NEWSFOOD SECURITY

This is a guest post written by Nora Pouillon, a chef a restauranteur. Her Washington, D.C.-based eatery, Restaurant Nora, is the first certified organic restaurant in the U.S. Nora is an advisor to National Food Day.

Putting food on the pedestal it deserves has been my goal for the last 40 years. Food is my medium. I started Restaurant Nora in 1979 with the goal of sharing healthy, wholesome food with my family, friends, and customers. In doing so, I have sought to demonstrate the importance of organically grown and raised food as a means of not only nourishing our bodies and souls, but also of preserving and improving our environment.

On October, 24, Food Day will draw attention to the dire straits of our global food system and set in motion a grassroots movement to inspire individuals to make safe, sustainable, and healthy food a priority—if not the highest priority—in their lives. Which is exactly what is urgently needed.

The statistics for lifestyle-related disease in the United States alone are staggering. A remarkable 68 percent of adults are considered overweight and 30 percent are obese. One in three children is considered overweight. Some 25.8 million adults and children in America have diabetes. And 26.8 million adults have been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease, which is the number-one killer in the United States. Food has a direct link to both disease prevalence and prevention, especially in tandem with other lifestyle measures. We need a national day like Food Day to bring awareness to the fact that whatever we put in our mouths—and the quality of what we put in our mouths—is of utmost importance.

In addition to its role in sustaining or degrading health, food is inextricably linked to our lives as citizens of this planet. How we grow and raise food, starting with how the environment is treated in the process, will dictate our ability to continue to sustain life on Earth. Producing safe, healthy food is the ultimate goal of our agricultural system, which also links animal and worker welfare, social issues like food access and affordability, and again, the maintenance of environmental health.

After a fruitful campaign on Change.org, a Memphis urban garden will keep on growing.

Adam Guerrero grows vegetables, produces biodiesel, raises honeybees, and composts in the front and back yards of his Memphis home. He even brings some of the local students by to teach them about sustainable food production. But after a neighbor complained about the smells emanating from the yard and a county judge deemed the operation to be a “nuisance,” Guerrero worried that he would have to dismantle the garden he’s cultivated for the past two years.

Two Memphis residents, Kristen Heath and Hannah Giles, didn’t want the community to lose the treasured garden, so they turned to Change.org. The women created a petition to save Guerrero’s garden. After only one week, the online petition got nearly 9,000 signatures and was covered in local newspapers and TV stations, Grist, Treehugger, and even the Washington Post. The two women also organized local rallies and protests in support of Guerrero.

"I was very angry that what this teacher was trying to do for his students was just taken apart and not even looked at," Heath told WREG after she created the petition.

On Friday, Guerrero received some good news. He attended his follow-up hearing with Judge Larry Potter armed with a lawyer and photos showcasing his efforts to clean up—but not dismantle—his garden. Judge Potter agreed that Guerrero’s garden was headed in the right direction and that so long as the teacher continued to tidy up the operation, he could keep it.  According to news reports, the judge clarified his original stance: He said he never told Guerrero he couldn't have a garden, but that in order to have one, he would need to seriously clean it up.

In fewer than five days, more than 2,500 people have joined an online campaign urging a judge to save a Memphis urban garden from destruction.

Memphis residents Kristen Heath and Hannah Giles launched the campaign on Change.org after reading about Adam Guerrero’s garden in the local newspaper.

Guerrero, a high school math teacher and board member of the organization GrowMemphis, grows vegetables, raises honeybees, and produces biodiesel in the yard of his Nutbush-area home. Judge Larry Potter recently deemed Guerrero’s garden to be a “nuisance” that contained “rubbish or garbage,” and ruled that he must dismantle the operation. Guerrero is set to appear in court on Friday, September 23, 2011, to prove that he complied with Judge Potter’s ruling. Local citizens are working to reverse the ruling before Friday’s hearing.

UPDATE 9/12/11: The Mar Vista Community Council pushed the vote to legalize beekeeping until October 11, 2011. That gives us even more time to ramp up support for this campaign! Please sign Chelsea and Rob McFarland's petition asking the community council to legalize urban beekeeping in the Mar Vista community.

