Food Riots, Tax Rebellions By 2012…

-says Gerald Celente, trend forecaster, renowned for being accurate in the past.

The man who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and the fall of the Soviet Union is now forecasting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years, while cautioning that putting food on the table will be a more pressing concern than buying Christmas gifts by 2012.

Gerald Celente, the CEO of Trends Research Institute, is renowned for his accuracy in predicting future world and economic events, which will send a chill down your spine considering what he told Fox News this week.

Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

“We’re going to see the end of the retail Christmas….we’re going to see a fundamental shift take place….putting food on the table is going to be more important that putting gifts under the Christmas tree,” said Celente, adding that the situation would be “worse than the great depression”.

“America’s going to go through a transition the likes of which no one is prepared for,” said Celente, noting that people’s refusal to acknowledge that America was even in a recession highlights how big a problem denial is in being ready for the true scale of the crisis.

Celente, who successfully predicted the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, the subprime mortgage collapse and the massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar, told UPI in November last year that the following year would be known as “The Panic of 2008,” adding that “giants (would) tumble to their deaths,” which is exactly what we have witnessed with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and others. He also said that the dollar would eventually be devalued by as much as 90 per cent.

The consequence of what we have seen unfold this year would lead to a lowering in living standards, Celente predicted a year ago, which is also being borne out by plummeting retail sales figures.

The prospect of revolution was a concept echoed by a British Ministry of Defence report last year, which predicted that within 30 years, the growing gap between the super rich and the middle class, along with an urban underclass threatening social order would mean, “The world’s middle classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest,” and that, “The middle classes could become a revolutionary class.”

In a separate recent interview, Celente went further on the subject of revolution in America.

“There will be a revolution in this country,” he said. “It’s not going to come yet, but it’s going to come down the line and we’re going to see a third party and this was the catalyst for it: the takeover of Washington, D. C., in broad daylight by Wall Street in this bloodless coup. And it will happen as conditions continue to worsen.”

“The first thing to do is organize with tax revolts. That’s going to be the big one because people can’t afford to pay more school tax, property tax, any kind of tax. You’re going to start seeing those kinds of protests start to develop.”

“It’s going to be very bleak. Very sad. And there is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we’re going to see many more.”

“We’re going to start seeing huge areas of vacant real estate and squatters living in them as well. It’s going to be a picture the likes of which Americans are not going to be used to. It’s going to come as a shock and with it, there’s going to be a lot of crime. And the crime is going to be a lot worse than it was before because in the last 1929 Depression, people’s minds weren’t wrecked on all these modern drugs – over-the-counter drugs, or crystal meth or whatever it might be. So, you have a huge underclass of very desperate people with their minds chemically blown beyond anybody’s comprehension.”

“When CNN wants to know about the Top Trends, we ask Gerald Celente.”
— CNN Headline News

“A network of 25 experts whose range of specialties would rival many university faculties.”
— The Economist

“Gerald Celente has a knack for getting the zeitgeist right.”
— USA Today

“There’s not a better trend forecaster than Gerald Celente. The man knows what he’s talking about.”
- CNBC

“Those who take their predictions seriously … consider the Trends Research Institute.”
— The Wall Street Journal

“Gerald Celente is always ahead of the curve on trends and uncannily on the mark … he’s one of the most accurate forecasters around.”
— The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Mr. Celente tracks the world’s social, economic and business trends for corporate clients.”
— The New York Times

“Mr. Celente is a very intelligent guy. We are able to learn about trends from an authority.”
— 48 Hours, CBS News

“Gerald Celente has a solid track record. He has predicted everything from the 1987 stock market crash and the demise of the Soviet Union to green marketing and corporate downsizing.”
— The Detroit News

“Gerald Celente forecast the 1987 stock market crash, ‘green marketing,’ and the boom in gourmet coffees.”
— Chicago Tribune

“The Trends Research Institute is the Standard and Poors of Popular Culture.”
— The Los Angeles Times

“If Nostradamus were alive today, he’d have a hard time keeping up with Gerald Celente.”
— New York Post

So there you have it - hardly a nutjob conspiracy theorist blowhard now is he? The price of not heeding his warnings will be far greater than the cost of preparing for the future now. Storable food and gold are two good places to make a start.
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Mary Kamps letter on the Water Council complex.

Dear Jim Godsil,
November 17, 2008

I’m writing about the material you recently sent on the proposal to locate a Water Council center at the Pieces of Eight restaurant site on Milwaukee’s lakefront. You write enthusiastically about the proposal, but here’s another view. I hope you’ll consider it.

A Water Council center—a research and teaching hub for water-based industries like Badger Meter, A.O.Smith, Pentair, etc.—could be a plus for Milwaukee but it should not be built on our lakefront. The restaurant site is on retrieved lakebed land, which is subject to the restrictions imposed by the Public Trust Doctrine. The Doctrine, based on the state constitution, limits use of filled lakebed lands to public parkland or activities supporting navigation or water-based recreation. Not only Pieces of Eight but the Milwaukee Art Museum and Discovery World are on filled land and are violations of the Trust Doctrine.

There are further concerns. The stretch of parkland between Discovery World and the Art Museum, where the restaurant stands, is too small for the proposed center, with its research labs, school, visitor center and convention facilities. The center will undoubtedly grow through the years, requiring ever more office and parking space, roads, lights, signs, outbuildings, etc. Consider how this large complex will visually impact the lakefront.

You may well ask, why have Trust Doctrine violations occurred? The short answer is that the DNR has responded to pressures from special interest groups and has failed to vigorously enforce the Doctrine. The Doctrine must remain part of our urban planning. Our lakefront is one of a kind. It is highly coveted for development. All lakefront tenants expand their operations over time. Groups such as the Lake Michigan Federation have successfully enforced the Doctrine’s restrictions and could do so again.

A new, better Water Council plan would be to locate away from the lakefront in a neighborhood that needs improvement. Such sites exist along our river and the Jones Island basin. What remains of our rare, beautiful, public lakefront parkland should remain open to all, and not be turned over to a private group, no matter how laudable its purpose.

