What's For Dinner?

Maurice Small is a renegade urban gardener and farmer who works to make urban farming an agent of renewal in Rust Belt cities (and now also in Raleigh, NC). He works in neighborhoods and with municipal officials to use urban gardens to do the same things environmental justice activists used to figure EJ should do - address the different pieces of the whole of community well-being - education, jobs, housing, youth empowerment, health... This is the 2nd half of the interview, and he and Susan compare notes about ways gardening works to inspire people and change things for the better.

Dave Murphy is "the big dude from Iowa", a former Dartmouth football lineman, and Food Democracy Now's founder - with 3 others. It helped make Kathleen Merrigan the Assistant Secretary of USDA, and is working to defeat big biotech's newest initiative. Dubbed the "Monsanto Protection Act," this rider to the Continuing Resolution would end courts' ability to halt sale and planting of unapproved GMO crops that are waiting for judge-mandated reviews to be complete. Hear about the changes in Iowa that got him active and about their 37 state GMO labeling campaign.

Maurice Small is applying as an adult what he learned from his father in Cleveland public housing as a boy - to use available land to feed his family. His work building gardens and teaching people to garden in poor neighborhoods has led to a cascade of results of neighborhood empowerment and re-engagement in several cities - as well as a deepening and broadening of city policies related to food and sustainability. He talks about the kind of plant knowledge that suits urban gardening to meet the multiple needs of poor communities - and describes with delight working with, through and around systems.

Greg Bowman directs a faith-based non-profit working in Youngstown, the Ohio city worst hit by the industrial Midwest's economic slump. Goodness Grows uses agricultural leadership and training to "grow families out of poverty and hunger" and make livelihoods and communities more sustainable. Greg served fifteen years with the Rodale Institute in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, developed two farms for Mennonite churches, and has researched and written extensively about sustainable and organic farming. His Steel in the Field: a farmer's guide to weed management tools is fascinating reading for profiles of techniques and farmers.

Boyce Thorne Miller and Jaydee Hanson: Boyce Thorne Miller, a Marine biologist, is science and policy coordinator at the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance (NAMA). She discusses AquaBounty's GM salmon, its pending approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, and the FDA's comment period. Doubting if facilities can prevent escapes, she is concerned about the detrimental effects on wild salmon populations. Anticipating low priced GM fish, she also expects the market for locally caught fish to be severely weakened. Boyce has carried out public oversight of scientific review processes for several federal agencies and has consulted for national and international NGOs on coastal environmental issues and biological diversity in marine environments.

Peter Carstensen: Peter Carstensen is a lawyer and professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin who teaches, testifies and writes about antitrust and competition. He co-authored an amicus brief for the Bowman v. Monsanto case heard on 2/19/13, and served as a panelist at the DOJ/USDA Madison, WI, Dairy hearing. Peter describes in concrete terms why concentration of buying power in the hands of only a few large coops or processors distorts prices and means growers (ranchers or dairy farmers) receive low prices. He also discusses the dairy settlements against Dean Foods and Dairy Farmers of America.

Father Edgar Guittierez-Duarte: Father Edgar Guttierez-Duarte is a native of Colombia, and an activist psychotherapist who followed a lifelong dream of becoming a priest. Now a bilingual, bicultural Episcopal priest, he serves a predominantly Hispanic congregation at St Luke-San Lucas in Chelsea, MA. He talks about growing the food pantry from filing cabinet-size to one that serves two Saturday meals and works with 500 families a month. Anti-hunger programs help frame the church's community relationships, and they reach different hungry people than those coming to the pantry before the 2008 recession.

Andy Fisher: Andy Fisher has a long history of research and writing about urban food security and building coalitions to bridge the anti hunger and local/sustainable agriculture movements. He co-founded and served as Executive Director of the Community Food Security Coalition. Andy describes living on a Food Stamp budget during his week-long participation in the SNAP challenge. And he talks about the achievements and "growing edges" of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) as a largely successful income assistance program. Andy is working on a book exploring agriculture book exploring corporate agriculture participation in the funding and governance of anti-hunger and anti-obesity organizations.

Emily Wheeler: Emily Wheeler is a Climate Action Committee and Food Policy Council member in Concord, MA. She describes how this historic New England town did a food systems assessment working with graduate students from the Conway School, a program in sustainable landscape planning. Key here are the town's undeveloped land and many farms and the students' use of novel and concrete ways to demonstrate how citizens could participate in more complete and extensive food production.

David Jacke: David Jacke is a visionary leader in ecological design and award winning author on permaculture. Hear how permaculture goes way beyond just food production to redesigning our whole culture to mimic the principles, patterns, structures and functions of natural ecosystems, including "the whole kit and caboodle" - our social relationships, our economy, our resource use, and our inner landscapes.

Sharon Thornberry, Oregon Food Bank

Bill Ayres (Why Hunger)

Jim Gerritsen: Jim Gerritsen is president of the Organic Seed Growers Association (OSGATA). He was heading to Washington, DC, to demonstrate and attend a hearing in the lawsuit brought by 100's of farmers and OSGATA'S members to prevent Monsanto from bringing lawsuits against farmers over "patent infringement" after Monsanto seeds naturally spread to nearby farms. Jim discusses "the right to farm without the threat of harassment by the world's largest biotech seed company" in terms of farmers' and consumers' rights as citizens in a democracy. Jim Gerritsen is the Maine potato farmer we interviewed in January of 2012.

Last Minute Agriculture Riders in Washington and Putting Wright-Locke Farm to Bed

Hank Herera, Dig Deep Farms and Produce

(FULL INTERVIEW)Joe Holtz, Park Slope Food Co-op

Jan Poppendieck (1930s Pigs and Wheat History)

Thanksgiving Old Time Food - Pickles

JeomOk Park Korean Women Peasant Assoc.

Food Sovereignty Award Ceremony