Help Transform Santa Cruz into an Edible Oasis!

On June 6 & 7, 2009 there will be parties all across Santa Cruz County where people will come together to plant new edible gardens and celebrate life in Santa Cruz! The FREE event is called "Gardens of Gratitude: The 100 Garden Challenge" and is presented by Grow Food Party Crew Santa Cruz, a regional representation of a global movement to create garden parties in every neighborhood across the world.
Recently, on May 16 & 17 2009, a Gardens of Gratitude was held in Santa Monica, CA in which they partied and planted 95 Edible Gardens! We'd like to surpass them and install 100 gardens - all in the name of fun!
How it works:
Visit www.GrowFoodPartyCrew.org and sign up as a Garden Recipient, Garden Helper, or Facilitator. Then people are linked together days before the event to party with friends and create the gardens - all for free. Each party will be its own unique expression. It can either be a self-facilitated garden pledge, or be assisted by Grow Food Party Crew members with design and facilitation.
If you've ever wanted a garden, but it was too much to take on, now's the time! If you're craving something fun, creative, and outrageous, come make it happen!
How you can help:
1. Join - Sign up online for one or more garden times (Saturday or Sunday - Morning or Afternoon).
2. Spread the Word - This event works by word of mouth and networking. Forward this on to EVERYONE you know. Put up flyers, email friends, invite folks on facebook, announce it at meetings, reach out to ALL your media connections! DO IT ASAP AS WE HAVE LITTLE TIME!
3. Donate - Make this event possible by sponsoring the event with monetary donations or materials. Your company or organization could end up on our website, or mentioned in the press as a sponsor. This event is completely volunteer run. We need to raise $5000 to cover costs and to be able to do a number of low-income gardens for free. Please contact us at growfoodpartycrewsc@gmail.com if you need more information to make a larger donation. Everyone can make even the smallest donation through our Paypal button online!

Pot Pie Confidential (Click on Cartoon for Video)

Who's afraid of a little organic garden?

Big, bad Ag, that's who. Great article from Barbara Damrosch.
"It seems like a pretty innocent idea, doesn't it? Planting an organic vegetable garden in your yard so that your kids can eat fresh, nutritious, safe food. But now that Michelle Obama has gone and done it, big agriculture is terrified that we'll all follow her example. First came a letter addressed to her from the Mid America CropLife Association, which represents the chemical fertilizer and pesticide industries, urging the first lady to give "conventional" agriculture equal time. One of the authors separately told association members that the thought of an organic garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. made her "shudder." And an industrial agriculture media group, CropLife, started an online letter-writing campaign to encourage Obama to use synthetic pesticides, euphemistically called "crop protection products," which her effort seemed to impugn."
Full text here. ~Thanks Tana for the hat tip.

Mississippi Farmers Trade Cotton for Corn

The Agriculture Department estimates that 8.8 million acres of cotton will be planted in the United States this year, down 7 percent from 2008 and 42 percent from 2006. It will be the lowest cotton acreage since 1983, an anomalous year when farmers cut acreage after a string of bountiful harvests that created a surplus. Nowhere has the slump been greater than in Mississippi, where farmers decreased their cotton planting to 365,000 acres in 2008, from 1.2 million acres in 2006. A survey suggested that could fall to 268,000 acres this year. Since 2003, cotton prices have declined nearly 23 percent, while prices for soybeans are up more than 38 percent and corn nearly 65 percent. Cotton surpluses have been stacking up around the globe in part because of rising yields from genetically modified cotton seeds and other technological improvements. Full article here.

Bringing Agriculture Back to U.S. Foreign Policy

Just read this article in the May/June Foreign Affairs. It is the best written, most well reasoned/informed article on the topic I've seen in quite a few years. Opening paragraph below:
It is not easy for Americans to understand the starvation that afflicts much of the developing world. Families in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia spend up to 80 percent of their incomes on food; for the average U.S. household, that would mean an annual grocery bill of $40,000. Yes, there are hungry Americans in the millions, and the U.S. food-stamp program is operating at record levels. But hunger in the United States does not put tens of thousands of infants into hospitals and require them to be hooked up to feeding tubes. Nor does it lead to stunting, wasting, and debilitating forms of malnutrition, such as kwashiorkor and marasmus.
Full text of the article here, courtesy of The Chicago Council's Global Ag Development Project. The full text of The Council's complete, bipartisan analysis can be found here.