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In one Brooklyn community, neighborhood residents are fighting to keep their farm. Bed-Stuy Farm, once a neighborhood garbage dump, was transformed into an urban oasis that produces over 7,000 lbs of fresh food every year, helping feed more than 4,000 people a month through the Brooklyn Rescue Mission.

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In dispute is whether the specialized method of drilling, called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” for short, should be conducted in the heart of New York City’s watershed, putting its drinking water supply in danger. Besides the chemical-laden fracking fluid that goes into the ground, wastewater that is pulled up contains naturally occurring carcinogens like cadmium and benzene, as well as a gritty mixture of salt and minerals called Total Dissolved Solids (TDS), which can decimate aquatic life in high quantities.

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So why not try a few marketing gimmicks to break through the misunderstanding? Perhaps you’re a fan of Greenpeace’s banner-dropping skills. Maybe you prefer the Maldivian government’s underwater cabinet meetings that demonstrated the potential devastation of rapid sea level rise on the low-lying island nation. Or if sinking isn’t your concern, how about melting? The Nepalese Cabinet plans on holding a meeting at the Mt. Everest base camp to highlight the melting glaciers of the Himalayas. The Yes Men’s culture-jamming exploits are hard to ignore, whether they’re pretending to be the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reversing its stance on climate legislation or tumbling down the front steps of the U.S. Capitol dressed in “Survivaballs.” Perhaps the best strategy is a tad less post-modern, like the International Climate Day of Action’s 5,200 events organized by concerned citizens in 181 countries. Or, maybe all we need are some supermodels stripping for the sake of climate change awareness.

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The Imperial Stock Ranch, which began in 1871, faces a new and serious challenge to its very survival: how to create new markets for its products to compensate for longstanding existing markets that have declined or shifted overseas. Some bold steps were needed to rethink what to do with the wool from the sheep they raise on their 30,000 acre ranch in Eastern Oregon. Their solution? Direct, value-added marketing to yarn retailers and apparel designers.

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Today’s reading is a guest post from the illustrious Dr. Marion Nestle, originally posted on her Food Politics blog.
I think we need a whole lot more public outrage about unsafe food. Maybe the recent front-page articles in the Washington Post and New York Times will do the trick.
Both tell tragic stories of [...]

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Last week, at the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, a small audience gathered for the screening of H2 Worker. The film, which opened the coop’s monthly film series on food issues, is an award-winning documentary released in 1990 on the exploitation of Jamaican sugar cane harvesters working in Florida. Shot clandestinely in the cane fields and the workers’ barracks, the film exposed the plight of thousands of Caribbean men who came to Florida every year to work in conditions reminiscent of the days of slavery on sugar plantations. Working long hours under the scathing sun, cutting the cane by hand with rudimentary machetes, living in overcrowded barracks, poorly fed, denied medical treatment for on-site injuries and frequently cheated out of wages, these workers paid the human cost of a global system that perpetuated their exploitation.

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Noting the problems associated with large scale consumption of bottled water, the Take Back the Tap campaign asks people to choose tap water over bottled water, but a recent New York Times article by Charles Duhigg, Toxic Waters: Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering, might give some people the impression that tap water is not always safe. Before consumers rush to fill their pantries with bottle water, however, there are a few important points to consider.

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“The Fertile Well,” “A Flooded Future,” and “Half Full/Half Empty,” tell stories, respectively, about the falaj, an ancient Arabic freshwater delivery system in Oman; the proposed damming and subsequent flooding of a Turkish town on the Tigris called Hasankeyf and the life-altering ramifications for its residents; and finally, the story of a Palestinian farmer and an Israeli agronomist who both think that freshwater distribution for agriculture needs to be administered better at top levels of government.

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The food revolution is upon us. Go into any school that has joined the revolution – many have – and you will see kids eating recognizable foods, helping themselves from salad bars, finishing what they take, all within the typical 30-minute lunch period. And nary a chicken nugget or soda in sight. Teachers in such places swear that the kids behave and learn better, do not bounce off the walls after lunch, and show fewer signs of eating disorders.

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In 2005, the Sampsons opened The Dogwood, a “neighborhood gourmet” restaurant serving new American food made from local, seasonal and organic ingredients whenever possible. But the restaurant’s sustainability went beyond the environment – they embedded into their operations a training program for people recovering from homelessness, addiction and incarceration. The following year, Galen was awarded his own Open Society Institute fellowship to grow that program. Though many of their former trainees are now employed in the Baltimore restaurant industry, the first years weren’t without their challenges.

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