Trial at five contaminated urban agriculture sites in Kampala City, Uganda

By G. Nabulo, C.R. Black, J. Craigon, S.D. Young
School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham
Online: 28 December 2011.
Environmental Pollution
Volume 162, March 2012, Pages 389-398

Abstract

Concentrations of potentially toxic elements were measured in soils and five contrasting tropical leafy vegetables grown in a replicated field trial at five contaminated urban agriculture sites in Kampala City, Uganda. Soil contamination at each site could be tentatively ascribed to known waste disposal practices. There was considerable variation in metal uptake between vegetable types. Washing leafy vegetables reduced chromium and lead concentrations but exogenous contamination of leaves also depended on vegetable type, withGynandropsis gynandraL. showing a marked tendency to accumulate Pb and Cr.

For the worst case scenario of children consuming unwashed vegetables, some metal ‘hazard quotient’ (HQ) limits (1.0) were violated at four of the five sites studied. For the 25 ‘site-vegetable’ combinations assessed, the HQ for Pb exceeded 1.0 in 36% of cases. A vegetable-specific site screening tool based on soil extraction with 0.01 M CaCl2and extrapolation to provide HQ values was assessed.Solubility of toxic metals in soils used for urban agriculture is highly variable. Washing leafy vegetables prior to cooking reduces consumption of Cr, Pb, As and Ni. Lead (Pb) presents the greatest hazard in produce from agriculture in Kampala City. Agriculture in East African cities can be practiced safely with the right choices. Soil screening to predict hazard to consumers may be useful in site surveys.

Purchase paper here.

A Manual For Teachers, Parents And Communities

Kraisid Tontisirin, Director,
Food and Nutrition Division
Mahmoud Solh, Director,
Plant Production and Protection Division
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
Rome © FAO 2005
198 pages

Foreword

The keys to the development of children and their future livelihoods are adequate nutrition and education. These priorities are reflected in the first and second Millennium Development Goals. The reality facing millions of children, however, is that these goals are far from being met.

Children who go to school hungry cannot learn well. They have decreased physical activity, diminished cognitive abilities, and reduced resistance to infections. Their school performance is often poor and they may drop out of school early. In the long term, chronic malnutrition decreases individual potential and has adverse affects on productivity, incomes and national development. Thus, a country’s future hinges on its children and youth.

Investments in nutrition and in education are essential to break the cycle of poverty and malnutrition. FAO believes that schools can make an important contribution to countries’ efforts to overcome hunger and malnutrition, and that school gardens can help to improve the nutrition and education of children and their families in both rural and urban areas. In this regard, it is important to stress that school gardens are a platform for learning. They should not be regarded as bulk sources of food or income, but rather as a way to better nutrition and education.

FAO encourages schools to create learning gardens of moderate size, which can be easily managed by students, teachers and parents, but which include a variety of nutritious vegetables and fruits, as well as occasionally some small-scale livestock such as chickens or rabbits. Production methods are kept simple so that they can be easily replicated by students and parents at their homes.

Food systems are the unifying concept. “From plot to pot”, students learn how to grow, tend, harvest and prepare nutritious seasonal produce, in the educational settings of the classroom, the garden, the kitchen, the school cafeteria and the home. The experience promotes the environmental, social and physical well being of the school community and fosters a better understanding of how the natural world sustains us. Links with home gardens reinforce the concept and open the way for the exchange of knowledge and experience between the school and the community.

Such food-based strategies have the merit of sustainability: they create long-term dietary habits and put food choices into the hands of the consumer. A strong education component ensures that the effects go beyond the immediate time and place, to children’s families and future families.

Nutrition concerns also link the developed and the developing worlds, which share many dietary problems. For example, the need to change perceptions of fruits and vegetables and to learn how they are best grown, prepared and eaten is common to many communities, rich and poor, and may be critical in building community health in both. This makes for meaningful joint efforts and exchanges of experience, ideas and teaching materials.

FAO has prepared this Manual to assist school teachers, parents and communities. It draws on experiences and best practices of running school gardens all over the world. Classroom lessons are linked with practical learning in the garden about nature and the environment, food production and marketing, food processing and preparation and making healthy food choices.

We hope that the Manual will be a useful tool for all those who wish to start or improve a school garden with the aim of helping school children to grow in both mind and body.

Contents:

Introduction

Part 1: What Does It Involve?

Running A Garden Project

Part 2: Who Will Help Us?

Involving The Family And Community

Part 3: What Is Our Garden For?

Aims And Principles

Part 4: Where Do We Start?

Raising Environmental Awareness

Part 5: What Does Our Garden Need?

The Garden Site

Part 6: What Shall We Grow To Eat?

Improving Nutrition

Part 7: What Shall We Grow To Sell?

Market Gardening

Part 8: How Do We Grow Things?

Gardening Methods

Part 9: How Will We Eat Our Garden Food?

Preparing, Processing, Promoting

Part 10: What’s The Plan?

Planning The Project

Part 11: How Do We Get Going?

Organizing The Work

Part 12: How Do We Keep Going?

Motivation And Ownership

Appendices:

Food Factsheets

See online edition here.

Download PDF here.

At TEDxManhattan Dr. Melony Samuels talks about using urban farming to empower low-income families to take control of their diets.

