Leasing Land In a questionable scheme to localize food production, land-rich, capital-poor Ethiopia, a major food importer, is leasing large tracts of agricultural land to foreign companies. H/T to the Food Times.

A Lasting Legacy? A year into her husband’s first term, First Lady Michelle Obama said Wednesday that she wouldn’t rule out testifying on the Hill if it would help curb childhood obesity.

Axing an Aquatic Agreement California courts have all but killed a landmark agreement aimed at curbing California’s over-consumption of water from the Colorado River.  The deal will continue to stand during the appeals process.

Creepy Corn A new study released by the International Journal of Biological Science links Monsanto’s genetically modified corn to organ damage in rats.

FDA Fail After releasing a new report acknowledging the harmful effects of BPA, the FDA said today there is little the agency can do to curtail the use of the substance in food containers.  Grist’s Tom Laskawy reports.

Peter Hanlon is the Outreach Associate for Network for New Energy Choices, a program of GRACE.

As 2009 drew to a close, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) quietly issued a decision that will dramatically decrease the destruction of fish within Long Island’s south shore estuary.  Tucked into the large expanse of salt marshes there, the E.F. Barrett Power Station can silently kill more than one billion fish and other marine life specimens every year.

Of the billion killed each year by the five-decades-old power plant, more than 30 million are winter flounder, a species whose numbers are today at a fraction of their historic levels due to habitat loss and overfishing. In fact, the stocks are so decimated that last year the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission required New York and other Mid-Atlantic states to impose drastic reductions to their commercial and recreational winter flounder harvest.  Meanwhile, the owners of antiquated power plants have been allowed to recklessly destroy aquatic life, virtually thumbing their noses at the highly regulated commercial and recreational fishing industry, and at taxpayers who have invested billions of dollars in the restoration of the nation’s rivers, lakes and oceans. The Barrett station alone accounts for 40 percent of the winter flounder destroyed by New York’s power plants.

So we were thrilled to learn on December 23 that Barrett’s owner – currently National Grid – will be required to install equipment that will drastically reduce the plant’s harm to marine life.  The bad news is that Barrett is not the only culprit on Long Island; the region’s five thermoelectric power plants together can destroy 10.6 billion marine organisms every year, or more than one million every hour.

So how is it that a power plant can so efficiently devour fish?  It all comes down to cooling.  Power plants must cool the steam used to turn their turbines and produce electricity.  As a result, they require large quantities of water to cool the equipment and keep everything running smoothly and safely.  For example, the E.F. Barrett plant sucks in nearly 300 million gallons of estuarine water brimming with microscopic life every day.  Fish eggs, larvae and plankton, all of which are essential to the aquatic food chain, are vacuumed into intake pipes, exposed to extremely hot water and toxic chemicals, and battered about by mechanical equipment.  Few, if any, survive.  Larger fish and other marine life that drift into the powerful currents rushing into the plants’ intake structures become trapped on screens intended to keep them out of the cooling system, and are injured and sometimes killed as a result.

For some it’s easy to dismiss the death of billions of eggs and larvae because the fact is that very few survive to adulthood.  Most fish in their early life stages are eaten by other animals, starve, or die from exposure to pollution or shifting water temperatures.  But just because an egg doesn’t grow to eventually end up on the end of a fishing line doesn’t negate its importance.  Eggs and larvae are a critical source of food for birds, mammals and other fish, and eggs that survive to hatch as young fish not only serve as prey for other wildlife, but become important predators themselves.

The solution is simple: destructive, antiquated cooling systems that simply withdraw and then discharge water – called “once-through” cooling – can be replaced by systems that recycle their used cooling water in what’s called a “closed cycle” system – much like a car radiator.  The result is a stunning 95 percent drop in the amount of water that the plant needs to withdraw and, in turn, a 95 percent drop in the amount of aquatic wildlife harmed and killed by the plant.  In fact, if any of the Long Island power plants were built today, they would be required to use this technology.

