yearofplenty

Time to Sign Up for a Winter CSA with Rocky Ridge Ranch

Gary and So Angell from Rocky Ridge Ranch are offering a 20-week winter CSA starting the first week of November and going up to Christmas. After a break it starts back up the first week of March and goes through the end of May. You can sign up for a produce & eggs program ($35/week) or a variety meats program ($65/week). Email Gary at info (at) rockyridgeranchspokane (dot) com for more info or call 509-953-0905. They will deliver weekly at Millwood on Wednesdays and at South Perry on Thursdays. Gary wrote a blog report about how the winter CSA growing season works. 

I feature Gary and So in the book and highly recommend their program. You may have come across products from Rocky Ridge Ranch at Sante' restaurant and the Rocket Market. 

Picture: So Angell tending to lettuce in the middle of winter last year.

Community Gardens Sprouting on Rooftops in Hong Kong

CNN has the story of a growing, but still small urban farming movement in Hong Kong. 

For just $15 per month, Lam rents out toolbox-sized planter boxes to businessmen, elderly couples and families alike, and even runs horticulture classes. He uses imported soil from Germany to fill his planters and lets the humid, subtropical climate do the rest.

Fifteen dollars a month seems pretty steep but Hong Kong does have some of the highest property values in the world.

I thought this comment regarding resistance to gardening was interesting:

Outside of convincing politicians, Chau said Hong Kongers themselves have historically been resistant to the idea of farming as a suitable pastime.

"It is the lowest of our traditional caste system. In traditional Chinese culture, if you're good at nothing else, you work on the farm," Chau said. "Also, Hong Kong is a very money-minded place... land is also very expensive in Hong Kong, so people don't spend time worrying about growing their own food."

America has its own version of this caste system story. The consensus opinion on the growth of the US economy is that advances in farming freed people up from working on the farm so they could apply themselves to other more GDP-enhancing activities. This chart tells the story of the movement out of farm work in the U.S.:

China has its own version of this chart but relative to the American move away from the farm they are in 1850. This chart compares farm employment stats around the world and puts China at 47% in 1999.

In countries that have moved dramatically away from the farm there are efforts in place to reconnect with land and food. My sense is that this, in large part, is what drives the local food movement, the interest in farmers' markets, CSAs, and rooftop gardens - even in Hong Kong. It's a kind of farming-deficit disorder. It may be awhile before perceptions in China change around farming but they are already shifting dramatically in North America.

UC Santa Barbara Study: Local Food Consumption Doesn't Reduce Carbon Footprint

All the locavore haters will be dancing with joy at the results of a new study done by UC Santa Barbara. The premise of the study is that if any place can pull off a truly local food economy it should be Santa Barbara County that ranks as one of the top vegetable producing counties in the country. A professor and students set out to see how local Santa Barbara County's food system is, and to understand the carbon impacts of local food vs. non-local food. The results are surprising.

The researchers found that more than 99 percent of the produce grown in Santa Barbara County is exported, and more than 95 percent of the produce consumed in the county is imported, some of it from as far away as Chile, Argentina and New Zealand. The study also found that, surprisingly, if all produce consumed here was grown in the county, it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions less than 1 percent of total agrifood system emissions, and it would not necessarily affect nutrition.

"Most of what's grown here is shipped out," Cleveland said while standing in a tomato field about a mile from the UCSB campus. "And most of what's eaten here is shipped in. That just seems crazy."

This is the same kind of craziness we discovered during out year of local consumption. Our biggest "that just seems crazy" moment was when we were told that we couldn't get local Darigold cheddar cheese because most of it was shipped to Wisconsin.

Here's another interesting tidbit:

"I talked to a manager who was very excited about his local fruit, Santa Maria strawberries," Radka said. "But he said he got all of his strawberries from the warehouse. I asked him where the warehouse was, and he said that it's not in the county. Turns out it's in the Bay Area. So strawberries from Santa Maria are transported by truck to a warehouse in the Bay Area and then trucked back here to be sold in stores."