Dr. Melony Samuels is the Founder and Director of the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger. She not only helps provide food to low-income families in Brooklyn, she’s started an urban farm to help residents get the healthiest, freshest food possible.

“Earlier this year, we developed a new leadership and greening program for youth called Green Teens. The focus of the program is to expose young adults to urban gardening while providing training in community focused leadership. Green Teens manage our Victory Garden, introducing out younger clients to its produce, engaging our seniors in planting and daily care and directing each harvest at our neediest neighbors.”

See the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger here.

Fears about food safety have prompted some young Chinese professionals to try growing their own

By Martin Patience
BBC News, Beijing
Aug 3, 2011

Excerpt:

Juggling their iPhones with spades, a group of young professionals are getting their hands dirty – digging vegetables.

During the week, they are teachers, PR consultants, and computer programmers. But at the weekend, these city slickers return to the soil.

“We’re worried about food safety,” says He Liying, explaining why they grow vegetables.

They toil under the summer sun – not always efficiently – at a co-operative farm called Little Donkey on the outskirts of Beijing. It has about 700 fee-paying members.

It is one of dozens of farms which have cropped up across the country catering for China’s middle classes, which are increasingly concerned about food safety.

Jiang Yan Shi says 600 of his melons “exploded” – a quarter of his crop.

According to state media, the number of consumer complaints over the issue is rising.

Read the complete article here.

The panelists at the latest Quiet Waters environmental lecture series said community gardens could be the answer to many of today’s health and environmental problems.

By Frank Smith
Greater Annapolis Patch
June 21, 2011

Excerpt:

The final panelist was University of Maryland student Deborah Dramby who showed how students have created a community garden with grant funding. The goal of their garden is to be completely self-sustaining.

They were given a small patch of land on campus that was weed-ridden. Instead of using harmful pesticides, their solution was to bring in a few goats.

Dramby said she and other students have learned so much from local gardeners that she thinks everyone should take it up at some point in their lives.

“There’s such a wealth of knowledge in growing out there that I think people miss out on,” she said. “I know I missed out on it.”

Read the complete article here.

“We’re trying to get them to eat familiar foods that they can grow instead of going to fast food places.”

By Doug Moore
SLT Today
April 15, 2011

Excerpt:

The urban agriculture program, run by the International Institute of St. Louis, is one of 19 across the country that have been funded by grants from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. The grants this year total $1 million nationwide, with typical local awards of about $75,000.

“There has really been a wellspring of interest in this around the country,” said Larry Laverentz, who manages the office’s Refugee Agricultural Partnership Program, based in Washington. “Organizations are recognizing that refugees’ being able to farm has real value. It’s proven that it’s good for them in terms of supplemental income and helps integrate them into the community. Many of the refugees were farmers in their countries of origin. They can grow familiar foods, and it provides better nutrition.”

Read the complete article here.

A Girl Chopping Collected wild mushroom. Photo by Tika Ram Aryal.

Mushroom poisoning is a great problem in Nepal

Tika Ram Aryal
Department of Science and Environment Education, Tribhuwan University, Prithivi Narayan Campus,
Pokhara, Nepal
E-mail:tikaramaryal2000 (at) yahoo.com

Abstract

Mushroom poisoning is a great problem in Nepal. Every year dozens of people died and hundred of people fall sick due to consumption of poisonous wild mushroom. Local people have been using wild mushroom in their diet as well as a source of income, but they do not have proper scientific knowledge about the identification of edible and poisoning mushrooms. This practice has caused severe poisoning and even death. Here is no any responsible organization to reduce the death of due to consumption of wild mushroom. An effort has been made with the aim to reduce casualty of people due to consumption of wild mushroom through different awareness programmes, training, and brochure distribution at the most vulnerable parts of Nepal which were identified from the published report in various national newspapers in 2008 and 2009.

Introduction

Nepal is a land-lock Himalayan country with natural biodiversity. It has been regarded as “The natural showroom of biodiversity “because of its geographical ecological and climate variation resulting in environmental diversity and gave a unique wealth in the form of various green and non-green vegetation. The different ethnic groups in Nepal possess rich knowledge of local Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) as a cultural heritage; these are listed as food, medicine, and on various socio-religious purposes. In Nepal various mycophagous group such as Serpa, Tamang, Gurung, Magar, Tharu, Danuwer, Newar,Kami, Damai, Sarki ,Chepang, etc. are directly concerned with the collection & consumption of mushroom historically due to mushroom are also locally trade as minor forest product at local market. Out of 110 species edible mushroom, 40 species are sold in local market every season.

Mushroom poisoning problems are not new to Nepal. Every year dozens of people die; hundreds are admitted to Hospital for treatment, while hundreds more rely on local treatments. During the rainy season, poor people (the so-called “lower caste”) rely on wild mushrooms as a much needed food source and also as a flavorful addition to their diet. Although they have vast knowledge about the regional wild mushrooms, sometimes serious accidents occur. Whole families have been wiped out by consuming poisonous wild mushrooms. Many are not afraid of using wild mushrooms despite knowledge of the risks associated with the poisonous effects of some mushrooms. Likewise, many local people are confident that they can recognize poisonous mushrooms even though they may have
witnessed their neighbors dying due to consumption of wild poisonous mushrooms.

