Thursday, December 22, 2011

Grow your food stamps – Learn how


Snap gardens
By Hayley Currier
What’s the difference between food and nutrition?
The United States government is attempting to grapple with this question, as seen in the October 2008 renaming of the federal Food Stamp Program which is now SNAP—Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The government is no longer, at least in name, just supplementing the purchase of food for low-income residents. They are supposed to be supplementing nutrition, somewhat of a different story.
A new wave of research and projects are questioning if all calories are created equal—enough food is not the same as enough nutrients. Processed and sugar-laden food—the cheapest option for many on food stamps—may be causing more problems than they are solving. Organizations like the Center for Weight and Health through the University of California, Berkeley are advocating for changes that encourage people to eat healthier. Globally, more people are suffering from obesity and related illnesses than undernourishment. Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, speaks strongly about the need to improve unhealthy diets on an international scale and calls for measures such as taxing unhealthy food and regulating food advertising. Evidence is mounting that we shouldn’t just talk about filling bellies any more, but what we are filling them with.

The First 70

<iframe frameborder="0" height="410px" src="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thefirst70/the-first-70/widget/video.html" width="480px"></iframe>

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

The Muppets Are Communist, Fox Business Network Says

<object width='320' height='240'><param name='movie' value='http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/pl55.swf'></param><param name='flashvars' value='config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg3?id=201112020036'></param><param name='allowscriptaccess' value='always'></param><param name='allownetworking' value='all'></param><embed src='http://cloudfront.mediamatters.org/static/flash/pl55.swf' type='application/x-shockwave-flash' flashvars='config=http://mediamatters.org/embed/cfg3?id=201112020036' allowscriptaccess='always' allowfullscreen='true' width='320' height='240'></embed></object>

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Era of Small and Many

Reversing the trend of generations

by Bill McKibben

Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine




Painting: Suzanne Stryk

Earlier this year, my state’s governor asked if I’d give an after-lunch speech to some of his cabinet and other top officials who were in the middle of a retreat. It’s a useful discipline for writers and theorists to have to summarize books in half an hour, and to compete with excellent local ice cream. No use telling these guys how the world should be at some distant future moment when they’ll no longer be in office—instead, can you isolate themes broad enough to be of use to people working on subjects from food to energy to health care to banking to culture, and yet specific enough to help them choose among the options that politics daily throws up? Can you figure out a principle that might undergird a hundred different policies?

Or another way to say it: can you figure out which way history wants to head (since no politician can really fight the current) and suggest how we might surf that wave?
Here’s my answer: we’re moving, if we’re lucky, from the world of few and big to the world of small and many. We’ll either head there purposefully or we’ll be dragged kicking, but we’ve reached one of those moments when tides reverse.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

The Era of Small and Many- Reversing the trend of generations

by Bill McKibben

Published in the November/December 2011 issue of Orion magazine



Painting: Suzanne Stryk

Earlier this year, my state’s governor asked if I’d give an after-lunch speech to some of his cabinet and other top officials who were in the middle of a retreat. It’s a useful discipline for writers and theorists to have to summarize books in half an hour, and to compete with excellent local ice cream. No use telling these guys how the world should be at some distant future moment when they’ll no longer be in office—instead, can you isolate themes broad enough to be of use to people working on subjects from food to energy to health care to banking to culture, and yet specific enough to help them choose among the options that politics daily throws up? Can you figure out a principle that might undergird a hundred different policies?
Or another way to say it: can you figure out which way history wants to head (since no politician can really fight the current) and suggest how we might surf that wave?

Here’s my answer: we’re moving, if we’re lucky, from the world of few and big to the world of small and many. We’ll either head there purposefully or we’ll be dragged kicking, but we’ve reached one of those moments when tides reverse.

Take agriculture. For 150 years the number of farms in America has inexorably declined. In my state—the most rural in the nation—the number of dairies fell from 11,000 at the end of World War II to 998 this summer. And of course the farms that remained grew ever larger—factory farms, we called them, growing commodity food. Here in Vermont most of the remaining dairies are big, but not big enough to compete with the behemoths in California or Arizona; they operate so close to the margin that they can’t afford to hire local workers and instead import illegal migrants from Mexico.

