You will not be disappointed. My talk on the heritage and future of urban food is tonight. http://ow.ly/lfScU See you there?
Order book here!
Join me in supporting Vancouver’s Truck Farm
Vancouver’s Truck Farm is a cool, fun mobile classroom and seed dispensary based in Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood. They’ve got an indiegogo campaign underway. It’s worth supporting.
Food in a nutshell: Judy Kenzie believes in small beginnings with big outcomes from her mobile truck garden.
Posted in Buying local, Community Gardens, Urban farmers
Tagged mobile classroom, seeds, truck garden
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EU banning bee-killing pesticide. Not U.S.
The European Union is banning a bee-killing pesticide to stem the collapse of its bee colonies. Meanwhile, there’s no such ban in the U.S., where 45% of hives were lost last winter, up 78% from the year before.
Bees pollinate 1/3 of our food. We need them, and we need to stem the pesticides, monocultures, and loss of habitat diversity that are killing them off at alarming rates.
Posted in Industrial farming, Laws and regulations, Pesticides
Tagged bee collapse, pesticides
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Bi-partisan support for food literacy in Ontario
Ontario PCs want to add food literacy to the province’s proposed Local Food Act.
The MPP bringing forward the amendment to the act says that in his party’s consultations with industry stakeholders, the PCs found that food literacy was a theme that kept being brought up. “One of the main things that we found out in our consultations is that food literacy seems to be something missing…including understanding of what local food means,” said Ernie Hardeman, PC Ag critic.
The party’s education critic is also pushing this: “We need our students today for the next generation to understand where food comes from…how it is cultivated, how it reaches market and how to prepare it…this will prepare them for life,” says Lisa MacLeod.
The NDP is also on board with this.
Food literacy is a basic survival skill at a time when conventional food sources are under threat, and junk-food diets are bringing on chronic diseases that ruin lives and bankrupt governments.
Posted in food literacy, Health care costs, Laws and regulations
Tagged food education, food literacy, local food
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A steady diet of donuts leads to debt
Premier Christy Clark caused a lot of screeching brakes and other variations of media road rage after Jonathon Fowlie’s Vancouver Sun story describing her going through a red light while driving her son through an abandoned intersection at 5:15 am.
But what caught my attention was the sentence.
“In her son’s bag is the pizza and Krispy Kreme doughnut Clark packed for his lunch.”
I know, she’s the most stressed-out single Mom in the province, but it’s surprising she wasn’t aware enough of what that meal signals to the reporter who was in the car.
Christy Clark, as someone who has championed getting junk food out of schools, and someone whose number 1 job is to reduce public debt, should be especially sensitive to the relationship between feeding kids processed foods, sugar and fat rather than fruits and vegetables, and the heart diseases, obesity and other chronic diseases that are swamping our health care system.
The projected growth in health care costs in B.C. will be double the projected tax and royalty returns from the premier’s election campaign showpiece: liquified natural gas plants.
With 80% of health care costs coming from chronic diseases that are mostly brought on by poverty, wrong diet and lifestyle choices, fixing that should be our #1 economic priority.
Talking points on that topic should be on the political food literacy curriculum.
Posted in Health care costs
Tagged Christy Clark, diabetes, diet, food literacy, health care costs, heart disease
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