Chelsea and Rob McFarland and their team at Honeylove, a non-profit, have been working tirelessly to make urban beekeeping legal in Mar Vista, a district on the West Side of Los Angeles. They will find out if their efforts come to fruition tomorrow, September 13th, when the community council votes on whether or not to sanction an urban beekeeping pilot program.

In the meantime, they're certainly garnering attention for their cause. Back in July, Honeylove led a flash mob at their local farmers' market, raising awareness about the issue of urban beekeeping among hundreds of shoppers. A few weeks later, they celebrated National Honeybee Awareness Day by dressing up in honeybee costumes and offering photo ops, information about beekeeping, and bee-related crafts for kids.

Now we're approaching the moment of truth: Following the successful completion of the district's feasibility study on urban beekeeping, the community council will finally vote on September 13th on whether or not to legalize a pilot beekeeping program. If approved, the program will pave the way for Mar Vista residents  to have the same basic beekeeping rights as their close neighbors in Santa Monica, as well as residents in New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Portland, Denver, Spokane, Atlanta, Chicago, Toronto, and Vancouver.

UPDATE 8/22/11: Change.org just got word that the hearing about Ron Finley's garden has been postponed until further notice. This is a great sign of progress, and we will update you with more information as it becomes available.

Most of South Central Los Angeles' parkways — plots of public land between the sidewalk and curb — feature nothing more than scraggly patches of grass. But not the parkway in front of Ron Finley's house. The stretch of land near the Crenshaw resident's home is an urban oasis brimming with fresh kale, tomatoes, squash, melons, and a bounty of other fruits and vegetables. Not only does the garden beautify one of the most economically depressed communities in all of L.A., it serves as an education spot for children and even provides neighbors with fresh fruits and veggies.

"It's fresh, healthy, organic food rather than the GMOs and no-flavored stuff at the store that you don’t know where it came from or how far it was trucked," says Finley.

The garden certainly sounds too good to be true. And if the city gets its way, it just might be: Depending on the results of a hearing scheduled for this Friday, August 26th, Finley may be forced to turn his garden back into grass.

Finley started planting the Crenshaw produce patch back in December with the organization he helped create, L.A. Green Grounds, which works to establish gardens throughout South Los Angeles. Finley's fruits and veggies quickly burst into bloom, but in May he received some bad news: City officials issued him a citation for violating city code. Depending on what happens during this Friday's hearing, Finley could be forced to level his garden and replace it with a traditional grass parkway.

This is a guest post written by Jeremy Seifert, the director of DIVE!, an award-winning documentary about food waste in America. He is currently working on another film project about genetically modified foods.

I recently started a national petition on Change.org asking Trader Joe’s to eliminate its food waste, and more than 78,000 people have joined the campaign so far.

Ever since, I’ve received many encouraging notes from people around the country about all of the good things the grocer is already doing.

“I personally helped a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility pick up hundreds of pounds of food every week from Trader Joe’s on National here in Los Angeles,” wrote one person. “Here in Dayton, Ohio, we have a Trader Joe’s and they do bring all their food, every day, seven days a week to the House of Bread, a soup kitchen I volunteer at,” said another. “I work for the food bank in Bellingham, Washington. Trader Joe’s contributes to the food bank more than any other single grocery store in Bellingham,” wrote yet another concerned citizen.

Understandably, a petition asking the grocery chain to “stop wasting food” strikes these people as unnecessary at best and recklessly mean at worst, like scolding a child for getting an “A” on a paper when everyone knows an “A+” is better.

But this campaign isn’t attacking local TJ’s that do amazing things to eliminate food waste. In fact, we want to praise them for their work and say THANK YOU!

They say that you don’t choose to be a beekeeper — the bees choose you. So when a swarm of honeybees showed up in our garden in Los Angeles, we were unknowingly recruited into the ranks of beekeepers, an order that includes everyone from Aristotle, Luke the Apostle, Alexander the Great, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy, Thomas Edison — all the way through to First Lady Michelle Obama.

