: hungry people and not enough food.
***
USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan released a memo [PDF] on Wednesday titled "Harnessing USDA rural development programs to support local and regional food systems," in which she highlights a number of exciting and overlooked grant opportunities for strengthening our local food systems.
The memo is broken into three sections, each highlighting how an already existing federal loan program could help rural food development. Merrigan posits a hypothetical at the beginning of each section, asking "What if?" to a number of scenarios.
As is often the case with federal funds, there is a bottleneck between the state and federal level and the community level. City governments and non-profits don't know how to navigate the bureaucracy and red-tape associated with federal funding, and the feds are slow to release those available funds.
Regardless, Merrigan provides a lot of hope for rural food systems. It's refreshing to see this type of memo coming from the desk of the deputy secretary of the USDA.
***
More from the USDA front: In addition to establishing this week as National Community Gardening week, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on Wednesday a new USDA volunteer program to get people involved with the department's People's Garden Initiative.
Located at the USDA headquarters in Washington, the People's Garden is a demonstration garden of sorts highlighting the benefits of small-scale food production. It's yet another refreshing example of this growing awareness of local, healthy food. The more people get out and volunteer with gardening and farm projects, the better. Kudos, Mr. Vilsack.
Every morning of this week a handful of VISTAs and Monte continued the inevitable college farm task: picking sweetcorn and tomatoes. Though we thought the corn was all picked-through and finished last week, this morning Monte drove us back to a swathe of untouched sweetcorn planted amid the grain crop on one of the college's land parcels.
We picked 100 dozen ears before moving to the tomatoes, which are ripening faster than many community groups can distribute them. We stopped after picking 150 lbs. today, even though another 100 lbs. could easily have been picked. The two organizations we delivered to today, Sugartree Ministries and Clinton County Community Action, simply can't process any more than that. I suppose that's better than the alternative: hungry people and not enough food.
***
USDA Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan released a memo [PDF] on Wednesday titled "Harnessing USDA rural development programs to support local and regional food systems," in which she highlights a number of exciting and overlooked grant opportunities for strengthening our local food systems.
The memo is broken into three sections, each highlighting how an already existing federal loan program could help rural food development. Merrigan posits a hypothetical at the beginning of each section, asking "What if?" to a number of scenarios.
"Imagine an NGO receiving USDA grant money to construct a community kitchen where farmers drop off produce and families join cooking classes that teach about healthy eating while everyone prepares fresh nutritious meals to bring home...Imagine a community using USDA money to construct an open-sided structure to house a farmers market...Imagine a school using USDA loan money to set up cold storage as part of a larger effort to retrofit the school cafeteria to buy produce directly from farmers and return cooking capacity to school lunch...Imagine..."However whimsical the introductions to the sections may be, Merrigan gets down to business in discussing the practical application of millions of dollars (some $961 million) of stimulus money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) for our rural areas.
As is often the case with federal funds, there is a bottleneck between the state and federal level and the community level. City governments and non-profits don't know how to navigate the bureaucracy and red-tape associated with federal funding, and the feds are slow to release those available funds.
Regardless, Merrigan provides a lot of hope for rural food systems. It's refreshing to see this type of memo coming from the desk of the deputy secretary of the USDA.
***
More from the USDA front: In addition to establishing this week as National Community Gardening week, USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced on Wednesday a new USDA volunteer program to get people involved with the department's People's Garden Initiative.
Located at the USDA headquarters in Washington, the People's Garden is a demonstration garden of sorts highlighting the benefits of small-scale food production. It's yet another refreshing example of this growing awareness of local, healthy food. The more people get out and volunteer with gardening and farm projects, the better. Kudos, Mr. Vilsack.
Day at the Market: Findlay
The campus here is back to buzzing with students completely moved-in and Fall semester classes underway. The hectic days of planning for their return is over, and we've fallen back into a routine of researching and planning for other projects.