Yours truly,
Mary Kamps
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Pettit Puppets Teach Deep Respect for Life

’My Vote Performs’ Puppetry Performance

Here is the link to the final cut of Because You Vote, (with all credits and titles in place) performed as a part of Milwaukee’s My Vote Performs project, on Election Day Nov. 4th and filmed at Bucketworks on Nov. 6th

http://blip.tv/file/1471767/

Great and sincere thanks for the support of all who helped to make this possible in so many ways, as performers, funders, producers, and greatly valuable firends and loved ones who have nurtued my creative spirit throughout this process.

Michael Pettit
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Obama’s New Office of Urban Policy — Promote Urban Farming

It barely made the news, but President-elect Obama seems to be making good on his (also under-reported) campaign promise to create a White House Office of Urban Policy.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/11/obama-to-create.html
http://origin.barackobama.com/issues/urban_policy/

Wonder if they’ll hire a point person on urban ag? (aside from The White House Farmer-in-Chief of course!)

The folks at FrontSeat (“software for civic life”) have launched a new web site to collect ideas for the Office of Urban Policy.
Voting up your favorite ideas is easy (no login req’d.) No guarantee they’ll look at this, but it could have an impact.
“Promote Urban Farming” could use some help to bring it up on the priority list a few notches…
http://obamaurbanpolicy.org/
http://obamaurbanpolicy.uservoice.com/pages/general/suggestions/71002 (Direct link to Promote Urban Farming)

Best,
Daniel

Daniel Bowman Simon
The White House Organic Farm Project
www.TheWhoFarm.org (sign the petition!)
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Fast food may be addictive

http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_content.php?id=786717

Key paragraphs:

Some scientists are starting to believe that bingeing on foods that are excessively high in fat and sugar can cause changes to your brain and body that make it hard to say no. A few even believe that the foods can trigger changes that are similar to full-blown addiction. The research is still at a very early stage, but thanks to Caesar Barber it is about to be thrust firmly into the limelight…

The US Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily intake for a normal adult male is 2800 kilocalories (11,723 kilojoules) and a maximum of 93 grams of fat. A meal at a fast-food outlet - burger, fries, drink and dessert - can deliver almost all of that in a single sitting (see Diagram). Biologists are now starting to realise that a binge of these proportions can trigger physiological changes which mute the hormonal signals that normally tell you to put down the fork. In the past decade, researchers have discovered myriad hormones that play a role in regulating appetite. Under normal conditions these hormones control eating and help maintain a stable body weight. Leptin, for example, is continuously secreted by fat cells and its level in the bloodstream indicates the status of the body’s fat reserves. This signal is read by the hypothalamus, the brain region that coordinates eating behaviour, and taken as a guideline for keeping reserves stable. The problem is, people who gain weight develop resistance to leptin’s power, explains Michael Schwartz, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Their brain loses its ability to respond to these hormones as body fat increases,” he says. The fatter they get, and the more leptin they make, the more insensitive the hypothalamus becomes. Eventually the hypothalamus interprets the elevated level as normal - and forever after misreads the drops in leptin caused by weight loss as a starvation warning.

Sarah Leibowitz, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University in New York City, has more evidence that eating fast food is self-reinforcing. Her experiments show that exposure to fatty foods may quickly reconfigure the body’s hormonal system to want yet more fat. She has shown that levels of galanin, a brain peptide that stimulates eating and slows down energy expenditure, increase in rats when they eat a high-fat diet.

What’s more, early exposure to fatty food could reconfigure children’s bodies so that they always choose fatty foods. Leibowitz found that when she fed young rats a high-fat diet, they invariably became obese later in life. She is still investigating what’s going on, but her theory is that an elevated level of fats called triglycerides in the bloodstream turns on genes for neuropeptides such as galanin that promote overeating. This suggests that children fed kids’ meals at fast-food restaurants are more likely to grow up to be burger-scoffing adults.

…that rats fed a diet containing 25 per cent sugar are thrown into a state of anxiety when the sugar is removed. Their symptoms included chattering teeth and the shakes - similar, he says, to those seen in people withdrawing from nicotine or morphine. What’s more, when Hoebel gave the rats naloxone, a drug that blocks opioid receptors, he saw a drop in dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, plus an increase in acetylcholine release. This is the same neurochemical pattern shown by heroin addicts as they go into opioid withdrawal (Obesity Research, vol 10, p 478). “The implication is that some animals - and by extension some people - can become overly dependent on sweet food,” says Hoebel. “The brain is getting addicted to its own opioids as it would morphine or heroin. Drugs give a bigger effect, but it’s essentially the same process.”

MIDDLE-AGED janitors rarely make their mark on science. But Caesar Barber looks like breaking the mould. Last July, Barber, a 56-year-old diabetic and double heart-attack victim from Brooklyn, sued McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC and Wendy’s, claiming that his illnesses were partly their fault. He had eaten in their restaurants for years, he said, without ever being told that the food was damaging his health. Barber’s class-action lawsuit a few years ago was the first volley in a long-awaited legal assault against the fast-food industry and its role in the obesity epidemic that is swamping the US health-care system (see “Fat facts”). Inspired by the success of Big Tobacco, the lawyers behind it believe they can force fast-food chains to meet their fair share of the enormous cost of caring for obesity. Pulling the strings is John Banzhaf, of George Washington University Law School in Washington DC, who masterminded the Big Tobacco crusade. That campaign won him plaudits all over the world. But “Big Fat” is a different matter. To many - including a federal judge who last month dismissed a similar lawsuit against McDonald’s - it seems blatantly absurd. Surely people who become fat and ill because they have eaten too much fast food only have themselves to blame?

Perhaps not. New and potentially explosive findings on the biological effects of fast food suggest that eating yourself into obesity isn’t simply down to a lack of self-control. Some scientists are starting to believe that bingeing on foods that are excessively high in fat and sugar can cause changes to your brain and body that make it hard to say no. A few even believe that the foods can trigger changes that are similar to full-blown addiction. The research is still at a very early stage, but thanks to Caesar Barber it is about to be thrust firmly into the limelight.

Taking on the fast-food industry was always going to be a much tougher assignment than beating the cigarette barons. Tobacco is obviously addictive. Nobody needs to smoke. And the tobacco companies knew their products were addictive yet covered it up. None of these accusations can be levelled at food.

Banzhaf maintains that he can win regardless. He points out that he doesn’t have to prove that the fast-food chains are entirely responsible for obesity. All he has to do is convince a jury that his clients’ health problems were not entirely their own fault - that the fast-food companies share the blame. Perhaps, for example, they should have labelled the food to inform customers of its high calorific value.

