INDUSTRIAL sized roof top garden planned for Berlin, this massive 7000 square metre former factory roof is earmarked for a sustainable garden producing both fish and vegetables for local residents. This could be a model for future city farms
694″ />A VOCAL American advocate of ‘local food’, Mark Winne, argues in his latest book, Food Rebels, Guerilla Gardeners and Smart Cookin’ Mamas, that the clash between the industrial-food system and the alternative-food system is undermining health, environment and democracy . He told Culinate’s Amy Halloran that ‘we need to get our hands in the soil, our vegetables on the chopping block and our voices down at city hall’. Winne, who for 25 years was the director of an emergency food programme in Hartford, Connecticut, says that moves by local communities to reject the dominant ‘industrial-food’ system by turning urban wastelands into farms, creating local dairy collectives, preserving farmland, and refusing to use genetically-modified seed offer hope for enduring change.
the Mount purple apple. Image: Jamie Kronborg” width=”150″ height=”150″ class=”alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-2679″ />A THREE-day exposition billed as ‘the largest heritage produce exhibition ever’ will be held near San Francisco, California, in September 2011. Heirloom seeds and produce from 50 states, animals from the American Livestock Breeds’ Conservancy, art and food will be on show at the Sonoma County Fairground between 13 and 15 September. A speaker programme will include Slow Food international vice-president Vandana Shiva, gardener and author Jimmy Williams, Seeds Savers’ Exchange chair Amy Goldman and Edible Magazines’ co-founder Tracey Ryder. Read more about this seminal event…
ABC’s Bush Telegraph reports on the Biological Farmers of Australia new initiative to take young children’s food education further by linking schools with organic farms. Steve Skopolianos of Ladybird O
rganics in Victoria is the program’s first adopted farmer. Jane Burns is the organiser of this program and is interviewed on the program by Michael Cathcart. Further information about this initiative is available at www.organicschools.com.au
Steve’s grandfather came out from Northern Greece and farmed the land and now the grandchildren have returned to organic farming. Hear Steve’s exciting story
THE ICEA Foundation has just started a partnership with EON Edible Gardens, by providing gardening tools and seeds as incentives to students to encourage and motivate them to start up gardens at home in their remote communities.
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//www.eon.org.au/defaultEEG.asp”>EON Edible Garden was set up by the EON Foundation at the Djarindjin Lambadin Catholic School in 2007 in the Kimberleys to see that the indigenous children had access to free fruit and vegetables. Owing to its success seven more EON Edible Gardens have been set up in the Kimberleys.
Recently we became aware of the inspirational work of nineteen year old Lachlan Cooke who set up the ICEA Foundation. The ICEA foundation is a not for profit organisation set up to help Aboriginal children in remote communities in Western Australia with opportunities to enhance their education experience.
Check out the fascinating and ingenious interactive food wheel on the EON Edible Garden website. It highlights both bush tucker and other, mostly western, fruit and vegetable food plants.
NINE year old Holly Gare of Cottesloe has written this beautiful award winning story about a tomato.
“Hello, I start off as a little seed and then I grow into a little green tomato, then I grow into a big rosy red tomato. I like to see all the little children around me playing. Sometimes I talk to the other plants that are near me and all the little bees…Buzz! Buzz! And chat to other insects too. I like to feel the cold water trickling down my red skin but when it’s hot it is like a big oven against my skin. I get all bitter in Summer and I get all cold in Winter and in Autumn I get covered in leaves but in Spring it’s just right for me and I love to see all my insect friends around me. I listen to all the trees swaying in the breeze and the sounds of all the plants getting watered drip drop drip drop onto their stems. Summer is horrible. Why does it have to be so hot? When I was a big ripe tomato a big hand came down and pulled me off my vine and put me in a box with a label on it saying “Boatshed.” Then somebody picked me up and brought me to Cottesloe Beach. Gobble, gobble. I was gone but when they spat out the seeds they started to grow into a big tomato”.
ASHLEY Da Silva from SBS Food reports of the successful food swap idea that is the craze around Australia. It is sadly noted that Western Australia has no food swap centre where people can trade their home grown surplus. Melbourne’s first food swap the “Urban Orchard’ started three years ago with twenty members and now has grown to 200 families. Read the full SBS story.
STEPHEN Crittenden of ABC’s Background Briefing on Sunday 18th April, reports on the complex issues surrounding food labelling. At present there is a public inquiry into food labelling which opens, as he reports, a Pandora’s box of problems. Earlier this year From Plains to Plate, a South Australian initative of farmers, community, government workers, gardeners, students, environmentalist, educators and citizens came together to discuss the issue of strenthening South Australia’s food systems, amongst which was the important item of food labelling. Among some of the partners in this initiative were Slow Food Conivia in South Australia, Friends of the Earth, the Government of South Australia, Community Gardens Network, the University of South Australia, South Australian Farmers Network. Their web site has been developed as an online meeting point to further strengthen a just and sustainable food system for South Australia and beyond.
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SLOW Food international president and founder Carlo Petrini this week launched a collaborative project between children’s environment awareness organisation Millennium Kids and Slow Food Perth to build children’s awareness of food production and indigenous food culture. Its aim is to enable children, through food knowledge, to ‘orbit in two worlds’ – as Aboriginal leader Noel Pearson describes it – and come to know and respect the foods of their own culture and those of indigenous cultures. Read about the project, called Food with latitude.
LOCAL food chains, how local food stores are operated in remote communites and research into the different sustainable models of local food gardens for remote areas are all part of the Remote Indigenous Garden Network research.
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