Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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LiveBlogging Edible Institute 2011
Posted on January 29th, 2011 by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
http://networkedblogs.com/dD6WR

Hello from sunny Santa Barbara, CA and the 2011 edition of Edible Institute 
at the Hotel Mar Monte. Today and tomorrow I’ll be liveblogging the goings on 
here for those of you who couldn’t make it and for those who did but mighta 
missed something. Since it’s live please forgive typos and so on – I’ll put 
on my editors hat at the end of the day.

Follow the goings on on the Twitter machine via the hashtag #EI2011

We’ve a heckuva lineup today, including a keynote from no less than Dr. Joan 
Dye Gussow, who is a serious food producer, a writer, and officially a 
retiree from Teachers College, Columbia University where she is Mary Swartz 
Rose Professor Emerita, former chair of the Nutrition Education Program, and 
where she still teaches her course on nutritional ecology every fall. Her 
latest book is called (I adore this title) “Growing, Older.”

Things are scheduled to start rolling here in about 20 minutes, so the first 
update from here will happen in about an hour or so. Take a look at the 
schedule of events, and please check back throughout the day (and again 
tomorrow).

But first, a word from our sponsors – a quick shoutout to the folks that 
helped make this thing happen:

St. Germaine

Green Project Consultants

and Verterra.

OK, we’re getting underway here with a welcome from Edible Communities 
co-founder Tracey Ryder. Shoutouts to the above sponsors, staff, and the 
instigator of all of this, Edible San Francisco publisher Bruce Cole.

Dr. Gussow has taken the stage, and is saying a few nice things about our 
humble publications, and says she’s going to start with her “Cassandra role.” 
Says she’s “spent several years depressing college students.”

“I feel the need to confess that I don’t feel as if I belong here,” Gussow 
says, on account of feeling not as up-to-date on all the foodie-goings-on 
these days. She then reveals that she’s an Iowa girl, originally – she grew 
up in Orange City – way up in the northwest corner of the state, and named 
not for the fruits – somewhat obviously – but for William of Orange.

Dr. Gussow is concerned about what she calls the “Frivolity of the US food 
supply.”

“Whenever you don’t understand something I’m saying, simply assume I’m trying 
to be funny.”

She’s touching now on her first book, The Feeding Web, which came out in 1978 
– a true harbinger of the coming food movement which told of the absurdity of 
the food supply. “People need to ask where all those marshmallow-enriched 
purple cereals in their technicolor food supply were coming from.”

Rodale Press, she tells us, did the first study of how much of our food might 
possibly be produced locally in light of the first energy crisis in the late 
70s. At the time she had a student at the time who did an independent project 
on her native Haiti about how the only US aid going on there was that we had 
taken their hogs, sent them Iowa hogs, which they were to raise and send to 
the US. This while Haitians were starving under Papa Doc.

her first attempts to get people to eat seasonally and locally “sank like a 
stone” because people thought that for example people who live in the 
northeast would starve and “what would the people of Iowa do for vitamin C?” 
Check in on my own Edible Iowa for some answers to that question.

She’s not trying to urge everyone to grow their own food and recognizes that 
that’s not realistic, but says its vital to link their life to nature – and 
food’s a great way to do that. “If we win our war with nature, we lose.”

“We have just elected – or the corporations have, or whoever’s in charge now 
– a strange group of people who don’t believe in climate change to add to the 
people who don’t intend to do anything about it.”

“Business as usual is no longer an option, but we’re doing business as usual.”

She highly recommends (as do I) Bill McKibben’s brlliant book Eaarth.

She’s optimistic about the growing availability of local foods. “People who 
used to admit embarassingly that they lived in Brooklyn now brag about it.”

But, “Those with an investment in the status quo will not give up without a 
fight.”

Fear is an obstacle, she says. But it’s being addressed by films like Food, 
Inc, and Foer’s book “Eating Animals.”

Those that say organic can’t feed the world fail to realize that they had 
their chance and haven’t succeeded, so maybe we should try it. GMO’s have 
failed thus far to broadly increase yields, says Gussow.

“We have an sustainble food supply, and Michael Pollan said that what 
unsustainable means is that it will end.” And that, she says, gives her hope.

Ooo, a nice shoutout too to the Slow Money Movement.

“I believe the local food movement is building a model for supporting us when 
the end of the current scene comes, and it will come” She urges us to take a 
stand too for economic and social justice.

