This evening the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will host its first-ever Food and Justice Passover Seder with Elissa Barrett of Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA) and Simon Greer of Jewish Funds for Justice (JFSJ). Rabbi Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy at the Rabbinical Assembly, and Rabbi Dara Frimmer of Temple Isaiah in Los Angeles will officiate at the seder, to be held at USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
As participants drink the traditional four cups of grape juice, the seder will bring a Jewish perspective to today’s pressing issues of hunger in America, the exploitation of food workers, and the unsustainable food production methods that are destroying our environment. Participants will discuss our individual and communal responsibilities for ensuring that healthy food, ethically produced, is available to all.
This seder was also conceived as a springboard for building relationships between members of the progressive Jewish community and a critical federal agency. The USDA wields enormous influence over how food is produced in the United States and is also responsible for ensuring that Americans in need – including the nearly 40 percent of U.S. children living in low income families – receive help putting food on their tables.
With the first cup dedicated to considering ways to end hunger and food insecurity, seder guests will receive poster illustrations of the “Food Desert Seder Plate” created last year in conjunction with a tour PJA conducted of Los Angeles neighborhoods to highlight communities where supermarkets are scarce and where healthy, nutritious food is hard to come by.
The question of food workers, and the conditions under which they toil so we may eat, will be the focus of the second seder cup, and has special resonance for Jews coming together at Passover to celebrate our freedom. Just last Wednesday, the EEOC filed two federal lawsuits accusing eight some of the world’s largest and most powerful agricultural producers of what amounts to modern day slavery. The allegations include human trafficking of hundreds of men, confiscating their passports, holding them hostage, saddling them with insurmountable debt and forcing them to harvest fruit, right here, on American soil, while also enduring verbal and physical abuse.
While these lawsuits are welcome, we know that our responsibility cannot end here. There are far too many abuses in the food chain – whether that means migrant workers and their families who don’t enjoy basic wage and working condition protections, whether it means contract farmers who can’t afford to stay on land their families have owned for generations, or food processing workers who can’t take a day off to care for a sick child. In one significant effort to address unfair labor practices in the food industry, PJA is currently supporting organizing efforts of Mercado food workers in the San Francisco Bay area who are seeking an end to poverty wages, a dearth of benefits, and substandard working conditions.
With a number of USDA staff members, Judith Belasco of Hazon, Josh Viertal of Slow Food, and dozens of other knowledgeable people at the table, there is sure to be a lively discussion of how unsustainable food production and consumption are damaging our water, soil and air – and what to do about it – as those attending the Food and Justice seder drain the third cup of the evening.
As guests work their way through the Food and Justice Haggadah created by JFSJ and PJA they will wrestle with the fundamental question: What is our responsibility and role – individually and communally – for repairing our broken food system, ensuring that everyone has access to healthy food, produced without exploiting workers, and without destroying the environment that sustains all life on Earth.
Near the JFSJ office there is a newish vegan restaurant called Loving Hut. It's kosher, too. But, everyone is a little freaked out to go there, because the television is always creepily playing something like this:
It was my cousin’s bat mitzvah this weekend. I had no idea what to get her. I probably should have gotten her a big package of yummy fair-trade, kosher chocolate…
JFSJ does service learning trips with Nat Turner, at the School at Blair Grocery in New Orleans. Nat is featured in this new film, Soul Food Junkies. This trailer raises important questions about food justice, while whetting my appetite.
Jeff Prussack is a program leader for our service learning trips. He also happens to live in New Orleans (where many of our service learning trips go) at the Moishe House.
Jeff just sent me pictures of the awesome chicken coop he built at the NOLA Moishe House. Having raised chickens myself and built two coops, I know they can be a pain to build. The two I helped with were super bulky. This one is so sleek, practical and cool looking. It’s the home to four laying hens- Pearl, Rose, Bubs and Girdie.
I’m in full support of all us city-dwelling Jews raising chickens. It’s actually really easy and rewarding. You can even order them in the mail! Fresh eggs everyday and if you’re really cruel (like me) backyard, organic chicken dinner for a special occasion. What do you think?
(Oh and for those who don’t know, Moishe House provides subsidized housing for young adult Jews to do cool things in a group home with and for Jews. There are 28 houses in 10 countries.)
If you want to talk chickens, Moishe House stuff or even because you want him to build you one of his cool coops, get in touch with me and I'll get you in touch with Jeff.
