Food activism USA: Difference between revisions

This article focuses on information specific to United States. Please see our Food, sustainable community action page for a topic overview.

Community gardening in the United States

Community gardening in the United States encompasses a wide variety of approaches. Some influential community gardens, such as the Clinton Community Garden in the middle of Manhattan in New York City, and the Peralta garden in Berkeley, California, inspired by architect and community garden visionary Karl Linn, are gathering places for neighbors and showcases for art and ecological awareness, with food production cherished but seen as one part of a much larger vision. Other gardens resemble European "allotment" gardens, with plots where individuals and families can grow vegetables and flowers, including a number (for instance, in Minneapolis and Ann Arbor, Michigan) which began as "Victory Gardens" during World War II. Even such "food" gardens can be very different — for instance, plot sizes range widely from as small as 1.5m × 1.5m (5 ft × 5 ft) in some inner city gardens and art gardens, such as the Dovetail Garden in Charlotte, North Carolina, to relatively large plots of 15m × 15m (50 ft × 50 ft) such as those at Hilton Head, South Carolina.

Some community gardens, in contrast, are devoted entirely to creating ecological green space or habitat, still others to growing flowers, and others to education or providing access to gardening to those who otherwise could not have a garden, such as the elderly, recent immigrants or the homeless — for example, the Community Garden for the Homeless, in Charlotte, is not far away from the very different Dovetail Garden. Some gardens are worked as community farms with no individual plots at all, shading into becoming urban farms. ^W

Campaigns

Organic Consumers Association, consumer protection and organic agriculture advocacy group based in Finland, Minnesota. It was formed in 1998 in the wake of opposition by organic consumers to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's controversial proposed regulations for organic food. The OCA is an online non-profit public interest organization that has over 850,000 members in its database. The members include subscribers, volunteers, supporters, and 3,000 cooperating retail co-ops, such as in the natural foods and organic marketplace. The OCA is one of the only organizations in the U.S focused on promoting the interests of the nation's estimated 50 million organic consumers.

The OCA deals with wide range of current crucial issues for health, justice, and sustainability. The campaigns are issues of food safety, industrial agriculture, genetic engineering, children's health, fair trade, environmental sustainability and other crucial topics. ^W

Resources

• Food MythBusters, a new collaborative project to bust myths about industrial agriculture and share the positive story of sustainable farming through creative movies, an online action center, and grassroots events. Food MythBusters is an initiative of the Real Food Media Project, directed by Anna Lappé, and whose mission is to inspire, educate, and grow the movement for sustainable food and farming. A project of Corporate Accountability International, the Food MythBusters coalition includes some of the most important food and farming organizations in the country, including Land Stewardship Project, Family Farm Defenders, Food Tank, Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Food and Water Watch, Food Chain Workers Alliance, Real Food Challenge, Slow Food USA, Small Planet Institute, and Sustainable Table. ^W
• HOMEGROWN.org, online community and resource
• Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food, USDA
• Seed Savers Exchange, non-profit organization based near Decorah, Iowa, that preserves heirloom plant varieties through regeneration, distribution and seed exchange. It is one of the largest nongovernmental seedbanks in the United States. The mission of SSE is to preserve the world’s diverse but endangered garden heritage for future generations by building a network of people committed to collecting, conserving, and sharing heirloom seeds and plants, and educating people about the value of genetic and cultural diversity. Since 1975, Seed Savers has produced an annual yearbook of members’ seed offerings, as well as multiple editions of The Garden Seed Inventory, and The Fruit, Nut and Berry Inventory. SSE also publishes Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing Techniques for Vegetable Gardeners. The nonprofit has sold seeds to about 600 retail stores in the United States and Canada. ^W

Food Coops

• Coop Directory Service, online source of information about natural food co-ops

Local food

• Local Harvest, Farmers markets, family farms, CSA, Organic food, PYO. Website aimed at connecting local growers; a great way for locavores to continue to source produce within their local community. ^W

Seasonal food

• Eat the Seasons, North America

Seed sharing

• How to Start a Seed Sharing Campaign in Your Town, Shareable, February 2015

Solar cooking

• Solar cooking resources in USA

Legal Resources

Farm Commons

Maps

Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food Compass Map, USDA, information for the years 2009-2012

