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Re: Sustainable Urban Food Systems
On Sun, 04 Nov 2001 11:44:31 -0800, "SEED PEACE"
<seedpeace@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>Greetings,
>
> Does anybody have some good leads for national/international projects
>of urban agriculture and sustainable urban food systems?
Operation Greenthumb 49 Chambers St NY NY (212)233-2926
The Green Guerillas 625 Broadway NY NY 10012 (212) 674-8124
David Gurzynski * Oh, some like trips in Luxury shops, and some
dawyd@dorsai.org * in gasoline wagons, and others swear by the
Brooklyn NYC * upper air and the wings of flying dragons...O Nash
>From ASFisher@aol.comWed Sep 13 11:13:19 1995
Date: Wed, 13 Sep 1995 00:08:48 -0400
From: ASFisher@aol.com
To: sanet-mg@amani.ces.ncsu.edu
Subject: Community Food Security Newsletter Fall 95
The Community Food Security News Fall 1995
Andy Fisher
CFSC
Po Box 209
Venice, CA 90294
310-822-5410
asfisher@aol.com
For a hard copy, e-mail me your street address.
Act on the Act
The Coalition's legislative efforts are now focused on getting the
House's
version of the Community Food Security Act enacted as legislation in
the
Senate. As of this writing, the bill is to be sponsored by Senator
Leahy (D-
VT, and minority chair of the Agriculture Committee, and hopefully
Senator
Lugar (R-IN, chair of the Agriculture Committee) and others. We are
working
over the next couple of weeks to get as many co-sponsors as possible.
Enactment of Senate legislation will help ensure passage of the Act
when the
House and Senate go to conference. The Senate version will ask for $4
million a year, and hopefully will propose the same funding mechanism
as the
House.
To support this effort, please call your US Senators immediately and
ask
them to express their support for Senator Leahy's CFS Bill. Also ask
them to
co-sponsor the bill. You may refer to HR 2003, or if you would like
a faxed
copy of the Senate legislation, contact us (See the "For More
Information"
box for our addresses). Time is of the essence! Thanks.
________________
FOOD BANKING: NEW IDEAS FOR THE 90S
The times are a-changing for many food banks across the country. For
the past
decade or so, food banks have focused on meeting the emergency food
needs of
an ever increasing amount of hungry people. With conservative business
leaders (with links to the food industry) as board members, food banks
have
in many cases shunned an advocacy role for a business model. Or as one
food
banker put it, "We're in the business of charitable food
distribution."
Nevertheless in recent years, a series of factors have encouraged an
increasing number of food banks to take on projects that are a
departure from
their usual scope of operations. Let's take a look at these factors.
Nutrition: The nutritional value of food bank donations has long been
questioned. Highly processed and high fat foods, such as government
surplus
commodities, routinely compose a significant portion of food bank
donations.
Health concerns combined with the addition of nutritionists to many
food bank
staffs have raised interest in distributing more fresh fruits and
vegetables
to low-income communities.
Reduced Donations: The advent of new more efficient management
techniques
such as total quality management and just in time delivery in the food
processing and supermarket industries has substantially reduced
corporate
food donations. Similarly, government commodity donations have
diminished
and promise to do so even further with the cost-cutting mood of
Congress.
These concerns have led food banks to seek out new innovative forms of
providing food as well as to redefine their role within the food
system.
Burn-Out: After 15 years of "emergencies", the emergency food system
is
becoming institutionalized. The level of hunger has not abated
significantly
since the "crisis" of the early Reagan era, and food bankers are
continuing
to see many of the same hungry faces year in and year out. This
situation has
led some food banks to consider prevention-oriented programs that
attempt to
put themselves "out of business."
These factors have led food banks to increase their presence as
community
institutions, and develop food security related projects. Many of
these
projects revolve around gardening and farming while others focus on
education
and training.
The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank's Green Harvest program is
a
comprehensive and ambitious foray into food production and
distribution.
Green Harvest has evolved since its inception in 1991 from a
community
gardening and gleaning program to include a community supported
agriculture
farm and three farm stands in public housing projects.
Central to the philosophy of the food bank is a belief that the food
bank is
part of the community and has a social responsibility to make best use
of its
far reaching distribution network. The development of farmstands in
isolated
housing projects is an excellent example of the way in which the Food
Bank
utilizes its projects for multiple purposes and grounds them in
community
organizing. The farmstands not only achieve their objectives of
increasing
access to fresh foods, but also accomplish nutrition and environmental
education goals through cooking demonstrations and farm tours.
Like the Pittsburgh Food Bank, the Capitol Area Food Bank in
Washington, DC
also operates a community supported agriculture farm and farmstands.