Undocumented and unrecorded mushroom poisonings are much more common than the published incidents because so many cases occur in very remote areas. News reporters are unable to reach many victims in remote areas in order to collect information. At the same time, there is vast knowledge about wild mushrooms among local users, and this may be far beyond that of professional mycologists. Therefore, it is of acute importance to document and conserve traditional local knowledge before it is lost permanently.

See the complete paper here. Large download. 6 MB.

Newspaper article in Nepalese about Tika’s work here.

US First Lady Michelle Obama harvests vegetables from her garden June 4, 2010 at the White House. The First Lady recruited chefs from across to join her anti-obesity campaign and help schools serve healthier, tastier meals. Mrs. Obama is calling on the chefs to partner with individual schools and work with teachers and parents to help educate kids about food and nutrition. She said healthy meals at schools are more important than ever because many children get most of their calories at school. AFP Photo by Paul J. Richards.

US First Lady Michelle Obama works in her White House vegetable garden in the 90-degree temperatures June 4, 2010, in Washington, DC, with students from Hollin Meadows Elementary School of Alexandria, VA. AFP Photo by Paul J. Richards

“This garden teaches us to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables”

By Matthew Kelly
Brooklynink
August 15, 2010
The Brooklyn Ink is devoted to news and features from the borough of Kings. The staff of the Ink, composed entirely of students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism , works tirelessly to bring you breaking news, multimedia and longer features five days a week.

Excerpt:

Standing over her garden, Joyce Dixon leaned down to weed the soil, tending to her patch of young tomato plants. The summer air was thick and sticky with 90-degree heat. Dixon stood up to wipe the dark skin of her brow, she shook the dirt off her t-shirt and gave a smile.

“I grew up on a farm as a little one,” she said, “and this brings me back.”

Dixon’s farm was on the island of Jamaica, but now it is in the East New York section of Brooklyn. She’s 65 years old and is a volunteer gardener at East New York Farms!, which is a program of the United Community Center. On Saturdays, she tends her patch at the youth farm behind the center, where interns help volunteer gardeners.

The farm is a half-acre of land on New Lots Avenue, across the street from New Lots Community Church and its cemetery. The other cross street is Schenck Avenue, with the aptly named Schenck Playground east of the farm. Every few minutes, a couple blocks north, the elevated Number 3 subway pulls into its final stop.

“This garden teaches us to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables,” Dixon said. “In this neighborhood and around the city.”

Since moving to New York in 1964, Dixon has lived in the Bronx and Queens, but for the past 19 years she’s lived in East New York. Lately, Dixon has been eating more greens, like Swiss chard, spinach, and lettuce; omitting starchy vegetables, like carrots, beats, and potatoes from her diet. “I have to watch out for the vegetables that are sweet, because they turn into sugar. I’m supposed to be losing weight,” Dixon said, “and I have bad arthritis in my knees. This is not only a hobby, I need it, to improve my lifestyle.”

See the complete article here.

Our attempt to organically grow 1 ton of food on our urban city lot!

By Kate n Daniel Vickery

From their blog:

Can you grow the majority of the food you eat?

Thinking about trying to grow a ton of food on our urban lot recently led us to a discussion of how much food we eat in a year. According to the USDA the average american adult eats about 4.7 lbs of food a day. So in a year the average person is eating 1717 pounds of food! That means if my wife and I are “average americans” we will consume a combined 3434 pounds of food.

If we are able to achieve the “Urban Ton,” and we eat what we produce, we would be growing 58% of our food by weight from our urban lot!

That means the Urban Ton Project is also a demonstration to the ability of an urban couple to produce the majority of their food from their own city lot.

Urban Ton Background

When my wife and I moved to St. Paul, MN in 2008 we decided we would focus on planting a primarily edible landscape. Over the past two years we have drastically changed our 0.2 acre lot from a series of overgrown flower beds, bushes, and trees into what is becoming our own urban oasis. As we have discussed, planned, designed, and occasionally even fought over the future of our landscape a question frequently arose: Just how much food could we produce on our urban lot?

From that question The Urban Ton Project was born…
Can we grow 1 ton (that is 2,000 lbs.) of food in a single year from our urban home?

Here are the Rules:

1.) Everything must be harvested from January 1st to
December 31st in the same calendar year.
2.) Everything must be grown on our property.
3.) Only organic methods may be used.
4.) Each day any crops harvested will be weighed and
recorded by crop type.
5.) Backyard grazing (e.g. eating tomatoes off the vine) of unweighed foods will not count.
6.) Food lost to damage, insects, dogs, chickens (our backyard pets) or any other cause will not be counted.
7.) Inputs will not be counted against the goal but will be
recorded (i.e. chicken feed, purchased compost, seeds etc..).
8.) No single crop can count for more than 20% of the total (no mono-crops here).

See their interesting blog here.

Bag a farm

By IRIN: Humanitarian news and analysis.
A project of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs
NAIROBI, 18 February 2010

Excerpt:

Faced with high food prices, low income and barely a patch of arable land, hundreds of residents of Nairobi’s densely populated slums have adopted a novel form of intensive agriculture: a farm in a sack.