Yesterday we heeded the advice of several regional farmers' market managers and visited Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati. Tucked into the rough-around-the-edges Cincinnati downtown, Findlay Market is more than 150 years old and easily one of the most successful in the state. They operate a year-round indoor market which is open every day except Monday. On Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from April to November growers set-up outside in the traditional farmers' market style, under a colorful pavilion.
The number of growers outside yesterday was only about half as many as show up on the weekends, which can bring in upwards of 2,000 people on Saturday alone. Findlay manager Cynthia Brown told us to come back on the weekend if we wanted an accurate impression of the markets' popularity; I don't think there was any doubt from us about that.
The baskets of produce yesterday had colors that jumped off the table. Peppers and eggplants bigger than I've seen this season filled out the table of a farmer from northern Kentucky. I bought a bag of Serrano, jalapeno and chili peppers from him for a future batch of our famous (self-proclaimed) Grow Food, Grow Hope salsa.
We spoke at length with Ms. Brown about the history and current state of the market. She was extremely knowledgeable about certain aspects of the market that will be helpful to us, like: how best to manage EBT and food stamps at the market; what's better...permanent or movable awnings for growers?; how to audit growers and survey consumers effectively, et cetera. As a former chef and longtime foodie, she had an interesting perspective on how growers should focus on specific commodity crops and build on relationships with restaurants and regional suppliers.
We're planning a return weekend trip to the market in the near future to see it in its natural, bustling state. And, we need to buy some more kettle corn from the man at the "Mom Made It" kettle corn booth. As one farmer quipped when we were walking away: "The stuff is habit forming." We completely agree.
Yesterday we heeded the advice of several regional farmers' market managers and visited Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati. Tucked into the rough-around-the-edges Cincinnati downtown, Findlay Market is more than 150 years old and easily one of the most successful in the state. They operate a year-round indoor market which is open every day except Monday. On Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from April to November growers set-up outside in the traditional farmers' market style, under a colorful pavilion.The number of growers outside yesterday was only about half as many as show up on the weekends, which can bring in upwards of 2,000 people on Saturday alone. Findlay manager Cynthia Brown told us to come back on the weekend if we wanted an accurate impression of the markets' popularity; I don't think there was any doubt from us about that.
The baskets of produce yesterday had colors that jumped off the table. Peppers and eggplants bigger than I've seen this season filled out the table of a farmer from northern Kentucky. I bought a bag of Serrano, jalapeno and chili peppers from him for a future batch of our famous (self-proclaimed) Grow Food, Grow Hope salsa.We spoke at length with Ms. Brown about the history and current state of the market. She was extremely knowledgeable about certain aspects of the market that will be helpful to us, like: how best to manage EBT and food stamps at the market; what's better...permanent or movable awnings for growers?; how to audit growers and survey consumers effectively, et cetera. As a former chef and longtime foodie, she had an interesting perspective on how growers should focus on specific commodity crops and build on relationships with restaurants and regional suppliers.
We're planning a return weekend trip to the market in the near future to see it in its natural, bustling state. And, we need to buy some more kettle corn from the man at the "Mom Made It" kettle corn booth. As one farmer quipped when we were walking away: "The stuff is habit forming." We completely agree.
Photo Friday - A Flower in the Sun
A sunflower peeking out of the tomatoes at the Demonstration Garden.
Weekly Food Roundup - The Daily Harvest, Time Magazine and Mr. POTUS
*Weekly Food Roundup is a weekly recap of local, national and global food issues as they play out online, in print and in our everyday lives. Check back every Friday for new installments.*
Though we were unable to make it to Sugartree Ministries this Wednesday to pass out food(it was pretty chaotic on campus this week), Monte Anderson and Jenn, our Community Garden Coordinator, harvested crates full of sweet corn and tomatoes Wednesday morning and dropped them off at the food pantry. Because the W.C. grounds crew is finished for the summer, Monte will need our help harvesting for the rest of the season. We all met at the college farm this morning at 7 a.m. to pick ripened tomatoes and try and finish picking the last of the corn. While we didn't finish all the corn, we did bag-up 54 dozen ears and 150 lbs. of tomatoes this morning alone. We divided the crates evenly and delivered them to Clinton County Community Action and Sugartree, which saw it's biggest crowd ever last Wednesday with more than 400 people.