Any hint that the food is addictive, though, would make Banzhaf’s job a great deal easier. And he knows it. Banzhaf already says he believes that fast food has “addictive-like” properties. “We might even discover that it’s possible to become addicted to the all-American meal of burgers and fries,” he says.

But how can something you need for survival be addictive? The answer could be in the food itself. The difference between a fast-food meal and a home-cooked one is the sheer quantity of calories and fat it delivers in one go. The US Department of Agriculture’s recommended daily intake for a normal adult male is 2800 kilocalories (11,723 kilojoules) and a maximum of 93 grams of fat. A meal at a fast-food outlet - burger, fries, drink and dessert - can deliver almost all of that in a single sitting (see Diagram). Biologists are now starting to realise that a binge of these proportions can trigger physiological changes which mute the hormonal signals that normally tell you to put down the fork. In the past decade, researchers have discovered myriad hormones that play a role in regulating appetite. Under normal conditions these hormones control eating and help maintain a stable body weight. Leptin, for example, is continuously secreted by fat cells and its level in the bloodstream indicates the status of the body’s fat reserves. This signal is read by the hypothalamus, the brain region that coordinates eating behaviour, and taken as a guideline for keeping reserves stable. The problem is, people who gain weight develop resistance to leptin’s power, explains Michael Schwartz, an endocrinologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. “Their brain loses its ability to respond to these hormones as body fat increases,” he says. The fatter they get, and the more leptin they make, the more insensitive the hypothalamus becomes. Eventually the hypothalamus interprets the elevated level as normal - and forever after misreads the drops in leptin caused by weight loss as a starvation warning.

But you don’t need to become overweight to perturb your leptin system. The latest research suggests that it only takes a few fatty meals. In a study published in December, physiologist Luciano Rossetti of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City fed rats a high-fat diet and found that after just 72 hours the animals had already lost almost all of their ability to respond to leptin (Diabetes, vol. 50, p 2786). The good news, says Rossetti, is that these changes are reversible. “But the fatter a person becomes the more resistant they will be to the effects of leptin and the harder it is to reverse those effects.”

Sarah Leibowitz, a neurobiologist at Rockefeller University in New York City, has more evidence that eating fast food is self-reinforcing. Her experiments show that exposure to fatty foods may quickly reconfigure the body’s hormonal system to want yet more fat. She has shown that levels of galanin, a brain peptide that stimulates eating and slows down energy expenditure, increase in rats when they eat a high-fat diet.

In fact, Leibowitz has found that it only takes one high-fat meal to stimulate galanin expression in the hypothalamus. When the effects of galanin are blocked, the animals eat much less fat. “The peptide is itself responsive to the consumption of fat, which then creates the basis for a vicious cycle,” she says.

What’s more, early exposure to fatty food could reconfigure children’s bodies so that they always choose fatty foods. Leibowitz found that when she fed young rats a high-fat diet, they invariably became obese later in life. She is still investigating what’s going on, but her theory is that an elevated level of fats called triglycerides in the bloodstream turns on genes for neuropeptides such as galanin that promote overeating. This suggests that children fed kids’ meals at fast-food restaurants are more likely to grow up to be burger-scoffing adults.

Rossetti’s most recent studies have also found a connection between triglycerides and food intake. Using a catheter implanted in the brain, Rossetti delivered lipids directly into the arcuate nucleus - a region of the hypothalamus - to either normally fed rats or overfed rats, and then measured their food intake for three days. In the normally fed group the excess fats curbed food intake by up to 60 per cent. But the overfed rats just carried on scoffing. What’s more, Rossetti discovered that this effect is not dependent on the composition of the diet, whether high-fat or high-sugar, but instead depends on the total amount of calories.

Hormonal changes may remove some element of free will, but on its own that hardly means that fast food is addictive. However, there is another strand of research that suggests gorging on fat and sugar causes brain changes normally associated with addictive drugs such as heroin.

It is already well established that food and addiction are closely linked. Many addiction researchers believe that addictive drugs such as cocaine and nicotine exert their irresistible pull by hijacking “reward” circuits in the brain. These circuits evolved to motivate humans to seek healthy rewards such as food and sex. Eating energy-dense food, for example, triggers the release of endorphins and enkephalins, the brain’s natural opioids, which stimulate a squirt of dopamine into a structure called the nucleus accumbens, a tiny cluster of cells in the midbrain. Exactly how this generates a feeling of reward isn’t understood, but it is clear that addictive substances provide a short cut to it - they all seem to increase levels of dopamine in the nucleus accumbens. Repeated use of addictive substances is thought to alter the circuitry in as yet unknown ways.

Sugar junkies

Most of this research has been done with the aim of understanding drug addiction. But a few researchers are now asking whether the brain’s reward circuits can also be hot-wired by mega-doses of fat and sugar. John Hoebel, a psychologist at Princeton University in New Jersey, is interested in whether it is possible to become dependent on the natural opioids released when you eat a large amount of sugar. Along with a team of physiologists from the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, Hoebel recently showed that rats fed a diet containing 25 per cent sugar are thrown into a state of anxiety when the sugar is removed. Their symptoms included chattering teeth and the shakes - similar, he says, to those seen in people withdrawing from nicotine or morphine. What’s more, when Hoebel gave the rats naloxone, a drug that blocks opioid receptors, he saw a drop in dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, plus an increase in acetylcholine release. This is the same neurochemical pattern shown by heroin addicts as they go into opioid withdrawal (Obesity Research, vol 10, p 478). “The implication is that some animals - and by extension some people - can become overly dependent on sweet food,” says Hoebel. “The brain is getting addicted to its own opioids as it would morphine or heroin. Drugs give a bigger effect, but it’s essentially the same process.”

As yet no one knows how a big hit of fat and sugar compares with a dose of, say, heroin. But Hoebel says: “Highly palatable foods and highly potent sexual stimuli are the only stimuli capable of activating the dopamine system with anywhere near the potency of addictive drugs.”

Ann Kelley, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin Medical School in Madison, has uncovered more evidence that the release of opioids in the nucleus accumbens tells your brain to keep eating. She found that if rats’ opioid receptors are overstimulated with a synthetic enkephalin, the rats eat up to six times the amount of fat they normally consume. They also raise their intake of sweet, salty and alcohol-containing solutions, even when they are not hungry.