Ex-convict John King’ori is hoping the project, run by Italian NGO COOPI, will help him go straight after eight years behind bars for a violent robbery.

King’ori chairs the Juja Road Self-Help Group, whose 76 members, also mostly former prisoners, are among the 1,000 households in Mathare and Huruma hoping their sacks will provide a sustainable source of vegetables such as kale, spinach, capsicum and onions.

“We can plant over 40 seedlings in each sack; each household is responsible for watering and maintaining their sack. We hope the vegetables will be ready for consumption in a few weeks’ time,” said King’ori at a demonstration plot. COOPI fenced the plot, improved water storage and provided the top soil, sand, manure and seedlings.

“The aim of the urban farming project is to empower the people to have better food purchasing power,” its manager, Claudio Torres, told IRIN.

“We contracted an agronomist to train the beneficiaries of the six bases on the soil content and ratio, management of the sacks and how they could undertake the urban farming in a sustainable manner,” he said. “I believe that such projects encourage the interest of other groups, such as banks, to invest in these people, thus enriching their life in general.”

Kale seedlings planted in a sack by urban farmers in Mathare, a slum in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. Photo by Salla Himberg/IRIN

Simon Kokoyo, director of Ongoza Njia – a network of at least 150 community-based-organizations – told IRIN most of the groups working with COOPI on the urban farming project were identified through the network.

“When ready for consumption, a sack containing vegetables such as sukuma wiki [kale], spinach and capsicum can feed one household for at least two months,” Kokoyo said. “Right now water is the biggest challenge for this project… sometimes the water is scarce and this can be a problem.”

See the rest of the article and photos here.

Also see: Slums and Garden Sacks: Organic Urban Agriculture In Kenya

Sharing powerful stories from his anti-obesity project in Huntington, W. Va., TED Prize winner Jamie Oliver makes the case for an all-out assault on our ignorance of food.

TED Talk
February 2010

Transcript:

Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead from the food that they eat.

My name’s Jamie Oliver. I’m 34 years old. I’m from Essex in England and for the last seven years I’ve worked fairly tirelessly to save lives in my own way. I’m not a doctor. I’m a chef; I don’t have expensive equipment or medicine. I use information, education.

I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of life. We have an awful, awful reality right now. America, you’re at the top of your game. This is one of the most unhealthy countries in the world.

Can I please just see a raise of hands for how many of you have children in this room today? Please put your hands up. Aunties, uncles, you can continue … Put your hands up. Aunties and uncles as well. Most of you. OK. We, the adults of the last four generations, have blessed our children with the destiny of a shorter lifespan than their own parents. Your child will live a life ten years younger than you because of the landscape of food that we’ve built around them. Two thirds of this room, today, in America, are statistically overweight or obese. You lot, you’re all right, but we’ll get you eventually, don’t worry.

(Laughter)

Right? The statistics of bad health are clear, very clear. We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder, homicide, you name it. It’s on the front page of every paper, CNN. Look at homicide at the bottom, for God’s sake. Right?

(Laughter)

(Applause)

Every single one of those in the red is a diet-related disease. Any doctor, any specialist will tell you that. Fact. Diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the United States, right now, here today. This is a global problem. It’s a catastrophe. It’s sweeping the world. England is right behind you, as usual.

(Laughter)

I know they were close, but not that close. We need a revolution. Mexico, Australia, Germany, India, China, all have massive problems of obesity and bad health. Think about smoking. It costs way less than obesity now. Obesity costs you Americans 10 percent of your health care bills. 150 billion dollars a year. In 10 years, it’s set to double. 300 billion dollars a year. And let’s be honest, guys, you ain’t got that cash.

(Laughter)

I came here to start a food revolution that I so profoundly believe in. We need it. The time is now. We’re in a tipping-point moment. I’ve been doing this for seven years. I’ve been trying in America for seven years. Now is the time when it’s ripe — ripe for the picking. I went to the eye of the storm. I went to West Virginia, the most unhealthy state in America. Or it was last year. We’ve got a new one this year, but we’ll work on that next season.

(Laughter)

Huntington, West Virginia. Beautiful town. I wanted to put heart and soul and people, your public, around the statistics that we’ve become so used to. I want to introduce you to some of the people that I care about. Your public. Your children. I want to show a picture of my friend Brittany. She’s 16 years old. She’s got six years to live because of the food that she’s eaten. She’s the third generation of Americans that hasn’t grown up within a food environment where they’ve been taught to cook at home or in school, or her mom, or her mom’s mom. She has six years to live. She’s eating her liver to death.

Stacy, the Edwards family. This is a normal family, guys. Stacy does her best, but she’s third-generation as well; she was never taught to cook at home or in school. The family’s obese. Justin, here, 12 years old. He’s 350 pounds. He gets bullied, for God’s sake. The daughter there, Katie, she’s four years old. She’s obese before she even gets to primary school. Marissa. She’s all right. She’s one of your lot. But you know what? Her father, who was obese, died in her arms. And then the second-most-important man in her life, her uncle, died of obesity. And now her step-dad is obese. You see, the thing is obesity and diet-related disease doesn’t just hurt the people that have it; it’s all of their friends, families, brothers, sisters.

