Fooducate is dead simple and a great way to get better informed about what you're eating. Just use the camera on your phone or tablet to scan the UPC code of just about any packaged food and Fooducate will come back with information the manufacturer may not have been very transparent about, along with recommendations for healthier alternatives.

Just a few days ago, they launched a companion website that lets you enter UPC codes manually for the same information, so you don't need a smart phone to eat smart!

http://www.fooducate.com/

Click here for the article: "Earth Day/Foodworks Update Letter - Farmer Zaid Selected For First Government-Based CSA in NYC"

Click here for the article.

Click here to read the full article.

According to Drs. Hans Herreman and Marcia Iishi Eiteman, the millions of dollars that USAID has already poured into GM crops have yielded little of the success that would warrant further investment.  A recent report by the non-partisan Union of Concerned Scientists raised serious doubts about the basic premise behind GM crops: that they substantially increase yields.  Further, a 2008 collaboration of 400 scientists from 80 countries, sponsored by the UN and World Bank emphasized structural issues such as access to markets and sustainable, low-input farming techniques, while noting that increased yields in and of themselves often do little to alleviate poverty.

The original stated intent of the Global Food Security Act included increasing the share of US aid dollars that support collaborative research and technical capacity-building, in an effort to promote more resilient, independent agricultural systems in developing countries.  With $7.75 billion at stake in this bill, however, it's not surprising that biotech giants like Monsanto, Syngenta and others would clamor for a piece of the pie. 

Which brings us to the present moment.  With Earth Day just behind us, I encourage readers to consider a revision of the well-worn environmentalist adage: as we act locally through CSAs, farmers markets and urban farms, let's link globally with other communities affected every day by US foreign development policy.

With its five-year, 7 billion dollar reach, this bill will do much to set the course of US development policy for years to come.  As written, it includes an important shift in emphasis toward empowering small farmers who would see economic benefits from locally adaptive, environmentally appropriate farming methods.  But our Senators have to hear that voters won't accept the latest biotech boondoggle in place of a real and long-awaited shift toward a meaningful policy of foreign assistance.

Grassroots International has made it easy to connect with your legislator and send a message for real development, not the latest chapter of dependency on global monopolies. Click here to use your voice on this issue.

When:  Friday, March 5, 2010 at 7:30 PM
Where:  1199SEIU Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center Auditorium, 310 West 43rd St. (btwn 8^th and 9^th Avenues), Manhattan

Sponsored by the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle of NY, in partnership with WhyHunger, the Brooklyn Food Coalition, and the Small Planet institute

This event is free and open to the public – bring your friends!

For more info, contact cbalbertolovera@gmail.com

About Food Rebellions:

In this very timely book, two of the world’s most prominent critics of the global food system, Eric Holt-Giménez and Raj Patel, dissect the causes of hunger and the food price crisis, locating them in a political economy of capitalist industrial production dominated by corporations and driven by the search for profits for the few instead of the welfare of the many. The picture that emerges is a political economy of global production that is failing badly in terms of feeding the world and is itself contributing to the spread of inequalities that promote hunger.
--Walden Bello, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, Bangkok

***** Personal note from our co-director *****

This event looks really cool - Raj Patel's "Stuffed and Starved" is a really interesting look at local, democratic solutions to problems that afflict food systems around the world, and he is a pretty engaging speaker, too. I don't know anything about Eric Holt-Gimenez, but I'm willing to bet it's going to be an interesting event, and I'm planning to go. 

Hope to see some of you there!

Greg

Remember: Just Food has moved our offices! The workshop will be at our new offices at 1155 Avenue of the Americas (6th Ave.) Suite 311. The workshop will be from 6-8pm as usual. Please RSVP to paula@justfood.org.

If any members from Harvest Astoria would like to attend that would be great!!  We hope to develop a policy group for Harvest Astoria and we'd love to get some ideas flowing so, please let us know if you attend and have any ideas to share.  Email us at community[at]harvestastoria[dot]com.

 We hope our CSA becomes not only a place for picking up farm fresh produce but also a space for engaged Astorians interested in all things fresh and local.  We’re sorry it has taken a while for us to get going with this project (who knew running a CSA could be this time-consuming?) ;)  We hope to begin creating an active space for activities, events and ideas related to improving our community.

Our first post is to share with you some of the things that CSA members are doing in and around Astoria.  We hope you can participate in some way or the other!  Let us know if you're involved in anything you'd like to share with other members.

Composting at Two Coves Community Garden using CSA scraps!

http://www.twocovescommunitygarden.org/

Our member, Dawn Henning, is trying to support Two Coves Community Garden’s composting efforts.  She hopes to establish a partnership with Two Coves and Harvest Astoria such that our veggie scraps can be collected and delivered to them to create nutrient-rich compost for their vegetable gardens (veggies turning back into more veggies!)   Please contact dawn.henning[at]gmail[dot]com if you’d like to help out.

Greenshores NYC

http://www.greenshoresnyc.org  

GSNYC is a coalition of individuals, community groups, and local businesses who have joined together to improve and promote the waterfront parks and shoreline in Astoria and Long Island City.  CSA member Dawn Henning helps to organize events and educational activities, and she is also the co-chair of the Street Tree Committee.   The Street Tree Committee focuses on providing much needed maintenance work to our neighborhoods’ many street trees to ensure their long survival, to beautify our neighborhoods, and to improve the ecological integrity of our watershed.    If you’re interested in getting involved, please email dawn.henning[at]gmail[dot]com.

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company

The Stolen Chair Theatre Company is transposing the model of community supported agriculture (CSA) to the world of the performing arts. In the CSA model, members invest in a farm at the beginning of the season and then receive their share of the produce that is harvested. In Stolen Chair's case, members will provide "seed money" for the company's development process, and then reap a year's worth of theatrical harvest! We hope this new business model will provide us the financial support we need and provide our members with an opportunity to be emotionally and creatively involved in a community of theatre-goers and -makers. This experiment in fixing the broken arts economy is being supported by an innovation grant from The Field (funded, in part, by the Rockefeller Foundation's Creative Innovation grant), and we'll soon be applying for the last phase of funding. Before we reach this final phase, we'd like to hone our ideas by talking to theatre-goers, CSA members, and fans of our work. This is where you come in!

The Stolen Chair Theatre will be hosting a focus group in the near future. We'll present our plans to you and then invite you to tell us what sticks, what stinks, and what still needs more work.  Please contact CST@stolenchair.org for more information or to reserve your spot.