Since Monday, we were able to harvest 895 lbs. of tomatoes and 115 dozen ears of corn. Since August 7, we've harvested 1,265 lbs. of tomatoes and 136 dozen ears of corn. And the plants are still producing!
***
This week, the sustainable food community was excited to see Time Magazine feature a very well written cover story about the food crisis in the United States. The story addresses most of the underlying issues that have been well-known to those with a finger on the pulse of the food-industry: the unsustainability of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); the environmental impact of Big Agriculture; the "cheap" cost of bad food; and the stigmas and misconceptions of fresh and healthy food. To a lot of readers, none of this is news. But that's not really what's important. What is, is the level of attention a story on the cover of Time will receive. This is arguably the biggest media attention the good-food movement has received to date, and it follows the national trend toward a broader consciousness of our food woes, and some of the ways we can remedy them.
***
President Obama weighed-in this week on the national food dilemma, particularly as it relates to school lunches and our youth. During a town hall meeting on Thursday, the president received the following question from a community member.
***
Though we were unable to make it to Sugartree Ministries this Wednesday to pass out food(it was pretty chaotic on campus this week), Monte Anderson and Jenn, our Community Garden Coordinator, harvested crates full of sweet corn and tomatoes Wednesday morning and dropped them off at the food pantry. Because the W.C. grounds crew is finished for the summer, Monte will need our help harvesting for the rest of the season. We all met at the college farm this morning at 7 a.m. to pick ripened tomatoes and try and finish picking the last of the corn. While we didn't finish all the corn, we did bag-up 54 dozen ears and 150 lbs. of tomatoes this morning alone. We divided the crates evenly and delivered them to Clinton County Community Action and Sugartree, which saw it's biggest crowd ever last Wednesday with more than 400 people.
Since Monday, we were able to harvest 895 lbs. of tomatoes and 115 dozen ears of corn. Since August 7, we've harvested 1,265 lbs. of tomatoes and 136 dozen ears of corn. And the plants are still producing!
***
This week, the sustainable food community was excited to see Time Magazine feature a very well written cover story about the food crisis in the United States. The story addresses most of the underlying issues that have been well-known to those with a finger on the pulse of the food-industry: the unsustainability of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs); the environmental impact of Big Agriculture; the "cheap" cost of bad food; and the stigmas and misconceptions of fresh and healthy food. To a lot of readers, none of this is news. But that's not really what's important. What is, is the level of attention a story on the cover of Time will receive. This is arguably the biggest media attention the good-food movement has received to date, and it follows the national trend toward a broader consciousness of our food woes, and some of the ways we can remedy them.
***
President Obama weighed-in this week on the national food dilemma, particularly as it relates to school lunches and our youth. During a town hall meeting on Thursday, the president received the following question from a community member.
"I have a two-part question. One is choice, the choice that we make to eat the foods that we eat and the lifestyle that we choose to engage in. And the second part, your family is very fit. What do you and the First Lady and the girls do to encourage physical fitness, and what can we—not the government, not private corporations—do to encourage activity in the public-school system and in young people?"President Obama meandered a bit in his response, as he is wont to do occasionally at these town-hall type of events , but he spent a considerable amount of time answering the woman. In the last part of his response, during which he addresses local foods and the White House kitchen garden, he said something that delighted the online food universe.
"One of the things that we’re trying to do now is to figure out, can we get a little farmers’ market—outside of the White House—I’m not going to have all of you all just tromping around inside—(laughter)—but right outside the White House—(laughter)—so that—so that we can—and—and—and that is a win-win situation.So, not only can D.C. area youth grow healthy vegetables in the backyard of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but the D.C. community as a whole might be able to buy those presidential veggies right out front. That, my friends, is amazing.