“Living as if our food is infinite on a finite planet.”

“We know that we are all a guilty party,” she tells us, “including those who 
grow their own food in New York and then FLY to California to talk about it”

Quoted Jim Hightower quoting his father “Everybody does better when everybody 
does better.”

“Hope is the lesson nature keeps teaching me”

“We need to pay more for local food from local farmers and that’s going to 
have to be OK.”

And with that, a big standing O for Dr. Gussow.

Question time: and the first asks what DOES she eat in January? Answer 
briefly is that she does a lot of puttin’ up (need to know more about how? 
Check out Sherri Vinton’s book Put’em Up).

Another asks her to comment on state and federal budget cuts resulting in 
universities funding and being funded by big ag and chemical companies, etc. 
She blames some of it on California passing Prop 13. Reminds me of the famous 
Oliver Wendall Holmes quotation “Taxes are the fee I pay to live in a 
civilized society.”

Break time, and then our first panel on “Will Urban Ag Change the Way we 
Eat”, with:

Annie Novak: Founder and director of Growing Chefs, field-to-fork 
food?education program; the children gardening program coordinator for?the 
New York Botanical Gardens, and co-founder and farmer of Eagle?Street Rooftop 
Farm in Greenpoint. Annie has worked with the CENYC?Greenmarket, Slow Food, 
and Just Food advocating and growing urban?agriculture throughout NYC. Her 
work in agriculture has been featured?in New York Magazine, Edible Brooklyn 
and the Martha Stewart Show?among other press.

David Cleveland: Professor, Environmental Studies Program University?of 
California Santa Barbara. Recent work: Trade offs between ?Agriculture, Open 
Space, and Urbanization. The ?value of land: Agriculture, food and 
urbanization in the Goleta?Valley, California.

Ashley Atkinson: Director of Project Development and Urban Agriculture?- 
Greening of Detroit Ashley gardens with passion and is?growing a new economy 
in her community that could change the way? Detroit uses its open spaces. As 
the Director of Project Development?and Urban Agriculture for the Greening of 
Detroit, Atkinson is?developing Detroit’s premier market farm from a 30-acre 
city park?filled with sewer pipes; all on a budget of $40 per week.

And moderated by:

Kerry Trueman is the co-founder of EatingLiberally.org, a netroots website & 
organization that advocates sustainable agriculture, progressive politics and 
a less-consumption driven way of life. She blogs regularly at Eating 
Liberally, right here on Huffington Post, and Civil Eats.

OK, a few Pixie tangerines and we’re back with the aforementioned panel

Deborah Kane of Edible Portland (among a lot of other fantastic exploits, 
like FoodHub) is handling introductions.

Annie’s talking about all the benefits of green roofs (rooves?) and showing 
some pictures of her work in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Novak: “Beekeeping seemed like a great idea because it was illegal at the 
time and that was stupid.”

And a shout out from Novak to the great work of Growing Power

David Cleveland is talking about “What does localizing mean? – changing the 
way we eat or greenwashing?”

The question is, is localization the answer to the problems in our dominant 
agrifood system?

Part of the problem is we don’t truly know if localizing is helping because 
there are no solid statistics on it. So he set out to get some.

It doesn’t help on greenhouse gasses because of transportation, because a 
farmer’s pickup is less efficient than 18 wheelers. But most of the fossil 
fuels in industrial ag are used in things like nitrogen fixing and pesticides.

Pushback coming from the likes of Walmart because local food is starting to 
eat into their bottom line “The L word is beginning to replace the O word”

Cleveland urges us to keep labor in mind – is the local food raised by local 
hands? California relies on noncompetitive labor for producing it’s 50% share 
of the fruit, vegetables and nuts America eats.

He points out that the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt began in no small 
measure because of food prices.

Ashley Atkinson is now talking about her work in Detroit. mentions she 
doesn’t like the term “food desert.” Thinks it’s inaccurate

“There are 50K vacant lots in Detroit that are ready to be farmed.”

The growers with Grown in Detroit have agreed not to sell their food outside 
Detroit until their food access problems inside Detroit are lessened.

Everything she has shown – gardening, beekeeping, chickens, etc. is illegal 
in Detroit but “we do it anyway” – big applause.