The authors of the study still advocate for local food systems, despite the CO2 findings, but they say that local food systems should not be the goal but the means toward the end of improved nutrition and sustainability.

Greenhouse gas savings has never been the primse motivator for my advocacy of local food systems and these findings don't come as a surprise to me. I've heard them before. I think it's important to note in this conversation that the current far-flung food system is highly dependent on cheap and abundant supplies of oil. From fertilizer, to pesticides, to diesel fuel for semi-trucks and tractors. The main reason the transport of food is only 1% of total agrifood emissions is that there is so much fuel used in the rest of the system. When oil prices spike there are a lot of food companies that would love to shave 1% of their fuel expenses off the bottomline.

Here are some of my arguments for a local food system:

1. It helps develop relationships between farmer and consumer.

2. It helps build connections between consumers and land and farming practices.

3. It educates people, especially children, about where their food comes from.

4. It promotes seasonal eating.

5. It disrupts our assumptions that we can have whatever we want, and we can have it now.

6. It connects us with the seasons.

7. It connects us with a place and the story of a place, helping us shape a hopeful future community story.

What about you? What are your reasons for supporting local food.

Good Friday/Earth Day: How the Food Movement is Making the Church Green

In a fluke of this year's calendar, Earth Day and Good Friday both converge today. I wrote an article for CNN Belief Blog arguing that these two events aren't such a bad pairing. The wider context of the article is that the Christian church and the environmental movement in North America have often struggled to cooperate and find common ground. Maybe the experience of sharing this day will be a trial run at a new future of collaboration. Go here for one of my many posts on this disconnect. 

It may not always be self-evident here on the blog, but I am a full-time Presbyterian pastor, and one of the motivations for this blog is to flesh out connections between faith and earth. Go here to see the "faith" thread on this blog. Year of Plenty is an extended exploration of the intersections of the environment and faith, especially the food movement. My experience with locavores, backyard farmers, and community gardeners makes me more hopeful than ever that despite past disconnects, the church may end up being the best friend of advocates for earth care.

Perhaps the greatest reason for a potential new future in this relaitonship is what some are calling the death of environmentalism and the rise of the food movement. 

Bryan Walsh wrote a provocative article in February describing significant shifts in the Go-Green movement. He says:

These are dark days for the environmental movement. A year after being on the cusp of passing landmark legislation to cap greenhouse gases, greens are coming to accept the fact that the chance of national and international action on climate change has become more remote than ever. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under attack by newly empowered Republicans in Congress who argue that the very idea of environmental protection is unaffordable for our debt-ridden country. Accustomed to remaining optimistic in the face of long odds, the environmental movement all at once faces a challenge just to stay relevant in a hostile political climate....

He even evokes the "death of environmentalism" mantra coined in a controversial essay from a few years ago. This decline of the traditionally framed debates about the environment may provide a helpful opening for the church. One of the reasons environmentalists and church leaders have often been at odds is that the issues fall so easily into the well-worn ruts of our cultural and political divides. I don't like that the Christian faith in America is politicized and held captive by powerful interests, but that is the current reality. As long as the environmental movement is robustly allied with one side or the other of American politics, I fear that it will remain a niche issue in liberal mainline churches, and fail to make real headway in more conservative evangelical circles.

Walsh says this so-called death of environmentalism may turn out to be a re-birth in the form of a thriving food movement.

Even as traditional environmentalism struggles, another movement is rising in its place, aligning consumers, producers, the media and even politicians. It's the food movement, and if it continues to grow it may be able to create just the sort of political and social transformation that environmentalists have failed to achieve in recent years. That would mean not only changing the way Americans eat and the way they farm — away from industrialized, cheap calories and toward more organic, small-scale production, with plenty of fruits and vegetables — but also altering the way we work and relate to one another. To its most ardent adherents, the food movement isn't just about reform — it's about revolution.

This shift away from a politically entrenched environmental movement toward a vibrant food movement opens up a new opporunity for the church to enter the conversation and even take the lead in some cases.