It gives suddenly D.C. more access to good, fresh food, but it also is this enormous potential revenue-maker for local farmers in the area. And—and that—those kinds of connections can be made all throughout the country, and—and has to be part of how we think about health."
***
O-Town or The Day the Students Moved In
The summer of 2009 has ended, at least according to Wilmington College's academic calendar. The last few weeks have been spent preparing for the arrival of new students, and today was sort of the culmination of that preparation: O-Town.
Apart from being the name of an embarrassingly bad boy-band from yesteryear, O-Town is an annual event here at W.C. that brings dozens of local businesses and organizations on to campus to set up booths and market to the incoming freshman. With all the work being done by the Buy Local First Clinton County campaign, as well as our own efforts for that campaign here on campus, O-Town was the perfect way to introduce the new students to the idea of spending their money (or their parents') locally.
Despite the threat of thunderstorms early in the day, this year's O-Town was a resounding success, and from what we heard from upperclassmen and faculty it was much better than in years past. Dessie, our Buy Local & Farmer's Market Coordinator deserves most of the credit for organizing the event this year. She put in a lot of work to make sure everything went as smoothly as it did. High-five, Dessie.
We, too, had our own booth at the event to try and meet students as soon as possible. We made some darn-fine homemade salsa from ingredients harvested from the community gardens as well as our home gardens, and people seemed to love it. We also were able to sign-up some potential volunteers in the process, which will be a tremendous help in the near future when we start rolling out new projects.
Apart from being the name of an embarrassingly bad boy-band from yesteryear, O-Town is an annual event here at W.C. that brings dozens of local businesses and organizations on to campus to set up booths and market to the incoming freshman. With all the work being done by the Buy Local First Clinton County campaign, as well as our own efforts for that campaign here on campus, O-Town was the perfect way to introduce the new students to the idea of spending their money (or their parents') locally.
Despite the threat of thunderstorms early in the day, this year's O-Town was a resounding success, and from what we heard from upperclassmen and faculty it was much better than in years past. Dessie, our Buy Local & Farmer's Market Coordinator deserves most of the credit for organizing the event this year. She put in a lot of work to make sure everything went as smoothly as it did. High-five, Dessie.
We, too, had our own booth at the event to try and meet students as soon as possible. We made some darn-fine homemade salsa from ingredients harvested from the community gardens as well as our home gardens, and people seemed to love it. We also were able to sign-up some potential volunteers in the process, which will be a tremendous help in the near future when we start rolling out new projects.
We're all excited to get to know the new students and work with them in the future. They'll be a very valuable resource to all of us, and we hope to provide them with outreach opportunities as well, as they get to know their new community.
On the Reading List, #1
Since most of us here are new to the world of local food systems, we put a particular emphasis on reading anything and everything we can to better educate ourselves. There are myriad resources in print and online, books, blogs, essays, documentaries, et cetera, that help us help others— to spread the Gospel of Good Food.
We'd like to share what we're reading here whenever we feel compelled to write about it, which, in my case, will likely be often (I tend to get caught up in what I'm reading).
I recently finished Edible Estates: Attack on the Front
Lawn, the coffee-table companion to the well-known project of the same name by American architect Fritz Haeg. From the first day of the project on July 4, 2005 to late 2007, Haeg recruited four families from around the country (and one in London, England) to tear up their lawn, completely uproot and throw away the sod, and in its place plant an entirely edible landscape. The project is part social criticism (why again do we plant a useless, non-native, resource and pesticide hungry lawn-- from property line to property line?) and part throwback to simpler times. But the effect that is most surprising about the project is how engaged the participants become in their community, in their neighborhoods and with their next-door neighbors. As it turns out, gardening gets you out of your house, and doing it in the front lawn brings the neighbors out, too.
