Posts Tagged ‘sustainable agriculture’
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, October 13th, 2010
(Image: Simply Local Food)
For those who don’t know, we’re in the middle of yet another theme dining week: American Farmland Trust’s inaugural “Dine Out for Farms” initiative.
The plan is simple enough: patronize those restaurants that support your local farms and help perpetuate the circle of sustainable agriculture/conscientious dining while getting a fabulous meal in the process.
We tried (unsuccessfully) to glean any DOfF week specials from the AFT, but were able to cull the roster of participating local restaurants:
*American Flatbread – Arlington, Ashburn;
* Clyde’s – Reston;
* Cock & Bowl;
* Open Kitchen;
* Wildfire; and,
So, if you’ve got some coin to spend and are looking to put your money where your mouth should be anyway, why not add these eco-activists to this week’s dining rotation?
It might even become a habit…
–Warren
VA Celebrates Farmers Market Week
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, July 30th, 2009
(Image: Columbia Pike Farmers Market)
As decreed by Gov. Tim Kaine, August 2-8 is officially Farmers Market Week here in the Old Dominion.
What’s that?
You are all for propping up the local economy but you don’t know where/how to begin?
We’ve taken the guesswork out of sustainable grocery shopping by tracking down nearly three dozen weekly farmers markets in the surrounding communities.
And if gorging yourself on straight-from-the-field foodstuffs isn’t reason enough to support our regional purveyors, the Virginia Department of Agriculture is sweetening the locavore-luring pot by offering up $100 in Virginia produce and specialty products as part of the Eat Local Recipe Contest.
Submissions need to feature local ingredients and must be filed by August 15. Winners (one in the adult category and one in the children’s category) will be chosen at random on August 28.
To do next week
Shop smart
Eat well
Maybe, just maybe, score some homegrown goodies
–Warren
Food, Inc. Aims to Feed Your Head
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
The documentarian drumbeat against industrial eating complexes continues this summer with the upcoming release of Food, Inc.:
(Video: Magnolia Pictures)
NoVA locavores may have recognized Polyface Farm principal Joel Salatin spouting off in the above trailer, as the so-proclaimed “grass farmer” has been catapulted to the forefront of the sustainable agriculture movement following his near-messianic role in Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
In Food, Inc., Salatin waxes philosophic about what elected officials SHOULD busy themselves with when it comes to our food supply:
Imagine what it would be if, as a national policy, the idea would be to have such nutritionally dense food that people actually felt better, had more energy and weren’t sick as much? Now, you see, that’s a noble goal!
Food Inc. is set to premiere locally Friday, June 19 at D.C.’s E Street Cinema and AMC Loews Shirlington 7.
Meanwhile, Food, Inc. co-producer and food journalist Eric Schlosser will most likely take a drubbing for his pinko dining habits on tonight’s Colbert Report.
-Warren
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, April 23rd, 2009
By Warren Rojas
Photography by Warren Rojas
Attention would-be NoVA farmers: The road to sound food production runs just due north of Warrenton.
That’s where you’ll find Local Food Project director Pablo Elliott coaxing about 60 seasonal crops out of a modest two acre farm (including the recently erected passive solar hoophouse) built on the Airlie Foundation campus just over a decade ago.
But the LFP doesn’t just grow food. It helps spawn more local farmers.
“It’s kind of an empowerment model of food production,” Elliott asserts.
According to an LFP aide, the garden supplies the Airlie Center kitchen with 100 to 125 pounds of produce—including: mixed lettuces, heirloom tomatoes, Swiss chard, strawberries, bok choy, lavender, lovage and an array of edible flowers—per week from May to late October.
“It’s all about having a really efficient system that churns out good food,” he insists.
Elliott fosters sustainable agriculture by hosting monthly workshops and annual farming conferences that draw hundreds of attendees. He estimates that they hosted nearly 1,000 participants in 2008, laying out a lofty goal of forcing 4,000 Airlie conferees out into the sunshine for a garden tour this year.
During a January 2009 workshop, one grizzled farmer voiced concerns that all his peers seem to be dying out for fear of modernization. “Sometimes I feel like an anachronism,” he stated woefully. A green roofing designer shared that she was hoping to flesh out ideas for weaving urban gardens into our high-traffic areas.
Another Airlie regular was totally enamored with idea of raising her own food—even if it’s only a very limited capacity.
