Food & Water

Web & media – Mar 22

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-A road not taken
-Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities and Our Health
-Richard Heinberg Lecture Peak Oil Pt 1
-Q&A with Chef Dan Barber: Can organic farming feed the world?
-The Global Food Market (VIDEO): Why Do Some Eat Well While Others Starve?

Moving phosphorus from noxious to precious (report on peak phosphorus)

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The problem of excessive phosphorus loading is affecting water bodies in all parts of the world, including Lake Winnipeg, which is the tenth largest lake in the world by surface area, and among the most heavily loaded with phosphorus of the world’s great lakes. … While our total global phosphorus reserves remain unknown, statistics on deposits found in recent decades indicate that more phosphate is being extracted than discovered. Although dwindling rock phosphate reserves may challenge our industrial model of agriculture, it will also stimulate innovation and create new economic opportunities for capturing and recycling phosphorus back onto agricultural lands.

Food & agriculture – Mar 19

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-Bees in the City? New York May Let the Hives Come Out of Hiding
-Produce to the People: Collaborating for Food Access
-Is Goat the New Cow? Why American Foodies and Environmentalists Are Reviving the Old-World Staple
-Ankeny forum to examine agricultural concentration
-New York rolls veggie carts into food deserts; can other cities follow?
-How guerrilla gardening took root
-New report reveals the environmental and social impact of the ‘livestock revolution’
-‘I’m not a slave, I just can’t speak English’ – life in the meat industry

Conscientious Cooks VII (Sooke Harbour House)/ Carlo Petrini & Slow Food Canada

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The Sooke Harbour House is a 28-room inn in Sooke, British Columbia which has been owned and operated by Frederique and Sinclair Philip since 1979. The inn is home to a restaurant that has led the way in Canada (if not North America) in the practice of sourcing local and wild-crafted foods…Deconstructing Dinner’s Jon Steinman visited the restaurant to learn more about the restaurant’s unique approach…(Also) in this segment we hear a talk from Slow Food founder Carlo Petrini and discuss the Slow Food Canada organization with Canada’s international representative Sinclair Philip.

Little City Gardens: Growing an Urban Micro-Farm

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A year ago, my business partner, Caitlyn Galloway, and I started Little City Gardens. We grow salad greens, braising greens, and culinary herbs in the heart of San Francisco, which we sell to a restaurant, caterers, and individual subscribers. Little City Gardens is a lot of things: a market-garden, a small business struggling to succeed, and an experiment in the viability of urban micro-farming. We started the business with a desire to apply ourselves to the redesign of our local foodshed.

The water wars: California’s salmon vs. agribiz interests

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These fish and shellfish are delicious, healthful, and can be eaten with a clean conscience. Still, there’s something missing in my line-up in recent years, and my customers and I miss it terribly: local, wild salmon. Not long ago, Chinook salmon pulled from our cold, clean offshore waters, constituted up to 50 percent of my business. Today: zilch, nothing. That’s because there hasn’t been a commercial salmon season in California and Oregon for the last two years.