Archive for November, 2009

Posted by Vanessa King | November 18th, 2009

This video was part of a project about undernutrition.

The first part of the project looked at community gardening in Rwanda involving people with HIV, who were unable to take their antiretroviral medicine because of nutrient deficiencies. That part of the project demonstrated a traditional idea of what undernourishment looks like: underweight Africans.

This video, Empty Calories, examines undernutrition in the developed world. Instead of underweight, undernutrition in America often amounts to obesity. We look at weight as something individuals control, but in reality it can be the result of social determinants of health, such as environment, access, availability and affordability.

Posted by Katie | November 17th, 2009

A new report by So Others Might Eat (SOME Inc.) and the DC Fiscal Policy Institute finds that Temporary Assistance for Needy Familes (TANF) is not providing adequate support for the 16,000 low-income families in the District’s program. TANF is designed to provide job training, supportive services, and cash assistance, with the goal of helping adults who are able to work find jobs.

Others have written about the findings of the report and its innovative methods. What hasn’t yet been discussed is cash assistance, and in particular the supports available as families transition from TANF to employment.

At D.C. Hunger Solutions, we’ve often heard that cash assistance and food stamps rarely last the full month, leaving people without enough money to buy food. This report comes to the same conclusion, pointing out that the benefits TANF families receive ($428 a month for a family of three) are not enough to make ends meet. These families often face one or more weeks at the end of the month without enough money to buy food.

Research has consistently shown that even a temporary increase in food insecurity can have a long-lasting and serious impact on the well-being and health of families.

While the report recommends the District government increase cash assistance, something Fair Budget Coalition and others have pushed for, there’s another immediate step the District can take to improve food security for TANF families: adopting transitional food stamp benefits, a policy option that will help families moving from TANF to paid employment.

Adopting this policy makes sense for D.C. families. There is a reduction in public benefits that accompanies an increase in earnings which makes transitioning from TANF to work that much more difficult. According to the report, a family of three that works for $9 an hour at their job (well below the living wage at $12.10), will lose $4,512 in food stamp benefits annually. Even worse, many families drop out of the food stamp program altogether when they leave TANF, unaware that they may still be eligible for benefits.

As one TANF recipient says in the report, “It’s more than you get with TANF but when you look at it, if you take that job, they’re going to take all your benefits from you once you get that job, so that means you have no help with food.”

Under the transitional food stamps policy option, a family leaving TANF can continue to receive the same food stamp benefit, adjusted for the loss of TANF income, without any additional interviewing, processing, or reporting requirements, for up to five months. And the payment is 100% federally funded. Nineteen states, including Maryland and Virginia, have already adopted this option.

During this difficult transition from TANF to employment, the District must ensure that families do not go hungry. Adopting transitional food stamp benefits for these families is one important way of providing this support and moving families toward stability

Katie Vinopal, Nutrition Associate at DC Hunger Solutions

Posted by Brynn Slate | November 16th, 2009

As members of the Columbia Heights Youth Club turn the soil at Girard Children’s Community Garden, I hold out my hand to accept a squirming tangle of earthworms. Girls aged 7 to 13 come to the garden, located near the corner of 15th and Girard Streets NW, on Monday afternoons to take part in one of the many programs led by City Blossoms, a non-profit organization that teaches young people in DC and Baltimore through creative food projects.

Along with other children’s groups who come to the Girard garden throughout the week, these girls take part in all stages of growing food. They plant, tend, harvest, cook, and eat fresh, organically grown vegetables.

Along the way, they have the chance to get up close and personal with the critters living in the soil.

On a crisp November afternoon, the girls use their hands and small trowels to dig into one corner of the garden and tuck colorful pansies into the moist, dark earth. Each discovery of another worm sends them into squeals of disgust and delight.

Squatting among the girls, teacher Lola Bloom, City Blossoms’ co-founder and director of curriculum development, explains the crucial role of worms in the garden—in terms that resonate immediately with youth.

“What’s your favorite food?” she asks.

“Pizza!” the girls chorus back.

“Okay, do you know where the tomatoes in pizza sauce grow?” She tells them how all of the foods we love to eat come from soil enriched by worm castings.

“Worm poo-poo!” the girls giggle.