Kelley has also discovered that rats that overindulge in tasty foods show marked, long-lasting changes in their brain chemistry similar to those caused by extended use of morphine or heroin. When she looked at the brains of rats that received highly palatable food for two weeks, she saw a decrease in gene expression for enkephalin in the nucleus accumbens. “This says that mere exposure to pleasurable, tasty foods is enough to change gene expression, and that suggests that you could be addicted to food,” says Kelley.

However, the idea that food is addictive is far from mainstream. And while many nutritionists think it is a plausible idea that deserves more research, others are sceptical. Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington DC lobby group that focuses on nutrition, doesn’t think the argument will fly. So far, the CSPI has not seen any evidence that fast food is addictive.”Considering the paucity of evidence, I think the burden is on advocates of the addiction argument to provide evidence of addictiveness,” Jacobson says.

Some practitioners also dispute the idea. There is no reliable evidence that addiction can account for bingeing and obesity, says Jeanne Randolph, a psychiatrist at the University of Toronto who specialises exclusively in treating obese patients. Randolph admits that the behaviour of many of her patients is remarkably similar to drug cravings: at predictable times of day, in predictable circumstances, they describe an increasingly intense drive to obtain their preferred sugary snack or junk food, and afterwards feel immediate relief and calm. But, she says, you can explain this without invoking addiction. Fast food, sweets and snacks in which simple sugars predominate can set up a cycle of instant satiation followed by a plunge in blood sugar, which leads to a natural desire for another snack.”It’s a set-up for a late-afternoon binge rather than an addiction.”

The argument has a long way to go. But chances are it won’t get the chance to mature naturally. Some time soon the allegation that fast food is addictive will be made in court, and once that happens the terms of the debate are out of the scientists’ hands. It won’t make for a scholarly discussion. But it is still a debate worth having.

What constitutes an addiction?

Addictiveness has proved surprisingly hard to define, and there are several different ways of judging whether a substance is addictive. One of the most widely used is known as the DSM-IV criteria, devised by the American Psychiatric Association. To be addictive, a substance has to meet at least three of the following criteria:

Taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than intended

Persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control use

A great deal of time spent seeking the substance out, using it or recovering from its effects

Important social, occupational or recreational activities given up or reduced because of substance use

Continued use despite knowledge of harmful consequences

Increased tolerance with use

Withdrawal symptoms

Fat facts

More than 60 per cent of American adults and 13 per cent of children and adolescents are classified as overweight or obese. The adult figure has doubled since 1980; for children and adolescents it has trebled

In 2000, the US healthcare system spent $61 billion on the diagnosis, care and prevention of obesity

Last year, Americans spent about $115 billion on fast food, more than on higher education or personal computers or new cars

Americans spend about half of their food budget on meals and drinks consumed outside the home, and consume about a third of their daily energy this way
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Student Run Urban Agriculture Project in Madison

Students launch community-supported agriculture farm on campus
June 17, 2008
by Bob Mitchell

From a few feet away, the kale looks perfect, but a closer look reveals a scattering of small holes in the broad, green leaves. A new hatch of flea beetles is beginning to feed.

University of Wisconsin-Madison students Vance Smith, Justin Schaude and Alex Weisberg don’t have time to worry about the beetles today. They’re too busy picking kale, lettuce and rhubarb — the season’s first harvest from the 30,000-square-foot plot near Picnic Point in Madison. Every piece of produce they grow has already been sold, and bugs or no bugs, the students need to deliver week after week.

Welcome to UW-Madison’s first community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm, a small-scale experiment created by members of UW-Madison’s F.H. King Students for Sustainable Agriculture. Although the student organization has operated a garden for several years, this year marks its first foray into running a CSA, in which customers make a flat payment at the beginning of the season in exchange for a weekly share of produce. The students sold shares to 10 customers, mostly to friends among the UW-Madison faculty and staff, who received their first shipment June 12.

Another 15 shares go to student volunteers, who devote an average of four hours per week to the program. As an independent student organization, they don’t get any academic credit for their work — but that doesn’t mean they aren’t learning.

“We’re providing a service to students who want to become involved in farm marketing and farm management,” says Smith, a graduate student in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies who coordinates the effort with Schaude and Weinsberg. “(This is) a case study for students about how to run a CSA.”

If the season goes well, the CSA’s customers will savor more than 60 types of fruit and vegetables. Their first shipment included kale, mustard greens, collards, rhubarb and two types of lettuce.

But only about 25 percent of the harvest goes to paying members. As a campus organization funded by student fees, F.H. King has a mandate to provide services to students, and in this case, “service” means distributing vegetables at no cost on Bascom Hill and Library Mall, as well as making donations to food pantries.

In the past, King students have found it’s sometimes easier to grow vegetables than give them away while they’re fresh. The idea to create a CSA came up last winter as a way to deal with that overabundance.

“We were throwing out ideas of how we might get our produce out and how we might get alternative sources of funding to support other projects,” recalls Weisberg, a senior majoring in economics and environmental studies. “We all really liked the CSA idea.”

A CSA also fits nicely with the objectives of the UW-Madison Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems (CIAS), which coordinates sustainable agriculture research and outreach on campus. CIAS has provided funds to add fruit trees and other perennials to the garden.

“It helps us by creating a bigger pool of students who are interested in these issues,” says Michelle Miller, CIAS associate director, who helped found the F.H. King group as an undergraduate 20 years ago. Miller says that CIAS researchers often turn to the F.H. King e-mail list to find students to assist with projects.

Miller says the small campus CSA isn’t likely to provide serious competition to local market gardeners, but it will provide some benefits.

“They too are looking for skilled and experience field hands and farm managers and neighbors doing similar work,” Miller says. “You can talk all you want in the classroom. But you can’t understand what it means to deal with unpredictable weather and other challenges until you’ve really had to do it.”