This isn't for a while, but it looks really great. Basically, RUST (Radical Urban Sustainability Training) is a weekend long course that teaches you how to live more sustainably in a city. Through hands-on activity, interaction with the local community, and lecture here are some of the topics they'll be teaching about:
* Low-tech bioremediation (cleaning contaminated soils using plants, fungi and bacteria) * Rainwater harvesting * Aquaculture: ponds, plants, fish, algae * Constructed wetlands/greywater * Autonomous technologies:wind turbines & passive solar * Worm composting and soldier flies * Raised bed gardening and soil alchemy * City chickens and micro-livestock * Struggles for land and gentrification * Brownfield restoration * Biofuels: methane digesters, wood gas and veggie oil vehicles * Mycoscaping:edible and medicinal mushroom cultivation * Energy depletion and climate justice * Sustainable and efficient wood burning
Also, just because it's awesome- "If you’ve ever dreamed about quitting the rat race and taking control of your life, spend an afternoon with Dolly Freed’s Possum Living." At 18, Freed wrote the classic book about how she lived without "working."
This is the final in a four-partseries about my visit to Stacia and Kristof Nordin’s permaculture project in Lilongwe, Malawi. Cross posted from Nourishing the Planet.
Travel anywhere in Malawi and you’ll see people sweeping—the sidewalks, the floors of their houses, and the bare dirt outside their homes. And while the sweeping makes everything look tidy, it’s also one of the major causes of damage to soils in the country. Because sweeping compacts soils, leaving it without any organic matter, erosion is widespread and the soil has very little nutrients. As a result, crops—especially corn—in Malawi rely heavily on the use of artificial fertilizers.
Kristof and Stacia Nordin have been working in Malawi to help educate farmers that “tidy” yards and gardens aren’t necessarily better for producing food or the environment. Stacia works for the German-base NGO GTZ, while Kristof runs the farm and is a community facilitator. Their home is used as a demonstration plot for permaculture methods that incorporate composting, water harvesting, intercropping and other methods that help build organic matter in soils, conserve water, and protect agricultural diversity.
“Design,” says Kristof, “is key in permaculture,” meaning that everything from the garden beds to the edible fish pond to the composting toilet have an important role on their property. And while their neighbors have been skeptical of the Nordins’ unswept yard, they’re impressed by the quantity—and diversity—of food grown by the family. More than 200 indigenous fruits and vegetables are grown on the land, providing a year round supply of food to the Nordins and their neighbors.
In addition, they’re training the 26 tenants who rent houses on the property to practice permaculture techniques around their homes and have built an edible playground, where children can play and learn about different indigenous fruits. More importantly, the Nordins are showing that by not sweeping, people can get more out of the land than just maize.
Such practices will become even more important as drought, flooding, other effects of climate change continue to become more evident in Malawi and other countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
For more about permaculture, check out Chapter 6, “From Agriculture to Permaculture” in State of the World 2010, which was released today.
Crossposted from Nourishing the Planet. I've had the opportunity to try some traditional-and tasty-local foods while I've been traveling in Africa, including amaranth, breadfruit, matooke (mashed banana), posho (maize flour), groundnut sauce, spider weed, sukuma wiki (a leafy green), and a whole lot of other vegetables and fruits with names that I can neither remember nor pronounce.
One thing I haven't tried yet is found all over Africa and, in addition to being a food source, it is also considered a pest-grasshoppers. As I was walking through a market in Kampala, Uganda I noticed women "shelling" what I thought were beans, but upon closer inspection the baskets sitting between their legs were full of wriggling grasshoppers. As they sat, chatting with one another and the curious American, they were de-winging the insects so that they could be either sold "raw" or fried for customers.
Despite the yuck factor many of you reading this might have for eating insects, grasshoppers, crickets, termites, and other "bugs" can be a nutritious source of protein, vitamins, minerals,
Collecting and selling insects can also be an important source of income, especially for women in Africa. And as climate change increases the prevalence of certain insects, they become an even more important source of food in the future.
Travel anywhere in Malawi and you’ll see people sweeping—the sidewalks, the floors of their houses, and the bare dirt outside their homes. And while the sweeping makes everything look tidy, it’s also one of the major causes of damage to soils in the country. Because sweeping compacts soils, leaving it without any organic matter, erosion is widespread and the soil has very little nutrients. As a result, crops—especially corn—in Malawi rely heavily on the use of artificial fertilizers.
I've had the opportunity to try some traditional-and tasty-local foods while I've been traveling in Africa, including amaranth, breadfruit, matooke (mashed banana), posho (maize flour), groundnut sauce, spider weed, sukuma wiki (a leafy green), and a whole lot of other vegetables and fruits with names that I can neither remember nor pronounce.