Celebrating the close of its first growing season in 2009, the Girard Children’s Community Garden oozes kid-friendliness. Hand-painted signs welcome visitors, share important reminders (“Don’t get hurt in the dirt”), and recommend culinary and medicinal uses for herbs. Jack-o-lanterns nestle among red and orange zinnias. A five-foot-long bug sculpture constructed of colorful glass and metal crouches over the herb plot and invites little ones to hide out under its belly.

Children are encouraged to take ownership of the space and to think of it “not as a place just for work to be done, but a place for play,” Lola says. Since the garden shares its perimeter with a playground, “kids make a point of coming in and independently watering, planting seeds, checking on plants, and tasting herbs and vegetables as part of their overall playground experience.”

And because City Blossoms integrates not just garden work, but also cooking and arts into its curriculum, neighborhood children can stay connected to this spot throughout the year. Winter activities include creating natural dyes from garden plants, tracking the growth of bulbs through written and physical exercises, and concocting meals from winter greens like Swiss chard and kale.

City Blossoms hopes to spark childrens’ interest so they’ll “be more creative and explore not just when they are in school but during their free time,” said Lola. Arts projects also help kids develop a sense of their place within the neighborhood. “It is a way for them to have a voice in the community,” she said. “The projects they work on are public and receive tons of positive feedback from families and neighbors.”

The opportunity to connect with adults and gain recognition from the broader community is key to keeping kids engaged with food in the long term. “Give them a space to showcase their own recipes and creations with the larger community,” she suggests. Lola envisions a child-driven food festival or even a restaurant where all the dishes are grown and created by kids engaged in transforming DC’s foodscape.

Brynn Grumstrup Slate spent two seasons growing vegetables and blogging for the Local Food Project at Airlie. She is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Urban Environmental Leadership.

Posted by Dan | November 13th, 2009

1) Although Dean Foods markets itself as a ‘regional’ brand in order to make their milk appear more local in its origin, they are really just offering the same product in different packaging, and the milk could come from any of Dean’s suppliers across the country.  Dean is also the largest producer of organic milk in the U.S. through its ‘Horizon’ brand, which has been equally implicated in price fixing lawsuits.  It’s an important reminder that ‘organic’, ‘local’, and ‘sustainable’ all mean different things, and that DC consumers may not always be purchasing exactly what they think they are.

2) Even when the milk is sourced locally/regionally, price-fixing between processors and producers provides an incentive for farmers to cut costs. This means farming more intensively, cutting corners on sustainability or quality, and/or upscaling operations to increasingly mechanized and industrialized practices.  So even if DC consumers are benefiting from these price savings (which is highly debatable), the environment and the nutrition value of their milk suffers greatly.  

3) A farmer’s lone alternative to selling their milk to a big processor is to focus on boutique, direct-to-consumer marketing through local farmers markets and CSAs.  For example, milk from South Mountain Creamery in Maryland — a local, family farm that doesn’t use growth hormones and minimizes antibiotic use — gives their cows free choice of feeding, and does a great deal for environmental sustainability by packaging in reusable glass bottles, not using pesticides on their fields (preventing downstream runoff), and several other initiatives on methane and bio-diesel energy projects. Their milk costs $7.50 a gallon, plus delivery fee.  Although this seems like an excessive price, it reflects the real cost of producing milk in a sustainable manner. This establishes two parallel markets for milk in the District: the vast majority, which is affordable, less nutritious, and environmentally less sustainable, or nutritious and environmentally friendly, which is available only to an elite cadre of buyers.

In an effort to stop price-fixing in the milk industry, Northeast dairy farmers recently brought a class action law suit against Dean Foods, accusing the company of unfairly using their market muscle to depress wholesale liquid milk prices.  Over time, this case will be fought out in US district court, and will invariably affect the price, availability, and quality of milk nationwide, but with greater impact on urban areas like Washington.

Breaking the price stranglehold of middlemen like Dean Foods will help give farmers the flexibility to adopt a range of business models that can more gradually and affordably move towards higher quality, more environmentally sustainable milk for all consumers. Over the next several months, the DC Food For All will continue tracking this lawsuit as it progresses, and explore what alternative visions for a regional milk system might look like.

Posted by Liz Falk | November 11th, 2009

Will Allen calls this a Good Food Revolution. And when standing shoulder to shoulder with 250 other people in a giant greenhouse on the outskirts of Milwaukee — where every foot of space is sprouting edible, nutritious, organic greens — it’s hard to not feel like this is a Revolution.