Click Here for original article.
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National Resource Defense Council’s Tool Kit for Green Living

http://www.nrdc.org/greenliving/

It’s Time to Build Transportation Networks Around People, Not Cars

Before Dash to Invest Billions in Transportation Systems, Experts Meet to Redesign Them So They Work Better
CNU Summit shifts focus from simply moving cars to getting people convenient and efficiently where they need to go

As Democratic President-Elect Barack Obama and conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks add their support to calls from across the political spectrum for a fast-acting economic stimulus built around reinvestment in roads, bridges and other parts of our country’s underperforming infrastructure, the timeline is tight for making sure that investment meets the changing needs of American households and employers.

Fortunately, a group of 150 leading transportation design innovators are meeting this week in Charlotte, NC to develop standards and models for reworking our inefficient 20th-Century transportation systems for the current century, where the urgent challenge is building an efficient clean-energy economy and renewing the American Dream.

The event that brings these reformers together, the Congress for the New Urbanism’s annual Transportation Summit, which wraps up Saturday in downtown Charlotte. The summit is becoming one of nation’s leading forums for rethinking prevailing transportation models and their single-minded focus on moving cars and trucks. Instead the focus shifts to moving people comfortably where they want to go, whether the best choice is walking, biking, riding transit or driving. Find details at the event’s website — cnu.org/transportation2008 — and follow the action in the summit section of CNU’s group blog.

“When you begin designing transportation networks around people instead of cars, a whole set of good things happen,” says John Norquist, President and CEO of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU), a leading non-profit group promoting walkable neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl. “Throughout history, streets were expected to be vibrant public spaces and the setting for diverse and valuable economic activity, as well as movers of people and goods. We’re learning how to do that again, but when you design simply around vehicular movement as typically happens, you limit the results to a familiar landscape that includes big-box and strip retail. And perversely enough, you get a lot of traffic congestion and outrageous carbon emissions. It shouldn’t be a surprise — when people need a car or truck to get anywhere, that creates a lot of long car trips.”

The summit builds on an impressive base of work by CNU and its 3200 members. In addition to designing and implementing development where homes, townhouses and apartments are found within walking distance of shops, schools, and other of life’s necessities, CNU works to remove barriers to such development and establish standards and best-practices that lead to better results. In one example, CNU has partnered with the United States Green Building Council and the Natural Resources Defense Council to extend the LEED green building rating system into the certification of green neighborhoods, where walkable, well-connected transportation systems lead to less driving and work to dramatically reduce carbon emissions.

The work on “sustainable transportation networks” at the summit grows in part from a successful effort in which CNU and the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) jointly created a manual that provides design guidelines for major urban boulevards and avenues . It represents the first time a civil engineering stalwart like the ITE has developed and promoted urban alternatives to the wide, high-volume roads found in the influential “Green Book” from the Association of State Highway Transportation Officials.

In addition to touring examples of innovative transportation design in Charlotte and discussing strategies for the upcoming Federal transportation funding reauthorization, CNU’s team of reformers will spend the next few days refining the work they’ve been doing to create standards for whole sustainable networks, not just the boulevards and avenues that serve as important components of them. These networks are based on intricately connected grids of streets that support a rich array of options whatever mode is chosen. The group includes leading urbanists such as University of Connecticut transportation engineering professor Norman Garrick, Center for Neighborhood Technology transportation director Jacky Grimshaw and CNU co-founder Andres Duany, one of the most recognized planners in the world.

“With existing conventional suburban design, a cul de sac leads to a local street that leads to a collector and an arterial. Since there’s only one way to get from one place to another, engineers count the resulting traffic and decide how many lanes to add,” explains Duany. “When you you open the network, you download the decison making to the individuals every time they hit the intersection. You say, ‘This morning, traffic looks a little rough here or I have to pick up the laundry, so I take a left or a right.’ It’s like decentralized computing. It’s much more intelligent than the old mainframe computer.”

The opportunity for this brand of change is recognized by none other than President-elect Barack Obama. “Over the longer term, we know that the amount of fuel we will use is directly related to our land use decisions and development patterns, much of which have been organized around the principle of cheap gasoline,” says Obama’s platform on energy. “Barack Obama believes that we must move beyond our simple fixation of investing so many of our transportation dollars in serving drivers and that we must make more investments that make it easier for us to walk, bicycle and access transportation alternatives.”

Participants in the 2008 Transportation Summit will spend the next few days making progress on that very challenge. Consult the agenda for information on the various work teams and their goals. And for more information contact, Stephen Filmanowicz at 312–927–0979 or sfilmanowicz@cnu.org.

Photo: Crews add rails to Elizabeth Street in Charlotte, NC to accommodate a future expansion of the city’s streetcar system. Like other areas in Charlotte served by rail, Elizabeth Street is seeing intense reinvestment in high-value, low-carbon mixed-use development, most of which continues despite the national downturn in real estate activity. In the bottom photo, a project manager explains the interaction between the rail project and a $265 million adaptive re-use and mixed-use infill project on Elizabeth Street.
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YWCA Brings Donna Brazile to Milwaukee for “An Evening to Promote Racial Justice”

The YWCA Greater Milwaukee will host its fourth annual “An Evening to Promote Racial Justice” on Thursday, December 11, 2008 at 5:00 p.m. at the Marcus Center for the Performing Arts. Program highlights include a keynote address by political consultant Donna Brazile, and recognition of two outstanding members of our community who will receive the YWCA’s Eliminating Racism Award and Empowering Women Award.

As part of its mission to eliminate racism, the YWCA welcomes Donna Brazile, one of the best known African American women in American politics today. As a result of Brazile’s hard work and contributions to American politics, she has been the recipient of many prestigious honors and awards. These awards including: Washingtonian Magazine’s 100 Most Powerful Women in Washington, DC, Essence Magazine’s 50 Most Powerful Women in America and the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s Award for Political Achievement. In addition, she works as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She has also worked at several other universities including University of Maryland, Harvard, and Rutgers Universities and as a columnist for Ms. Magazine and Roll Call Newspaper. She is most widely recognized for her work as a political consultant for ABC News, a contributor to National Public Radio’s (NPR) “Political Corner” and a contributor and political commentator for CNN.

Brazile’s presentation will focus on the effects of race during this year’s presidential election. Brazile’s extensive background in American politics makes her an ideal choice to speak about this timely issue. Her participation in “An Evening to Promote Racial Justice” compliments the YWCA’s programs and resources dedicated to addressing racial disparities in Milwaukee.