“I’m just a backyard, not-very-good farmer,” she admitted. “But I like to dream about it.”
Airlie Foundation and Conference Center: 6809 Airlie Road, Warrenton; 540-347-1300. To learn more about the Local Food Project, please visit: www.airlie.org/activities/foodproject.htm.
Wise Acres
Sage advice from local fieldhands Plagued by groundhogs?
“You need Jack Russell terriers.”
Got rabbits?
“I recommend you grow garlic.”
Feeling sluggish in winter?
“Join a gym.”
Bad back?
“If you can’t lift it, don’t grow it.”
(April 2009)
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Friday, April 17th, 2009
Most commercial villains aren’t daft enough to broadcast videos of themselves defiling the food supply:
(Video: YouTube)
The truth is, food tampering is often an invisible crime–at least until it becomes a national pandemic like our back-to-back salmonella scares.
And while almost everyone agrees that protecting what we eat should be a priority, the shape and scope of said safeguards are being hotly debated even as we speak courtesy of H.R. 875 – the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009.
Bill author Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-Conn.) maintains that her plan would:
“set up a farm-to-fork system for protecting foods … and changes the focus from catching violators to preventing disease-causing contamination.”
Pivotal changes to our current food production infrastructure would include the establishment of a new “Food Safety Administration”–to be run by a White House appointed “Administrator of Food Safety”–within the Department of Health and Human Services, and the adoption of a national traceability database designed to “retrieve the history, use and location of an article of food through all stages of its production, processing and distribution” (echoes of the Virginia Peanut Corporation crackdown, no doubt).
Meanwhile, DeLauro has been accused of demagoguery by some who smell a Patriot Act-sized rat rooting around in the farm registry and inspection provisions of the bill:
(Video: YouTube)
Of course, both DeLauro and Monsanto vehemently deny any wrong doing. And neither H.R. 875 nor its Senate companion S. 510 have cleared so much as a single committee yet.
But independent farmers aren’t going to sit idly by on the sidelines.
Sustainable agriculture supporters are planning to plead their case in person Tuesday, April 21, when they fan out across the Capitol for their “Farm Food Voices” lobbying blitz.
Deborah Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, and Polyface Farms operator Joel Salatin are expected to host a reception that evening where locally sourced foods will be served, while the morning will be dedicated to bending solons’ ears and pressing the flesh with congressional aides.
Anxious to write yourself into this David v. Goliath storyline? Head downtown on Tuesday and investigate the issues for yourself.
Otherwise, sit back in silence and wait for the next batch of tainted food to be delivered to your door/favorite restaurant/neighborhood grocery.
–Warren Rojas
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Thursday, February 19th, 2009
By Warren Rojas
Given our geographical predisposition for immediate gratification (omnipresent WiFi, Olympic-pace text messaging) and comfort (drive-through everything, from coffee shops to upholstery cleaning), it is no wonder some NoVA residents have lost sight of what’s really important: great food.
Slow Food DC co-leaders Alexandra Greeley and Kati Gimes want to help everyone find their way.
The dynamic dining duo have been championing sustainable living and sensible eating for going on a decade in this area, fostering a cadre of a band of perhaps 30 like-minded omnivores that have blossomed into force of approximately 800 floating members (those with email accounts, anyway) and close to 400 active participants. That makes the D.C. chapter, according to Greeley, the fifth-largest convivium in the U.S.
Greeley suggests that members tend to be “middle-class, well-educated people who care about what they are eating.” She says she knows of at least one Great Falls couple that has remained active since the beginning, and notes that a subset of about 20 chapter members regularly get together for private slow food dinner parties.
But Greeley is hoping the current wave of interest in green living and locally sourced cuisine will help them recruit the next generation of Slow Food members. To that end, Greeley is kicking around plans to set up a schoolyard garden at an area school to help teach students about sustainable agriculture and healthful eating.
Meanwhile, the group is lining up a variety of activities for 2009, including: a cook-off between the chef at the Latvian embassy (a chapter member) and Clyde’s Penn Quarter staff, an open-air dinner a la last summer’s Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco and their annual farm dinner (to be hosted again this year at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm in Ashburn). Local farm tours and charity events are also in the works.
New members must pay a $60 annual fee to join, plus the cost of individual events (which Greeley said are usually capped at around $50).
For the global perspective on slow food, visit: www.slowfood.com
To join the D.C.-Metro chapter, visit: www.slowfooddc.org
(February 2009)