The book is a great introduction to the project, if you haven't already read about it elsewhere. It includes essays by Diana Balmori, Michael Pollan, Rosalind Creasy and Lesley Stern, and documents each prototype "estate" from start to finish. The first, planted in the geographic center of the United States, Salina, Kansas. The last, in London, England. In between are testimonials and reflections about the project from its participants, the essays, photographs and a regional planting calendar broken down by the growing zones.
Haeg himself concedes early in the book that this idea is not new, that "growing our own food is the first thing we did when stopped being nomadic and started being 'civilized!'" What's new is coupling this renewed interest in growing food with sustainable home-practices. And if anything is apparent these days, it's that front-lawns are decidedly unsustainable. Eric Schlosser says it best in a blurb on the back cover of the book: "Instead of mowing your lawn, you should eat it."
Brilliant.
- John Cropper
We'd like to share what we're reading here whenever we feel compelled to write about it, which, in my case, will likely be often (I tend to get caught up in what I'm reading).
I recently finished Edible Estates: Attack on the Front
Lawn, the coffee-table companion to the well-known project of the same name by American architect Fritz Haeg. From the first day of the project on July 4, 2005 to late 2007, Haeg recruited four families from around the country (and one in London, England) to tear up their lawn, completely uproot and throw away the sod, and in its place plant an entirely edible landscape. The project is part social criticism (why again do we plant a useless, non-native, resource and pesticide hungry lawn-- from property line to property line?) and part throwback to simpler times. But the effect that is most surprising about the project is how engaged the participants become in their community, in their neighborhoods and with their next-door neighbors. As it turns out, gardening gets you out of your house, and doing it in the front lawn brings the neighbors out, too.The book is a great introduction to the project, if you haven't already read about it elsewhere. It includes essays by Diana Balmori, Michael Pollan, Rosalind Creasy and Lesley Stern, and documents each prototype "estate" from start to finish. The first, planted in the geographic center of the United States, Salina, Kansas. The last, in London, England. In between are testimonials and reflections about the project from its participants, the essays, photographs and a regional planting calendar broken down by the growing zones.
Haeg himself concedes early in the book that this idea is not new, that "growing our own food is the first thing we did when stopped being nomadic and started being 'civilized!'" What's new is coupling this renewed interest in growing food with sustainable home-practices. And if anything is apparent these days, it's that front-lawns are decidedly unsustainable. Eric Schlosser says it best in a blurb on the back cover of the book: "Instead of mowing your lawn, you should eat it."
Brilliant.
- John Cropper
Weekly Food Roundup - Sugartree, Organics and the Food Revolution
*Weekly Food Roundup is a weekly recap of local, national and global food issues as they play out online, in print and in our everyday lives. Check back every Friday for new installments.*
Food donations this week from the college farm were especially productive, with 142 lbs. of tomatoes and 94 ears of sweetcorn handed out at Sugartree on Wednesday. Yesterday, Monte Anderson took over another 126 lbs. of tomatoes to the food bank for a total of 268 lbs. of tomatoes donated for the week. The hot weather and abundant sunshine we've had these past few days are surely to thank for the productive tomato harvest, and we're grateful for some "typical" summer weather in what has heretofore been an unseasonably cool summer.
As far as quantifying the amount of food we're able to harvest from the farm, we've decided to switch from basic vegetable counts to a weight measurement. We feel like, after a year or so, a pounds-of-food tally will be a more tangible representation.
***
A recent study published by the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA) takes to task the argument of conventional versus organic vegetables, and ultimately decides that organically grown vegetables are no more-healthful than their "conventional" veggie siblings, grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The report has caused a fire-storm in the food and policy blogosphere and continues to create blog fodder this week. (For some background, Paula Crossfield, managing editor of the respected food blog Civil Eats, writes about how she thinks the report is flawed here and here, and the Washington Post wunderkind-cum-food columnist Ezra Klein disagrees with her here). The argument carries on, some three weeks later, with the food editor of Grist.org, another revered food policy blog, Tom Philpott challenging Klein to a friendly e-debate on the issue. Here is Philpott's first address, followed by Klein's response, Philpott's rebuttal, which delves into the issue of soil quality, and now Klein's most recent response. It's a lot of back-and-forth, but how else do debates get resolved? (Not that that will happen anytime soon.)