The presentation is preceded by a hospitality hour with hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. Following the program, Brazile has agreed to meet with event attendees for photos and autographs. Reservations are available for $50 per person or $20 for students and may be made at http://www.ywcamilw.org/ or by calling (414) 267–3222. A group rate of $15 per person is available for groups of 10 or more students.

Local Author to Read from New Book that Celebrates Nature in Milwaukee

Experience the paradox of Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed, by photographer Eddee Daniel, published by the Center for American Places at Columbia College Chicago and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Two readings are scheduled in November. Both are open to the public.

7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 6 at the Firefly Room of the Wauwatosa Public Library. For a map and more information go to http://tpublib.fp.execpc.com

7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 17 at the Sierra Club – Great Waters Group monthly meeting, which takes place in the community room of Mayfair Mall. For directions and more information go to http://wisconsin.sierraclub.org/gwg/Programs.htm

Urban Wilderness intertwines the arts of photography and storytelling to promote an appreciation for natural environments in our community. Documenting the conditions within the Milwaukee River watershed, it proposes a vision for the preservation and restoration of natural areas along the region’s rivers and streams.

To produce the book the author spent six years combing the “backwoods” of an urban landscape, experiencing what it means to live in a watershed. With camera and notebook he recorded what he found, whether natural or built up, aesthetically pleasing—or polluted and ugly. Urban Wilderness guides the reader down waterways and reveals that preserving urban rivers is key to sustainable city life. While Urban Wilderness describes explorations of specific and local places, it also relates to universal experiences. In a time of dwindling natural lands, as well as looming ecological crises, the idea that we can and must enjoy and protect nearby natural areas carries a particular urgency.

To learn more about the Urban Wilderness Project, to see images from the book, to read excerpts or to check on a schedule of exhibits and presentations, visit www.eddeedaniel.com.
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Milwaukee to Become World Water Hub, the Silicon Valley of Water Technologies?

LAKE DELAVAN, WI (September 29, 2008) —
From the John Muir Chapter, Great Waters Area of the Sierra Club (Wisconsin) Newsletter
http://wisconsin.sierraclub.org/gwg/news/NewsNov08.pdf

Milwaukee’s commitment to become the Silicon Valley of Water Technologies took a giant step forward last week, with leaders announcing a new plan, organization and commitment to what they are calling the world’s water hub. “Over a fast paced two days, forty-four leaders came together and mapped out an aggressive strategic program to make the region the world hub for research and solutions to meet the world’s fresh water challenges,” stated Rich Meeusen, chairman, president and Chief Executive Officer of Badger Meter, Inc. and co-chair of the Milwaukee 7 Water Council. Meeusen added “Make no mistake that the Milwaukee region has the academic knowledge, the business expertise and the government commitment to find answers to one of the world’s most critical natural resources -- fresh water.”

Participants included representatives from Milwaukee and Wisconsin-area water technology companies; leading universities; federal, state and local governments; and non-government organizations [The GWG Sierra Club was represented at the meeting by Dale Olen] who came together to collaboratively solve tomorrow’s water challenges -- making the Milwaukee region the world’s water technology hub. The group shaped a verbal vision of the region for the future.

Water Council Vision

Imagine you are flying to Milwaukee from Israel to attend the Fifth Annual Global Water Expo and to find solutions to your desalination problems back home. At the airport you are welcomed to the to “The Freshwater Capital of the World.” There you board the light rail that will take you to the Water Council Building on Lake Michigan’s shore. You pass by a strip of recognizable water industries. You arrive
at a beautiful facility connected with Discovery World and the Art Museum, where the Water Council and the School of Freshwater Sciences are housed. You see signs for several large water companies. Students and children are milling about while a water conference takes place.

A huge vessel pulls up and you watch an exchange of research equipment and scientists. The vessel pulls out into the Great Lakes. A building complex stretches from the Lake to Rockwell Automation. The Park hums with water research and development, laboratories and field studies, business formation and technology innovations. Collaboration is happening everywhere with universities, businesses,
and government agencies working cooperatively to improve the freshwater resource around the world.

At the Water Council you meet Andy, a freshwater scientist who works at Badger Meter. Andy grew up on Lake Michigan and went to UW-Madison for his undergraduate degree in engineering, then to UWM’s Freshwater Institute, where he received his Ph.D. in freshwater sciences. He shows you around a busy Water Council.
You discover that since the Water Council opened, ten major water companies have moved large portions of their operations to Milwaukee to join the five major water companies that are home-grown. The number of water-related industries has risen from 100 companies to 200 companies in five years. Green jobs, most involving water, have increased 25% and have raised Milwaukee’s standard of living.

Milwaukee’s water economy and its power to draw water industries is being called “The Blue Gold Rush.”

You see the Water Council’s world-renowned library —a depository of legal and water policy resources, a vast array of information and technological advancements, along with intense educational efforts to inform citizens on the care and protection of our waters, especially of Lake Michigan. Newly proud of being a Milwaukeean, Andy takes you on a city tour. You immediately sense the freshwater feel of this water-rich city. Bradford Beach hosts hundreds of kids and adults swimming in clean water and playing volleyball. You learn that yellow perch are growing again in Lake Michigan and the fish supply from Milwaukee is plentiful in part because of the aqua farm work of the WATER Institute. Friday Night Fish Frys are more popular than ever…and cheaper than in 2008.

You see the river running through the Menomonee Valley where people are fishing and swimming. Downtown buildings show off green roofs and solar panels that heat water supplies and turn on lights. As you walk through City Hall, you sense the collaborative efforts on the part of all to re-use water and to use it efficiently with the best technology Milwaukee can offer. You feel clean and fresh as you journey through the city. When you return to the Water Council, you are connected to two Milwaukee industries and the WATER Institute in order to talk business. You are certain you will be signing a contract for services and products before you leave. As you say good-bye, you are already planning your next business/pleasure trip back to Milwaukee, The Freshwater Capital of the World.
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Federation of Southern Coops Have Something to Teach Us!

http://www.federationsoutherncoop.com/coops1.htm
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Chicago High School for Agricultural Science

by Scott Simon

October 25, 2008 · On Chicago’s southwest side, the intersection of 111th Street and Pulaski Boulevard is just about as urban as bus exhaust. There’s a pizza parlor on one corner. Heavy trucks trundle past, carrying heavy things like cars, steel and cement.

