The kids are back in school and enjoying the famous school lunches. After eight years of "social-cut-back" government the lunches are very different than in yesteryear.
I remember when I was a kid, many, many years ago, the school lunches were pretty hardy even if they were a bit funky. Things like the square pizza slices that were different from any pizza you can imagine. What was that cheese on there? Not sure what type of sauce that was either. And my favorite, the incredible cinnamon rolls.
Over the years, things began to decline in school kitchens. Remember during the Regan administration when ketchup was being counted as a vegetable for nutritional purposes?
With all of the attention be placed on the "greening" of America, one thing that hasn't be talked about much is school lunches. Here is a an interesting blog post I ran across recently about healthier school lunches and what got me thinking about this.
The first step in nutritional lunches for your kids is really to pack a lunch for them. This works well if your kids are interested in eating healthy. And if there is not some "kid-stigma" about kids who carry lunch pails. When my children were in school they insisted they had to buy lunch.
The best answer for all school children is to work towards school systems buying locally for school lunches. I wrote an article about Consumer Supported Agriculture in which I encouraged local growers to start looking for new markets and to be creative about it. We joined a CSA network this summer that is affiliated with our local Hen House Grocery stores. It has been a great experience. It seems to me that a similar alliance could be created to develop a market with the local school systems to provide better foods for school lunches.The local school might even serve as a good CSA outlet for families to pick up food subscriptions.
There could also be some interesting educational opportunities as well. Many CSA's encourage participation of their members at the local farms. Wouldn't it be a great out-of-the-classroom experience to get the children connected to the source of their food? The lessons that would provide are multiple. You could incorporate lessons on science, writing, socials studies, business, economics, among others.
A simple cup of porridge: Solidarity with our Hungry Brothers and Sisters
Many in the hungry third world are serviced by charitable food organizations such as the World Food Programme. The WFP concentrates on feeding children at school. This encourages school attendance along with providing nutrition to give the children a fighting chance at a better future.
WFP provides one cup of corn meal/soy meal porridge or beans and rice. If available a cup of milk is also provided. For many children this may be their only meal of the day.
The recent food crisis resulting in the price of grains shooting up 50% to 75% means that organizations like WFP now must try to provide food with the same funding base but only having 1/2 to 1/3 the buying power. This means the food does not stretch like it did before and not all the needs can be met.
If you would like to really know what it is like to live on one meal of porridge a day, try what I call the "48-Hour Fill the Cup" challenge. Below is a recipe for corn meal porridge. Try eating nothing but a single serving of this porridge once per day for 2 full days or 48 hours. I suggest 48 hours since this amount of time gives you not only head-knowledge but full-body knowledge of what it feels like to live on this amount of food. (If you have any type of medical condition that would be adversely affected, do not try this.)
WFP is currently holding a "Fill the Cup" campaign to raise funds. You might even calculate the money you save on meals during your 48-hour challenge and donatethat amount to the World Food Programme.
Cornmeal Porridge, one serving recipe
Place 1 cup soy milk (I use vanilla flavored) in a pan over medium heat.
In a measuring cup add 1/2 cup cold water and 1/4 cup corn meal.
Soak the corn meal until water is fully absorbed and then add to the warming soy milk.
Stir until thickened and serve in a large mug.
Drink lots of water throughout the 48 hours, but don't eat anything but one bowl of porridge a day. I kept a journal of how I felt and the ideas that floated by as the days worn on. You might consider that as well. I continued to do my work and house chores. On hour 49 I broke the challenge with cheese and crackers. Yes I am weak!
I don't recommend this as a long-term diet for obvious nutritional reasons. I also don't claim this to be an accurate recipe for what WFP serves, just a facsimile to give you a good idea what it is like to eat if you were living in the hungry third world. Hopefully it is thought provoking for you.
-Joy
Fill the Cup! It takes just 25 cents (US Currency) to fill one of the red cups that the World Food Programme uses to give hungry school children a regular school meal of porridge, rice, or beans. US $1.50 would feed a child for a week. Help us fill the cup by making an online donation now.
Fill the Cup is an international campaign to raise funds for the estimated 59 million children in the developing world who go to school on an empty stomach. From Africa and Asia to Latin America WFP free school meals are served up in 70 developing countries, encouraging poor families to send their children to class and laying the foundations for a better future. WFP estimates that providing free meals to all the world's hungry school children will cost about US $3 Billion per year.
The recent issues with food scarcity around the world highlight the weaknesses that has been introduced by industrial farming. Always looking for ways to make the operation more profitable leads towards engineering diversity out of the food network. International corporations with loyalty only to their own interests invest capital where land and labor is cheapest but sell the produce where it will garner the highest return, taking food out of countries that can least afford to lose this sustenance. From the loss of local farms to the loss of variety on our dinner tables and even the loss of natural habitats and animal species industrial farming seem a soulless entity with no concern to the land resources it is ravishing and leaving wasted.