Food is not so easily politicized. Not that the usual characters don't do their best to turn food into a political football, but the food movement is too complex and the interested parties too diverse to easily pigeon hole. 

Here's how I put it in a previous post on politics, church, and food,

Concerns about food short-circuit political divides in some wonderfully mischevious ways. Farmers' Markets may be the most politically diverse gathering in the community, with Glenn Beck conspiracy theorists rubbing shoulders with neo-hippie peace activists. The recent Whole Foods CEO curfluffle highlights some of this diversity and forces the question, "Is it OK for conservatives and liberals, who disagree on so much, to agree on food and work together in that agreement?"

I sure hope so. In today's intense, hyped up political landscape, a good potluck with arugala and country style pork ribs (and of course grandma's jello salad) could do us a lot of good. There's something about gathering around food that makes us more human.

Not only does food allow for more diverse entry points, it plays to the church's strengths - theology, history, and practice. Here's how I put it in Year of Plenty:

The pattern in the Bible of forming community is surprisingly down to earth…The first words out of God’s mouth to Adam and Eve are, “You are free to eat.” Not far behind is the warning, “You must not eat.”

In the wilderness it was the manna, gathered daily in the dew of morning that forged the faith of Israel. Once the people were settled in the land, the warning loomed large from Joshua to serve the Lord alone and remember that God “gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build; and you live in them and eat from vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant” (Josh. 24:13). Joshua was telling them to nurture a deep connection between the harvest of the vineyard and the God who made them a people and gave them the land.

To a people disoriented by exile in Babylon, Jeremiah said, “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce” (Jer. 29:5). In other words, they were to attend to necessary things and do necessary things for one another. In doing so, they would find their way to God.

This pattern continued with Jesus as he sent the disciples out among the people to proclaim the kingdom of God. He told them to enter the homes of the cities to which they were sent. “Stay there,” he said, “eating and drinking whatever they give you, for workers deserve their wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you” (Luke 10:7-8). The disciples had this grand vision of the kingdom of God to proclaim and live into, but the proclamation was always in the context of shared meals, working side by side with others, doing necessary things.

I think if you look closely, the shift in the American church is already evident. Churches are taking the lead in their communities starting community gardens, promoting Plant-A-Row for the Hungry, hosting farmers' markets, and teaching classes on food and health. Churches and Christians of all political stripes are becoming environmentalists, but be careful - some of them may not like the label. They'd prefer faithful foodie or sustainable backyard farmer or guerilla gardener, but those are just different ways of describing environmentalists. And this earthy move in church circles bodes well for the big debates about land, CO2, and going green.

As Walsh points out in his Time article, this emphasis on food leads us into the heart of issues dear to the traditional environmental movement.

As the food movement matures and grows, it could end up being the best vehicle available for achieving environmental goals. The industrialized way we farm today damages our land, our water and our climate. Reforming agriculture and promoting sustainability won't just help us get better and healthier food; it will also fight greenhouse-gas emissions and water pollution....

Environmentalists once thought that the only way to create lasting change in the U.S. and the rest of the world was by controlling our carbon emissions. Not quite. As Brian Halweil, a leading thinker on sustainable food, put it in Saturday's TED conference, "If the environmental movement is dead, then I say, 'Long live the food movement.'" Environmental and social changes are coming — and they will be served up on our dinner plates.

Not only will they be served up on dinner plates, but the church will say a prayer before the meal.

Consumers and Retailers Wrangle Over the Definition of "Local Food"

The AP has a nice piece of reporting on the emergence of "local" as the newest hot commodity in food labeling and marketing.

The No. 2 official at the Agriculture Department recently got a real-life lesson in the loose definition of the trendiest word in groceries: "local."

Walking into her neighborhood grocery store in Washington, Kathleen Merrigan saw a beautiful display of plump strawberries and a sign that said they were local produce. But the package itself said they were grown in California, well over 2,000 miles away.