But if you listen carefully to the cacophony of car horns and bus splats, you may hear Lucy, chomping on grass like a pig, which she is — a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig of 350 pounds and then some. Lucy is also the resident mascot at the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, a public school and a 72-acre working farm. Its 600 students grow corn, milk cows, farm fish and run a stand where their own apples, pickles and cookies are for sale.

First and last, it is a public high school, with students clustering to gossip and teachers reminding them that they’re in class — even when their class is in a barn. They sit on the rails of a corral and gossip about a goat — a real goat — they’re worried looks too thin.

Dr. Joan White is the school’s teaching veterinarian. Her patients include two horses: Dalia, who has arthritis, and Splash, “who has Wobblers syndrome,” White says. “Both of them would have headed somewhere bad, but we use them to teach husbandry, anatomy, teaching basic skills.”

Ag High, as it’s called, opened in 1985. It’s the second agricultural high school in the country — and one of the first steps toward Chicago’s long effort to rejuvenate its public schools with innovation and experimentation.

Students must apply to attend, and some travel more than an hour each way each day. They take the full academic load of English, history, science and language classes. But they also spend part of the day in classes and enterprises distinct to Ag High, such as tending the greenhouse, which right now is planted with hundreds of poinsettias. These will bloom in time for the holiday season and will be sold at the school’s farm stand.

Students also mind five tanks of tilapia. The fish will be sold to restaurants, and the little flecks of waste that they swirl through their tank is sprinkled on the soil of basil plants. The basil is harvested to make pesto produced by the school and sold at the stand.

Remember when schools used to have bake sales? Junior Krystal Anderson works the farm stand, selling pesto along with “applesauce, butter pickles, salsa, zucchini bread, applesauce cakes and cookies.”

Anderson plans to become a food inspector. She says the high school isn’t just about growing and baking, but about the business — big business — of real agriculture. She has partnered with her friend, Heather, on their own line of products.

“It’s called K&H Goods,” Anderson says, “and so … we decide what are we going to be making, how much we are going to make and what are we going to be selling the product for.”

A Working School, A Working Farm

In Richard Johnson’s Ag Finance class, students debate as passionately over what to sell at the farm stand as some students argue about rap versus hip-hop:

“Pumpkin pies are filthy. Sweet potato pie, just an idea,” says one student.

“I’m tired of eatin’ everything zucchini,” says another.

Amid these debates about the farm stand and livestock, the voice of principal William Hook over the P.A. system reminds that Ag High is, of course, a working school. Most of his daily announcements — about the homecoming dance, football scores and detention — blaring through the hallways could be transmitted in more traditional schools.

“There will be detention on Saturday starting this week,” he says. “You must meet at the barn at 8 a.m. and work for the duration of your detention. Thank you, and have a good day.”

Hook thinks the mix — of city and country, academics and enterprise, classroom and street cred (or, in this case, field cred) — strikes a balance in learning. Instead of having students choose between a college track or a vocational track, “We show that you can do both,” he says. “You’ll have students out sixth period in pre-calculus class, and then in seventh period they’re out laying sod. I think that they learn just as much from doing either one of those things. And I think that’s one of the things we do really well here: We prepare them for college and we prepare them for the world of work.”

'Ag Is The Future'

A group of students who are city kids confessed it had not been their life’s ambition to attend an agricultural high school. Several said their parents were eager for them to apply, because the school is academically distinguished. And, it’s notably safe: The metal detector at the school entrance didn’t seem to be in use.

Ryan Shelton, who hopes to go on to college in New York and become an actor, is one of those students who needed to be won over. He says the school has made him a “more well-rounded person. And when you’re in that field of entertainment, one of the things people look at is whether you have that quality, that ‘it’ factor, diverse.”

Dantrell Cotton, a junior, says the school has changed the way he sees the world. “Ag is all around us. It branches off to thousands of occupations,” he says. “No matter what happens economically, that’s one of the industries that remain the same. And ag is the future. Agriculture is the future.”

Some students confide that friends in their urban neighborhoods mock them as “farmers.” Those friends don’t understand farming as a modern, scientific and cosmopolitan enterprise that teaches improvisation and persistence.

“A lot of people don’t understand what we get at this school that nobody else does,” says Melissa Nelson, another junior. “Because what other school can you be like, ‘Oh, yeah, we were out in the field and then the tractor broke down so we had to walk back’?”

The farm stand has many students with special needs working the shelves and helping customers. The teacher who runs the stand, Richard Johnson, used to have a family lawn mower business. But he was intrigued by education, and when the Chicago Public Schools began to open the door for teachers with professional backgrounds in business, arts or the military, Johnson signed on. He now holds forth in what may be the only Chicago high school with bales of hay. Last week, when a customer wanted to rent some for a Halloween party, a couple of Ag students saw an opportunity.

“So, after they made the deal, the kids called me and said, ‘Hey, Mr. Johnson, we got $45. And they’ll bring [the bales] back on Wednesday.’ Entrepreneurship at its best. Not like working at White Castle,” the teacher says. “You have to make decisions. I think the skills we teach, the entrepreneurial skills, they transcend … agriculture.”

By the way, one especially posh local restaurant buys tilapia from Ag High. But the school won’t disclose the name. It seems the chef doesn’t want customers to know that the fish in their tilapia with smoked mushroom aioli and ginger-flavored vegetables isn’t plucked fresh from the Nile but is trucked in — all the way from exotic 111th Street.

Click Here for original article.
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Grace Lee Boggs’ “The Economy Isn’t Everything”

LIVING FOR CHANGE
The Economy Isn’t Everything
By Grace Lee Boggs
Michigan Citizen, Oct. 19–25, 2008
http://www.boggscenter.org/
http://boggsblog.org/

In these times of economic meltdown, when so many of us are losing our homes and our jobs and agonizing about how to pay our bills, the conventional wisdom is to insist that the economy is everything, and that you’re stupid if you don’t agree.

That is why I’d like to share the email about the Dow that I received this week from my friend, Rosa Naparstek. who used to live in Detroit and now lives in New York. Rosa is an artist who helps us liberate our imaginations from the dominant culture and get to our human essence. In August she gave a very moving slide show presentation of her artwork at the Boggs Center. She called it “Childscapes” because it revealed how our inner landscapes form the emotional roots of the world we create personally and politically.

