Future Harvest Conference - Jan. 14 & 15, 2011

The Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture, also known as Future Harvest, will be holding its 12th Annual Conference on Friday and Saturday, January 14-15, 2011, at the Pearlstone Center in Reisterstown, Maryland.

As someone who attended last year, I can attest that the Future Harvest-CASA Annual Conference is a great event - a gathering of scores of farmers, agricultural experts, researchers, marketers and food systems advocates who care about the sustainability of food and farming systems in the Chesapeake watershed.  There will be more than 25 workshops and 40 speakers presenting on more effective sustainable farming techniques, how to market farm products profitably, and how to engage your community in building a stronger local food system.

And the Pearlstone Center is a great place to have it: the center promotes environmental awareness by modeling bio-sustainable business practices and facilities management, and features Kayam Organic Farm, a working educational farm. Meals throughout the weekend will feature sustainable, kosher cuisine, sourced extensively from local farms and producers.

To read the complete conferences schedule and brochure, click here.

And to register for the conference online, click here.

(Please note: early, discounted registration for the event ends this Thursday, December 23.  And since the conference  is held before the first 2011 edition of the MVG update comes out, you won't see another notice here, so act now!)

Greatest School Vegetable Garden How To Video Ever!

No kidding, this is the best school vegetable garden how-to video ever - or at the very least, the best this food and gardening enthusiast has ever seen! 

Produced by the Home and Garden Information Center and the MD Master Gardeners, both projects of the University of Maryland Extension program and under the leadership of Jon Traunfeld, this short 6 minute video (there will be a second part in 2011) stars Chrissa Carlson, the Garden and Nutrition Educator at the Hampstead Hill Academy in Baltimore.

This video is concise, clear, fun and filled with great ideas - even the sound track is awesome!  It's posted on the Master Gardener's Grow It Eat It website, and you can watch it right here.

As busy as she must be, we're working to bring Chrissa Carlson to speak to us here in Montgomery County sometime in 2011 - we'll keep you posted!

New Numbers on Food Sickness in America

How many people get sick from food in the United States every year?  The numbers have been bandied about quite a bit lately, with part of the problem being that the most recent study of this was done in 1999.

Well, the Center for Disease Control has finally completely a new study, which was released last week.  According to this latest research, as many as 48 million people, or one out of every six Americans, contracts an illness from food borne pathogens every year, with about 3,000 of those people dying.

Two things are certain: first, that the debate over food safety and the need for new laws and regulations will continue, regardless of these numbers.  And it's so sad that just as this new study is coming out, the Senate appears to be allowing the Food Safety Bill to die (see below).  The second thing that is certain - the more of your food you can source locally, whether that means growing it yourself, buying at a local farmers market or from the farmer him/herself, the better your chances that you will avoid being one of those 48 (or more) million.

 

Food Safety Bill Appears to Be Dying

The Food Safety Modernization Act that passed in the Senate a few weeks ago is far from perfect, and thanks to your phone calls and emails the Tester amendment was added to help protect small and family farmers who sell direct to consumers at the local level.  (You know it was a good amendment because Big Ag fought it tooth and nail, going so far as to call for the bill's defeat once it was included.)

That effort may have been for naught, though: as reported in the last update, the violation of an arcane Constitutional provision on tax-law in the bill caused the House to pass a slightly different version, which was then sent back to the Senate for a second vote.  Problem is, the Senate is just about out of time in this lame duck session of Congress, and once it's over the bill is dead.  It also doesn't seem high on many Senators' priority list right now, and there are some who are determined to kill it.

It's a sorry, sorry state of affairs, to say the least.  Click here to read more about this disappointing development from Food Safety News... along with, of course, the most recent food recalls and food illness outbreaks. 

Virtual Veggies - One Corporation's Lame Attempt

So here's a food related news item that sounds encouraging: "Birds Eye® is on a mission to inspire a love of vegetables - and it all starts with kids. To help encourage the next generation to discover their passion for vegetables, Birds Eye is launching the 'Feed Kids Better' initiative."

What could be wrong with this? Well as our friends at Garden Rant note , Birds Eye is not asking kids to grow vegetables, eat vegetables, or even touch vegetables - but just to "like" their Facebook page!  You wanna guess what their views on cooking are?

For more on corporate America's latest lame attempt to co-opt the new food movement to their own benefit, click here to read the Garden Rant "Virtual Veggies."

Root Cellars - Isn't it Time You Got One?

Many of wish we had some fresh locally grown food during the winter months.  While a few farmers markets in Montgomery County do stay open year round, another great alternative is to store some of that food yourself - in a root cellar.

Root cellars are of course an "old-fashioned" food storage system that are coming into vogue again as the local food movement grows.  Particularly if you grow any of your own, but even if your just buying from local markets, root cellars are a very low cost, earth friendly way to keep fresh food long into our chilly winter.

In Grist Magazine's New Agtivist interviews, they talk with people who are "working to change this country's f'ed-up food system in inspiring ways."  The following interview is with Chris Chaisson, a Vermonter who offers farmers, gardeners, and communities an array of very old-school -- and now very hip -- crop storage services. From root cellars to ice houses, these technologies may just become integral to a sustainable food future.

Click here to read The New Agtivist interview, "Chris Chaisson wants to root around in your cellar."

Dive! Living Off America's Waste

Did you know that in the United States we throw out 263 million pounds of food EVERY DAY? That's  11 million pounds of food thrown out every hour, 3,000 pounds a second, or more than 96 BILLION pounds of food a year.  However you cut it, it's an astoundingly huge and obscene number.

What if you were determined to do something about that unconscionable waste - and also determined to feed the equally alarming (and growing) number of hungry people in our country?  "Dive! Living Off America's Waste" is a fascinating look at the growing number of Americans who address both of these problems by salvaging some of this precious "waste."

Dumpster diving probably won't become an MVG campaign in 2011 :-), but it's hard to ignore the logic, and the passion, of these folks who are tired of watching people go hungry while we throw away mountains of edible food every day.

Click here to watch the trailer for this remarkable documentary - "Dive! Living Off Ameria's Waste."

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That's it for this week folks - and this year!  We've had a fantastic year bringing you the latest in local and good food news, events and updates, and we look forward to even greater things when we pick it up again in mid-January, 2011.  In the meantime, please accept our very best wishes for a wonderful holiday season! (And don't forget, you can continue to follow us on the MVG Facebook page even while the update is taking it's winter rest!)

For the Montgomery Victory Gardens Team,

Gordon Clark, Project Director