REAL FOOD IN SCHOOLS DAY

We think of Labor Day as a time to consider the working lives of adults, but this September 7th, why not do something active for the working lives of children? Slow Food and other local organizations are sponsoring a National Action Day to Get Real Food into Schools. In case you don't know it, the national school lunch system is in need of serious overhaul. Jan Poppendieck, whose prior work has been on emergency food, non-profits, government accountability, and hunger, has turned her attention to school lunches -- and while her new book, Free For All, isn't out until January, it shouldn't stop you from learning about the issues now and adding your voice -- and your potluck dish -- to the collective outcry. Here's a link to a recent interview with Poppendieck. And here's what University of California Press has to say about Poppendieck's book: "Drawing from extensive interviews with officials, workers, students, and activists, she discusses the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs and turns a critical eye on the "competitive foods" sold in cafeterias. How did we get into the absurd situation in which nutritionally regulated meals compete with fast food items and snack foods loaded with sugar, salt, and fat? What is the nutritional profile of the federal meals? How well are they reaching students who need them? Opening a window onto our culture as a whole, Poppendieck reveals the forces--the financial troubles of schools, the commercialization of childhood, the reliance on market models--that are determining how lunch is served. She concludes with a sweeping vision for change: fresh, healthy food for all children as a regular part of their school day" In the meantime, let's consider what you can do: When they re-convene this fall, Congress will decide whether to update the Child Nutrition Act, which is the law that determines what 30 million children eat at school every day. As many of you know, some of our national nutritional guidelines are shaped by political rather than health interests (remember that ketchup is considered a vegetable...). This national action claims that, "By giving schools the resources to serve real food, we can build a strong foundation for our children’s health. We can teach them healthy habits that will last them through life. We can make a down payment on health care e reform. We can do all of this--but only if we help our legislators connect the dots." The Call-to-Action on September 7th includes three good activities: 1. Attend an Eat-In in your community on Labor Day, Sept. 7, 2009. On that day,people across America will come together for public potlucks that send a clear message to legislators: It’s time to provide our children with real food at school. Right now there are 239 potlucks planned in 49 states! Many of these are taking place outdoors and in public parks, in schools, and in private homes. Check out the map on the slow website to find one near you. If there's no potluck in your community, consider gathering your friends and family together, taking a photo and sending it along to us in order to show your support. We need to show legislators that there's a real movement for change, which means we need people from every corner of the country to help out. 2. Sign the Time for Lunch petition at . Help us get 20,000 signatures by September 7th by telling friends, family, coworkers, church, groups and everyone else you know to sign it, too. One of the best ways to do that is post a link to Facebook and share it with blogs, message boards and listservs. Spread the word! 3. Tell your legislators in Congress that it’s time to give schools the resources to serve real food. The petition and National Eat-In will build momentum, but legislators need to know that this is a priority in their districts. Contact your legislators by writing them a letter, making a phone call and inviting them to your Eat-In. The Slow website has all the resources you need to do this.. The Time for Lunch Platform explains the first steps Congress needs to take in order to get real food into schools. For more information, go to http://slowfoodusa.org/timeforlunch.

FOOD, INC: the politics of food on the big screen

By now you've probably heard about Food, Inc, a new film that's co-directed by Eric Schlosser of Fast Food Nation fame. Filmmaker Robert Kenner offers a highly developed expose-type examination of the food industry, government regulatory agencies such as the USDA and FDA, corporate greed, and unsustainable markets. While none of this will be new to sustainability or green adherents, the new film provides a big public forum for the return of food politics as a social movement that is relevant to people of all socio-economic and cultural viewpoints. Starting in your local grocery aisle and ending on your table, it's the middle that will turn your stomach no matter how much you already know: slaughterhouses and factory farms are undeniably undigestable for a green planet and a healthy population.

The film is a must-see in the genre of An Inconvenient Truth or Bowling for Columbine, and like other message-based non-fiction films (the word "documentary" isn't quite accurate, although the officials at Monsanto, Perdue, and Tyson were unwilling to offer a counter-argument on screen), there are reams of educational and promotional materials designed to help change the larger food system. Still at it, despite personal attacks by corporate spokespeople, Marion Nestle, who is a public policy expert, food industry critic , and scientist-at-large and a strong voice in food advocacy for decades, offers a whole host of film-related resources on her Food Politics website and blog. The book-that-goes-with-the movie is a terrific overview of the problems inherent in the agricultural-food system -- and more importantly, a great tool for action. Consider that an anti-Food, Inc website is already in place, sponsored mainly by meat industry folks attempting to counterspin the film's message. The defensive posture is not surprising: these companies are among the worst violators of farm workers' rights, they engage in countless lawsuits designed to advance business over consumers, and they've allowed some of the worst food safety violations of the last three decades to happen in a supposedly regulated marketplace. It's unfortunate that the current problems with food production are generally presented by vitriolic opponents, especially since the solutions are most likely to come from a middle ground. However, the film does highlight commercial producers (Stonyfield Farms among the strongest) who demonstrate that large-scale production does not have to entail environmentally damaging methods.