Last week I had the opportunity to attend a training and conference at Growing Power. Held at the 3-acre Growing Power main facility, the training was an insightful look into the operations of a highly successful urban community farm project. I toured the site, learned the ins and outs of Growing Power’s innovative farming systems, and spoke at length with staff and interns. Growing Power, now running 10 farm sites, managing more than a dozen greenhouses and an extensive aquaponic system thus enabling year-round food production and having processed over 20 million pounds of food waste into fertile soil, is (un)paving the way to urban food security and sustainability.

Ten years after establishing themselves, Growing Power is now being approached by Milwaukee city officials for advice and insight into creating sustainable communities. Milwaukee, with the help of Will Allen, has created a City Master Plan with urban agriculture as a major component of it. Public transportation is slated to be brought to every nook and cranny of the city, native and perennial plantings are replacing the ornamental non-native ones seen in public spaces, the Milwaukee Public Market is being expanded rather than closed, and subsidized housing projects are being renovated to include social and community services within them so to encourage people to stay in their communities. And just last week, the city of Milwaukee promised to help Growing Power raise $8 million to build the country’s first vertical farm!

Following the training, the conference, called “Growing Food and Justice For All”, was equally as exciting. It was there that I experienced the Good Food Revolution in action – at a very large scale. 250 people from all over the US (including Hawaii) and several from other countries were there to learn from Growing Power’s work and the work of each other. Each person came from a different community with different needs, different challenges and most importantly, different resources.

So, how is this all a Revolution? As revolutions go, this Good Food Revolution is driven by the people, and is for the people. And it’s only beginning to gain momentum. This Revolution is the energy of thousands of people across the US who work passionately and tirelessly to ensure that food – Good Food, fresh food – is available and accessible to every individual: to the young, the old, the rich, the poor, the disabled, the sick, nursery schoolers, college students, the urbanites, rural dwellers, the homeless and the homebound. This is the endless amount of resources and information each Good Food leader holds and their open and willingness to share it with others. This is the tangible action happening in our communities as a result of the communal knowledge. These actions beautify urban spaces. They teach at-risk youth how to farm and care for the land. They create urban markets where small family farmers can sell produce and make a living. They bring fresh produce to food deserts and corner stores where it has been scant. They empower people to live healthfully, to take control over their dietary choices and the health of their communities. They unite people through a simple and central component of all human existence: food.

The Good Food Revolution is changing the organizational structure of our food system as we know it. The new system we, each of us, are working to establish enables transparency and involvement at every level, from seed to fork. People (not machines) are planting seeds, tending fields, and delivering fresh food to their community. Food grown in communities is staying within those communities, creating jobs, and sustainable food economies.

As a stakeholder in our DC Good Food movement, the trip to Growing Power was an opportunity for me, personally and as Director and co-Founder of Common Good City Farm, to gain perspective on a community food project, on its management structure, on its methods of operations, its relationship to its staff, immediate neighbors, and the greater network of community food projects nationwide. Further, I was looking forward to attending a food conference that was more than just about how to grow food, but that was focused on how to involve people, how to ensure equity for all people, how to inspire people to be leaders and recognize their own potential. And moreover, it was exciting to represent DC, the Nation’s Capitol, at the conference and bring my new learned wisdom back to share in hopes it can help continue our momentum as leaders in the Good Food Movement here.

Altogether, in one conference room, talking about people, talking about food, talking about peoples’ access too food, about neighborhoods and growing food in cities, it was very clear that a Revolution is happening with our food system. Each person in that room is doing their part, in their way, to make sure that somebody else is able to have Good Food. And as we all know, “ a group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed that is the only thing that ever has.”

Liz Falk is a founder and director of Common Good City Farm.

Posted by Ed Bruske | November 11th, 2009

By Ed Bruske
Contributing Editor
Cross-posted from The Slow Cook

Plans for Justice Park Community Garden

The last time I sat in on a planning meeting for our neighborhood’s new community garden I was nearly run out of the room for suggesting it be built along the lines of a CSA farm, rather than simply providing plots to individuals. I reasoned that lots more food could be grown on a small farm under single management, but gardeners want their individual plots.