Pastor Steve. An inspirational man. One of my early allies in Huntington, West Virginia. He’s at the sharp knife-edge of this problem. He has to bury the people, OK? And he’s fed up with it. He’s fed up with burying his friends, and his family, his community. Come winter, three times as many people die. He’s sick of it. This is preventable disease. Waste of life. By the way, this is what they get buried in. We’re not geared up to do this. Can’t even get them out the door, and I’m being serious. Can’t even get them there. Forklift.

OK, I see it as a triangle, OK? This is our landscape of food. I need you to understand it. You’ve probably heard all this before, but let’s just go back over it. Over the last 30 years, what’s happened that’s ripped the heart out of this country? Let’s be frank and honest. Well. Modern-day life.

Let’s start with the Main Street. Fast food has taken over the whole country. We know that. The big brands are some of the most important powers, powerful powers in this country. Supermarkets as well. Big companies. Big companies. 30 years ago, most of the food was largely local and largely fresh. Now it’s largely processed and full of all sorts of additives, extra ingredients, and you know the rest of the story. Portion size is obviously a massive, massive problem. Labeling is a massive problem. The labeling in this country is a disgrace. They want to be self … They want to self-police themselves. The industry wants to self-police themselves. What, in this kind of climate? They don’t deserve it. How can you say something is low-fat when it’s full of so much sugar?

Home. The biggest problem with the home is that used to be the heart of passing on food and food culture, what made our society. That isn’t happening anymore. And you know, as we go to work and as life changes, and as life always evolves, we kind of have to look at it holistically — step back for a moment, and re-address the balance. It ain’t happening. Hasn’t happened for 30 years. I want to show you a situation that is very normal right now. The Edwards family.

(Video) Jamie Oliver: Let’s have a talk. This stuff goes through you and your family’s body every week. And I need you to know that this is going to kill your children early. How are you feeling?

Stacy: Just feeling really sad and depressed right now. But, you know, I want my kids to succeed in life and this isn’t going to get them there. But I’m killing them.

JO: Yes you are. You are. But we can stop that. Normal. Let’s get onto schools, something that I’m fairly much a specialist in. OK. School. What is school? Who invented it? What’s the purpose of school? School was always invented to arm us with the tools to make us creative, do wonderful things, make us earn a living, etc., etc., etc. You know, it’s been kind of in this sort of tight box for a long, long time. OK? But we haven’t really evolved it to deal with the health catastrophes of America, OK? School food is something that most kids — 31 million a day, actually — have twice a day, more than often, breakfast and lunch, 180 days of the year. So you could say that school food is quite important, really, judging the circumstances.

(Laughter)

Before I crack into my rant, which I’m sure you’re waiting for …

(Laughter)

I need to say one thing, and it’s so important in hopefully the magic that happens and unfolds in the next three months. The lunch ladies, the lunch cooks of America … I offer myself as their ambassador. I’m not slacking them off. They’re doing the best they can do. They’re doing their best. But they’re doing what they’re told, and what they’re being told to do is wrong. The system is highly run by accountants. There’s not enough, or any, food-knowledgeable people in the business. There’s a problem. If you’re not a food expert, and you’ve got tight budgets, and it’s getting tighter, then you can’t be creative, you can’t duck and dive and write different things around things. If you’re an accountant, and a box-ticker, the only thing you can do in these circumstances is buy cheaper shit.

Now, the reality is, the food that your kids get every day is fast food, it’s highly processed, there’s not enough fresh food in there at all. You know, the amount of additives, E numbers, ingredients you wouldn’t believe … There’s not enough veggies at all. French fries are considered a vegetable. Pizza for breakfast. They don’t even get given crockery. Knives and forks? No, they’re too dangerous. They have scissors in the class room but knives and forks, no. And the way I look at it is, if you don’t have knives and forks in your school, you’re purely endorsing, from a state level, fast food. Because it’s handheld. And yes, by the way, it is fast food. It’s sloppy joes, it’s burgers, it’s wieners, it’s pizzas, it’s all of that stuff. 10 percent of what we spend on healthcare, as I said earlier, is on obesity. And it’s going to double. We’re not teaching our kids. There is no statutory right to teach kids about food, elementary or secondary school. OK? We don’t teach kids about food. Right? And this is a little clip from an elementary school, which is very common in England.

Video: Who knows what this is?

Child: Potatoes. Jamie Oliver: Potato? So, you think these are potatoes? Do you know what that is? Do you know what that is? Child: Broccoli?

JO: What about this? Our good old friend. Do you know what this is honey? Child: Celery.

JO: No. What do you think this is? Child: Onion. JO: Onion? No.

Jamie Oliver: Immediately you get a really clear sense of do the kids know anything about where food comes from.

Video: JO: Who knows what that is? Child: Uh, pear. JO: What do you think this is? Child: I don’t know. JO: If the kids don’t know what stuff is, then they’d never eat it.

(Laughter)

JO: Normal. England and America, England and America. Guess what fixed that. Guess what fixed that. Two one-hour sessions. We’ve got to start teaching our kids about food in schools, period.