Monday, November 21, 2011

Paramilitary Policing of Occupy Wall Street: Excessive Use of Force amidst the New Military Urbanism

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed_show_v2/300/2011/11/17/story/paramilitary_policing_of_occupy_wall_street"></script>

New York City Students Join OWS Day of Action with Union Square Rally, March

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed_show_v2/300/2011/11/18/story/new_york_city_students_join_ows"></script>

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Back to the Land, Reluctantly

Susan Gregory Thomas is the author of “In Spite of Everything: A Memoir.”
I’M not interested in being hip or a hippie. Nor does my happiness particularly hinge on artisanal cheese. (Odd, perhaps, given that I grew up a stone fruit’s throw away from Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif.)
As a 42-year-old Brooklyn mother of three, what I care about is lunch, and feeding my family on a tenuous and unpredictable income. And so I have 20 fresh-egg-producing hens and a little garden that yields everything from blackberries to butternut squash to burdock root.
My turn with spade and hoe started a few years ago when I found myself divorced and flat broke. My livelihood as a freelance writer went out the window when the economy tanked. I literally could afford beans, the dried kind, which I’d thought were for school art projects or teaching elementary math. And I didn’t know how to cook.

Luckily, my late father had hammered into me that grit was more important than talent. So, when I couldn’t afford fancy food — never mind paraben-free shampoo — for my babies, I figured, if peasants in 11th-century Sicily did all this, how hard could it be?
 I researched how to raise hens from chicks so we could get our omega-3-filled eggs. I learned to stretch a single piece of cheap meat into nearly a week’s worth of dinners. I made my own cleaning products. Not because I liked it. Because it was cheap.
My goal was to have healthy, unprocessed food for $10 or less a day. Cereal was the first thing to go. It dawned on me that making granola was a matter of tossing oatmeal and nuts into a bowl with a little oil, honey and spices — and then baking until brown. No more $14 boxes of fancy grains with pomegranate antioxidants.

iPhone App True Food Shopping Guide

<iframe width="400" height="233" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/h-Gzs1O6OH4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Label GMO

<iframe width="400" height="233" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/lP1FsZ2bn2k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Friday, November 11, 2011

TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline plan on hold!!!

Marcin,
Huge news: The Obama Administration just rejected TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline plan, putting the project on hold indefinitely while they study alternate routes.
This decision is a tremendous victory in the grassroots campaign against a pipeline that, until recently, was considered a done deal. The expected 12-18 month delay is a critical blow to the project, making it likely that the pipeline will be rejected or abandoned altogether.
Today’s decision is a major step in the right direction, and a true reason to celebrate — but let’s be clear: we can’t stop. The fight against Keystone XL isn’t over, and there are critical decisions on the horizon.
Perhaps the best news of the day is that we know how to win this fight. In this battle between people power and corporate dollars, people power is coming out on top.
In the last 72 hours, you have pledged over 200,000 hours to stand up to Big Polluters this year. Our people power will win this fight, and it will carry us to victory against coal, fracking, and the corporate interests polluting our politics.
Let’s keep the people power going. We’ve set a new goal of 500,000 hours for People Power 2012.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Jon Stewart Steps Up For Occupy-Wallstreet

<iframe width="400" height="301" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Pql2ETgegR4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Farm Bill Petition



http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/5735/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=4944

Food Sovereignty

<iframe src="http://blip.tv/play/hsEGgcalaQI.html" width="480" height="300" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://a.blip.tv/api.swf#hsEGgcalaQI" style="display:none"></embed>

Fields of Learning: The Student Farm Movement in North America


Where will the next generation of farmers come from? What will their farms look like? Fields of Learning: The Student Farm Movement in North America provides a concrete set of answers to these urgent questions, describing how, at a wide range of colleges and universities across the United States and Canada, students, faculty, and staff have joined together to establish on-campus farms as outdoor laboratories for agricultural and cultural education. From one-acre gardens to five-hundred-acre crop and livestock farms, student farms foster hands-on food-system literacy in a world where the shortcomings of input-intensive conventional agriculture have become increasingly apparent. They provide a context in which disciplinary boundaries are bridged, intellectual and manual skills are cultivated together, and abstract ideas about sustainability are put to the test.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Trader Joe's refuses to do its part.



