Our great friend Just Food has worked for years to build a more just and regional food system in and around New York City, by supporting community gardeners, local farmers’ markets, community supported agriculture (CSA) program, neighborhood-based food education and much more. Now, with funding from the USDA Risk Management Agency, they’ve brought us ten beautiful video snapshots of the farmers in their network. “We’d love it if everyone could get a chance to see their farmers in action on the farm,” Just Food says, “but we know that busy New Yorkers don’t always have the time to get out of the city.”
We’re thrilled that these short films have brought the farms to us on this December day. Enjoy!
Click the photo of Farmer Bill Halsey to watch the films.
By Brooke Smith, Director of WhyHunger’s Grassroots Action Network
For a few amazing autumn days in New Mexico, I had the opportunity to visit and learn from the production innovations, long-term training strategy and layered community leadership of the Agri-Cultura Network and AFSC New Mexico’s Farmer-to-Farmer training program. Check out snapshots of the trip with WhyHunger Community Learning Project friends and partners Aaron Cardona, Cesar Lopez, Don Bustos, Fidel Gonzalez and Patrick Jaramillo.
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Hoop houses on Don Bustos’ Santa Cruz Farm in Espanola, NM, produce thousands of pounds of produce every season.
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Visiting a training and production farm in Albequerque, NM.
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The team at the South Valley Economic Development Center, where the post-harvest processing takes place.
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Don, Aaron and Cesar visiting an Agri-Cultura Network training site in Espanola, NM.
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Fidel demonstrates how he’s using passive solar techniques to heat the greenhouse during the cooler months.
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Fidel shows us his sprouts.
This article first appeared on “Who Fishes Matters,” the official blog of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA) on August 31, 2012.
Written by: Pamela Flash
I have to be honest, my love of shrimp is deeply rooted as my ‘go to food’ when back in the day I wanted something low calorie and low fat to eat. Of course, this was in the days before we worried about our cholesterol levels. Salad and shrimp cocktail were not going to pack on the pounds.
Back then, I had no idea where my shrimp came from but my guess is that it was wild and lived in the ocean. Now, it’s still a challenge to figure out my shrimp’s origins and on top of that I find my food choices have become more complicated.
So, it’s summer and the perfect time to eat outside, and to eat lots of shellfish. I decided I would try to get a sense of where the shrimp that I order in a restaurant comes from.
Why should you ask where the shrimp (or any animal protein for that matter) is sourced?
Here’s why.
The shrimp we order at a restaurant is most likely farm raised. They are fed antibiotics, GMO feed or some other unnerving food source. According to Food and Water Watch, “Fish-lovers would be horrified to learn that huge quantities of fish and shrimp are now being grown in giant nets, cages, and ponds where antibiotics, hormones and pesticides mingle with disease and waste. These industrialized aquaculture facilities are rapidly replacing natural methods of fishing that have been used to catch fresh, wild seafood for millennia.”
Not sounding good to me.
A 30-million-square-meter shrimp farm in Indonesia
In one high-end restaurant I visited recently, I asked, “Can you tell me where the shrimp is from and if it is wild or farm-raised?” The waiter came back with the answer that the shrimp were wild and from Guatemala.
Another thing to think about is that shrimp are often farm-raised in foreign countries like Indonesia, where the workers rights are questionable and the effects of shrimp farms can be devastating to their ecosystems. And, let us not forget the increased carbon footprint created when shrimp travels hundreds if not thousands of miles to make it to our dinner plate. [read entire article…]
Olivier De Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, briefing the US Congress at the Capitol.
The right to food is a legal, human rights-based way of looking at hunger and poverty issues, suggesting a shift from relying on compassion or pity to end hunger, to an approach that encourages people without food to end hunger by claiming their rights. Many governments are legally obligated to uphold the right to food, giving antihunger advocates an important angle from which to exert pressure, especially in an age of social media.
In May, WhyHunger coordinated a meeting and Congressional briefing with Olivier de Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. The Special Rapporteur ensures, through country tours and meetings with officials and experts, that governments uphold the human right to food. He is an important leader to end hunger, and spoke with concerned NGOs and government officials on how we can use the framework of the right to food to progress towards our vision of a hunger-free world.
But what exactly is the right to food? Human rights lawyer and right to food expert Kaitlin Cordes explains the the concept in “Fighting for Food: How Human Rights Law Can Help Address Global Hunger.” WhyHunger is pleased to feature her writing in the Food Security Learning Center, which clearly explains how human rights law works, how it applies to food and hunger, and how advocates and lawyers can leverage human rights to make positive change. Read Part 1 and Part 2 to understand the right to food.
Kaitlin also writes at the blog Righting Food and is a co-editor with Olivier de Schutter of the book Accounting for Hunger: The Right to Food in the Era of Globalisation. Check her out on Twitter @kaitlincordes.