The primary reason the carnage has been allowed to continue is a lack of federal leadership. According to the Clean Water Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) should have created regulations that require all existing power plants to use the “best technology available” to minimize the destruction of aquatic life.  In other words, the EPA should require closed cycle cooling.  However, weak draft regulations and a resulting series of lawsuits have left us where we are today: with the EPA trying, once more, to piece together a new set of rules to compel power plants to end their environmental destruction.

But on Long Island, local groups aren’t waiting for the EPA to act.  Organizations including Citizens Campaign for the Environment and Network for New Energy Choices (the group I work for) are spearheading a campaign to stop the slaughter of Long Island’s marine life by all five of the region’s power plants.  Using New York’s ongoing wastewater permit renewal review of the plants as an opportunity to demand change, we have called on the DEC to require National Grid to replace its plants’ antiquated once-through cooling systems with closed-cycle cooling.

Clearly DEC is listening.  With its year-end decision to require closed cycle cooling at the E.F. Barrett plant, the state may save over a billion Long Island fish every year.

Or Not Many are disappointed by the results of the World Hunger Summit in Rome this week, where few leaders from wealthier countries showed up, and the leaders who did show up declined to commit to the FAO-recommended $44billion per year, or to pledge to end hunger by 2025.

Avoiding Pesticides? There’s an App for That It’s a new one from the Pesticide Action Network and it’s called What’s on My Food? and unlike the Environmental Working Group’s Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides, (also a great app) this one breaks down exactly what kinds of chemicals are likely to be on different kinds of foods and explains their implications for personal health. (hat tip to Take Part).

Safety First If you have questions about how to prepare your Thanksgiving dinner safely, tune in to the Consumer Reports Safety blog Tuesday at 1pm eastern for a live chat with food safety expert Urvashi Ranvan.

Academy Award Dreams Food, Inc. is in the running for an Oscar nomination!

Jamie Oliver, Matchmaker The foodist formerly known as the Naked Chef is playing cupid with his new business venture — an online dating site for foodies.

Fishing for Answers As catfish farmers struggle to maintain control of US markets, the state of Alabama has banned untested fish imported from China and Vietnam after catfish from both of those countries were found to contain residues of banned antibiotics.

When I got there, I took a “field trip” out of Des Moines to a number of farms and I was struck by the conflicting feelings that the visual of miles upon miles of corn evoked in me.  On the one hand, a pastoral wholesomeness that rang with my heart, though not with my head.  On the other, the cliche: Children of the Corn.  To be sure, while the Midwestern landscape is bereft of the overstimulation of the city and full of some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, there is also some creepy stuff going on there, namely an unhealthy amount of genetically modified corn and soy, a staggering number of confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and a lot of industry influence.

Before flying out, I’d been thinking a lot, as usual, about food production and the controversies that surround it.  Michael Pollan had just been lambasted in Wisconsin by what felt, to me, not unlike the anti-healthcare reform “tea parties” we saw earlier this fall.  Yes, there were real people, real farmers in fact, and yes, they were likely genuinely threatened by Pollan’s message, but the fact that they were reportedly organized by a Madison-based feed company to protest Pollan’s appearance cost them in credibility.

These were not the farmers I’d been hanging out with.

Last spring, Smithfield CEO Larry Pope, seeking to deflect blame after H1N1 appeared to have originated in a Smithfield operation in Mexico, said in an interview that family farmers stood to suffer from the massive hit the pork market took when the outbreak first occurred.  While that may have been true, Smithfield’s strategy of vertical integration has done more to put small producers out of business than have…well, the factory farming practices that almost surely created the breeding grounds for the swine flu.

And yet, industry would have those who follow such things believe that it’s activists who create problems for farmers, and they are eager to pit them against one another.  Talk about “sustainable” agriculture or “swine flu” and you hate farmers.  Ask too many questions about GMOs and you’re a science-hating elitist who doesn’t care about the hungry.  It seems to me that agribusiness has used farmers as human shields to deflect the claims of activists of all stripes — animal welfare, labor, environmental, social justice, etc.