Our fascination quickly turned us into advocates when we learned that our city's policy is to exterminate feral swarms of bees rather than rescue them.  Given the threat of Colony Collapse Disorder to global honeybee populations, this is not something we felt we could stand by and watch happen. That's why we're working to get urban beekeeping legalized in the Mar Vista section of Los Angeles, where we live.

As Albert Einstein reportedly said, “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” The reason for his grim prognosis is the fact that the histories of the human species and that of the honeybee are inseparable. Neither species could have evolved to present conditions without the symbiotic relationship that we harbor. In fact, bees pollinate 80 percent of the world’s plants — including 90 different food crops — which means that one out of every three-to-four bites of food is courtesy of a honeybee.

Hundreds of shoppers at the Los Angeles-area Mar Vista Farmers' Market were met with an unlikely scene this past Sunday. In addition to fruit and veggie vendors, bakers, complimentary dog-sitters, and a woman singing Bob Marley cover songs, locals encountered a swarm of bees. Well, a swarm of activists dressed as bees, that is.

This impromptu gathering of bees, beekeepers, and flower-wearing volunteers was an idea from Chelsea and Rob McFarland, founders of the non-profit, Honeylove. The couple created the non-profit to raise awareness about the current plight of the honeybee and to offer a solution: Legalize urban beekeeping in Los Angeles. Beekeeping in the city is currently illegal, and the McFarlands started a petition on Change.org asking the Mar Vista Community Council to allow urban beekeeping in the Mar Vista region of Los Angeles.

Honeybees have it rough these days, so the pollinators certainly need all the help that they can get. A phenomenon known as Colony Collapse Disorder is causing bees to leave the hive, never to return. No one knows for sure what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder, but bees are up againt a host of threats: pesticides, fungal pathogens, loss of habitat, pollution, and climate change, just to name a few. Local urban hives could help the ailing species that's responsible for producing a full one-third of America's food supply.

As the national interest in urban beekeeping grows, cities like Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, and Seattle have joined the movement and legalized the practice. These cities recognize just how important bees are to the future of our way of life.

Yet, as bees are quickly vanishing due to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), some cities like Los Angeles have yet to legalize urban beekeeping. In the Mar Vista community of L.A., a group of activists is ready to change that. Chelsea and Rob McFarland recently started a petition on Change.org asking the Mar Vista Community Council to support beekeeping in the region and work to repeal Los Angeles Municipal Code 50.03, which makes beekeeping illegal.

Working in collaboration with the Mar Vista Community Council Green Committee and Backwards Beekeepers, the McFarlands started honeylove.org to raise awareness and gain support for the legalization of urban beekeeping in Mar Vista and Los Angeles as a whole. After speaking in front of the Mar Vista Community Council, Chelsea and Rob gained unanimous approval of a feasibility study on legalizing beekeeping.

Nick Maravell of Maryland's Montgomery County has run Nick's Organic Farm for the past 31 years. Maravell leases the site from the Montgomery County Board of Education (BOE), which plans to eventually build a public school on the land once the region's schools become overcrowded.

Year after year, the BOE renewed Maravell's lease — until this year. Beginning in 2012, the BOE will lease the land to the County, which plans to partner with a private organization, Montgomery Soccer Incorporated (MSI), in order to build soccer fields on the site. There was no public hearing on the issue, and no one even informed Maravell that his farm could get taken away until two weeks before the decision was made.

Fans and supporters of Nick's Organic Farm are understandably upset, and they started a petition here on Change.org. We caught up with Maravell to talk about why Nick's Organic Farm should become a food education hub — not soccer fields.

SP: Tell me about your farm.

NM: I started in 1980 as a vegetable farmer. Over the years as I’ve expanded my operation, Nick’s Organic Farm in Potomac has become primarily seed production. I am in a location where I’m not near other agricultural fields, so as an organic farmer, I produce seed that is free of GMO contamination. I have another farm about 30 miles away, and I use my seed there to produce corn and soybean and other crops. I also use some of the seed to mix into my feed that I use for poultry. We have free-range chickens and turkeys.