Article: Spoiled: Organic and Local is So 2008

Locavoring under attack on the pages of Mother Jones. Just in case we started feeling too comfy within the easy confines of our local foodscape, Paul Robert reminds us that we are 6.5 billion and growing. Sustainability in a food system will have to be a lot less neater that many of us envisioned it in order to feed us all. Spoiled: Organic and Local are SO 2008.

Article: Farmer in Chief

In an earlier post I refered to a serious discussion of an edible garden on the White House lawn. Well Michael Pollan is the main proponent of this idea and you can read his open letter to the President here, Farmer in Chief.

A little excerpt to get you in the mood: "Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis -- a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact."

Meals-on-Wheels Hits the Farm

What is bright yellow, goes up to 60 mph, and has a fire on its tail (actually a custom built grill)? Apparently Meadow Lark Farm Dinners. These folk prepare an outdoor meal right next to the farm field out of a converted yellow school bus. Its extreme locavoring and it sounds wonderful. The down side for us is that they do this only in Colorado but it is such a great idea someone from Northern California will surely steal it. Meadow Lark Farm Dinners

Article: Eat Local, Kill Local

Pass this up if you don't eat meat. If you do and you want to do it locally and ethically, Read Heather Smiths article about a group of ranchers attempting to open a small-scale slaughterhouse in the Bay Area. Apparently even locally grazed, organically raised cattle must be trucked out to some industrial slaughterhouse in the Central Valley to be killed. These folk want to close the loop and bring some honesty to our local meat consumption. Read it hear Eat Local, Kill Locall

In the works: Documentary Film 'Edible City'

Check out video clips and help support this homegrown film project.

Edible City Trailer 1 from East Bay Pictures on Vimeo.

Food Deserts

This old post at FOOD MAPPING is worth revisiting because it brings up an important point about food accessibility. Although not local (the post focuses on NYC, of course we have our own food deserts. See the post @ FOOD MAPPING

Back on the Blog

After a long hiatus because our family has sprouted a new addition (Inez is now almost 9 months old), San Francisco Local Foods is back. It is hard to believe how much more momentum this movement has taken in the meantime. From the start, this energy has come because of grassroots efforts but may not be unrelated to a new sense of optimism brought on by the change in leadership in Washington. There has even been a serious discussion about displacing a portion of the White House lawn to make way for an organic kitchen garden (along with a new position of Farmer in chief).

It is now hard to find a mainstream publication or news outlet that has not covered local food movements and no more telling sign than the recent adoption of the word locavore by the editors of the Oxford American Dictionary (although this html editor still underlines the word in red).

We missed bringing you the news from our local scene and we are glad to be back in the stream.
Francisco.