This year, as a way to engage more in food justice First Presbyterian Church in Brookline (the church I am serving at) has decided that instead of having the congregation purchase poinsettias that we would collect money for the Brookline Food Pantry. This is a great way to remember loved ones while also helping those who cannot afford food in our community. We are asking for $10 donations to be made in memory of or in honor of a loved one. This money will also purchase of a paper ornament that will be decorated by the children of the church and displayed at the front of the church. These names of loved ones will also be listed in the church bulletin. 

Food Pantries are a bandaid covering up a much larger issue.

A couple of weeks ago I attended a documentary screening and panel discussion in Brookline, MA where we watched the documentary Just Eat It. This documentary is all about the problem of food waste, particularly in Canada and the United States.

My name is Ashley Earley and I am serving as a Presbyterian Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) in Boston this year and our focus is food justice. I will be posting periodically onto this blog about various food related topics for the next year.  First, I would like to introduce myself. I am from Rock Hill, SC (just south of Charlotte, NC) and graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in May with a bachelors in biology and a minor in math. I am currently taking a gap year before going to graduate school for a master’s in plant biology and afterwards plan to go into research. I have never been to the New England area before, but I am so far really enjoying my time in Boston.

For this year, I am serving at First Presbyterian Church in Brookline and at a non-profit called Woman and Girls Thriving in Brookline with a focus in the Healthy Food and Lifestyle working group. My role will be to learn and educate about food justice.

Also as part of the program we will be participating in two different food challenges. From September to the end of January is the local eating challenge and February to the end of July is the SNAP (food stamp) challenge.

The 2015 Liturgy for the Churches’ Food Week of Action is READY!

PDF version with music

Welcome and Introduction

2015 is being commemorated as the International Year of Soils and the World Food Day 2015 focuses on Social Protection and Agriculture.

In spite of steady gains against hunger and poverty, today, more than ten percent of the population of the world; about 795 million people, are undernourished and go to bed hungry.

Let us commit ourselves in prayer, to overcome hunger and social vulnerability in our communities and across the nations!

Since agriculture emerged 10,000 years ago, it has been smaller-scale producers who have fed the world. Industrial, high-tech and chemical-intensive farming has only been around for about 80 years, and still today it is small-scale farmers, ranchers, pastoralists and fishers who provide approximately 70% of all the food eaten on Earth[1].

Marketing professionals and lobbyists from Monsanto, ADM and companies promoting industrial agriculture and GMOs [we’ll call that Big Ag for shorthand] have spread a myth, which people of all stripes have swallowed. This myth claims that only large-scale industrial agriculture can feed a hungry world. The myth consists of two parts: (1) More food is the answer to feeding people; (2) Corporate, industrial agriculture is the approach that can fill this need.

First, the myth that more food will feed a hungry world.

A big thank you to Adam Liebowitz at North Star Fund, a fellow member of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food Systems Funders, for this great collection of news on all things food and farming.