Despite its name, the nonprofit Just Food is about more than just food—it's a network of farmers, educators and volunteers and working together to get all New Yorkers access to locally grown food. With Tropical Storm Irene devastating many farms upstate, Just Food's work is particularly important now—they're working on providing relief funds for many local farms, and looking for all the help they can get. On a slightly happier note, Just Food is also preparing to host their annual Let Us Eat Local event, a giant dinner party featuring chefs from ABC Kitchen, Back Forty, Northern Spy Food Co. and more. LUEL honors local food heroes, like a high schooler raising chickens in the Bronx and a Harlem grandmother who teaches canning classes. We spoke to Just Food's executive director Jacquie Berger about the many ways that New Yorkers can get more involved with their local food system.
Talking Farms, Irene, And Eating Local With Just Food's Jacquie Berger
How To Help Local Farmers Devastated By Irene
While Tropical Storm Irene may not have hit NYC as hard as it some feared, the storm has caused some serious devastation in other parts of the state, particularly in much of the farmland that supplies Greenmarket shoppers with their heirloom tomatoes and ramps and whatnot. It's still too early to asses the full extent of the losses, but flooding, soil erosion and poor road conditions have all but destroyed some farms upstate, resulting in some heartbreaking stories from small family-owned farms. Governor Cuomo has requested federal assistance to help farmers recover from Irene damages totaling at least $45 million, but some NYC restaurants and food organizations are also banding together to help. Here's how:
Brooklyn Food Summit Will Determine the Future of Food
Does the corn grown on Iowa farms affect the way the five boroughs eat? The almost universally agreed-upon answer is yes, and two recent Times articles highlighted two separate root issues affecting the future our country’s food policy. The Business section featured a beaming Alice Waters, the organic food proponent, buying cabbage at a farmers' market. The death knell for agribusiness and corporate food has once again sounded, the article intoned, as production is moving toward smaller and more sustainable business models, and the organic vegetable garden being installed on the White House Lawn is only one indication of the trend's momentum.
Young Farmers, in Their Own Words, for the Greater Green
Often armed with not much more than unwieldy liberal arts degrees, the mass exodus of 20-somethings from urban areas to farms outside of the city was a much reported story last year; the underlying idea being that growing vegetables from seed to harvest might be more appealing than hitting up the mediabistro classifieds every two minutes during temp job downtime.
City Council May Legalize Urban Beekeeping
Serious Eats reports that City Council member David Yassky has introduced a bill to set up a licensing process for urban beekeepers. Currently illegal—thanks to an archaically-worded health code subsection—beekeeping in the city thrives in a “don’t ask, don’t tell” sort of way; an excellent Edible Manhattan article published last fall describes the outlaw subculture for all of its charms. Last fall, author Rowan Jacobsen told us that more rooftop buzzing in the city could “generate quite a bit of its honey needs,” not to mention a really local sweetener. In the meantime, there’s a NYC Beekeeping meetup group and a petition you can sign. There’s even a $75, twelve-hour, soup-to-nuts urban beekeeping course (going on now, with another starting next month) administrated through the New York City Beekeepers Association.
Tidbits: Sustainable Agriculture Edition
- The Meatrix folks are at it again. This time, in The Meatrix 2 1/2, Moopheus and the gang expose the many dangers of industrial slaughterhouses. The short is produced by Sustainable Table and is designed to help promote the upcoming release of the movie version of Fast Food Nation.
Canning Time
At the farmer’s market you’re entranced. The stalls swell with the season’s natural bounty—corn, tomatoes, peaches, peppers—all the foods that taste right only when eaten at this time of year. You buy pounds and lug the harvest home. But as the shortening days slip by, those special $2 bags of veggies risk going to rot in your fridge. It’s enough to make a gourmet’s heart sink. What do you do? Can it. That’s what some people in the city are learning to do. It may seem like a lost art, but canning could be coming into a revival. “Putting up” food has an old-fashioned homey appeal, not unlike that of knitting, another noble homestead craft that has spurred a recent craze. This summer the Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights threw a couple “jam sessions,” and the Park Slope CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group gave a tutorial for members last week. If you’re a believer in the importance of buying locally, canning gives you a way to have your cake and eat it too. Stock up on berries now, cook them into jam, and eat them in January without any guilt. Preserving food at home can even feel a little revolutionary in this era when industrially produced food is the norm.
On the Plate: Upcoming Food and Wine Events
May 10: A Taste of the Good Life, Une Soirée en Provence
Keep Hope Alive
Today's New York Times Dining & Wine section sounds the death knell for the Bronx Terminal Market, once a thriving hub of trade in locally-grown produce. Squeezed out of the wholesale market by cheaper, more plentiful imports and lower transportation costs, and too big to profitably tour the Greenmarket circuit, many of the region's medium- to large-scale farmers are on the out-and-out. And discontent has been simmering in the food world over the declining quality and ethics of the Greenmarket system. What's a New Yorker who cares about fresh food and supporting local farmers to do?
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