The Green Fork is the official blog of the Eat Well Guide. Click here to Find Good Food.

Our Monday Movement grew by leaps and bounds this past year – thanks to all of you who are making an effort to improve your personal health and the planet’s! We look forward to what 2010 will bring as the momentum continues to grow. Here’s a look back at some of 2009’s most notable Meatless Monday moments:

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Eating locally grown food makes sense for many reasons, not least of which is that we need to be conscious of lowering our carbon footprint however we can.

But to be a strict locavore has consequences that may cause untold suffering to the family of man beyond the hundred-mile locavore limit.

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In an ongoing David versus Goliath legal battle, Frank Morton, an organic seed breeder in Philomath, Oregon, along with the plaintiffs listed in this lawsuit, have successfully sued the USDA and its Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), for failure to require an environmental impact statement (EIS) prior to deregulation of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready sugar beet plant. In the United States District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge Jeffrey S. White ruled on September 21, 2009 in favor of the plaintiffs— Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, Sierra Club, and High Mowing Organic Seeds— requiring that APHIS prepare an environmental impact statement, and setting in place the remedy phase of the trial, scheduled to begin today (December 4) to decide the fate of next year’s transgenic sugar beet crop.

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At the massive global climate meeting taking place this week in Copenhagen, agriculture has played a largely secondary role. Negotiators seem most eager to put off the tough questions on agriculture until next year (see IATP’s Anne Laure Constantin’s report). But at a conference a short distance from the Bella Center (where the climate talks are taking place) agriculture was on everyone’s lips. And the results were both encouraging and troubling.

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Today’s post comes from the queen of the pressure cooker, Lorna Sass, who recently launched a fantastic new blog, Pressure Cooking with Lorna Sass.  This post was originally published at Lorna Sass at Large.

Last night I had a ball–or should I say a Ball jar?– at a free workshop called Preserving Your Harvest with Canning.
The class [...]

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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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