The plans for this 1/4-acre garden have come a long way since then. Recently Mayor Adrian Fenty participated in a much ballyhooed ground-breaking. Since our last meeting, a working group of gardeners has put up a site on Facebook, registered a Twitter account and even printed business cards, along with the Yahoo! listerv we’ve been using to announce meetings.

Last night, revised architectural drawings were revealed to a meeting of about 20 prospective plot holders and representatives from the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation, which is responsible for the land.

In all, the plans provide for 40 individual plots, each about 50 square feet in size. That’s a pretty good size for a community garden plot. But the parcel also has room for a public area with room to stroll, seating and even tables. The discussion now centers on a proposed storage shed that some members would rather not look at, or think is too big. But the more I look at the plans, the more I see a place for a community composting facility, or even a greenhouse.

One of the most frequent questions I get from neighbors is where can they compost their kitchen scraps if the don’t have a compost heap of their own. The District of Columbia does not have a municipal composting program (it needs one), and people want to be more environmentally responsible and not send their food wastes to the landfill, where it just turns into methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Last year, a group proposed building such a composting facility at another community garden but could not get the grant funding it needed to get the project off the ground. With the city funding our new community garden, this is the perfect time to take up the idea of a small neighborhood composting facility, perhaps an indoor worm operation that could be used as a model for the whole city, as well as providing valuable worm castings for the garden plots.

Better yet, if not a storage shed, what about a greenhouse? Even if it were just a large hoop house, it could not only house a worm composting operation, it would provide an invaluable site for gardeners to start their seedlings in spring and extend the growing season spring and fall.

And dare I mention chickens? Can you picture a community garden with chickens, just a mile from the White House? Kids would be lined up around the block to get a look. And the gardeners would have fresh eggs every day.

Well, I’m not sure they’d go for the chickens. But there are all sorts of tantalizing possibilities for making this site a valuable food resource. It’s a blank slate–a completely vacant lot–with tons of room around the perimeter for fruit and nut trees. A landscape architect has been working with the group, and apparently a desire for shade trees has been expressed. But why not trees that feed people? Walnut, hazelnut, chestnut: with very little care, these not only provide shade and valuable carbon sequestration, but shed edible nuts year after year. Cherry, plum, apple, peach, pear, fig thrive in the city. Paw paw has the added virtue of being native to the area.

The group has also requested hedging. But why not berries for hedges? Raspberries, blueberries, black berries, currants: they are all worthy landscape plants, as well as providing a bounty of nutritious food at different times of the year. Fruit and nut trees, berries, perennial vining plants such as grapes or kiwi–all should be features in any modern, sustainable community gardening scheme, to my mind.

On its Facebook page, the Justice Park Community Garden lists the Capital Area Food Bank as a partner. In fact, 10 percent of the garden–or four plots–are to be set aside for a local food bank. But it was disappointing at last night’s meeting to see only white faces representing an area of the city that is heavily populated with blacks and Hispanics. This garden is one of the most urban of any in the city. It is surrounded by apartment buildings. In fact, the garden site abuts a low-income housing complex.

At one point early in the planning process it was suggested that an effort should be made to go door-to-door, with interpreters if necessary, to encourage people who might benefit most from growing their own food to participate. I wonder if a more valiant outreach effort should not be made. We were told than anyone belonging to the Yahoo! listserv automatically qualifies for a garden plot. But as one would-be plot holder noted, many of our neighbors don’t even have computers. The question sits there waiting to be answered: how do you get the entire community involved?

Ed Bruske is author of The Slow Cook blog

Posted by Amy Johnson | November 10th, 2009

A couple of weeks ago, residents of the small town in Lantana, Florida organized in protest of USPS’s plans to close their local post office. Their organizing tactics were pretty unusual: they sent hundreds of protest coconuts by mail – one by one – to the Postmaster General’s office in L’enfant Plaza. Last week, Bread for the City received a call to ask if we would accept the many mail bins full of tropical fruit.

Given our recent Nutrition Initiative to bring more fresh produce into our food pantry, we figured this was an opportunity we could not refuse.

But it turns out that opening a coconut is quite a labor-intensive process, and there are very particular ways in which you can use its innards. I had never actually held a real coconut in my hand, and had no idea where to begin. Needless to say, the same goes for most of our clients.

In order to ensure that our customers weren’t as clueless as I, we handed out a flier with step-by-step directions on how to puncture, drain the juice, and eventually crack and cut up the coconut.