What happens in times of natural disaster or economic crisis when the diversity of our food network has been compromised? Read on for some current examples.
Food Riots Speak Loudly
Food riots around the world over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue of poverty to a boiling point. World Bank President Robert Zoellick has said the surging costs could mean "seven lost years" in the fight against worldwide poverty.
"While many are worrying about filling their gas tanks, many others around the world are struggling to fill their stomachs, and it is getting more and more difficult every day," Zoellick said late last week in a speech opening meetings with finance ministers. (Read more...)
When Importing Goes Bad
TOKYO, May 16 (Reuters) - Japan could find itself dining on rice, pickles and potatoes if global food supplies keep tightening and imports are cut off, the government warned on Friday.
Just 39 percent of food in Japan is produced at home, the lowest percentage among the major industrialised countries, raising alarm among officials over food security as supplies fall and prices soar. (Read more...)
Sustainable Agriculture Depends on Diversity
(SciDevNet) A variety of factors work against maintaining agricultural biodiversity. But among the most important is a lack of knowledge and awareness of agricultural diversity's intrinsic value to society, and its potential for development. Sustainable agricultural systems depend on a diversity of species to withstand attacks — from present and future diseases, pests, climate and other environmental changes — as well as unpredictable social, economic and market demands. (Read more...)
Monoagriculture and monocrops have other side effects. Reducing diversity in plant life also affects the wildlife that lives in the farming regions. Many native bird species are being driven to extinction because of loss of diverse food sources. (Read more...)
Vanishing Food Resources
(Green Living Tips) In the USA, only 5% of the apple varieties that existed 200 years ago still remain. In the UK, 90% of vegetable varieties have disappeared over the last century.
We are basically driving many of our food resources to extinction on purpose. Market control, aesthetics and shelf life reign over diversity and taste these days. Hybrid varieties are developed by companies for pest resistance, fast growth and uniformity; then marketed to a such a degree that traditional varieties lose popularity and disappear. They are also bred for qualities related to easy machine harvesting, long distance transport and refrigeration.
The seeds you buy at your nursery, even the fruit and vegetables you purchase from organic farms are likely to be these hybrid varieties. Another disturbing issue is just a handful of companies control the majority of the world's seed production and as a result, farmers and home gardeners are basically held to ransom. (Read more...)
Making a difference
There are people working to preserve biodiversity and also the heritage that plants hold. One for example is Seed Savers Exchange. Seed Savers Exchange was founded in 1975 by Diane Ott Whealy and Kent Whealy, after her terminally-ill grandfather gave them the seeds of two garden plants, Grandpa Ott's Morning Glory and German Pink Tomato, that his parents brought from Bavaria when they immigrated to St. Lucas, Iowa in the 1870s.
SSE organization is saving the world’s diverse, but endangered, garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, while educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity. Few gardeners comprehend the true scope of their garden heritage or how much is in immediate danger of being lost forever.
Another very interesting organization Kokopelli Seed Foundation promotes charitable donations of organic, heirloom seeds and seed-saving education to fight hunger in Third World poor countries. For an excellent and extensive article on the importance of biodiversity and dangers of monoagriculture, please read A Short History of Plant Breeding, from the early Beginnings up to modern Biotechnology by Jean Pierre Berlan, translation by Bernard Declercq featured on the Kokopelli site.
What you can do:
As a consumer:Look at labels and buy local. Local markets selling locally grown food strengthens the community. Shop farmers markets, buy and enjoy unique varieties and encourage the farmers you buy from to grow diverse crops. Consider a closer relationship with your food grower by joining a CSA - consumer supported agriculture coop. (CSA started in Japan and was called Teikei meaning "putting the farmer's face on food.") Encourage your local green grocer to shop locally to stock his or her market by letting them know you would prefer locally grown food.
Write and/or call the office of the President, your congresspersons and senators and encourage them to support a farm bill that builds stronger farm communites and builds a healthier environment.
Heifer International: Causes and Remedies for the Food Crisis - Dr. Jim DeVries, Heifer’s Vice President of Programs says, "it is becoming apparent that the industrial farming system is not sustainable. In the West, decentralizing production, with an increase in the number of family-sized farms or large family-operated farms that use methods that recycle agricultural byproducts would help improve the negative impacts of industrial agricultural production."
As a small farm farmer:Get more involved in connections between farmers and consumers by considering a Consumer Supported Agriculture (CSA) business model for your farm. Work with local green grocers to develop markets for unique crops. Also develop new markets with the growing number of organically inclined restaurants that could become regular customers for unique food crops. Contact an heirloom seed organization and explore growing a wider variety of crops.