(Applause)

I want to tell you about something, I want to tell you about something that kind of epitomizes the trouble that we’re in guys. OK? I want to talk about something so basic as milk. Every kid has the right to milk at school. Your kids will be having milk at school, breakfast and lunch. Right? They’ll be having two bottles. Okay? And most kids do. But milk ain’t good enough anymore. Because someone at the milk board, right — and don’t get me wrong, I support milk, but someone on the milk board, probably paid a lot of money for some geezer to work out that if you put loads of flavorings and colorings and sugar in milk, right, more kids will drink it. Yeah.

(Claps)

And obviously now that’s going to catch on. The apple board is going to work out that if they make toffee apples they’ll eat more apples as well. Do you know what I mean? For me, there ain’t no need to flavor the milk. Okay? There is sugar in everything. I know the ins and outs of those ingredients. It’s in everything. Even the milk hasn’t escaped the kind of modern day problems. There’s our milk. There’s our carton. In that is nearly as much sugar as one of your favorite cans of fizzy pop. And they are having two a day. So, let me just show you. We’ve got one kid, here, having, you know, eight tablespoons of sugar a day. You know, there’s your week. There’s your month. And I’ve taken the liberty of putting in just the five years of elementary school sugar, just from milk. Now, I don’t know about you guys, but judging the circumstances, right, any judge in the whole world, would look at the statistics and the evidence, and they would find any government of old guilty of child abuse. That’s my belief.

(Applause)

Now, if I came up here, and I wish I could come up here today, and hang a cure for AIDS or cancer, you’d be fighting and scrambling to get to me. This, all this bad news, is preventable. That’s the good news. It’s very very preventable. So, let’s just think about, we got a problem here, we need to reboot. Okay so, in my world what do we need to do? Here is the thing, right. It can not just come from one source. To reboot and make real tangible change, real change, so that I could look you in the white of the eyes and say, “In 10 years time, the history of your children’s lives, happiness — and let’s not forget, you’re clever if you eat well, you know you’re going to live longer, all of that stuff, it will look different. OK?”

So, supermarkets. Where else do you shop so religiously? Week in, week out. How much money do you spend, in your life, in a supermarket? Love them. They just sell us what we want. All right. They owe us, to put a food ambassador in every major supermarket. They need to help us shop. They need to show us how to cook, quick, tasty, seasonal meals for people that are busy. This is not expensive. It is done in some. And it needs to be done across the board in America soon, and quick. The big brands, you know, the food brands, need to put food education at the heart of their businesses. I know, easier said than done. It’s the future. It’s the only way.

Fast food. With the fast food industry you know, it’s very competitive. I’ve had loads of secret papers and dealings with fast food restaurants. I know how they do it. I mean basically they’ve weaned us on to these hits of sugar, salt and fat, and x, y, and z. And everyone loves them. Right? So, these guys are going to be part of the solution. But we need to get the government to work with all of the fast food purveyors and the restaurant industry. And over a five, six, seven year period wean of us off the extreme amounts of fat, sugar, fat and all the other non-food ingredients.

Now, also, back to the sort of big brands, labeling, I said earlier, is an absolute farce, and has got to be sorted. OK, school. Obviously in schools we owe it to them to make sure those 180 days of the year, from that little precious age of four, til 18, 20, 24, whatever, they need to be cooked proper fresh food from local growers on site. OK? There needs to be a new standard of fresh proper food for your children. Yeah?

(Applause)

Under the circumstances, it’s profoundly important that every single American child leaves school knowing how to cook 10 recipes that will save their life. Life skills.

(Applause)

That means that they can be students, young parents, and be able to sort of duck and dive around the basics of cooking, no matter what recession hits them next time. If you can cook recession money doesn’t matter. If you can cook, time doesn’t matter. The workplace. We hadn’t really talked about it. You know, it’s now time for corporate responsibility to really look at what they feed or make available to their staff. The staff are the moms and dads of America’s children. Marissa, her father died in her hand, I think she’d be quite happy if corporate America could start feeding their staff properly. Definitely they shouldn’t be left out. Let’s go back to the home.

Now, look, if we do all this stuff, and we can, it’s so achievable. You can care and be commercial. Absolutely. But the home needs to start passing on cooking again, for sure. For sure, pass it on as a philosophy. And for me it’s quite romantic. But it’s about if one person teaches three people how to cook something, and now they teach three of their mates, that only has to repeat itself 25 times, and that’s the whole population of America. Romantic, yes, but, most importantly, it’s about trying to get people to realize that every one of your individual efforts makes a difference. We’ve got to put back what’s been lost. Huntington Kitchen. Huntington, where I made this program, you know, we’ve got this prime time program that hopefully will inspire people to really get on this change. I truly believe that change will happen. Huntington’s Kitchen. I work with a community. I worked in the schools. I found local sustainable funding to get every single school in the area, from the junk, onto the fresh food. Six-and-a-half grand per school.

(Applause)

That’s all it takes. Six-and-a-half grand per school. The Kitchen in 25 grand a month. Okay? This can do 5,000 people a year, which is 10 percent of their population. And it’s people on people. You know, it’s local cooks teaching local people. It’s free cooking lessons guys, free cooking lessons in the main street. This is real, tangible change, real, tangible change. Around America, if we just look back now, there is plenty of wonderful things going on. There is plenty of beautiful things going on. There are angels around America doing great things in schools, farm to school set-ups, garden set-ups, education. There are amazing people doing this already. The problem is they all want to roll out what their doing to the next school, and the next. But there is no cash. We need to recognize the experts and the angels quickly, identify them, and allow them to easily find the resource to keep rolling out what they’re already doing, and doing well. Businesses of America need to support Mrs. Obama to do the things that she wants to do.