March & Rally at Trader Joe's Corporate Headquarters
Friday, October 21st ~ 12 Noon
Monrovia, CA
Two SFA staffers are currently living and working in Southern California to mobilize folks for the
Trader Joe's action — if you live in the area or have any contacts there, please let us know!
With more than $8 billion in sales last year, Trader Joe's is an emerging leader in the US supermarket industry. The company’s rapid growth is largely based on its ethical and progressive image.
But behind that veneer lies a disregard for human rights.
For decades, farmworkers who pick tomatoes for companies like Trader Joe's have endured grinding poverty and systemic human rights abuses. Today, hope is on the horizon, but Trader Joe's refuses to do its part.
The Campaign for Fair Food led by the internationally-acclaimed, farmworker-led Coalition of Immokalee Workers has sparked an unprecedented transformation in farm labor conditions. Corporations such as Whole Foods, McDonald's, Taco Bell, and six other food industry giants have committed to a strict, farmworker-designed Code of Conduct and to increasing wages by paying a premium for their tomatoes.
But Trader Joe’s has refused to seize this opportunity to be a part of the solution, responding instead to the just demands of farmworkers and consumers with slick public relations stunts – hardly the behavior one would expect from one of the “most ethical companies” in the US.
Join the movement for Fair Food!
Join Florida tomato pickers and their student, faith and community allies in a mile-long march from a Monrovia Trader Joe's store to their corporate headquarters. Participants will gather outside of Trader Joe's at 604 W. Huntington Dr. on Friday, October 21 at noon, then march east on Hungtington Ave. to the company offices on 800 S. Shamrock Ave. There, farmworkers will lead a creative action calling on Trader Joe's to support human rights for the men and women who harvest the tomatoes sold in its stores.
For info. about the march and rally, including carpools or vans from your area, contact info@justharvestusa.org or 510-725-8752

Monday, October 3, 2011

Occupy Wall Street

<iframe frameborder="0" height="410px" src="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/610964639/occupy-wall-street-media/widget/video.html" width="480px"></iframe>

700 Arrested on Brooklyn Bridge as Occupy Wall Street Enters Third Week, Protests Grows Nationwide

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.democracynow.org/embed_show_v2/300/2011/10/3/story/700_arrested_on_brooklyn_bridge_as"></script>

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Keep Pesticide-Ridden Corn Off Your Dinner Plate


Surveys over the past decade have consistently shown that Americans don’t want to eat genetically engineered (GE or GMO) food. Despite the overwhelming opposition to this risky new food technology, the biotech giant Monsanto continues to impose its unlabeled GMO’s onto our dinner plates.
The latest: Monsanto’s new GMO corn, intended for the frozen and/or canned corn market. This experimental corn will not be labeled, so consumers cannot know when they may be eating a GMO food that contains a toxic pesticide in every bite. Monsanto’s corn is a new GMO variety that has been genetically modified for three different traits, to resist two different insects and to withstand heavy spraying with Monsanto's toxic Roundup herbicide. Because there are already untested varieties of other insect-resistant and Roundup-Ready varieties on the market, federal regulators are not requiring ANY approval process—which means NO public comment on its introduction into our food supply.
CFS has teamed up with the Center for Environmental Health to urge major companies that make frozen and/or canned corn to take action to avoid Monsanto’s new crop. We need tell Del Monte, Bird’s Eye and other major food makers to reject this new GMO corn. General Mills (Green Giant, Cascadian Farms) and Trader Joe’s have already indicated that they will not use Monsanto’s new GMO sweet corn in their products—so can the other top companies!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Juniata's First Potato Harvest















Seeding the Future: Cultivating the College Farm Conference




Join us as we head to Dickonson College for the "Seeding the Future Conference" on beginning, improving, and utilizing farms and gardens on college campus. From creating compost to developing new courses, learn how to cultivate opportunities for local, sustainable food integration across your curriculum, campus and community. Includes skills workshops and tours at the Dickinson College Farm, presentations, discussions and exhibits that feature faculty, students, farmers and staff from many different colleges that are using farms and gardens in their education programs.
The conference goes from October 14-15.  We will have vans leaving juniata on both days; students should feel free to come and go as is confient througout the conference. There is also an option to camp at the Dickonson farm with other students (there is a hoedown involved in this option). Regestration is $65, please contact for possible scholarships.
For more information see link bellow or contact Jarosmk08@juniata.edu
http://blogs.dickinson.edu/seedingthefuture/

Monday, August 22, 2011

Foreign Students in Exchange Program Walk Out of American Jobs amid Claims of Labor Exploitation



Hundreds of foreign students taking part in a U.S. State Department cultural exchange summer program walked out of their job at a Hershey’s chocolate plant in Pennsylvania. The students said their jobs are exploitative and in many cases grossly failed to cover the costs they spent on visas in their home countries. The students have reportedly been required to lift heavy boxes, work eight-hour shifts beginning at 11 p.m., and stand for long periods of time while packing Reese’s candies, Kit-Kats and Almond Joys on a fast-moving production line.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Drought 2011: Texas Agriculture Losses Could Set New Record


LUBBOCK, Texas -- Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West Texas before he decided to give up irrigating 75 acres of corn and focus on other crops that stood a better chance in the drought.
He thought rain might come and save those 75 acres, but it didn't and days of triple-digit heat sucked the remaining moisture from the soil. McGee walked recently through rows of sunbaked and stunted stalks, one of thousands of farmers counting his losses amid record heat and drought this year.
The drought has spread over much of the southern U.S., leaving Oklahoma the driest it has been since the 1930s and setting records from Louisiana to New Mexico. But the situation is especially severe in Texas, which trails only California in agricultural productivity.

