Vert-à-Go

The 4th annual fundraising gala for CHEP (Child Hunger and Education Program) will be held this Saturday, 4 April. Entitled “Think Global: Eat Local”, this lively gala will include a delicious dinner featuring unique international cuisine, live music, student entertainment, door prizes, and silent auction. In keeping with the global theme of the event, the dress code is creative international or business casual–prizes will be given out for Best Dressed attendees.

All proceeds from the evening will go towards programs helping to break the cycle of poverty and fight root causes of hunger. CHEP’s programming includes Children’s Food & Nutrition Programs and Family Food Security Initiatives such as collective kitchens, the Good Food Box, community gardening, and senior stores.

This is a great opportunity to support CHEP and its vital work in helping people living in Saskatoon. I would be there in a flash if I wasn’t completely flattened by the flu right now!

When: Saturday, 4 April, 6pm (reception, cash bar, silent auction), 7pm (dinner and wine bar), 8pm (program, music & dancing)

Where: Hilton Garden Inn, 90 22nd St E, Saskatoon (Google map)

Cost: $50 (including $15 tax receipt), or $35 for students (with no tax receipt)

For more information: CHEP web site, or call Dana on 655-5322 or email dana@chep.org

This event is presented by Health Everywhere, students from the College of Medicine, and CHEP.

The 10th annual Seedy Saturday seed exchange & eco-fair is today! Seedy Saturday is a fun and informative event promoting heirloom seed-saving, biodiversity, and sustainable living. Come along for lunch (soup, salad and bannock!), check out the many interesting information booths, and join in on the free presentations on several topics of interest. There will also be children’s activities running throughout the day.

See you there!

10th Annual Seedy Saturday

When: Saturday 14 March, 12-5pm

Where: Princess Alexandra School, 210 Ave H South, Saskatoon, SK (Google map)

Admission: $2. Lunch $2 or whatever you can pay

For more information: Seedy Saturday events (Seeds of Diversity), Dana (dana@chep.org or 655-5322)

In further recognition of International Women’s Day, I’d like to cross-post something written by Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved, on his blog back in October. His post was in response to the New York Times magazine’s special food issue, which dealt with many concerns surrounding food, food politics, and food security. He, along with Dan Moshenberg (a professor of Women’s Studies at Georgetown University) felt that the NYT had missed something pretty basic in all its many and varied discussions of food–women. They wrote a letter to the editor in response (it comes below, after Raj’s introduction).

The New York Times ran a special food-themed issue of its Sunday magazine a week back. It was kicked off by a fine piece by Mark Bittman, who observed quite rightly that the conversation being had in the magazine’s pages reflects America’s new, and healthy, interest in what they’re eating.

Indeed, just a few years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine this sort of interest, and even harder to imagine that the New York Times would countenance the sorts of politics espoused in Michael Pollan’s Farmer in Chief essay, or David Reiff’s subtle dissection of the Gates Foundation’s African Adventures.

I like David’s piece a great deal, not just because I appear in it as a reasonable person, but because he captures exactly what’s wrong about the Northern do-gooder in Africa. For the record, a mistake crept in to the piece – I’ve never actually met Raj Shah – but the piece certainly captures how I feel about the Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa.

And yet, despite all that, the issue had one or two gaping holes. Labour didn’t really get a look in and, most important, the entire issue was almost wholly silent on the issue of gender. One doesn’t have to look far to see women food producers and food-makers taking on the inequities of the modern food system. Just today, from their meeting in Maputo, the women of Via Campesina released this declaration. And Dan Moshenberg, who sends much of the finest material to me for this blog, took the lead in writing this letter to the editor which, alas, the editor decided not to print.

Dear Editor,

The New York Times Magazine October 12th Food Issue is a measure of how far the debate around agriculture has come. A few years ago, it would have been inconceivable that Sunday’s glossy section could be devoted to a mosaic of pieces about the politics of food, from belly to bourse, from private purchases to public policy. We still, however, have far to go. One neglected element would have brought coherence to the disparate pieces: women.

Certainly, women were mentioned in the issue. Mark Bittman noted that cooking is no longer the exclusive purview, burden, or task of those called `housewives’. With women pressured or choosing to enter the waged labor force, men are encouraged or forced to cook for themselves and even, occasionally, for others. In her discussion of the ethical kashrut movement, Samantha M. Shapiro recalls the cultural and religious traditions of her own family, in which men would slaughter, skin and butcher animals, and women would purchase the meat, soak and salt it, and prepare it for the family. Michael Pollan urged the next President of the United States to expand the WIC program for low-income women with children.