Let me go on record here and now.  I don’t hate farmers. 

I do hate the fact that many of the farmers I met in Iowa raise GMO corn, but visiting with them confirmed what I had long known: that they have reasons for what they do.  One farmer I met cited subsidies and futures as his reason for growing commodity crops.  Indeed, if you were to watch your fellow farmers lose farms and land over the years as you struggled yourself to stay in business, would you dare gamble on growing anything that the government didn’t guarantee you a price for?  Would you plant non-GMOs, knowing that if whatever you plant isn’t Roundup Ready and a neighbor accidentally sprays your field — or their spray just drifts on over — your crop is lost?  For that matter, would you go through the trouble of that risk knowing that your more sustainably-produced product was going straight into a silo with the mountains of GMO corn produced all around you, anyway?

I also hate that so many farmers have found, over the years, that the only way to raise livestock and stay in business is to raise ever-greater numbers of animals in ever-smaller spaces, and deal with manure in unhealthy ways.  I hate that companies like Cargill and Smithfield have managed to trap farmers and their animals between a rock and a hard place, where the farmer incurs all the risk, the animals suffer more and the company makes all the profit.  I hate that traditional methods of raising livestock, along with concerns for animal welfare, workers rights, public health and other social and environmental justice issues have fallen victim to vertical integration and unchecked free market capitalism, in essence, forcing farmers to be complicit in a dangerous system that puts eaters, workers and the environment all at risk.

I know that there are farmers who will find something here to disagree with.  I’m not saying that we all can or should get along, but I did meet several conventional farmers in Iowa with whom I’d love to grab a beer.  I hope they felt the same way.   My guess is, without the twisting of words provided by industry shills, most activists and most farmers would find they have much more in common than either of them do with any multinational corporation, or even with seemingly farmer friendly front groups, like the Farm Bureau.

Speaking of the Farm Bureau, a few states over, in Ohio, an “issue” is on the November ballot which illustrates industry’s attempt to lock environmental and animal rights advocates out of any future conversation about farm policy, in this case, regualations that apply to livestock production.  Issue 2 would allow the governor of Ohio to appoint members to a “Livestock Care Standards Board,” which, if I’m getting this right, would give the group unchecked power over all future decisions on the care of farm animals.  

Proponents of the measure are framing it as a food safety issue, but opponents are calling it a corporate, special interest takeover of the Ohio constitution.  In fact, Ohio ACT (Ohio Against Constitutional Takeover) have put together an analysis of the funding (PDF) behind Ohioans for Livestock Care, less than 8% of which came below the $1,000 mark and over 66% was in chunks of $20,000 or larger.  Far and away, the Ohio Farm Bureau was the largest contributor, but the twelve largest donations all came from either corporations or industry groups.  Not exactly a grassroots effort.

So, who’s scarier?  The people, like Michael Pollan, who would speak out about the problems with our food production, or the people behind a measure to cut them out of the conversation completely?

I’m always amazed by the number of folks who think that most of Central Park is some kind of natural habitat of indigenous plants, a pristine terrain onto which we plunked our bike paths, boathouses and pretzel vendors.

In reality, nearly every square inch of Central Park was painstakingly landscaped back in the mid-nineteenth century to the specifications of Frederick Law Olmstead and Calvert Vaux. A massive public works project, it required some 20,000 workers to subvert existing swamps and blow up bluffs to create a soothing pastoral landscape in the English romantic tradition.

Oh, and there was the little matter of evicting the Irish pig farmers and German gardeners who’d built shantytowns on the land. And destroying Seneca Village, the “first significant community of African American property owners on Manhattan.” The five acre settlement, which included three churches and a school, was seized through eminent domain and demolished.

