food Archives

August 25, 2010

Holy land or a commodity?

Posted 1:13pm

Since the food crisis of 2008, food justice activists have warned that governments in concert with multinational corporations have accelerated a worldwide “land grab” to buy up vast swaths of arable land in poor countries. According to The Economist magazine, between 37 to 49 million acres of farmland were put up for sale in deals involving foreign nationals between 2006 and mid-2009. A friend pointed out how the land grabbing going on now is nothing new to what Native American, Hispanic and Black farmers and communities have faced for centuries. The current scale of the land grabs is tremendous. Take a look at what is happening in this good interview of Anuradha Mittal — executive director of the Oakland Institute and keynote speaker at past PC(USA) conferences — by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

August 20, 2010

Pay your library fine with food

Posted 12:09pm

waiting patiently for a meteorite shower to commence, I spy the single light on top of the mountain in front of me

August 13, 2010

Your guide to the Week of Action on Food

Posted 7:28pm

start preparing for activities for the Churches Week of Action on Food from 10-17 October. During the Week you will be connected to thousands of people, churches and communities around the world in a movement calling for change in the way food is grown, sold, distributed and shared. It is a time to lift up the voices of small-scale food producers, particularly women, to have choices on what crops to grow and how they can grow these crops.

April 28, 2010

I’m an idiot

Posted 7:12pm

Each year! This would translate into 100s of new jobs. Based on other cities, Dan estimates about a 1,000 jobs would be created. If your town or city is anything like Louisville, you could use more good jobs, right? Deep thinkers might wonder if new jobs in your town would cause the loss of jobs somewhere else. Fortunately it doesn’t work like that. While a few jobs might be lost in various locations in the US or overseas, the reason why a small shift to local purchasing -10 cents on the dollar – creates so much new wealth and jobs is the power of local money circulation.

April 16, 2010

An Agrarian Vision: When Work and Place Jive

Posted 12:18am

From an agrarian point of view, the Exodus was a movement from the flat, easily tillable land of Egypt to “the narrow and precariously balanced ecological niche that is the hill country of ancient Judah and Samaria.” The people of Israel had to re-make their economic life to conform to a landscape that allowed “only the slightest margin for negligence, ignorance, or error.”

April 15, 2010

Who started the local food revolution? Cuba or Jamie Oliver?

Posted 11:43am

“The organic and urgan agriculture revolution that is under way there is nothing short of amazing, but what a lot of people don’t know is the amount of hardship Cubans have been through to get to where they are. Unlike with most people in the US and other wealthy countries, growing their own and doing it organically were not really choices for Cubans: they did it to survive. Or to put it more flippantly, when life gave the Cubans limes (mint and rum), they decided to make mojitos.”

March 17, 2010

Planet says, “This food gives me gas.”

Posted 9:25am

The Swedes are labeling some food items with the amount (estimated) of greenhouse-gas emissions the production of the food puts into the atmosphere!If this experiment is effective, they estimate the country’s emissions could be reduced by 20-50 percent. One Swedish burger chain, Max, offers beef alternatives and signed on enthusiastically to the new recommendations. It became the first restaurant chain to publish carbon footprints of menu items to encourage people to eat less beef.

March 4, 2010

A Better Way to Feed the Hungry?

Posted 3:28pm

Bill Gates thinks he’s got a brilliant idea: fighting malnutrition abroad by fortifying food. The scheme, backed with $50 million from the Gates Foundation, in part encourages Proctor & Gamble, Philip Morris’ Kraft, and other companies to develop vitamin and iron-fortified processed foods. It then facilitates their entry into Third World markets. Gates seems to believe we don’t have time to address the complex social and political roots of malnutrition. But in opting for this single-focus, top-down, technical intervention, Gates can end up hurting the very people he wants to help.

January 15, 2010

Haiti and your favorite comfort foods

Posted 3:27pm

This was to go up yesterday, until Tuesday’s earthquake devastated Haiti. Rather than cancel the post, I’m posting it with this suggestion… Think about the comfort food you love, the things you love to do, the people in your life whom you love – really generate in your heart an intense feeling of love – and send that to the people of Haiti and to the souls who have so suddenly been separated from their bodies. Favorite comfort foods for North American Presbyterian Hunger Program facebook fans. List! Cheese grits win. Pot roast, mac’n cheese and chicken with dumplings close runner ups.

February 28, 2008

Talking ‘Bout Serious Change

Posted 9:10pm

I want Upton Sinclair’s change. I want God’s change. I want the change that gets us out of thinking and living “better grab all that I can get ‘cuz there won’t be enough” and into trusting the life-giving Commandments to love God and to love our neighbor.

Posts Tagged: food