***
Will Allen of Growing Power farms in Milwaukee and Chicago (whom we've written about here) is featured in a Grist interview here, in which he waxes poetic about the Good Food Revolution growing around the country, the success of his Growing Power alumni and the issue of youth involvement in the food movement.
Allen is a figurehead in the good-food sector, and his message carries with it a lot of clout about the importance of good food access and education.
***
Earlier this week, U.S.D.A chief Tom Vilsack declared the week of August 23-29 National Community Gardening Week. Vilsack has taken interest recently with backyard and community gardening, most notably in his People's Garden project at the USDA headquarters in D.C., and we applaud this designation. While it's true that every week or month of the year is declared in the name of whateverelse these days (see: National Breastfeeding Awareness Month, Hair Loss Awareness Month and International Left Handers Day, all of which fall in August), the designation no-doubt helps to raise awareness for the benefits of community gardening. That it's coming from the U.S.D.A. is another big plus for the movement.
***
Food donations this week from the college farm were especially productive, with 142 lbs. of tomatoes and 94 ears of sweetcorn handed out at Sugartree on Wednesday. Yesterday, Monte Anderson took over another 126 lbs. of tomatoes to the food bank for a total of 268 lbs. of tomatoes donated for the week. The hot weather and abundant sunshine we've had these past few days are surely to thank for the productive tomato harvest, and we're grateful for some "typical" summer weather in what has heretofore been an unseasonably cool summer.
As far as quantifying the amount of food we're able to harvest from the farm, we've decided to switch from basic vegetable counts to a weight measurement. We feel like, after a year or so, a pounds-of-food tally will be a more tangible representation.
***
A recent study published by the U.K. Food Standards Agency (FSA) takes to task the argument of conventional versus organic vegetables, and ultimately decides that organically grown vegetables are no more-healthful than their "conventional" veggie siblings, grown with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The report has caused a fire-storm in the food and policy blogosphere and continues to create blog fodder this week. (For some background, Paula Crossfield, managing editor of the respected food blog Civil Eats, writes about how she thinks the report is flawed here and here, and the Washington Post wunderkind-cum-food columnist Ezra Klein disagrees with her here). The argument carries on, some three weeks later, with the food editor of Grist.org, another revered food policy blog, Tom Philpott challenging Klein to a friendly e-debate on the issue. Here is Philpott's first address, followed by Klein's response, Philpott's rebuttal, which delves into the issue of soil quality, and now Klein's most recent response. It's a lot of back-and-forth, but how else do debates get resolved? (Not that that will happen anytime soon.)
***
Will Allen of Growing Power farms in Milwaukee and Chicago (whom we've written about here) is featured in a Grist interview here, in which he waxes poetic about the Good Food Revolution growing around the country, the success of his Growing Power alumni and the issue of youth involvement in the food movement.
Allen is a figurehead in the good-food sector, and his message carries with it a lot of clout about the importance of good food access and education.
***
Earlier this week, U.S.D.A chief Tom Vilsack declared the week of August 23-29 National Community Gardening Week. Vilsack has taken interest recently with backyard and community gardening, most notably in his People's Garden project at the USDA headquarters in D.C., and we applaud this designation. While it's true that every week or month of the year is declared in the name of whateverelse these days (see: National Breastfeeding Awareness Month, Hair Loss Awareness Month and International Left Handers Day, all of which fall in August), the designation no-doubt helps to raise awareness for the benefits of community gardening. That it's coming from the U.S.D.A. is another big plus for the movement.