All this, so that cooped-up city dwellers could get their fix of “nature.” Our civilized way of life is so removed from the natural world that Central Park’s manicured, manipulated acres are as close to a bit of wilderness as we can hope to get within the borough of Manhattan.

But you can catch a glimpse of what Manhattan was really like before we invaded it and tamed it by watching the fascinating video that architect/educator Fritz Haeg’s created in collaboration with the Mannahatta Project. The video documents Haeg’s Lenape Edible Estate installation, which was designed to “provide a view back to the lives of the native Lenape people, how they lived off the land 400 years ago” on the island that was then called Mannahatta.

The Lenape project was installed back in June when Haeg and a team of volunteers descended with shovels and soil on a triangle of uncultivated land in front of a Chelsea housing project to plant the beans, corn, squash, berries, and other edibles that the Lenape tribe lived on centuries ago.

The project offers a “meditation both on the historical facts and the future possibilities for our occupation of the island,” as Haeg notes. He hopes that it “may also serve as a model for modest small scale urban edible landscapes and as a possible prototype for future green spaces on similar housing sites across the city.”

I’m delighted to see Haeg bring his verve and vision to an American urban setting. His U.S. plantings have been primarily in the ‘burbs, as documented in his book Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn (which also includes an installation at a London housing project). Edible Estates, written in 2007 and published in the winter of 2008, anticipated–and surely helped inspire–the recent kitchen garden renaissance. Haeg’s book sold so well that it’s now out of print.

Happily, a new edition will be released next spring. The new Edible Estates will include more stories of lawn-to-lettuce conversions and an expanded preface from Haeg on how the edible landscape scene has changed since the first edition. Urban ag genius Will Allen’s contributing a piece, and there will be a nod to the White House kitchen garden, whose role in helping to inspire millions of new gardeners this year is indisputable.

As Haeg noted in an op-ed this past spring in The Guardian, the First Family’s 1,100 square foot patch of veggies is “not just a pretty garden, or an empty symbol, but a place for a family to grow the food that they like to eat, on the land that is around them” (that’s why there’s plenty of cilantro and tomatillos, for salsa, but no beets– Obama doesn’t like ‘em). Haeg adds:

Many American children today do not see evidence that food comes out of the ground or experience the pleasure of eating food fresh from plants. Instead their diet is causing epidemic childhood illness. The introduction of a food-producing garden into their early lives is our best hope for changing the situation in a meaningful way.

But there’s another compelling reason to start growing some of your own food, whether it’s in your yard, on a rooftop, or in a window box: it’s one way to help curb your carbon footprint, or, rather, foodprint. No one is seriously suggesting that city dwellers can produce all our own food in our yards, community gardens, or urban farms, but it’s just one of the many steps that we can take to lower our impact.

During World War II, planting a kitchen garden was pitched as our patriotic duty. Isn’t it time we made growing your own food a civic virtue once again? Only this time, the fight is against the fossil- fueled American life that’s given us an increasingly unhealthy populace and an overheated planet.

And we’re in imminent danger of losing that battle. “Current emissions trajectories” are hurtling us towards the point of no return, i.e. “the worst-case scenarios” of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to the New York Times.

At a daylong conference on climate change held Tuesday at the United Nations, Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, told the world’s leaders that “Science leaves us no space for inaction now.”

This bleak pronouncement comes on the heels of a headline blaring “We’re Screwed” on the front page of Monday’s New York Post–or, rather, a remarkably New York Post-like publication that was passed out to unsuspecting commuters by activists. The hoax was orchestrated by the Yes Men, that pair of pranksters who’ve so masterfully manipulated the mainstream media, as documented in their upcoming film, The Yes Men Fix the World.

It looked an awful lot like the real thing and fooled a lot of folks. But on close inspection, you could tell that it was a fake because, unlike Rupert Murdoch’s publication, “the faux Post is filled with factual information on the threats posed by climate change,” as USA Today observed.