And a shoutout to the fine work of Brother Nature

Question about dealing with municipalities and all the illegal stuff they 
just mentioned. Ashley says Just Do It – ask for forgiveness rather than 
permission. “If we’d asked for permission we’d have never done what we did”

Gary Nabhan asks if the food miles issue is dead. David Cleveland says yes 
and we should recast the issues around local and sustainable food.

Another break, and then we return with panel #2:

Activists and Advocacy: SOLE Food’s Message for Change.

Tom Philpott moderator. Grist food editor, Tom Philpott farms and cooks at 
Maverick Farms, a sustainable-agriculture nonprofit and small farm in the 
Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

PANELISTS:

Ralph Loglisci: Project Director for the Johns Hopkins Healthy Monday 
?Project. Before joining the Center for a Livable Future, Ralph served?as the 
Communications Director for the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute?of Bioethics. 
However, it was his work as the Communications Director?for the Pew 
Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production that Ralph?became aware of 
the intricate connections between food systems, the?environment and public 
health.

Debra Eschmeyer: Marketing & Media Manager of the National Farm to? School 
Network and the Center for Food & Justice. She works from a ?fifth-generation 
family farm in Ohio, where she continues her passion?for organic farming 
raising heirloom fruits and vegetables. Prior to ?joining CFJ, Debra was the 
Project Director at the National Family ?Farm Coalition in Washington, DC 
where she focused on U.S.?agricultural policy and food sovereignty 
initiatives among grass roots? domestic and international rural advocacy and 
other social justice ?networks.?? She also blogs right here at HuffPo.

Dan Imhoff: Co-founder of Watershed Media, a researcher, author, and 
?independent publisher who has concentrated for nearly 20 years on?issues 
related to farming, the environment, and design. He is the ?author of 
numerous articles, essays, and books including Food Fight:?The Citizen’s 
Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, Paper or Plastic:? Searching for Solutions to 
an Overpackaged World; Farming with the? Wild: Enhancing Biodiversity on 
Farms and Ranches; and Building with? Vision: Optimizing and Finding 
Alternatives to Wood.

Philpott:

The rise and fall of the American industrial machine has lead to local food 
systems in these communities like Detroit, need to move beyond the 3-5 percent

Federal policy perpetuates the current dominant food system

Why aren’t policy makers learning from detroit and other local food systems? 
Need to push policy in these directions.

Last two admins were abysmal, then Michele Obama using soft power to effect 
change, but President Obama is still putting agribiz based people in his 
administration.

Eschmeyer

She helped make farm-to-school competitive grant program possible

Points out that Republic budget cutters do not have direct subsidies on their 
hit list, but to have Americorps, NEA, Organic Certification, and ObamaCare.

Urges people to help collect data that support these ideas, for example: $1 
spent on local food circulates $3 in the community – that’s a low estimate.

Collaborate with people smarter than you. And join the Community Food 
Security Coalition, among many others.

Highlight your heroes – like Ashley (above)

“Every ingredient has a lobbyist,” but Eschmeyer believes Edible Communities 
could be the “lobbyist” for the good food movement.

Ralph Loglisci:

Is studying the effect of the Meatless Monday thing, seeing if their is 
science behind how well it works.

A shoutout to the Center for a Liveable Future blog

Points ou that this is not an elitist thing – we want good healthy food for 
EVERYONE. Reminds me of Josh Viertel’s recent video question to President 
Obama: “Why do Fruit Loops cost less than fruit?”

Dan Imhoff describes himself as a “reluctant wonk”

A Manure lagoon is now eligible to be part of a farm environment protection 
plan

Talks about how industrial ag says “you don’t understand agriculture”

The Tea Party could actually be an ally to the real food movement – cutting 
$5billion in subsidies, and how good food can be an economic engine

The map of the disaster relief farms and the non subsidized farms are the same

Says he is rewriting Food Fight:?The Citizen’s Guide to a Food and Farm Bill, 
for the new 2012 Food & Farm Bill

References the issue brought up by Mission Readiness. (See my essay on the 
subject called Why Johnny Can’t March)

New Food & Farm bill should include:

Delink nutrition title from land and farm title
No subsidation without social obligation
“Getting perennial by the next centennial” – taking a much longer view of 
agriculture
A Suburban and Urban Ag title
One size doesn’t fit all: Regs are currently made only for big ag.

MUST get urban people involved in the Food & Farm bill

Now LUNCH! Back in an hour or so.