(Applause)

And look, I know it’s weird having an English person standing here before you talking about all this. All I can say is I care. I’m a father. And I love this country. And I believe truly, actually, that if change can be made in this country, beautiful things will happen around the world. If America does it I believe other people will follow. It’s incredibly important.

(Applause)

When I was in Huntington, trying to get a few things to work when they weren’t, I though if I had a magic wand what would I do? And I thought, you know what? I’d just love to be put in front of some of the most amazing movers and shakers in America. And a month later TED phoned me up and gave me this award. I’m here. So, my wish. Dyslexic, so I’m a bit slow. My wish is for you to help a strong sustainable movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again, and to empower people everywhere to fight obesity.

(Applause)

Thank you.

See Jamie’s talk and transcript here.

One of Jamie’s TV shows, “Jamie at Home”, focuses on the home kitchen garden. See here.

Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl’s Interview with Urban Ag High School Student, Ana Araujo

Center for Livable Future
Dec 18, 2009

Excerpt:

In October 2009, Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl sat down with Ana Araujo to discuss the Urban Agriculture and Food Systems class she participated in at Richmond High School in 2008/2009. The class was a pilot program, which gave the students graduation credit and was centered around the creation of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and direct sale of produce from a middle school farm and the school garden at Richmond High. 10 families received a bi-weekly box of produce for $5, which was planted, tended and grown completely by Richmond High students.

In addition to the garden, the students learned about the American food system, their local food shed and global issues surrounding food. The students joined working groups in their chosen area of focus to delve deeper into the project. Students presented their work to the City Council of Richmond as their final project.

What do you think were the best parts of the Urban Ag Class in general?

Answer:
In general, well, I really like the harvest day when we collected the food and we put it in boxes and weighed it. And I really like planting and like taking care of the garden in general. I’ve always liked that kind of stuff

Q: Why. Why do you like that stuff?

Answer:
It seems fun, putting plants, seeing them grow. You did that. You planted that. You saw it grow, you gave it water. You watched it grow. You did something for the community. And like it felt good.

See the rest of the interview here at the Center for Livable Future website.

Our garden veggies and fruit go to West Side Family Place

Head gardener Sharon Slack drives five minutes from the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden to donate freshly harvested organic food to Family Place.

West Side Family Place in Kitsilano is a resource centre dedicated to supporting families with young children. It is a place to meet new friends, gain a sense of community, and to receive ongoing assistance that helps families to raise healthy, happy children.

Family Place distributes our produce to families in the area who request it. Many new Canadians are particularly excited to find kale in our basket, something they don’t often see in the supermarket.

Photo by Michael Levenston

See more about Family Place here.

Bronwyn picks some Russian kale leaves at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden and walks us through the steps to make her unique muffins. She created this recipe last summer while working on an organic farm where there was nothing to eat but kale.

Kale-Carrot Muffins

Ingredients:
½ cup vegetable or grape seed oil
½ cup honey
1 egg, slightly beaten
½ cup milk
1 tsp almond flavouring
½ cup carrots, shredded
1 cup young kale leaves, (when steamed and pureed with 1-2 tbsp of milk, it produces approximately ½ cup of puree)

1 ½ cups whole wheat flour
½ tsp nutmeg (freshly ground tastes better)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ cup pumpkin seeds, toasted
½ cup unsweetened shredded coconut, toasted
½ cup raisins
¼ cup millet
½ cup good quality dark chocolate chunks

Directions:
1. Steam the kale for a few minutes. Transfer to a blender or food processor and process with 1-2 tbsp of milk until the kale has been chopped up fairly well.
2. Beat together oil, honey, egg, milk and flavouring.
3. Stir in the carrots and the kale puree.
4. In a separate bowl, mix flour, nutmeg, baking powder, baking soda, pumpkin seeds, coconut, raisins, millet and chocolate chunks.
5. Stir in the dry ingredients into the wet until just moistened.
6. Pour into greased or paper lined muffin tins.
7. Bake for 18-20 minutes at 350F or until toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Makes 12 muffins

We grow lots of garlic at the Vancouver Compost Garden. But not many people know about scapes, the flowering stems that appear in June about three weeks before the bulbs are harvested.

Maria picked some of our scapes and prepared a quick and easy recipe for delicious pesto sauce.

From May 24 through May 30, local “Wild Girl” Becky Lerner will be eating an entirely wild diet as she forages from sidewalks, parks, wilderness areas and yards in Portland. There will be no dumpster diving or mooching off gardens – Lerner will be surviving on wild edibles only.

“I’m interested in foraging as a way to connect with the land and explore a fundamental aspect of what it means to be human,” Lerner said. “It’s also a valuable survival skill: Should the trappings of modernity become unavailable to us one day, knowing how to find food without grocery stores or even farms will surely come in handy.”

Lerner readily admits that her pesco-vegetarianism is in question. She will face the decision of whether to endure a vegetable fast — or else eat insects, go fishing or even consider dining on roadkill.