You’d never see an article in the real Post touting the potential of rooftop farming to help curb New York City’s carbon foodprint, or a shout-out to an upcoming presentation hosted by NYU on Food and Climate Change: The Meat of the Matter, that explores the significant contribution that meat and dairy production make to rising greenhouse gas emissions.

Meanwhile, Monday’s edition of The Daily News ran an article about the 18,000 pounds of fresh produce that inmates on Rikers Island have grown this year to supply the city’s soup kitchens and food pantries–further proof of the tangible, quantifiable benefits of urban agriculture.

Monday’s Financial Times also echoed the Yes Men’s “We’re Screwed” headline with an article entitled “Scientific Consensus Over Dire Consequences,” which noted that:

The gap between the glacial pace of negotiations and the rapid progress of global warming is now endangering the safety of the planet, scientists are warning. Martin Parry, of Imperial College, London, says: “That is what is at stake. I don’t think people have realised [sic]. We are nowhere near tackling this.”

Can we muster the collective will to alter the way we live in order to avert the worst repercussions of climate change? Those of us who live in densely populated cities already have the advantage of mass transit–and, ironically, greater access through farmers’ markets and CSAs (though not nearly enough in many communities) to the freshly harvested plant-based foods that form the cornerstone of a low-impact diet.

I don’t know if we’ll ever manage to liberate ourselves from the petroleum-based processed foods that currently dominate our food chain. But I’m heartened by the sight of so many New Yorkers attempting to grow food, whether it’s on the roof of a Brooklyn warehouse or the back of a Brooklyn-based pick-up truck, behind the barbed wire of Rikers Island, or in front of a housing project on the island formerly known as Mannahatta. Let freedom spring!

As I type up this post, I imagine Roger Doiron, a man I’ve only met once or twice in person (we’ve exchanged quite a few emails), is just walking out onto the White House lawn.  Roger’s been invited to tour the White House garden today, which is auspicious, because it’s also his birthday.  But he’s the one coming bearing gifts.

Let me back up.  Last fall, just after President Obama won the election, I published a blog post titled “Now, Vote for Veggies,” in support of Roger Doiron’s Eat the View campaign, which encouraged the Obamas to revive the tradition of an edible garden on the White House lawn. Doiron’s campaign, which consisted entirely of online promotion (first in the form of the winning “idea” at ondayone.com, followed by several smart videos and some brilliant Photoshop endeavors), was one that tens of thousands got behind, and the garden, planted this spring, may be one of the most unequivocally supported actions that the administration has taken (unless one counts the consternation voiced by the CropLife Association, who took issue with the fact that the garden, though not certified organic, doesn’t make use of chemical pesticides, and let their opinion be known. As Daily Show enthusiasts may recall, hilarity ensued).

Back to the gift.  Today, Roger plans to present a compost-able list of signatures — some 110,000 — from people who supported his campaign and/or wanted to thank the first family for their efforts. Doiron was also the mastermind behind the Food Independence Day campaign; he heads up Kitchen Gardeners International, is also an IATP Food & Society Fellow. While he may have brought the most to bear in terms of encouraging the first family to break ground, his fellow fellows are doing amazing work too, and as such, they’ll serve as his entourage during his moment in the sun.

While breaking ground on the White House lawn may not have seemed too groundbreaking to some, for the rest of us, it signaled a larger shift in consciousness, and demonstrated Michelle Obama’s willingness to lead the way toward a tastier, healthier future.  And since then, it’s gotten even better.

Rumors began swirling recently that the Obamas might go one step further when the President made some off-the-cuff remarks about a farmers’ market outside the White House. These rumors gained traction when White House chef Sam Kass made an appearance at a community meeting to support the efforts of Fresh Farm Markets, a DC-area nonprofit group that was seeking to open a market in the vicinity of the White House.  Then, earlier this week, Fresh Farm Market, now officially supported by the First Lady’s Office, applied for a permit to close Vermont Ave. between H and I streets on Thursday afternoons to make space for the market.