There’s much to admire in, and much to debate over, these descriptions of women. But women are more than contemporary household cooks (since they are still a minority among paid chefs), more than the stories of how it was done in our family in the good old days, and more than the recipients of government handouts.

In much of the world, and in particular in the Global South, women are the primary toilers of the earth, even if they are a minuscule portion of the owners of land. For example, while women produce the majority of food consumed in the Global South, the OECD has noted that women own 1% of the land mass of Africa. If that seems a little far away, there are plenty of examples of women producing food closer to home - consider the fate of Maria Isabel Vasquez Jimenez, a farmworker who died of heatstroke in May this year while harvesting grapes in California, the latest in a long line of women casualties in our modern food system.

Women aren’t only central to understanding how food is produced - it’s hard to tell the full story of food distribution and food consumption without them either. The food crisis discriminates against women - 60% of those going hungry are women and girls. Michael Pollan almost touched on this when he noted that in recent months more than 30 countries have experienced food riots which are, more often than not, protests that result from planned and coordinated action by women.

All of these stories, and the big story they add up to, is a story of women. Women farmers, women care providers, women wives, women mothers, women daughters, women aunts, women heads of households, women consumers, women workers, everywhere in the world. If food matters, as we certainly agree it does, then women must be accounted for because, when it comes to food, women count. Perhaps in the next food issue, the Times might move a little further to doing this particular piece of arithmetic.

Sincerely,
Dan Moshenberg
Raj Patel

“Women produce between 60 and 80 percent of the food in most developing countries and are responsible for half of the world’s food production, yet their key role as food producers and providers and their critical contribution to household food security is only now becoming recognized.”

–Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Today, 8 March, is International Women’s Day, a day to celebrate the social, political, and economic achievements of women. One of the big headlines today was how the recession is hitting women in developing countries. As the article states, “Seventy per cent of the poorest people on the planet are women and girls, and even in a wealthy country like Canada they are the majority of the poor.” Jobs in the traditionally female employment sectors (retail, restaurants, cleaning) are rapidly vanishing because of the economic downturn, and because women earn less than men even in good times (a 16% overall wage gap globally), they have fewer resources when things turn bad. This makes them (and their children) extremely vulnerable to rises in food prices and much more likely to fall victim to poverty, malnutrition, and starvation (not to mention abuse as they are forced to do whatever is necessary in order to earn money to buy food to survive).

The International Food Policy Research Institute has issued a number of fascinating reports (Women: the Key to Food Security, Helping Women Respond to the Global Food Price Crisis) outlining the special problems facing women as they deal with issues of food security and hunger. Here are a few of its findings:

1. Agricultural productivity increases dramatically when women get the same amount of inputs (such as educational, labour, fertiliser) that men get: one single year of primary school education caused women farmers to increase their maize production by 24%.
2. Women’s education and status within the household contribute more than 50 percent to the reduction of child malnutrition: an educated and respected woman has a much greater likelihood of raising a healthy child.
3. Good care practices can mitigate the effects of poverty and low maternal schooling on children’s nutrition: teaching uneducated women about how to feed and care for their children helped their children to achieve the same height and weight as those of more highly-educated mothers.
4. Women are at a disadvantage when food and nutrients are distributed within a household: women feed their children first and themselves second, which means they often go hungry and lack proper adult nutrients.

The IPRI recommended that a number of steps be taken to improve the situation: reform and monitor legal, social, and cultural institutions to improve the status of women, be innovative in the design of agricultural, food, and nutrition programs, and design projects to be more sensitive to the livelihoods of both men and women.

One brilliant example of what can be done: the international women’s human rights organisation MADRE runs a program for women farmers in the Sudan , who “face a triple crisis of poverty, environmental degradation, and armed conflict.” Their project provides these farmers with seeds and supplies, including donkeys and plows, as well as resources and technical assistance. You can donate to MADRE here.

Happy new year! Holiday festivities are now over for most people and there’s not much to do apart from dig yourself out from the snow and finish clearing out the fridge of festive leftovers. A friend of mine, Tom, suggests the following New Year’s Day recipe:

Humpty’s Last Stand

Take all remaining 2008 food, chop, add egg and bake. Ready for 2009!

I have already made turkey pot pie, stock, creamed turkey, a couple of coleslaws, and chilli and am now down to half a leek, a grapefruit, and a cup of gravy. Oh, and a pound of chestnuts. I fear it may require more than eggs to transform those ingredients into an edible concoction!