Greening the Food Deserts



Last week, First Lady Michelle Obama announced that SUPERVALU, Walgreens and Walmart committed to open or expand 1500 supermarkets across America’s food deserts - low-income areas without easy access to a supermarket. But while improving food access is a noble goal, the announcement merits a closer look.
Critics of the program note that health disparities are more strongly related to poverty than location of grocery stores. In fact, a recently published study in a top medical journal found that “greater supermarket availability was generally unrelated to diet quality…” Responding to the announcement, Joe Hansen, of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), pointed out that “Walmart is more responsible than any other private employer in our country for creating poverty-level jobs that leave workers unable to purchase healthy food.”

U.N.: Horn of Africa Crisis Threatens 12.4 Million



The United Nations is warning the food crisis in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa has grown to threaten more than 12.4 million people. Aid groups continue to plead for donations as funding continues to lag. Less than half of a $2.5 billion U.N. appeal has been met. On Tuesday, a UNICEF spokesperson urged international airlines to help carry aid to starving children.
Marixie Mercadi: "The funding situation is dire for the Horn of Africa. UNICEF has a funding gap of over $200 million out of a $314 million appeal. There are over 2.3 million acutely malnourished children in the Horn of Africa. More than half a million will die if they do not get help within weeks. With therapeutic feeding, a child can recuperate in a matter of 4 to 6 weeks. We are appealing to the airline industry for free or heavily discounted airline cargo space to transport this therapeutic food to children who will die without it."

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

THE GARDEN.


I am proud and excited to share with you these photos, of the second year, of our student garden. For some of us it has been a distant goal for a long time, for others a pleasant surprise, but I think we can all agree that it is an encouraging victory of our effort.

All of us have put a great deal of energy into SFI--whether by planning, organizing, decorating, reading, watching, debating, hoping, or eating--we have successfully begun to materialize a vision of new ways we can grow, relate, eat, distribute and share food within and around the Juniata community.

 We all eat, some more than others, and this gives us a great responsibility. Our efforts over the last 3 years are being noticed, supported, and realized and it is our small group of students who is responsible. We should never underestimate or doubt the power of our own initiation.I hope we can continue to agree on our continuing goal of supporting each other in our individual and group efforts dedicated to food issues.

The food we are growing in the garden (and farm) is a small portion of the food and ideas that we aspire towards, but we are nevertheless creating fertile land on which to grow imagination. Growing ideas that will
inspire (or derail) other imaginations is the essential to what we are doing.

Here is our garden as of June (more recent photos are on-the-way):




Monday, July 18, 2011

Kenya Opens New Camp for Somali Refugees



Kenya is opening a new camp on its border with Somalia to accommodate refugees fleeing the region’s worst drought in decades. The Kenyan government says the camp will take in around 80,000 people within 10 days. An estimated 380,000 people are currently living in nearby camps meant to hold less than one-fourth that amount. The United Nations describes the Somali drought as the worst humanitarian disaster in the world, with more than 11 million people in need of life-saving assistance. A doctor at a Kenyan hospital said he is seeing increased arrivals of children suffering from severe malnutrition.
Doctor: "In the last few weeks, we’ve been seeing increasing cases of children with severe malnutrition. Of these children, most of them come with complications resulting from acute malnutrition. The children that we have seen in the wards, most of them are very sick, and most of them come here with an inability to feed, and we have to feed them through the nasal-gastric tube."

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Understanding Stress

Stress-related diseases like heart attacks are becoming common. Science is trying to understand how the human body copes with stress

STRESS - always recognised by alternative medicine, ancient Indian practitioners and yogis as a cause for disease, is only now being studied by modern scientists and doctors for its implications for the human body. Advances in the understanding of the neurobiology of stress open vistas for preventive medical treatment including drug therapy and in the more distant future, gene therapy.
"The proper acti-vity and effects of the stress system in the resting state and appropriate activation and effects in the stress state are important both for normal daily functioning and for coping with superimposed stress," explains G P Chrousos, a stress expert at theUS-based National Insti-tutes of Health ( NIH ).