The popularity of locally grown food — which many assume means the food is fresher, made with fewer chemicals and grown by smaller, less corporate farms — has led to an explosion in the use of the word "local" in food marketing. It's the latest big thing after the surge in food marketed as "organic," another subject of continuing labeling controversy.

But what does local mean? Lacking common agreement, sellers capitalizing on the trend occasionally try to fudge the largely unregulated term. Some grocery stores may define local as within a large group of states, while consumers might think it means right in their hometown.

The emerging debate is around how to define local, and whether there will be a consensus definition that guides the industry. Some states are proposing new rules for governing the use of the term "local" in marketing food, but it seems unlikely that there will be a federal standard. According to the article:

Whole Foods Market says a food cannot be labeled as local unless it traveled to the store in seven or fewer hours by car or truck. Wal-Mart labels produce as local if it is from the same state where it is sold. Supervalu, which operates some Albertsons stores, Jewel-Osco and other supermarket chains, defines local as within regions that can encompass four or five states. Safeway defines local as coming from the same state or a one-day drive from field to store. Many retailers just leave it up to individual store managers.

How do you define "local" when it comes to food?

Deadline Approaches for Sunset Magazine "One-Block Feast" Contest

There are still 5 days to enter this cool contest at Sunset Magazine. Here's the description at their One-Block Feast blog:

THE CONTEST

The One-Block Feast, our book based on this blog, gives you everything you need to grow a summer feast. It includes planting plans, gardening advice, and food project guides (how to make vinegar, raisebees for honey, brew beer, and more), plus over 100 recipes.

Here's the challenge: With the book as your guide, you and your family, and/or friends and neighbors, will grow a summer garden, following our plan—or planting whatever grows best in your area. Then you’ll throw a block party for yourselves, using (as much as possible) only what you’ve raised or made. For a preview of the book, which comes out March 22, visit our website.

THE PRIZE
We’ll tell your story and feature you in an upcoming issue ofSunset as well as on our blog. You’ll also get $500 cash to spend however you like.

ENTRY DEADLINE: MARCH 30, 2011

Send us a brief paragraph about why you’d like to enter this contest, plus a list of:

• Plants you’ll grow
• Food projects you’ll take on
• Recipes (original) you plan to make for your party
• Names of those who’ll be involved in the project

Include a contact name, address, email, and phone. Then send your entry to [email protected] or Sunset magazine, 80 Willow Road, Menlo Park, CA, 94025 (attention: One-Block Party).

We’ll choose 10 finalists by April 8 and send each group a book (additional copies will be available for $10, a significant discount off the cover price of $24.95). Then it’s Go Time in your gardens!

This sounds like a good community garden project. I'm thinking of drawing up an entry for the Pumpkin Patch Community Garden. (FYI - we have a workday tomorrow, March 26, if you want to come and dig in the dirt for awhile.)

Go here for find out more about the One-Block Feast project or go here to get a copy. There is also a Kindle version. If you're in the no-man's land between print books and e-books you may find this Publisher's Weekly article interesting. They claim that print books are better in every case except cookbooks.

CSA Vegetable Box Programs Growing and Evolving Ctd. - Full Circle Farm and the Mega CSA

In a recent post I pointed out the growing popularity of CSA (Consumer Supported Agriculture) programs where consumers sign up with a farmer to receive a weekly "subscription" of food, usually a box of seasonal vegetables and fruits. They have grown in popularity because they are a boon to farmers, for whom cash flow is king, and they help consumers simplify the process of acquiring healthy, local, and in some cases, organic food. Go here to the LocalHarvest site for a more detailed rundown of how the programs typically work. 

The rise in popularity has led to growing pains, with farmers and customers sorting out expectations and relationships (see previous post), but there is another notable development - the rise of the mega CSA. As the Spokesman Review pointed out in yesterday's food section, Full Circle Farm in Carnation, WA, is expanding their delivery footprint beyond their current Seattle and Alaska markets to include Spokane. 