***
More Summertime love: Corn and Tomatoes
Dessie and Jenn, the newest VISTA to join the family, count the 142 lbs. of fresh tomatoes and 94 ears of Ohio sweetcorn.Wednesdays have quickly become our regular day at Sugartree, bagging up produce from the college farm and helping pass them out to families and community members at Your Father's Kitchen.
This Wednesday was no different. Six crates of tomatoes and two more burlap sacks of sweetcorn were trucked over from the farm, and we headed to the food bank en masse; all six of the active VISTAs spent the afternoon at Sugartree.
Yesterday was a particularly busy day at the kitchen, with the delivery of a huge food donation from the international relief organization Feed the Children. It was the third such delivery from the group since February 12, when 12 semis dropped off 387,000 lbs. of food for the community. Included in yesterday's delivery were 400 boxes of food and 400 boxes of personal hygiene products. Allen Willoughby, director of Sugartree Ministries, told the Wilmington News Journal the donation should last for about 2 months, depending on the number of people who come in on a daily basis.
Study links Food Stamp use to weight gain - a boon for EBT at Farmers Markets?
A nationwide study released today by researchers at the Ohio State University links the use of food stamps to increased weight gain, particularly among females. The study found that the Body Mass Index (BMI) of food stamp recipients increased faster when they were receiving the food stamps than when they were not, and increased more the longer they were enrolled in the program.This news isn't entirely surprising, considering the multitude of factors that are at play when considering poverty and health. The poorest members of our community are the least likely to exercise, and most likely to buy cheap, high-calorie, low-nutrient foods. A person's access to and education about healthy, nutritious food is typically proportional to his or her income. Most of the time these facts aren't the result of choice, but rather circumstance: "cheap" foods are often the only option, given the amount of a person's weekly income used toward food.
The press release that accompanies the study ends with the obvious bits of information: the foods made available to people on food stamps are not the healthiest, and better access to healthier foods needs to be a top priority for policymakers. From the study:
Government statistics showed that the average recipient received $81 in food stamps per month in 2002, the last year examined in this study.Farmers' Markets are an obvious starting point for discussion about increasing this access. But we need to work toward more education at national benefit banks and Child and Family Services offices. Much of the time, all it takes is a push in the right direction for a positive change to happen. Hopefully this study will be the impetus for a more intensive look into the issue of healthful-food access to everyone in our community.
"That figure was shocking to me." (Study co-author Jay) Zagorsky said. "I think it would be very difficult for a shopper to regularly buy healthy, nutritious food on that budget."
That's because calorie-dense, high-fat, processed foods tend to be less expensive than more healthy choices.
Zagorsky said policymakers should aim at changing the types of food that program participants purchase.
Summertime Food: Sweet Corn and Tomatoes
Four more crates arrived today from the college farm: 188 tomatoes and 121 ears of sweet corn-- essential summertime food. We'll be dropping these off at Sugartree at the end of the day. Talk about a good way to end the week.
Third Sugartree donation, biggest yet
This morning the W.C. grounds crew dropped off five more crates of vegetables that were picked yesterday and today from the college farm. I was shocked at the amount they were able to pick today, and we were ecstatic to take them over to Sugartree for their busiest day of the week.
In today's donation were: 166 tomatoes, 160 banana peppers, 150 green peppers, 54 squash and two buckets of potatoes. The total number of vegetables was 530, not including the potatoes, and we were able to bag up 110 individual bags with the harvest.
The volunteers at Your Father's Kitchen were excited when we walked in carrying the crates, and they got right to work helping us bag them up. We're especially grateful for Jo Hanner, Michael Meyers and Bill Thatcher, who helped us beginning to end.After most of the bags were taken, we stuck around for a very good lunch of chili, watermelon and chips & salsa, and talked to a lot of people about our project. We found 10 people who were interested in maintaining their own community garden plot or backyard garden next spring, and a few of them expressed interest in helping out immediately.