Serve Your Country Food, A project of the greenhorns - see external links

yardsharing.org, share a yard, grow a community

Research

Center for Regional Food Systems, Michigan State University

Creating Change in the Food System: The Role of Regional Food Networks in Iowa, 2012 Center for Regional Food Systems

Video

News and comment

2019

Jun 3 California news: How one nonprofit is fighting hunger, food waste, and poverty with kitchen apprenticeships ^[1]

New York City: 'The Bronx City Park that is Making Public Land Forage-Friendly', Jan 1 ^[2]

2018

Back to the land: are young farmers the new starving artists? Dec 17 ^[3]

Pittsburgh food rescue nonprofit expands nationally, Sep 12 ^[4]

What public banks can do for food systems, Sep 6 ^[5]

The promise of worker-run farming, Aug 14 ^[6]

These 3 grassroots movements are bringing people together through food, May 2 ^[7]

2017

The Fine-Dining Soup Kitchens Fighting Food Waste and Loneliness, Apr 11 ^[8]

2016

Seed Libraries And The Law - Organic Gardening, Dec 8 ^[9]

A New Almanac for the Young Farmers of the World, Nov 6 ^[10]

Move Over, Community Gardens: Edible Forests Are Sprouting Up Across America, Aug 16 ^[11]

Beyond Food: Community Gardens as Places of Connection and Empowerment, Mar 2 ^[12]

Activist Farmers Tell the Food System That Black Lives Matter, February 19 ^[13]

2015

Opinion: The USDA Is Putting $34.3 Million Into Local Food Projects. Will It Be Enough?, November 13 ^[14]

San Francisco: Why I Quit Ordering From Uber-for-Food Start-Ups, Nov 6 ^[15]

House passes bill blocking states from requiring GMO labels on food, July 23 ^[16]

2014

Duluth City Council Unanimously Passes Seed Sharing Resolution, December 22 ^[17]

Setting the Record Straight on the Legality of Seed Libraries, August 11 ^[18]

Agrihoods: Emerging Self-Sustainable Communities, April 15 ^[19]

2013

Tasty, and Subversive, Too, May 11 ^[20]

2011

Town with population of 1,012 declares the right to produce and sell local foods of their choosing, March 9 ^[21]

Events

October 24 - Food Day, in the United States is celebrated annually on October 24 and oftentimes throughout the month. The Food Day initiative is now run by Food Day.org within CSPI. ^W

See also

• Food, sustainable community action
• United States#Free stuff
• local information can be found, or shared, via our many USA location pages

Interwiki links

Wikipedia: Community gardening in the United States

External links

• Agrarian Trust, land access for next generation farmers
• Greenhorns, non-traditional grassroots non-profit organization made up of young farmers and a diversity of collaborators. Our mission is to recruit, promote and support the new generation of young farmers.
• Grow Appalachia
• Growing Power, an urban agriculture organization headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It runs the last functional farm within the Milwaukee city limits and also maintains an active office in Chicago. Growing Power aims for sustainable food production, as well as the growth of communities through the creation of local gardens and Community Food Systems. They implement their mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance. ^W
• National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition
• Slow Food USA Wikipedia's Slow Food article includes a Criticisms section, see also information re Slow Food USA
• Slow Money, a movement to organize investors and donors to steer new sources of capital to small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. Slow Money takes its name from the Slow Food movement. Slow Money aims to develop the relationship between capital markets and place, including social capital and soil fertility. Slow Money is supporting the grass-roots mobilization of investors through network building, convening, publishing, and incubating intermediary strategies and structures of funding. It is a 501(c)3 non-profit based in Boulder, Colorado. ^W

• StrongerTogether.coop, consumer website developed by National Co+op Grocers
• Sustainable Table, created in 2003 by the nonprofit organization GRACE to help consumers understand the problems with our food supply and offer viable solutions and alternatives from sustainable agriculture. Rather than be overwhelmed by the problems created by our industrial agricultural system, Sustainable Table celebrates the joy of food and eating from sustainable food systems. ^W

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