I spoke with Frank Paganelli, the Chief Operating Officer of Full Circle Farm, to get a better understanding of the business. The fact that they have a C.O.O. is the first clue that Full Circle is not a traditional CSA. In fact, as Frank explained, while they started as a traditional program, bound by the limits of the seasons and a single farm location, the business now delivers year-round, and no longer limits the food to local sources. So in the winter months boxes are filled with organic items from Mexico and California. Pagonelli explained that when summer rolls around, up to 90% of the food items are sourced from the Pacific Northwest region, but bananas and other non-local items are still in the mix.

The owners of the farm started moving in this direction because the traditional mode was a limited business model. They hated to send away workers and customers during the off season when local vegetables and fruits were in short supply. Paganelli said, "Customers want purpose all year round," when it comes to their food choices, so Full Circle has sought to bring that purpose to customers, one box at a time, 52 weeks a year. This has meant straining the definition of "purpose" usually attached to a CSA. In fact Full Circle has moved away from using the term "CSA" to define what they are doing.

The page on their web site that still comes up under the heading "CSA" on a Google search explains the shifting language:

Over time what was called the Full Circle Farm CSA program has evolved in response to the call from members new and old alike: more good food to your table. Our farm fresh produce delivery program networks with organic growers to provide members with a robust year-round offering to balance the crops from our own fields.

This changing language is also evident in the Spokesman article from yesterday describing their Spokane presence. It is described as a "farm-to-table delivery service" instead of a CSA. They are "Farm-to-Table boxes" instead of CSA boxes. They openly state that the boxes "include produce grown at Full Circle Farm as well as fruits and vegetables from an international network of other organic growers." Full Circle has shifted the definition of "purpose" to emphasize certified organic as the thread that holds it all together, and while they still seek to interpret the farmer relationships through printed materials that accompany the box, the connection to a local farm and farmers is no longer the defining center of what they are doing. 

Paganelli explained that they don't see themselves competing with traditional CSA programs that keep a laser focus on the direct farmer relationship. He said, "We're competing with the QFC's and Albertsons." In Spokane that would include Huckleberries. 

There has been some backlash to this shifting business model at Full Circle. A quick tour through their Yelp! page shows a steady stream of customers who were under the impression it was a more traditional CSA program sourcing exclusively from local farms. One commenter wrote, "Surprisingly little in the boxes is actually local. Strawberries from Mexico, fruits from California....We're not interested in supporting big farms from far away, even if they are organic." Another reviewer commented, " Everything delivered was stuff you'd find in a grocery store." From what Paganelli said, the company is working intentionally to move away from the CSA label, and more clearly set expectations, especially during the winter months when local supplies are limited. They still have a page at LocalHarvest listing their services as a CSA. 

Despite the growing pains, business seems to be booming. Spokane already has 14 sites to pick up boxes. They are well staffed and appear to have some serious capital funding supporting their expansion efforts. And there are plenty of customers delighted with their service. One reviewer from Seattle on Yelp! wrote,

I have been a happy, satisfied customer of Full Circle for over two years.  I love that I can customize my box when I am inclined (special recipes in mind, etc), and when I do not have time to go online and select each item, I still know that a beautiful box will arrive each week...I LOVE FULL CIRCLE!

Another commented;

I will admit that Full Circle Farm (FCF) does not conform to the "strictest" definition of a CSA. I will also admit that produce from Central America, even produce certified as organic, makes me nervous. But in defense of FCF, I recognize that they strive to provide the very best produce delivery service they can.  Their customer service is bar-none and they have always been very helpful over the phone....I happily give my $35 to FCF, even if they're delivering produce from California, rather than to the grocery store where sourcing information is not as transparent.

Full Circle is a new breed of food marketing and delivery, somewhere between a CSA and a grocery delivery service. They are stretching the brand of farm-to-table, and I'll be interested to see how their emerging business model plays out in the coming years. Here are some words of advice to Full Circle that I think will be key for the success of their expansion efforts in Spokane:

- Do your best to integrate your offerings with unique items from farms near Spokane. I was told they are looking to do this in the future, but for now they are just working to get their delivery systems in place. There is a unique and growing local food movement in the Spokane area and efforts to enter the market should be aimed at not just luring customer dollars and establishing market share. In order to have credibility as something more than a grocery-delivery business in this community there needs to be investment in farmers and farms in this region. There needs to be capital investment to accompany market share. 