By next week we should have the recipe cards we ordered to put in the bags with the vegetables, to give people examples of how to prepare the food. Today we talked a little bit about how to prepare squash and zucchini, but they might be more willing to try new vegetables if they can see first hand how it's prepared.
In just three weeks, the total number of vegetables donated to Sugartree is now 1,412. And we're still growing.
Visiting the Farm
Last Friday was a perfect day for a VISTA roadtrip, so I tagged along with Ms. Dessie as she made her weekly rounds to area farmers' markets for outreach and general food mingling. This trip, though, was a bit different. She had planned on visiting a few specific growers in Xenia, OH, which boasts a very nice weekly market and a handful of on-site, farm markets.
Our first stop was L&P Ison Produce (formerly S.P. Mallow & Sons Produce) on Bellbrook Ave in Xenia. After turning down the farm's gravel drive, past the apple, peach and plum orchards, we were greeted by the toothy grin of 82-year-old John Mallow, one of the farm's proprietors. He gave us a brief history of the farm and talked about how times have been hard in recent years.
"There's never two years alike. You get one peach crop every three years," he said. This year was better than last, he said, because they got a few trees of white peaches.
The apple and plum trees looked great, despite Mr. Mallow's insistence that this year wasn't the best. I guess a farmer is his biggest critic.
After Dessie bought a pound of the lucky white peaches, he told me to take one free of charge after he caught me eyeballing them. I obliged, of course, and thanked him greatly as we made our way out of the aging building at the back of the orchard where the Mallows sell their produce.
Our next stop was Anderson Farm Market, ten miles up the road on the outskirts of Yellow Springs, OH. The Anderson's have a very nice farm on Clifton Road where they grow sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and just about every other farm market staple.
We talked to Doug Anderson, the farm's owner, and his two kids who help their parents at the market and at the farmers' markets where they sell. Doug also talked about
how the economy is starting to affect business on the farm, and how some specific markets are trying to combat this lag in sales with new business practices, like accepting credit card and food stamp transactions at the market.
Visits like these, while fun for us, are also extremely helpful in our day-to-day tasks at the office. They help us get a pulse on some of the problems and issues facing the local food economy, and allow us to look into the possible solutions to those problems. Sometimes, just talking can be the best way to address a concern, and I think we're becoming good talkers.
Our first stop was L&P Ison Produce (formerly S.P. Mallow & Sons Produce) on Bellbrook Ave in Xenia. After turning down the farm's gravel drive, past the apple, peach and plum orchards, we were greeted by the toothy grin of 82-year-old John Mallow, one of the farm's proprietors. He gave us a brief history of the farm and talked about how times have been hard in recent years.
"There's never two years alike. You get one peach crop every three years," he said. This year was better than last, he said, because they got a few trees of white peaches.The apple and plum trees looked great, despite Mr. Mallow's insistence that this year wasn't the best. I guess a farmer is his biggest critic.
After Dessie bought a pound of the lucky white peaches, he told me to take one free of charge after he caught me eyeballing them. I obliged, of course, and thanked him greatly as we made our way out of the aging building at the back of the orchard where the Mallows sell their produce.
Our next stop was Anderson Farm Market, ten miles up the road on the outskirts of Yellow Springs, OH. The Anderson's have a very nice farm on Clifton Road where they grow sweet corn, tomatoes, peppers, strawberries, raspberries, blackberries and just about every other farm market staple.We talked to Doug Anderson, the farm's owner, and his two kids who help their parents at the market and at the farmers' markets where they sell. Doug also talked about
how the economy is starting to affect business on the farm, and how some specific markets are trying to combat this lag in sales with new business practices, like accepting credit card and food stamp transactions at the market.Visits like these, while fun for us, are also extremely helpful in our day-to-day tasks at the office. They help us get a pulse on some of the problems and issues facing the local food economy, and allow us to look into the possible solutions to those problems. Sometimes, just talking can be the best way to address a concern, and I think we're becoming good talkers.
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