On July 31st, I discussed being suave and effective when talking to people about their food choices. A sexy, new food label may be one of the communication tools used to help convert people to eating more consciously. The University of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism had this very idea and launched a contest earlier this summer to redesign the food label called, simply enough...Rethink the Food Label. On July 25th, Renee Walker, was awarded the first prize for her label concept. Check out the picture above with a sample of Renee's design. As a visual learner, I love it! If a food is crammed with all kinds of preservatives or too much salt or sugar, this label is going tell you - each ingredient gets a proportionally, sized, colored box relative to the amount of other ingredients. A solid, colored square will more often than not indicate a whole food. Unless of course it's something like cotton candy and then it would just be a big, pink square for sugar...not wholesome. My only suggestion...how about a section on the food label where it tells you more about where the food was made and by who. The folks at AgroEco Coffee have designed a label for their packaging to connect drinkers to growers by telling them more about the farm, where it is, the beans, the owners, etc.... Okay Renee, there's your next hurdle...concisely and artistically design a label that educates us both on the nutrition and the origin.
We see at them every day but probably don't read them nearly enough. I'm talking about...nutrition labels. Those things on the back of canned goods and cereal boxes telling us the ingredients and the percentage of carbs and calories. Now, if food labels were a little bit more sexy and easier to understand, we may pay better attention. And in doing so, people would discover for themselves what's really in their food.
On July 31st, I discussed being suave and effective when talking to people about their food choices. A sexy, new food label may be one of the communication tools used to help convert people to eating more consciously. The University of Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism had this very idea and launched a contest earlier this summer to redesign the food label called, simply enough...Rethink the Food Label. On July 25th, Renee Walker, was awarded the first prize for her label concept. Check out the picture above with a sample of Renee's design. As a visual learner, I love it! If a food is crammed with all kinds of preservatives or too much salt or sugar, this label is going tell you - each ingredient gets a proportionally, sized, colored box relative to the amount of other ingredients. A solid, colored square will more often than not indicate a whole food. Unless of course it's something like cotton candy and then it would just be a big, pink square for sugar...not wholesome. My only suggestion...how about a section on the food label where it tells you more about where the food was made and by who. The folks at AgroEco Coffee have designed a label for their packaging to connect drinkers to growers by telling them more about the farm, where it is, the beans, the owners, etc.... Okay Renee, there's your next hurdle...concisely and artistically design a label that educates us both on the nutrition and the origin.
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I had dinner with some girlfriends this evening on a backyard deck with Lake Tahoe in the distant background. Not a bad spot! Each of us catching the other up on our summer adventures against setting skies. They were eager to hear about what I've been learning on the farm and in my ag courses. One friend had just returned from an island vacation with her extended family. She agreed with the concept of the food revolution being more of a social movement and liked the idea of creating more food hubs to help organic farmers get their food to like-minded markets and finding ways to preserve farmland and get more people farming. "That is all well and good," she said, "but how do you broach the sustainable food subject with friends and relatives who either don't see or care about the value of our food?" People want to buy their Wish-Bone salad dressings and Gogurts. They are familiar, cheap and convenient products. It can be a touchy conversation and one you want to go well so you both feel happy with the outcome. I've thought about this conundrum many times thinking how we need a set of communication tools and tips to help convince friends and relatives respectfully but swiftly. We can't be judgmental in our approach because people will turn off but we also need to start seeing light bulbs go off at a faster pace than they are currently in order to increase the groundswell for a healthier tomorrow. Times a tickin! If you've got ideas, send'em my way. Please! Most people will agree that pesticides are bad and chickens should have room to roam but they still buy chemically drenched veggies and factory farm eggs. Why is that? For one, they don't see the direct connection to the food they are eating. It's not like they are picking the eggs up at a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) and see the conditions in which their food was raised. But the bigger reason is...Price! We are a price driven society. And even though food is one of life's three basic building blocks along with water and air, we want food to be cheap. But we will pay high prices for other consumer goods like fashion, electronics and toys. If we measured status by what we ate and not how we looked, the tables would be turned. We need to view ourselves not as consumers but as eaters (just learned this concept in the book I'm reading entitled, Farmer Jane). Bottom line, food needs to be a priority. We make our children a priority. The food we feed them and where it comes from should be a priority. Once upon a time, we use to spend 25% of our salaries on food now it is less than 10%. If we reprioritized our buying habits, we would spend less on dressing our lives and more on nourishing our families. And if worried about price, then we should find ways to not waste so much. 40% of the food produced in the US gets thrown away either before it reaches the market, at the market or in our homes. If we shopped more consciously, we would