These events bring hope to even Tom Philpott, another food activist I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a time or two, and one who I imagine sitting behind a laptop on his North Carolina farm right now.  Tom’s posts often tend toward the macabre, so when he blogged last week about the hopeful nature of the White House garden, it meant something.

Here’s hoping it all means a lot for the future of our food system and, by extension, our health, because, as Michael Pollan pointed out today (it’s kind of crazy that this needed pointing out), the two are connected.

In terms of hopefulness, though, Philpott’s got nothing on Doiron, who had this to say about today’s garden party:

To borrow a line from the Obama campaign last year, I am “pumped up and ready to go” to the White House to visit the garden that the good food movement helped dig.  To be able to see it at all is a dream come true, but to be able to see it on my birthday with some of my favorite people from the movement is beyond words.  I have profound gratitude for what First Lady Obama and Chef Sam Kass have done and are doing.  They haven’t simply planted a garden, but have added some rich and timely compost to the home-grown revival taking root in our country and around the world.

Happy Birthday, Roger!!!

“Recycling” NYC Restaurants The flailing economy, and the resultant restaurant closures, have inspired a new take on recycling for the industry.

Breaking Records, Not the Good Kind The number of food stamp recipients hit 35 million in June, up 22% since that time last year, and hitting an all-time high. (hat tip to Naomi Starkman)

What to Do with All That Zucchini Veggie Trader is the place to be this time of year!  (via Health and Nutrition 2.0)

Nation of Foodies Some of our favorite people, including Anna Lappe and Food Democracy’s Dave Murphy, are featured in this month’s issue of The Nation, which is devoted to (guess what?) food politics. Dig in!

Creepy! Mercury in Fish Widespread A study released last week by the U.S. Geological Survey revealed mercury contamination in every single fish tested, from nearly 300 freshwater streams around the country. Daily Finance calls it the “true cost of coal.”

Dairy Workers’ Rights The United Farm Workers report that workers at Ruby Ridge Dairy in Washington State have been denied basic lawful rights like the right to take breaks, earn overtime pay and organize.

Obama Loves Local At last Thursday’s interactive health care strategy meeting, the President pointed out the link between good food and health, going so far as to call for a farmers’ market outside the White House.

Whole Foods Issues Apology After fury over Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s health care op-ed sparked a boycott against the natural food giant, this week, the company issued an apology.

Q: School is starting soon. Is there any hope that school food will ever improve?

A: Yes, there is. 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.

From what I’ve seen, this miracle requires a committed principal, a dedicated school food service director, and at least a few teachers and parents who care what kids are eating. If the food service people know the kids’ names, it’s an especially good sign. With such elements in place, the food will be real and taste good enough for the kids to want to eat it.

But the school food revolution can do more. It can turn the cafeteria into a teachable moment. I discovered that on my first teaching job when I saw how easy it was to teach biology through nutrition. Everyone eats.
Schools can use what’s served for lunch to teach the chemical composition of food and its biological effects. They can use recipes to teach mathematics, food choice to teach political science, and the entire eating experience to teach literature, English or foreign languages. Kids can be taught about food plants and animals, how they are produced, and the associated monetary, labor and environmental costs.

Individuals like you can make this happen. The national model, of course, is Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley. If your dream is to have your school connect food production to eating, take a look at Berkeley’s Center for Ecoliteracy’s how-to guide, “Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment.” (Go to ecoliteracy.org.)

Although many schools are not equipped to grow or cook food, they can still produce healthy meals that kids want to eat. I’ve just met with some of the people who work with the British chef, Jamie Oliver, on his school dinner campaigns. Oliver used his cooking skills and celebrity status to produce revolutionary changes in English school meals which, if anything, were worse than ours. I like his ideas because they sound much like mine, and I especially enjoy the British way he puts them:

• Ban the junk. Please, let’s. It’s time we got rid of vending machines, a la carte service and everything else that competes with federally funded school meals. If we did that, we wouldn’t have to have all those nutrient-based arguments about what’s allowed in vending machines. Kids need water? How about fixing the drinking fountains or supplying tappable containers of filtered water as I’ve seen done in the Berkeley schools.