Stock up on your local (or home grown) veggies before you head to the theaters, though: as more than one reviewer has pointed out, this film is not for the squeamish. Better yet, find a local group screening such as this "Pack the Theater" Slow Food Sponsored Event in Portland, Oregon, and then eat out at your favorite sustainable restaurant!

YOU ARE BRILLLIANT AND THE EARTH IS HIRING

Paul Hawken, author and advocate, was recently asked to give the commencement speech at the University of Portland this past May. His newest book is Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters. Among my favorite of his books is The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, now over fifteen years old and still relevant. This is a rather long post for our blog, but it is one of the best statements about the globe, humanity, our bodies, and our place in it all. Please enjoy it and pass it along.

“When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there. But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades. “…the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.” This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food, but all that is changing. There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done. When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums. “YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.” You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way. There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world. Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history. “Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.” The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich. The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.” “We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells.” So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past. Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television. This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.”

for a pdf of the speech and more info, go to Hawken's website.

Dolce Vita Diaries - The Story of Nudo Olive Oil

We here at the Green Connoisseur are big fans of Nudo Olive Oil. There's just so much to like about the business, from its delicious flavors to its innovative production model. Recently, founder Jason Biggs got in touch to remind us of an exciting development that's taken place since they were featured on the website - they've published a book! The Dolce Vita Diaries, by Jason and co-founder Cathy Rogers, describes their adventures as they left careers in London to start an olive farm in Italy: "It's a very funny, deliciously different foodie travelogue about the trials and tribulations of setting up a olive oil business in rural Italy. It's a warts-and-all account of what it's really like to throw it all in, follow your dream and end up in the middle of a European nowhere untouched by modernity. At the end of each chapter are delicious recipes which we used along the way." I haven't seen the book yet, but it sounds like a great summer read. The recipes in particular should come in handy for anyone who's expecting a shipment of oil from an adopted olive tree!

"Are you doing the work you know you were meant to do? Does it allow you to spend most or all of your time doing work you are uniquely good at, work you love, work that is genuinely needed in the world, and 'on purpose' for you?" Do you ever find yourself pondering questions like these? If so, you're far from alone, and you're in luck, because entrepreneur Dave Pollard has written a book (Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur's Guide to Reponsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work) for you. Frustrated by the perceived divide between profitable businesses, sustainable enterprises, and for that matter, personally satisfying work, Pollard set out to explore these attitudes and the way to transform them. Pollard has also written a series of articles based on the principles of this book. Curious if your current work situation stands up to his rigorous scrutiny? Check out this questionnaire based on the fifteen qualities of natural enterprises. But don't despair. According to Pollard, more and more businesses are meeting these criteria daily, and if the opportunity you're looking for isn't out there yet, chances are you can make it yourself.

Green Resolutions for 2009

Happy New Year; it's time to break out the organic champagne!  Looking for a way to go greener in the coming months?  Here are a few resolutions to consider:

1. Eat local.  Join the movement popularized by books such as The Omnivore's Dilemma and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and do what you can to buy and eat local foods.  Eating locally also means eating seasonally, since the produce of any region varies throughout the year.  For some help planning menus, check out the cookbook Simply in Season, (although even better resources are probably available in your own area). 

2. Offset your carbon emissions.  Use a carbon emission calculator like this one to calculate the yearly emissions of your family or business, then purchase offsets from a reputable seller such as Native Energy.  Offset companies should use your funds to clean up environmental problems or create alternative sources of energy.

 

3. Replace your light bulbs with LEDs.  These super-efficient bulbs fit in normal fixtures, consume a negligible amount of electricity, and should last over a decade with normal use.

4. Freecycle.  When you do your spring cleaning, what happens to things you don't need anymore?  If you don't donate them already, consider using Freecycle to find them new homes.  Freecycle helps connect people with used items they need, reducing the demand for new products.  

5. Go for a year (or more) of zero waste.  It sounds almost impossible, but pioneers like No Impact Man have shown us that it can be done, even if you have a family and live in New York City!  If that's a little too extreme, do what you can to reduce, recycle, reuse, and compost your way through the new year.

creative commons image by Gaetan Lee