throw less food away in our homes leaving more money to buy food grown sustainably. The way I learned about UCSC's Agroecology seminar was through a list serve I am on with Roots of Change. Today, the entire Roots of Change staff came to present on their efforts across California to transform the state's food system. Their work goes deep from strategic planning at the state level to their Farmer's Market Consortium which leverages the food stamp program to not only help those in need gain access to sustainably grown food but to increase demand for these products thus securing more business for organic farmers. The cornerstone to their mission lies within their "convening" practice where they coordinate regional roundtables with stakeholders in local agriculture - farmers, non-profits, government agencies and businesses. Roots of Change provides the process but the agenda is driven solely by its participants. It is the participants who agree upon realities in their foodshed and develop a map for change. Through this cooperative process, Roots of Change hopes there will be enough area roundtables to form a Food System Alliance which can contribute to shaping California food policy. But the process isn't always rosie. In fact, it can get down right noise, haha. As Roots of Change president, Michale Dimock, describes, "Your working with people from different sectors and at different levels. You've got to get people to open up and start sharing so you push in a variety of ways to create that spark." To move the ball forward, we need to work in collaboration. In these roundtables are both conventional and organic growers. By first striking a balance with agreed realities, these unlikely allies can work together on progressive policy. Here is where it gets a little sticky though...just recently, Roots of Change came out with a promotional video called, Food Movement Rising. It starts off with all the usual, scary things associated with modern-day farming and ends with the solutions for a sustainable food future. Sounds great, right?? Wrong...the conventional growers in these roundtables feel blindsided. They thought they were working in cooperation only to have the finger pointed at them. Guess they didn't get the memo on what it meant to "transform" the food system. "Transforming" could have different meanings to different people. For many of us, transforming means converting conventional farming practices over to sustainable. For conventional growers, it must mean their methods still have a place at the table but in a modified approach, i.e. instead of Pesticide A that is a proven carcinogen and an endocrine disruptor, they will use Pesticide B which is just a carcinogen. Fleshing out misunderstandings like this is all part of the process and where new realities will be met. Back to the drawing board! I want to hand a blue ribbon to all the programs and initiatives I've been learning about this past week but my favorite so far is where we visited today, ALBA! The ALBA growing and education center is in the fertile valley of Salinas, CA. Bottom line, we need more of these centers all over the country, the world in fact! ALBA stands for "Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association." Here's the skinny...ALBA not only trains people how to farm organically but helps them get started by leasing them subsidized land from their 110 acre property. The biggest risk in starting to farm is taking that financial leap of faith. Even if you can afford to buy land, you have a huge learning curve in developing best practices. ALBA's collaborative approach provides continued field education for all its graduates. At ALBA, you start with 6-months (150 hours) of training then lease .5 acre at 20% its market value. After five years, you are paying 100% of the market value but may have increased your capacity to 5 or 7 acres. It is an "incubator" for small farms. The model is brilliant! But that's not all...ALBA also has a distribution component, ALBA Organics, to help their farmers get their food to market since marketing can be the toughest hurdle of all - you may be a good farmer but not a very good sales person. ALBA Organics is the engine which funds the entire project first paying their growers for their harvest and returning profits back into the program. Many of the graduates who lease land from ALBA opt out of ALBA Organics. With the help of ALBA staff, they develop their own economically, viable businesses with CSA's and farmer's markets...like Pablo Perez of J & P Organics . We had the fortune of meeting Pablo in the fields and hearing his story...Pablo had started out working in a chemically, dependent nursery years ago later leasing .5 acre and then 7 acres where he grew flowers conventionally. When his irrigation pump broke, the landowners refused to help fix it. $70K in lost income later and Pablo had also lost his lease and was back working in a nursery. His American dream crumbled. A couple years later, Pablo's son, Juan, was on field trip to ALBA and saw an opportunity for his family. He encouraged his dad to take the bi-lingual course offered at ALBA. Together five years ago, they formed J & P Organics. Juan handles the marketing and Pablo farms their now 5 acre plot which supports 500 CSA shareholders. It's enough to bring a tear to your eye. But not to Pablo. He is all smiles and full of stories. Including this story, or is it a parable... A man asked Pablo, "Why are your strawberries $1 more than that guy's strawberries over there?" Pablo replied, "Because mine are organic and I don't use chemical fertilizers and pesticides." "I don't care about that," the man responded and proceeded to buy the cheaper, poison laced strawberries. A few days later, than man came back to ask Pablo why the strawberries he bought were dry and tasteless. Pablo explained, "because the chemicals take out all the nutrients and flavor." And with that, Pablo cut one of his strawberries open and handed it to the man. It was juicy and exploding with taste. The man never bought a conventionally grown strawberry again. The End! Photo: Nathan Harkleroad, ALBA's Farm Incubator Program Manager, giving us a tour of ALBA's farmland and Pablo Perez of J & P Organics telling stories. |
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