While you’re enjoying the revitalised dregs of 2008, here is a list of some of the top food stories from the past year. 2008 was a tumultuous year, which brought a huge amount of hardship to people worldwide–as well as some exciting developments that promise some hope of change in 2009.

1. Although the first shocks were felt in 2007, it was in 2008 that the food crisis began to bite hard. Skyrocketing food prices, riots, privation, and starvation–it was a perfect storm formed from a combination of factors, including food commodities speculation, the rush to biofuels, crop failure, spiking oil prices, natural disasters, and governmental incompetence (or malice). Towards the end of the year, some organic growers and vendors (like Whole Foods) were beginning to feel the pinch as consumers looked for ways to reduce their food bills.
2. The previous few years brought the term ‘locavore’ and the 100-mile diet to the fore, but in 2008 a backlash arose against the strict application of ‘food miles’ without consideration for other environmental impacts such as method of production. Turns out transport doesn’t count for everything when it comes to carbon emissions.
3. In March, Brad Wall’s Saskatchewan Party government withdrew funding for Station 20 West, a non-profit public centre that was to include dental, medical, and mental health services for Saskatoon’s core neighbourhood residents. CHEP and the Elizabeth Fry Society were also expected to join the centre, as well as a cooperative grocery store (area residents have been without a full-service local grocery store for a decade). In April, thousands of supporters gathered to protest the cuts in a community march. Having spent the year fundraising, Station 20 West now plans to break ground on its revised centre (which will include the grocery store) this May.
4. Uncertainty about the food crisis led to a sharp increase in the number of people planting gardens, many for the first time, this past spring. Seed sales skyrocketed in Canada, the US, the UK, and elsewhere. Many city people (including me!) dug up their front lawns to plant vegetables instead.
5. It was another rotten year for rotten food–in Canada, with the Maple Leaf foods listeriosis outbreak, which killed 20 people across the country, and the E. coli outbreak from contaminated lettuce at a North Bay Harvey’s fast food restaurant. Fingers were pointed at the Canadian food inspection system. The US scrambled to find the source of a salmonella outbreak (first incorrectly linked to California tomatoes, then later to Mexican peppers), while in China, tens of thousands of babies were harmed by melamine-tainted milk (which had then also entered the global food chain).
6. Honeybees, which are succumbing in droves to an as-yet-unsolved combination of ailments called Colony Collapse Disorder, continued to decline. Parasites and pesticides appear to be chief culprits, but many of the hive deaths and disappearances are unexplained.
7. There were catastrophic floods in Iowa, as well as another year of catastrophic drought in Australia, as well as ever-increasing evidence of the effect of climate change on the ocean–salmon in Alaska attacked by a warmer-water parasite, while west-coast oysters were hit by a bacteria deadly to shellfish larvae that appeared to be connected to a new anaerobic dead zone in the ocean. These natural and unnatural disasters demonstrate yet again how dependent we are on the earth and weather behaving as we expect they should so we can grow sufficient food.
8. Several more fisheries were forced to close or are driving themselves close to collapse because of insufficient fish, due to manmade contamination or overfishing–US west coast salmon from California to Oregon, and bluefin tuna in both the Mediterranean and off the coast of Japan. Taras Grescoe’s book Bottomfeeder warned of the imminent need for humans to stop eating so far up the ocean’s food chain and to reject unsustainably-caught fish if we are to prevent mass oceanic extinction.
9. Seventeen Canadian municipalities, including the city of Toronto, decided to ban the sale of bottled water on their premises and forty-five more are set to debate the issue. It’s time to go Back to the Tap!
10. ABC News’s Senior White House Correspondence Jake Tapper called Barack Obama “an arrogant, arugula-eating, fancy-berry-tea-drinking celebrity”, while sustainable food fans cheered when Obama revealed that he had read Michael Polan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Pollan wrote an open letter to the ‘Farmer in Chief’ and a campaign began to create an organic food garden on the White House Lawn. And he hasn’t even taken office yet!
11. Burger King released a men’s cologne that smells like a Whopper hamburger. Well, I suppose it’s better to smell like one than eat one…
12. The launch of Vert-à-Go! I’ve learned a huge amount since starting up this web site last March, and I’m looking forward to covering more food issues and providing more information on where to find sustainable, organic, local and ethically-produced food over the next year. Thanks for reading!