• Place the coconut on a hard surface that won’t damage, such as a cutting board.
• Find the soft “eye” of the coconut.
• Screw the coconut’s eye with a corkscrew, or hammer a nail through the eye.
• Place the coconut over a bowl with the eye face down to let the water drain.
• Keep the juice for use in cooking.
• Put the coconut in a plastic bag and smash it on a concrete floor, or wrap it securely in a towel and hammer it a few times. Take it out of the bag or unwrap the towel. (Cooking the coconut in the oven at 375 for 20-30 minutes after draining may make it easier to crack open.)
• Cut the white meat away from the shell with a knife. Rinse and drain. It should store well in an airtight container for 1 week or frozen for up to 3 months.

But once you’ve drained your coconut and opened it, then what? Well, you can use the coconut a number of ways. On the back of the flier, we included a few interesting and (relatively) easy suggestions.

First, the drained coconut juice is the healthiest part of the nut. Add a little milk and honey, and you’ve got yourself a cup of nature’s Gatorade!

Additionally, coconut meat can be used in many different dishes if it’s grated or cut up, added almost like another vegetable in the dish (but remember, it’s a nut). We included an easy recipe for coconut meat curry that can be made with a variety of different proteins and produce.

And, perhaps most delicious of all, you can make your very own coconut milk. (It’s not to be confused with the juice that’s naturally in the nut–coconut milk is made from the meat.) Add a cup or two of simmering water to finely grated/shredded meat, puree the mixture, and then strain the liquid through a strainer or cheesecloth. The refined liquid you get is pure, precious coconut milk that you can use to drink, supplement a smoothie, drizzle on a desert, add to a delightful dish (especially Indian or Thai recipes), and more. We included this recipe on the flier as well, although in practice I think this procedure is a little more challenging than it appears.

Armed with documentation of how to use the coconuts, we set up a distribution spot. The scene at the food pantry front desk looked a little comical, with two bins brimming with coconuts decorated with postage and pleas from Lantana residents. Atop the pile of cocunuts we placed a poster of palm trees: the food pantry suddenly looked more like a travel agency.

As the doors opened, customers gathered around the bin, browsing through coconuts of various shapes and sizes, occasionally giving one a good shake to hear the slosh of juice inside. One woman was exuberant: “My son’s going to have a field day with this!” Another customer examined his coconut and declared, “It’s gold. It’s going to be gone fast.”

A few people mentioned that it wasn’t worth the effort, or that they didn’t have a taste for coconuts. But overall, our clients wanted to try this new and unique item. We also shared information about the health benefits of eating coconuts. Coconuts are rich in fiber and calories. And although the fat in coconuts is saturated, it is composed of beneficial medium-chain fatty acids–especially Lauric acid–that boost the immune system.

One man was thrilled to hear this, saying “If it helps the immune system, it’ll work for me. I need that!”

We hope everyone enjoys the experience. Lantana, you timed your protest perfectly. You’re giving our customers not just a tropical taste but also an unusual way to prepare for the flu season!

Posted by Ed Bruske | November 9th, 2009

Liz Falk, founder and director of Common Good City Farm here in DC, recently traveled to Milwaukee to attend the Growing Power conference, led by urban agriculture trailblazer Will Allen. Growing Power has developed an array of innovative methods to grow wholesome food and make it available to those most in need.

On Wednesday, Liz will give a presentation about her impressions from Growing Power and lessons learned.

Free! 7pm, Nov. 11, at ArtSpace, 614 S St. NW. Event page here.

Some preview photos from her talk are below:

Inside greenhouse #2, sprouts and young salad mix grow in hanging baskets. Underneath, in wooden bins, is the Growing Power vermiculture system – millions of Red Wiggler worms chewing up comspot and making worm castings. The heat these worms generate while eating helps heat this greenhouse throughout the winter. 

Growing Power Founder and Director, Will Allen, explains stage 1 of their composting system, where food breaks down inside bins made of pallets. 

Common Good City Farm, the most prominent example of urban agriculture here in the District of Columbia, is part of a global movement to create resilient food systems in urban spaces where wholesome, nutritious food too often is not available or not easily accessible. As Will Allen has demonstrated, urban farms don’t just provide food–they put often neglected urban properties into productive use, creating jobs, income and a sense of community.