- You say that you are not competing with existing CSA's but there is one CSA in Spokane that already follows a hybrid model very similar to yours. The CSA program through Fresh Abundance has a year-round vegetable box program that sources items locally when possible, and when not possible they include organic items. Both programs are around $35 per week. Fresh Abundance has been investing in the local food scene in Spokane for many years, so I hope that Full Circle won't undercut their efforts. I also think the marketing materials need to be as clear as possible that Full Circle is different from what someone like Gary Angell at Rocky Ridge Ranch offers. If you use the word local, make sure that you define that clearly. Most folks who use the phrase, "local food" around here have Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho in mind.

- Most farmers in Eastern Washington do not have the resources to get officially certified as organic, but they do follow organic practices. Given this reality I think you should be willing to flex on the "certified organic" label in order to embrace our local food system. For example, I don't see any reason why your boxes couldn't include lettuce from C&S Hydro Huts. Stewart is not certified organic, but is meticulous in the way he follows organic practices. I think this makes good marketing sense even if it does force you to compromise on your commitment to "certified organic" in some cases.

What Full Circle offers is not my cup of tea. I like direct relationships with local farmers. I like eating seasonally. The "certified organic" label is much less meaningful to me than having the food sourced from local farms and farmers. But I don't doubt that there is a market for them in Spokane and that there is room for their offerings in the Spokane food scene. I just hope that what's good for their western Washington business is good for local Spokane businesses and farmers.

CSA Vegetable Box Programs Growing and Evolving

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is an innovation in food selling and buying that has finally broken into the mainstream. These kinds of programs that usually involve a consumer signing up with a local farmer to get a weekly box of seasonal vegetables. In some cases the boxes are picked up at a farmers' market, on the farm, or they can be delivered at an extra cost. These innovative arrangement first emerged in Europe and Japan as a response to hardships experienced by local farms and farmers, and in an effort to bridge the relational gap between consumers and growers. As the interest in locally grown food has skyrocketed in recent years these programs have proliferated.

My favorite CSA in Spokane is the one from Rocky Ridge Ranch, located in Reardan. Gary and his wife So have summer, winter, and spring CSA subscriptions. They also have a meat CSA that's the best deal in town for locally, naturally raised beef, chicken, and pork. The Millwood Farmers' Market, that I help manage, is one of their two CSA pick-up sites.

As more farmers have offered these programs and they have grown in popularity there are some interesting growing pains and ethical dilemmas that are starting to emerge, both for shoppers and farmers. One regular reader of the blog lamented last summer that, after putting up big bucks for a summers' worth of vegetables, the offerings in the box were sometimes dissappointing compared to what the farmer had on display at their farmers' market booth. She discovered the uncomfortale tension that come with a direct relationship with a farmer. What do you do when you're unhappy? It's one thing to talk to the produce manager at the grocery store, which seems safe, but it's a whole other thing to file your complaints with the person who planted, nurtured, and plucked the plants out of the ground. To complicate matters, the skill-set required to be a great farmer does not necessarily lend itself to having good customer-service skills. CSA's make buying food a relational experience, which brings with it the mixed-bag of what we experience in human relationships. Here's how the unsettled CSA customer put it last summer:

But I’m wondering – here, finally, is my question – how you think we might navigate those imperfect relationships, with all of us imperfect ourselves, when we’re talking about non-negotiables, about food? In a local, relationship-based economy, there’s no room for mistakes. What happens if I have a bad day? Grocers, middlemen, long supply chains, all create room for me (and the growers) to be imperfect. How do we live without that when we’re, you know, human?