“At this festive season of the year, Mr Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time….We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”

–Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Today, December 26th, is Boxing Day in much of the English-speaking world. The tradition of Boxing Day most likely emerged during the English Middle Ages, when alms were given to the needy and servants were given gifts and the day off by their employers in lieu of Christmas. It is not, historically (as a person-on-the-street on CBC Radio this morning blithely declared), “a capitalist holiday”–although it certainly seems to have become one in the past couple of decades in Canada.

After a day when so many of us have been so richly blessed, it really seems more appropriate to spend it sharing some of our good fortune with others who need it so badly. Most if not all of these charities will issue tax receipts (check for a Canadian tax receipt number), so make sure you make your donation before the 31st of December to make it count on your 2008 tax return.

Here is a small sampling of organisations and programs that have a particular emphasis on feeding and providing food security for disadvantaged people–both near at home or half a world away. Most of them have secure online donation facilities, which makes it as easy as shopping online–and a lot more satisfying.

• UNICEF (Buy 25 sachets of a therapeutic high-protein nutty spread that makes the difference between life and death for severely malnourished children, or high energy biscuits which provide immediate emergency nutrition for girls and boys, amongst other Gifts of Magic) $13-30-–other gifts $10 and up
• 10,000 Villages Gift of Seeds (Provide 10 families in needy areas with vegetable seeds and fruit seedlings) $25 (other Living Gifts also available)
  
• Heifer International (Buy animals that can provide food and livelihood for needy families) US$10 and up
• Red Cross Food Security Crisis Appeal (They are stepping up food security programs in 15 African countries) any amount greatly appreciated

Don’t forget closer to home, too:

• The Saskatoon Food Bank serves 12,000 visitors each month and its goal is to close its doors. When I phoned them before Christmas they said they needed ‘everything’. Its most wanted items list suggests canned beans, canned meat, canned soup, canned fruits and vegetables, peanut butter, whole grain cereals, baby formula, and baby food are always highly welcomed. Food bank donation bins are available at most, if not all, grocery stores as well as the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market, so it is very easy to donate. You can also make a cash donation.
• The Saskatoon Friendship Inn serves 500 meals a day to Saskatoon men, women and children. They are grateful for both staple food and money donations (you can call to see if there is anything in particular that they need–for Christmas, for example, they were looking for turkeys, vegetables, coffee, and so on)
• CHEP–the Child Hunger Education Project–works with children, families, and communities to improve access to good food and promote food security. They run the (sadly, much-needed) children’s nutrition program, which provides breakfast, lunch, snacks, and supper to hungry kids in the city, as well as a wide range of other fabulous hands-on educational programs and community services.
• Station 20 West, with the help of the generous people of Saskatoon, is working towards breaking ground for the Good Food Junction–a locally owned grocery store cooperative–in May 2009. This grocery store will vastly improve access to good quality, affordable food for people living in Saskatoon’s core neighbourhoods, who have been without a proper grocery store within reasonable walking distance for a decade.

I wish you and your families a happy, safe, well-fed, and contented holiday season!

For more information: CHEP web site

“One of the most dazzling books I’ve read in a very long time. The product of a brilliant mind and a gift to a world hungering for justice.”

–Naomi Klein (The Shock Doctrine and No Logo) on Raj Patel’s book Stuffed and Starved

Here’s the cover blurb for Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World’s Food System, which should give a pretty good overview about the content of the lecture:

For those with enough money - and that’s most of us in wealthier countries - life is good. We can eat almost anything we want, regardless of where it comes from, what season it is or how much it costs. The world is our dish, laden with more foods than we’ve ever seen in history and more calories than we know what to do with. A continent away, there are more bloated bellies, but this time from malnutrition - seemingly due to a scarcity of food. But these two contrasting worlds are linked, deeply and inextricably. In a timely look at the entire global food chain, Stuffed and Starved asks us to think about the way our food comes to us, to understand how our supermarket shopping makes us complicit in denying freedom to the world’s poorest and to recognize how we ourselves are poisoned by our choices.

Raj Patel, an author uniquely qualified to take a long, broad view of world food production, looks at food systems-the machine most of us don’t even know exists - and the web made up of corporations, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, farmers’ groups, government agencies and corporate lobbyists. From farm to fork, Patel travels to rural collectives in Brazil, investigates the all-powerful distribution networks, serves up the specific journeys of coffee, soy and high-fructose corn syrup, and visits the kitchens of fast-food restaurants. What he uncovers is the shocking story of commercial greed and helpless hunger that is a key ingredient in everything we eat.

