My mother grew up in Jackson County on a small farm. Her family grew cotton, corn, and peanuts like everyone around them. Unable to pay the mortgage, her family planted crops in the spring; laid them by; headed to Michigan for the summer to pick cheeries, strawberries, peaches and the like before returning to harvest their crops in north Florida. With the onset of winter, the family loaded up for...
"A Peace of Bread" a new documentary by Diva Communications, is about young folks around the country who are working on food system change as a method of addressing hunger in their communities. Debra, Diva's director/producer got wind of my work here in Tallahassee because I am a Food Justice Fellow with the Presbyterian Hunger Program. She came through Tallahassee this past August to interview...
This past week I was in Oakland for the 15th annual conference of the Community Food Security Coalition. With the Oakland's rich history of food justice work rooted in the Black Panther's Free Breakfast for School Children Program(that gave rise to the nation-wide free and reduced lunch programs), the Occupy Oakland movement centered just around the corner, and a gathering of 1100 folks from...
Food Day festivities were a whirlwind of Tallahassee's food movement. From the New Leaf Farm tour to video screenings, garden open houses, the community gardens tour, the Youth Symposium on Hunger and Food, Food-O-Rama at Kleman Plaza, the Sustainable You conference, and the "Florida Grown School Lunch Week Kick Off" at the capital, Food Day revealed many of the organizations and efforts amidst...
A friend shared this article on my FBpage a couple days ago. It is the most articulate and emcompassing article I've read about the food movement's benefits-- as well as a rebuttal against the centralized food system's attempts to hedge in our community garden, health, small-scale/sustainable agriculture, community-based food systems, nutrition, farmers' market... (i.e. food movement) work. It's...