She makes a keen observation - that one of the hidden efficiencies of our long supply chains in the food system, is that they remove the human, relational element. They give the illusion of a transaction based only on price and quality, and erase the fingerprints of the farmers who grew the food. But this is only ever an illusion. CSA program that put us face-to-face with a farmer ultimately force us to give up our romantic notions, maybe the very notions that led us to sign up for a CSA, and encounter food, people, and land in new and responsible ways. In my mind, the purpose of CSA programs is the formation of community. It's an intentional complicating of life. Yes it's probably cheaper, easier, and more time-efficient to just go to Win-Co and load up your shopping cart on a weekly basis - but sometimes more expensive, more complicated, and less efficient is better. 

Which brings me to my next observation about this fast-evolving market segment. I knew we were in new territory when I saw a "CSA" program show up on Groupon here in Spokane. Full Circle Farm was offering a deal on subscriptions to their CSA program. I was surprised, because I'd never heard of Full Circle Farm, and I take pride in having my finger on the pulse of our local food system. I did a little investigating and was intrigued by what I found. I have a call into Full Circle and will follow up on this post with more details and observations when I have to chance to talk to them. 

28 Books in 28 Days - Christian Voices on Environment, Food, and Simple Living

Starting tomorrow, February 1, I will be reviewing 28 books in 28 days leading up to the release of my book, Year of Plenty, on March 1. Year of Plenty tells the story of our family's experience in 2008 consuming only what was local, used, homegrown, or homemade. Our four rules, scribbled on a Starbucks brochure in a fit of consumer fatigue, led us into wonderful conversations about locavores (people who eat local food), going green, farmers' markets, downshifters (people who intentionally seek to consume less), simple living, food not lawns, backyard chickens, and more. 

There are already some great books on these topics. The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan is a wonderful expose of how our far-flung food system has gone awry, and Alisa Smith and J.B. McKinnon pioneered the year-long-food-experiment genre with their book The 100 Mile Diet. (If I use the Canadian title to the book, it will be less obvious that I borrowed a little inspiration from their American released book, Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet, for the title to my blog and now book. I wanted to call the blog Consuming Passions, but Nancy thought it sounded too much like a cheap romance novel or daytime soap opera. Of course, she is almost always right.) Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle took it a step further by telling the tale of her family's year of eating local, and the beauty of her story is more than matched by the beauty of her prose. Colin Beavan firmly established the "bumbling eco-experimenter" genre with his book and movie, No-Impact Man, that tells the tale of seeking to live for a year with zero environmental impact in the middle of Manhattan. While Year of Plenty shares a literary eco-system with these books, it seeks to break new ground by offering a Christian reflection on these issues.

While Year of Plenty is based on a premise that there is a need for more Christian engagement with these important issues of the day, there certainly are other books that have already, in their own unique way, sought to flesh out an authentic Christian response. That's where the 28 books in 28 days project comes in. Earlier in the week I consulted the wisdom of my Tweeps and Facebook friends, and based on their counsel, I came up with a list of some of the most important contributions to date. I chose books that were overtly Christian in their perspective, with the exception of books by Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben. Their writings draw from the deep well of faith and their works are highly influential, so I thought it was important to include them. I tried to have a good representation of books in the areas of environmentalism, food, simple living, and redemptive consumption practices, which are the main themes covered in Year of Plenty. Most are more recently published but there are some classics in the mix. I picked one obscure book, titled MISSIONARY EARTHKEEPING (Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992: An Appraisal), that I found too intriguing to leave off. Some of the authors have more than one book on the topic so, in that case, I picked the one I thought to be the most important contribution.