• Big love to dinner ladies. This is Oliver’s way of calling for better support – financial, material and emotional – to the school food service people. I vote yes.

• Teach kids about food. Teach kids to grow, cook and taste food, and they will never look at fast food or food “just for kids” the same way again.

• Half a quid a kid! Translation: School meal programs need and deserve more money. In American schools, the federal lunch program is required to be self-supporting while everything else is subsidized. Education officials in San Francisco tell me they know how to produce healthy, tasty meals for kids but they desperately need more money to do it right. Slow Food USA is sponsoring a Time for Lunch campaign aimed at getting legislators to better support school meals. Join it. The program kicks off with an Eat-In on Sept. 7. (Go to slowfoodusa.org for more information.)

These are great ideas, but I don’t think Oliver takes them quite far enough. I want another action that I think is essential for American school meal programs:

• Make school meals universal. Our present system requires a hugely expensive local and national bureaucracy expressly devoted to preventing kids who are deemed ineligible from getting free or reduced-price meals in schools. This ugly system stigmatizes poor kids and makes the kids of illegal immigrants go hungry.

Why not just say that we think all kids should be fed breakfast and lunch while they are in school? Doing this would allow all that bureaucratic waste to be applied to the meals themselves, making it easier for the “dinner ladies” to obtain better food and be paid decent wages.

The school year begins soon. Here’s your opportunity.

[Marion Nestle is the author of "Food Politics," "Safe Food" and "What to Eat," and is a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at New York University. E-mail her at food@sfchronicle.com and read her previous columns at sfgate.com/food.  This article appeared on page K - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle. © 2009 Hearst Communications Inc.]

It may seem counterintuitive to think about farmers spending a lot of time online, but the web is actually a critical tool for many farmers — being the most democratic medium the world has ever seen means that it can help to level a radically uneven playing field when it comes to marketing.  Where else can a small producer even think of competing with multinational corporations?

This was no doubt the reasoning behind the Eat Well Guide when it was initially conceived by our friends at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP).  It was certainly our reasoning behind last summer’s publication of Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement.  And it’s the reasoning behind this panel:

Cultivating the Web: Netroots Action for Grassroots Food: The “organic” nature of social media creates fertile ground for activists, but how can online advocacy move beyond e-actions and Facebook Fan pages, translating to local, on-the-ground actions? This panel will explore various innovative and creative uses of social media and online technology to support the local food movement.

Unlike the book, this panel would not merely present case studies of the best and brightest resources and campaigns in the sustainable food world, although we’d start with that — it would go further and discuss how to hone the internationally-available tools of the web to make change on a local level. Panelists would include myself, Rob LaFave (CEO, Foodzie.com), Roger Doiron (IATP fellow, Kitchen Gardeners International, of Eat the View fame) and Marla Camp (publisher, Edible Austin).

Voting for panels started yesterday and will run until Sept 4th.  Although SXSW Interactive is basically a giant digital media trade show, it has tremendous influence over emerging trends. Having our panel on this platform would further the sustainable food agenda through increased media attention and by engaging thought leaders in leveraging emerging technologies to help farmers rebuild regional food systems.

Although public votes make up only a portion of the decision, there have been over 2,000 panels submitted this year, so competition is fierce and every vote counts.  It’s super quick to register and vote, so please spare a moment and help us out.  While you’re at it, check out some of the other food panels that have been proposed and consider voting for them too, as well as the other nonprofit proposals, which Beth Kanter has compiled all into one blog post.  Thanks for including us, Beth!

(hat tip to the Ethicurean)