Stuffed and Starved is one of the most shocking investigations into the “haves” feeding off the “have-nots” and a compelling look at how we all suffer the consequences of a food system cooked to a corporate recipe.

Copies of Stuffed and Starved will be available at the event.

Sponsored by the National Farmers Union as part of its 39th Annual National Convention

The Chinese melamine poisoning scandal caused a lot of people to take a closer look at their Halloween candy this year. I suspect that a lot of candy labelled ‘Made in China’ was simply thrown away by nervous parents after their kids brought it home. I know that I culled a fair amount of my kids’ treats–some because it was made in China and didn’t have any ingredients listed, some because it was overwhelmingly composed of corn syrup and modified palm oil. Other stuff got axed because it was just too ridiculously sugary for little kids (such as…tubes of powdered sugar). I didn’t really fancy dealing with a squishy-style bender, and preschoolers aren’t known for the thoroughness of their toothbrushing technique (besides, I just really fancied those Twizzlers).

But health considerations aside, there are other reasons that we need to look twice at that mound of brightly-wrapped chocolate. Most cocoa beans (from which chocolate is made) are grown by farmers and plantation workers who live in dire poverty and often suffer appalling working conditions. Over 100,000 of those workers are children–and most of them are working against their will.

The US Department of State has estimated that more than 109,000 children in Cote d’Ivoire’s cocoa industry work under “the worst forms of child labor,” and that some 10,000 or more are victims of human trafficking or enslavement. These child workers labor for long, punishing hours, using dangerous tools and facing frequent exposure to dangerous pesticides as they travel great distances in the grueling heat. Those who labor as slaves must also suffer frequent beatings and other cruel treatment.

–“The Cocoa Protocol: Success or Failure?”, June 2008, International Labour Rights Forum

Although the cocoa industry agreed to abolish child labour seven years ago, little or no improvement has been made. Cocoa companies promised to make their cocoa “child labour-free” by 2005, and when they completely missed that target, promised to

make 50% of farms child labour-free by 2008. That hasn’t happened either. In the meantime, tens of thousands of children and their families suffer in grinding poverty–earning only about 1 cent from the dollar or so we pay for a chocolate bar.

So what can we do to help the children who are the victims of the international cocoa trade, especially at this prime candy-buying time of year?

• Buy fair trade chocolate. Certified fair trade chocolate production prohibits child labour, increases the amount of money paid to farmers, and encourages safer and more environmentally sustainable farming methods. I bought mini Cocoa Camino chocolates to give away to trick-or-treaters this year. Try 10,000 Villages, Steep Hill Co-op, Herbs and Health, or Just Delights (664-6071).

• Go Reverse Trick-or-Treating. This Global Exchange campaign sets kids up with samples of free trade chocolate and postcards detailing the benefits of buying fairly traded chocolate, which they can hand out as they make their rounds. It’s a great chance to sweetly introduce people to the concept of fair trade!

• Think homemade (if and where possible). Homemade treats have mostly gone the way of the dodo bird, due to fear of tampering by unknown nutters. But you could still give out your great popcorn balls or cookies to the kids and parents you know well. It’s a sad state of affairs when people are so afraid of their own neighbours that they won’t let their kid eat a home-made treat from someone they see every day, but will let them scarf all the trans-fat laden, non-identifiable mystery-ingredient junk they can stomach. Maybe you could make it a personal challenge to get to know as many of the families on your block as you can and break down that distrust–a summer block party can be a great way to get people to open up to their neighbours.

• Try alternatives to chocolate. When I was a kid, we used to get apples. How delightfully retro! We weren’t always overjoyed, but we still ate them. This year I gave out little boxes of raisins along with the chocolate. You could also try something like Pure Fun candies–organic, kosher, vegan, fair trade candies made in Canada and the USA. They make lollipops, as well as individually wrapped sweets. Dad’s and Nutters carry their products–ask them to bring in the Halloween pack! There’s also peanuts in the shell (I wouldn’t hand these out unless there is a parent right there to say it was ok, in case of allergies), fruit leather, chips, pretzels, savoury snacks, juice boxes, applesauce/fruit cups…

• Politely pester retailers to carry fair trade candy. Stores won’t bring it in unless enough people ask them for it. So ask for it! We need to create alternatives to the mainstream chocolate and candy trade so that they know what they should be doing when their customers abandon them for their unethical business decisions.

Vert-à-Go has a Facebook group, which is open to any and all who would like to join!

You may also be interested in:

Saskatchewan Permaculture Enthusiasts and Skill-Share group

and

CHEP’s Good Food Box group