Go here to see the full list on Springpad. The titles and authors are as follows in nor particular order:

1. Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, Michael Schut, Editor
2. Farming As a Spiritual Discipline, Ragan Sutterfield
3. The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World, Donald B. Kraybill
4. Living More with Less, Doris Janzen Longacre
5. Global Warming and the Risen LORD: Christian Discipleship and Climate Change, Jim Ball
6. Planetwise: Dare to Care for God's World, Dave Bookless
7. Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues [EARTH WISE 2/E], Calvin B. DeWitt
8. Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship, Fred H. Van Dyke
9. MISSIONARY EARTHKEEPING (Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992: An Appraisal), Calvin Dewitt
10. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Engaging Culture), Steven Bouma-Prediger
11. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben
12. The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Norman Wirzba
13. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, Wendell Berry
14. Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread, Michael Schut, Editor
15. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, Ellen F. Davis
16. Bread for the World, Arthur Simon
17. Natural Saints: How People of Faith are Working to Save God's Earth, Mallory McDuff
18. Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not Food [Paperback], Lysa TerKeurst 
19. Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess, Will Samson
20. Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices, Julie Clawson
21. A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, Katharine Hayhoe
22. Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action, Matthew Sleeth M.D.
23. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity, Ronald J. Sider
24. Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet, Jonathan Merritt
25. The Consuming Passion: Christianity & the Consumer Culture, Rodney Clapp, Editor
26. Saving God's Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church's Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship, Tri Robinson
27. Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God's People, Scott C. Sabin
28. The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting toward God, Leslie Leyland Fields, Editor

So what do you think? Does the list cover the most significant contributions or are there some that I've left off? You can lobby me to add books to the list but I'll only add them if you provide the blog post review along with the reason it is important to the conversation. I've read many of these books already, but there are many I haven't, so we'll see how it goes. I'll offer my perspectives on each book but will also reference The Englewood Review of Books for some of these titles. They are currently the go-to source for book reviews of books on these topics. If you're not following them already on Twitter or Facebook, you should be. 

KFC, Jack in the Box, and Other Fast Food Restaurants to Accept Food Stamps

The California Restaurant Association is lobbying San Diego County supervisors to allow participants in the CalFresh Food Benefits program to use their federally funded debit cards to receive hot, prepared meals at restaurants. North County Times reports:

The San Diego County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved early plans to allow elderly, disabled and homeless recipients to redeem their county-administered benefits at local restaurants. With the vote, county staff is charged with crafting a way to put the plan in place, and presenting it to the board in three months.

Supporters say restaurants should be an option for food stamp recipients because many have no way to cook or store the food they receive at grocery stores. About 10 percent of the county's 213,000 food stamp recipients would be eligible for the program, county officials said.

"A lot of the elderly and the homeless don't have kitchens," said Andrew Casana, a lobbyist for the California Restaurant Association, speaking to the board at its downtown chambers.

The association brought the idea to board members last year, saying it would boost business and fill a community need. The number of people receiving food stamps countywide has spiked by 79 percent in two years, according to the county.

At first blush this seems like a terrible idea to me, but I can see why they are taking the proposal seriously. The option would only be open to the 10% who are homeless or don't have access to a kitchen. The menu items would be limited to supposedly healthy options, but the list of participating restaurants doesn't inspire confidence -  Long John Silver's, Pizza Hut, Jack In The Box, KFC, and Carl's Jr.. I am thinking of one homeless person I'm working with lately who doesn't have access to a kitchen and he mostly just wants peanut butter from our food pantry. The worst fast food would be a better option for him than just peanut butter. So for him, and people like him I would support something like this.

What concerns me is that this is the beginning of a shift in the way federal dollars are used to help the poor. This door has already been opened in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and I'm wondering how long it will take the lobbyists to suggest that the program has been so successful that they need to open it up to people who have kitchens but who don't know how to cook. That is a major problem for many people in poverty. In working with the EBT program in Spokane County at the farmers' market, I know there is hard fast rule that benefits cannot be, in any circumstance, used for hot, prepared foods. I think that's a good thing, but I'd like to see more resources go into helping people in need develop skills for preparing healthy meals with low cost fresh foods subsidized by the government. Another helpful direction would be to help people learn to grow their own foods and preserve them. Ironically, the local food movement that is much maligned as elitist, is the cultural resource that is best able to help people poverty develop these skills. 

The Food Sense program in Spokane County is a doing some of this important work.