Is it true that government farm subsidies are going to the wealthy and not to the family farms of America? What is the outcome of the subsidies? Why are Americans going hungry?
We are facing instability in the US jobs market, foreclosures in the US housing market, and the US family farm is being overlooked by Congress yet again when we need family farms as much as they need the help of the subsidies. But where are the subsidies going?
Bill Moyers: "What was supposed to be a temporary financial safety net for imperiled family farmers has become a huge boondoggle for a fraction of wealthy farmers, including landowners who've never gotten close enough to a barn to slip on the manure. But you don't have to take my word for it. Listen to a team of journalists from the Washington Post (Expose - Farm Subsidies) —which by the way, won six Pulitzer prizes this week."
The Center for Rural Affairs asserts that, "The single most effective thing Congress could do to strengthen family farms is to stop subsidizing mega farms to drive their neighbors out of business by bidding land away from them. The 2007 Farm Bill should set an enforceable payment limits on loan deficiency payments, marketing loan gains, and all other income support payments. This limit should be strictly applied to everyone, regardless of how many corporations they create. The bill should eliminate loopholes that allow large operations to receive millions in loan deficiency payments and marketing loan gains through generic certificates or by forfeiting commodities to USDA to pay off loans."
The only way that Congress will ever care about rural development and family farming in general is if rural America builds connections with Urban and Suburban America to join forces in a common cause: the stability of our food basket. If our bread basket is empty, we cannot and we must not simply "eat cake" produced from grains grown in Argentina. We must remember and support the families that built our country by the sweat of the brow with their hands on the plow.
This is not out of charity but out of the knowledge that locally provided goods are far superior in multiple ways to those transported over long distances from mega-corporate farms. Not only is the quality of the product better, but the local commerce is better for the local community. Strong local communities equal a stronger America. What is that phrase??? Oh yeah, "all politics are local." Apparently not, if the farm bill subsidizes corporate farming to the harm of the family farm.
It's time for all Americans to realize that the pain of the rural American is the sign of a "heart" problem. We must all gain an understanding that the pain of the rural American is the pain of every American. City-folks wake up! The milk you drink for breakfast doesn't come from a carton and cereal doesn't come from a plastic bag.
Biodiversity is a term we hear a lot lately in the news. We are told that it is important, but what exactly is biodiversity? And why should you care?
The ecosystem of our planet is an intricately woven fabric of life with many interdependencies. The greater the magnitude of biodiversity the healthier our ecosystem is.
The Convention on Biological Diversity defines biodiversity as:
"the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are a part; this includes diversity within species, between species, and of ecosystems."
The Encyclopedia of the Earth describes the importance of this concept:
"Biological diversity is of fundamental importance to the functioning of all natural and human-engineered ecosystems, and by extension to the ecosystem services that nature provides free of charge to human society. Living organisms play central roles in the cycles of major elements (carbon, nitrogen, and so on) and water in the environment, and diversity specifically is important in that these cycles require numerous interacting species."
With the advent of "out-sourcing" our farming from local farms to corporate farming in the US and around the world, we have inadvertently diminished the biodiversity of our food. Corporate farming has aimed towards efficiency in supplying the foods we crave. This leads to finding food varieties that package well and are sturdy for the storage and transportation required to bring it across the many miles it often has to travel. Unique but more tender fruits and vegetables are either squeezed out by sturdier varieties or are more highly priced therefore economically squeezed out of the market.
The efficiencies of corporate farming have poured ever increasing amounts of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers onto the land. This actually acts to diminish diversity and depletes the viability of the soil causing the need for more and more chemicals to force the land to produce. It also breaks the natural interaction that is produced by healthy biodiversity.
We also lose in other ways when we out-source local farming to corporate farms. We lose the individuals that have helped build our nation and feed the world - the family farms. Family farms are struggling because we are buying our corporate-grown food at corporate stores which by-pass the local farmer. More and more, this food is coming from beyond our national borders where regulations are more lax. We are putting our food basket at risk by importing which puts the control of food in the hands of others and by farming in monocrops which weakens the ability of our food sources to withstand stress. We are in essence breaking down our human-diversity by allowing this to happen. If you think there is nothing you can do about this, think again. Your purse strings are your strongest vote. Buy local and buy responsibly grown food. Learn more about what you can do to encourage biodiversity: The Center for Biodiversity at the American Museum of Natural History is a great resource for finding out about the subject. Read the module: Living with Biodiversity found on the AMHN site. This is a great place to start gaining understanding of the subject as it relates to your everyday life.
Ten Simple ThingsYou Can Do to Promote Biodiversity.
Watch the following video and see what one person can do.
Only 17 but he is a Super-Hero of the Local Market
