Growing Passions – New York School Food Program
The US has traditionally had a significant role to play in children’s nutrition via their school lunch programs. While the worst of the system has been illustrated by people like Jamie Oliver, there are also some positive signs that food literacy gains are being taken seriously in the US. When travelling around New York recently the subways and trains were plastered with a multitude of materials about the new School Food Program’s summer campaign. With a slogan ‘Feed Your Mind’, the campaign promoted free summer meals for everyone under 18 years, sourced locally when possible, accessible all over the city, it was impressive in its scope. During the summer school break free breakfasts and lunches are available at hundreds of public schools, community pool centres, libraries, parks, public housing estates, and other locations around the city. Food trucks also complement this food access initiative, targeting areas of identified need. Plus they have just introduced compostable plates that will save 128 million styrofoam plates going to landfill.
Partnerships with programs such as the state’s school garden program Grow To Learn are identifying schools to participate in the school to cafe program during the year and the amount of local produce procured overall for the School Food Program is progressively increasing due to the institutional procurement policies that encourage purchase of locally grown food . A great initiative – if only we could have something on this scale in Australia.
Growing Passions – Quebec City Parliament
It seems natural that in a country with a reputation for lovely gardens and so much greenery and food production that Quebec’s parliament should have dedicated spaces for a kitchen garden for both the public and the parliamentary cafe, plus a medicinal garden and other quirky demonstration gardens. A garden of 130 varieties of fruit and vegetables was planted in front of the parliament a couple of years ago, sending a message to the world that urban agricuture is something that is recognised and it is interesting to the public. People arrive with scissors and small plastic bags, harvesting herbs and salad vegetables from areas marked as available to the public, tourists savour raspberries and the demonstration specimen container gardens show a sense of humour – such as ‘bowl of cereal’, the ‘salad bar’ and a version of the French term of affection saying ‘ I love my (little) cabbage’. What a way to invite the public into the seat of power.
Growing passions – Canada’s food activists
A week spent in Toronto was an opportunity to meet with people leading Ontario’s food scene. Tours of Foodshare Toronto, The Stop and Green Barn were generously provided by busy staff and meetings with Wayne Roberts and Nick Saul were inspiring insights into the background and activities of the Toronto Food Policy Coalition and the development of Canadian Food Centres via the evolution of The Stop community food centre from its origins as a food bank.
Wayne’s book, recently revised, “No-Nonsense Guide to World Food’ is a must read – an ebook it is over 300 pages packed with essential reading about the world’s food system. Nick Saul’s book ‘The Stop: How the fight for good food transformed a community and inspired a movement’ is equally essential reading. How wonderful it was to be able to witness the origins of this cutting edge movement that is showing how community food centres should be integral to every community and neighbourhood, replacing a charitable model of food handouts with access to healthy fresh produce, citizen empowerment and food literacy.
Local shopping at Loblaw’s supermarket and the fantastic Evergreen farmers market showed how a Local Food Act can work to support producers and assist the community in accessing local produce – due to the work of Sustain Ontario and long standing Foodland Ontario branding. The government support for a Local Food Act is Ontario is ground breaking and achieving fantastic results in the community – have a look at their ‘Ontario Local Food Report’.
Having witnessed the future now its time to make this happen in Australia.
Growing Passions – Vancouver Island
On Vancouver Island, similar to elsewhere around the world, farmers markets are a significant community event. Our bright and sunny days on Vancouver island were a perfect backdrop for farmers markets at Campbell River and Lantzville, where once more kombucha was on the menu and the blueberries were fine. There’s nothing like a farmers market to provide a conversation starter, with pride in quality of produce and respect and appreciation for that as the starting point.
Growing Passions – San Diego
In downtown Hillcrest, San Diego we met Pete, whose passion is growing succulents and verge gardening. Fascinated by his technique of totally surrounding his house with colourful pots of succulents of every description we chatted when we met him out front of his spectacular home. His water wise gardening in drought stricken California is spectacular. He shared the secret of his lining up so many rows of potted plants attached to his house – a special hook – he gave us one to take home. His verge garden went around the block and with healthy loquats in addition to his succulents he shows how a water wise verge garden can also be edible.
10 ideas for a more edible Bendigo in 2015
Using my 2014 Template for Food System Change here are 10 Ideas for a more Edible Bendigo in 2015:
1. Vision
Contribute to a City of Greater Bendigo Community Food Coalition, supporting a local food policy and urban agriculture policy to ensure your favourite food system ideas and expertise are included
2. Champion
Start a local community food market that champions very local produce – separate from a larger Farmers Market, involving small scale and niche producers and people from the Bendigo community with something edible and homegrown to sell or swap plus bargain boxes of seasonal fruit and veg, maybe with recipes for their use
3. Participate
Work with a community group to start a weekly community lunch using rescued, donated, homegrown and gleaned fresh produce . Check out the Castlemaine Community Lunch
4. Advocate
Find out who else shares an idea you have around food production in Bendigo and advocate for change Eg. Why can’t our street trees be citrus trees? Wouldn’t it be great to have community orchards around the city? Have you heard of The Lemon Tree Project? or local ideas for a community food forest garden?
5. Value
Map our assets – infrastructure like kitchens in public buildings and trees producing fruit going to waste and get ideas going of what we could do with them. Check out this Harvest Group‘s activities
6. Establish
Think about what sort of new ventures could be established that will enhance the food system in our local community? A food hub or a community food centre? Check out the Trentham Food Hub, the cooperative buying and distribution of the Open Food Network and the brilliant Canadian Community Food Centres. How about investing in commercial greenhouses, or even better, a large community greenhouse? When it comes to the most popular and healthy produce greenhouse produce seems to be the way forward. Plus, greenhouse equipment, including heat shrink plastic wrap can be found online at a great price nowadays. Just take a look at this visqueen plastic for instance. By investing in the necessary equipment now, a community greenhouse could be up and running in no time at all.
7. Celebrate
Celebrate the diversity of food cultures in Bendigo with an annual event where we can learn food preparation ideas from our diverse citizens such as our Karen Community
8. Teach
Volunteer at the local primary or secondary school to grow fresh produce and share your experience with the students, such as the local Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation program at Eaglehawk Primary School
9. Invest
Invest funds in local community food initiatives and social enterprise startups, large and small, and where possible provide advice, mentoring and support. A new local social enterprise Growing Change is supporting is Go and Grow Gardens
10. Reduce
Find out about composting to reduce waste going to landfill and creating greenhouse gas emissions, so many things can be composted, there are even loads of benefits of composting dog poop, so even something so obsolete could be used for good – 2015 is the International Year of Soils. Let’s have a Composters’ Composium later in the year – an event similar to one in Melbourne a couple of years back that was a smash hit. Think about reducing waste in general