Calgary Eats! Free public event in Calgary, Alberta to discuss and learn about local food

Calgary Food Council is hosting a free public event for people to gather, learn and discuss local food systems.  I'll be speaking at the 12:30 p.m. panel and I'm bringing a big slide show of urban agriculture and food gardens I've visited around the globe for the book. The event begins at 10 a.m. and runs to 4 p.m. Spread the word.

Here's some info from the Calgary Food Committee themselves about it:

This coming Saturday January 28th the Calgary Food Committee is holding a public event at the Ant Hill Building in Kensington. The CalgaryEATS! event features a wide range of players in our local food system. This an eating and learning event that is meant to engage a broad cross-section of Calgarians around the different aspects of our food system and look at ways that we can make it better.
 
With over 40 vendors, interactive demonstrations, panel discussions, live music, activities for kids and many opportunities to purchase and eat this event is shaping up to be big!


You can also visit www.yycfood.com form more information. Our twitter hashtag is #yycfood and we have a facebook event here.

Urban Agriculture, Permaculture, Food Security and Cuba with The Urban Farmer

La Patria, urban farm, CubaI've known Ron Berezan, aka The Urban Farmer, for many years. He was instrumental in breathing life back into Edmonton's community gardens over a decade ago, and he has been helping people all across Canada transform urban yards into beautiful permaculture and food-growing spaces.

In September, we were both up in Yellowknife to do our respective talks at The Territorial Farmers' Association's Fall Harvest event, a gathering of a good portion of the Northwest Territories' community gardeners and urban farmers. Ron gave two fantastic presentations on "Lessons in Food Security" "Transform your Yard," which I particularly enjoyed for the lessons on permaculture design. I took notes and am planning a few changes for my garden come spring.

Of particular (timely) interest, Ron organizes food security, permaculture and urban agriculture tours of Cuba. He's extremely well-connected in the Cuban Association of Agricultural Technicians and Foresters (ACTAF) and the Antonio Nunez Jiminez Foundation for Nature and Man (FANJ). (I've met people in both of these camps while I was in Cuba and just mentioning Ron's name brought a smile to their faces and warm invitations.)

Ron has two terrific tours of Cuba coming up: January 30 – February 13, 2012 (Western Cuba) and February 20 – March 5, 2012 (Eastern Cuba).

Both trips will offer a full itinerary of visits to organic farms, urban agriculture projects, natural, cultural and historic sites, and meetings with the “movers and shakers” in Cuba’s agro-ecological movement today. This is a very exciting time to be visiting this passionate and beautiful country that continues to forge such a unique path for itself. Rest assured that if you chose to accompany us on this adventure, you will have an experience that will be far richer than the typical tourist beach holiday. -- from The Urban Farmer newsletter, October 7, 2011

I've been to Cuba twice and it opened my eyes and mind to the possibilities of low-tech, high-output sustainable food production and truly local food systems. Cuba is literally decades ahead on urban agriculture, permaculture, alternative energies, and ingenious sustainable food production techniques. As a bonus, you also get to immerse yourself in a culture that takes music and dancing very seriously.

For more info on The Urban Farmer's Organic Cuba 2012 tours, click here.

Bill C-474, Triffids, and the genetically modified / engineered food debate we're NOT having

In early 2011, I had myself in a knot about all the genetically engineered foods that were being developped, tested, grown and distributed in Canada. (This is nothing new, but the load of GM crops and ingredients in our diets had reached a bit of critical mass for me and it was starting to really make me crazy that the government-industrial ag line was that it was a de facto sitatuation at that point, so why get all hysterical about it?)  I wrote a couple of snotty blog posts about it. But it was far from being out of my system.

It's not that I'm against science, technology or building better mousetraps. I've got a medicine cabinet full of pharmaceuticals that I will take at the very slighest hint of a cold or nasty virus that even thinks of settling into my head, sinus or gut. But it's my choice to gulp a handful of drugs, and the contents of those drugs are very clearly stated on the little plastic bottles. With genetically modified or engineered foods, our governments have decided that we don't need to know what is in our food. Apparently, that conversation was between the global food giants and our governments. We weren't invited to the debate on whether we want them, whether we should have them, and what the potential consquences of tinkering with the DNA of the sustance of our lives might be. We've entered the era of genetically modified foods (plants AND animals) without ever having the conversation.

I pitched an article on Canada's love affair with GM foods to the editors of the fabulous new magazine, Eighteen Bridges. As it turns out, my outrage over the lack of GM-food labelling and lessons not-learned from the recent past in GM crop development was the first in what will be a series of columns. My articles won't always be about my pet project of bringing to light our reckless destruction of 10,000 of open-source agriculture by privatizing plant and animal DNA. Promise. I might not even write about food each issue, for that matter. I suppose I'll figure it out as I go, but for now, you are welcome to click here and read Whither the Wheat, pages 60-61, in Eighteen Bridges, Winter 2011.

Update on Tuesday, January 3, 2012 at 9:09PM by Jennifer CK

Seems like my instincts were not all that far off... just read this post on the Saskatchewan Farmers Market site that reprint's an article by Wendy Holm who warns that the dismantling of the Canadian Wheat Board is like a welcome mat to GE wheat in Canada. Read the article here.

Dealer's Choice: Food blogs of note this week (Kerstin's Chocolates)

OK, a bit of a break from urban agriculture today...because there are a few good blogs out there that I want to post about.

First, my friends Kerstin and Cyrus own a fantastic chocolate shop in Edmonton called Kerstin's Chocolates. The store is open (so buy your Christmas gifts, people) but Kerstin, Cyrus and their two kids are trekking around the globe visiting all sorts of chocolate at the source. Even better, they're blogging and posting fantastic photosets from their adventures that are taking them to chocolatier salons in Paris to exclusive cocoa plantations in Madagascar...yes, read Kerstin's report and see her photos from their visit to a cocoa plantation in Ambanja, in Madagascar, where some of the best COCOA IN THE WORLD comes from.

Greenroofs in Paris, via Treehugger.com

Copyright: Nature Capitale – A creation by Gad Weil Photo credit : Nature Capitale/Resolute D.R.Paris surprised me last year when I visited to poke around looking for signs of urban agriculture. (Perhaps because I had no expectations, I was totally impressed by what I saw. In fact, it turned out to be the lead chapter of main part of my book on the various cities at the forefront of urban agriculture that I visited.)

First of all, Paris is where many of the elements that we use today in modern urban agriculture came together...in the mid-19th century. (Paris' maraicher district was the primary urban gardening zone of the city...and it was so successful and productive that all over France, urban and peri-urban market gardeners are known as maraichers / maraicheres.)

Today, Paris has a very active urban beekeeping scene. The fact that pesticide use in the city limits has been illegal for over a decade might be a significant element of the success of Paris' urban bee hives. It's also not a city I associate with community gardens, but I found a fantastic one just around the corner from my friends' flat and met a wonderful community gardener, M. Griffault. Here's my post from last October about Paris' urban agriculture.

It's not just food that Parisians are growing...there are around 10 urban vineyards in right in the city, and 132 in the greater Paris metropolitain area.

Today, via a report by Alex Davies on Treehugger.com, it seems that Paris is going to surge ahead with 80,000 square yards of green roofs and rooftop gardens by 2020.

Félicitations, Paris!