In this email about the Dow Rosa reminds us that life isn’t only about the economy. We are, first and foremost, human beings who down through the ages have created our way of life according to who and what we are. Until the onset of capitalism only a few centuries ago, our relationships with one another and our communities, not the rapid growth of the economy, were what we valued. The current crisis provides us with the opportunity to reclaim those fundamental human values.

“Last week,” her email begins, “my sister and I went to Ellis Island, the portal of our entry into the United States in 1951. I remember standing on deck at the railing, holding my father’s hand and cheering at the sight of the statue and land. I knew we had arrived for a new life and home.

“My father was a socialist who brought me up to respect labor and recognize that capitalism was an exploitative form of human relationships. He was a scholar and also by trade an ‘upper maker’ (the top part of the shoe) who worked at Henry Ford’s cutting upholstery. My mother worked there too, sewing the upholstery. She had been a seamstress. He wanted to teach me how to make shoes so that I could always earn a living. I told him I didn’t need to; that I would go to college and be safe.

“Now, after many professions, I find myself gathering things, the fruit of human labor, to put together in a form that honors the story behind them so that I too can finally say I have made something with my hands.

“We are at an interesting juncture. The sky is falling. Crisis, danger and opportunity are palpable. Evolution takes a long time, but emergent realities can sometimes break through.

“Many celebrated when ‘communism’ failed in what seemed ‘not with a bang, but a whimper.’ We won, we won! And now, who will say forthrightly that capitalism, unfettered markets and unaccountable profits, have failed, bringing us down with a global bang?

“As much as I read and have read about economics now and in the past, I feel most of what we say about it is fiction. We do not live the truths in each theory. We live and create from the truth of who and what we are.

“Socialism and communism, are spiritual economic systems: to give according to our abilities and receive according to our needs. And the final stage, the withering away of the state, is the stage when we no longer need external rules or laws because we have become our best and highest selves, and are unafraid to know that we are all one.

“Laissez faire also has its theoretical validity, a belief in personal freedom, which after all is also the highest goal of ‘the withering away of the state.’ However, personal freedom unmoored from spiritual development can become greed and ruthless disregard of the other and the best in ourselves.

“We can create an economy of caring and sharing and cooperating. The land is still here. The people, hands, minds are still here. It is an affair of the heart, giving and receiving. “

THINKING FOR OURSELVES
Good News in Troubled Times
By Shea Howell
Michigan Citizen, Oct.19–25, 2008

Over this last week there have been some clear signs of hope, indications that some people are coming to grips with the depth of the changes we have to make to restore healthy ways of living.

The first sign was in Cook County, Illinois, where Sheriff Thomas J. Dart placed his conscience above notions of abstract duty. Refusing to carry out evictions, Dart suspended foreclosures in all of Cook County, including the city of Chicago.
“Many good tenants are suffering because building owners have fallen behind on their mortgage payments,” he said last week on CNN’s “American Morning”

“These poor people are seeing everything they own put out on the street. They’ve paid their bills, paid them on time. Here we are with a battering ram at the front door going to throw them out. It’s gotten insane,” he said.

Mortgage companies have not identified a building’s occupants before asking for an eviction.

“This is an example where the banking industry has not done any of the work they should do. It’s a piece of paper to them,” Dart said.

“These mortgage companies… don’t care who’s in the building.They simply want their money and don’t care who gets hurt along the way.

“On top of it all, they want taxpayers to fund their investigative work for them. We’re not going to do their jobs for them anymore. We’re just not going to evict innocent tenants. It stops today.”

Dart said he wants the courts or the state Legislature to establish protections for those most harmed by the mortgage crisis.

In 1999, Cook County had 12,935 mortgage foreclosure cases. In 2006, 18,916 were filed, and last year, 32,269. This year’s total is expected to exceed 43,000.

“The people we’re interacting with are many times oblivious to the financial straits their landlord might be in,” Dart said. “They are the innocent victims here, and they are the ones all of us must step up and find some ways to protect.”

The Illinois Bankers Association objects to Dart’s decision, saying that he “was elected to uphold the law which includes serving eviction notices.”

The association said Dart could be found in contempt of court for ignoring court eviction orders.

But Sheriff Dart is unmoved. He said, “I think the outrage on my part with them [is] that they could so cavalierly issue documents and have me throw people who have done absolutely nothing wrong out of homes,”

“When you’re blindly sending me out to houses where I’m coming across innocent tenant after innocent tenant, I can’t keep doing this and have a good conscience about it.”

Actions like Sheriff Dart’s represent the kind of thinking that is essential if we are to build an economic system based on values that place people at the center of what we do.

The second important development has been buried under headlines hailing the decision of the administration to buy into banks. This decision was forced on an unwilling President. Pressure brought to bear by the United Kingdom forced Bush not only to stabilize national banks but also to give up U.S. control of the World Bank.

Douglas Alexander, the UK’s development secretary, backed by other European governments and developing countries, overcame Japanese and U.S. resistance. Alexander said, “The agreement provides the opportunity for candidates to be nominated regardless of nationality. It will ensure that the best qualified candidate is selected.”

After the ideologically driven, disastrous appointment of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president, this is good news. The world decided it could not trust the U.S. to make global decisions. This change opens up possibilities for renewed efforts at creating fair and thoughtful international relationships.
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Policy Resources for Growing Urban Foodsheds

Greetings Comfoodies,

I’ve been trying to inject a little urban agriculture policy talk into our local school board and city council elections and compiled some resources that some of you might find helpful. (Most this stuff originally comes from the comfood community).

Thanks to Heather Wooten of Planning for Healthy Places for your suggestions/editing of the 5% Local Coalition Foodshed Policy Packet.

1. 5% Local Coalition Foodshed Policy Packet

2. Policies, Programs, Initiatives, and Information to Grow Urban Foodsheds
So far, this only has a North American perspective. I hope to eventually add links to RUAF/UN resources. Also, in the “making the case” for growing urban foodsheds section, I intend to also add more studies which show public health/nutrition impacts of urban ag/community gardens.

I’d be interested in any feedback folks have…especially info/studies you think I should add.
Cheers,
Park

Park Guthrie
(510) 691–5051
www.urbantilth.org
Purchase a 5% Local Coalition Membership.
Join the 5% Local listserve.
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