Lerner will be blogging for the nonprofit web magazine CultureChange.org on a daily basis during the project, updating readers with photos, video and writings about the foods she finds, how she prepares it, how she is feeling (satisfied? starved? desperate for brownies?) and how it changes her life.

See Lerner blogging on CultureChange here.

Lerner is a 26-year-old freelance journalist living in northeast Portland who writes about primitive skills, wilderness survival and wild food on her blog, www.FirstWays.com. Visit her blog here.

And this wild food story wins an award.

WEED ‘EM AND EAT

Locavore story wins award

May 29, 2009

Toronto Star food editor Kim Honey has won a feature writing award from the Association of Food Journalists.

Honey won for her story “Incredible Edibles,” about locavores and wild food in the city. It included her attempts to kill a rabbit for dinner, which enraged some readers.

“The point of the story was to show how the city, despite its distant relationship with nature, could provide a hyper-local diet if only pollution, city bylaws and love for furry animals would allow us to harvest it and eat it,” Honey says. “It really opened my eyes to the bounty around me, especially things like dandelion and wild mustard. Weeds, it turns out, are delicious.”

The story, published last July, was cited as one of the best newspaper food features in 2008.

The association is a professional journalism group with members across North America, but mainly in the United States. There were 234 entries in 12 categories for 2008.

Link to “Incredible Edibles” here.

PowerPoint presentation by Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe (See next page.)

Sri Lanka National Agriculture Policy Documents

Statement – 29 (2003)
Implement a special urban agriculture promotion
program designed to ensure supply of home
consumption needs and environmental protection.

Statement – 17 (2007)
17.1 Promote home-gardening and urban agriculture
to enhance household nutrition and income
17.2 Promote women’s participation in home-gardening.

Government Programme for Promotion of Home Gardening – 2007 (Let us Cultivate to Uplift the Nation)

1. Rural and urban home-gardens
2. School gardens
3. Home-gardens of school children
4. Gardens and model farms in office premises
5. Gardens in security forces camps
6. Private home-gardens of state officials
7. Gardens in office premises of the private institutions
8. Home-gardens of public representatives

See Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe’s well-illustrated Powerpoint presentation describing the concept of Family Business Garden (FBG) in the field of urban agriculture and the urban-rural continuum in Sri Lanka.

Here is the complete PowerPoint presentation. (Large download 6.6 MB)

Also see: Family Business Gardens: Agricultural Options in Remodeling & Modernising Tsunami Devastated Townships in Sri Lanka (.doc file)
by Dr. Thilak T. Ranasinghe, Director of Agriculture (Western) Sri Lanka

“Over 20,000 children and young people, 400 teachers, with many families and communities (we estimate about 50,000 people in total) in four continents in four continents have participated in garden-based teaching and learning and community action and have come to generate new ways of learning about, and living in, an uncertain modern world.”

Gardens for Life promotes partnerships between schools, children and teachers to share all the learning that can come from gardening and growing food across communities, cultures and countries.

The boys and girls are wearing the same colorful uniform. They work in a large agricultural garden, which was set up by “Gardens for Life” ( Eden’s first international education project). The “Gardens for Life” initiative seeks to embed the most fundamental of issues, food and nutrition, within the education curriculum by maximising the use of schools gardens and make gardening an attractive activity and a source of income for the school. The foodstuff produced can be sold locally after feeding the students.

Gardens for Life web site here.

Garden for Life is a part of The Eden Project. See their web site here.

Gardens for Life at Kapila Khandvala College of Education, Mumbai, India

Jayashreee Inbaraj, a long-serving Gardens for Life partner and a lecturer at a teacher-training college in Mumbai, tells us of progress in their garden.

After convincing the College of the tremendous potential of Gardens for Life the management finally in August 2007 agreed to waterproof the terrace for us to begin the Garden. We started the terrace garden work on Oct 2nd (the day Mahatama Gandhi was born). This day was selected as an ideal day because Gandhi believed in practical education and working with your hands. He believed that the curriculum should be connected to life and encouraged a sustainable life style.

A group of 50 student-teachers of the Kapila Khandvala College of Education volunteered to work with soil and set up the garden. As the “used tyre” concept works well with the Indian schools in the Gardens for Life project we used the same. We put three sections in place: vegetables, flowers, and fruits. Students took turns to come and water the plants and now we have a long pipe and the work seems easier. I never need to tell anybody the plants need water—I know it is being done.

The ownership feeling has already begun. For the last one month we have enjoyed the fruits of the garden. Many beautiful flowers have bloomed. We have consumed chillis, carrots and eggplants from the garden. We are planning to introduce vermi-compost soon. This academic year from July 2008, we plan to introduce it in our teaching. Students will give at least two simulated lessons outdoors so that they can be trained how to integrate outdoor learning with their subjects. We’re also proposing to get funds from the University Grants Commission (UGC) to carry on the good work. We also look forward to linking with a teacher training college in UK who would be interested in connecting with us on the project.

Garden for Life in India here.

Maria pulls up a large harvest of delicious Satina potatoes at the Vancouver Compost Demonstration Garden. We’ve boiled and baked these and made potato salad – all delicious dishes.