Two sides

The paper of record has two articles of note. One is a good piece in the Sunday magazine about Will Allen and Growing Power, the amazingly productive urban farm in Milwaukee that is the prime inspiration for Veggielution. My favorite quote:

So no, Growing Power isn’t self-sufficient. But neither is industrial agriculture, which relies on price supports and government subsidies. Moreover, industrial farming incurs costs that are paid by society as a whole: the health costs of eating highly processed foods, for example, or water pollution. Nor can Growing Power be compared to other small farms, because it provides so many intangible social benefits to those it reaches. “It’s not operated as a farm,” said Ian Marvy, executive director of Brooklyn’s Added Value farm, which shares many of Growing Power’s core values but produces less food. “It has a social, ecological and economic bottom line.”

The other is one of those stories that seems to reinforce the fact that the reader is on the outside looking in. It details a dinner in Oakland that brought together the local luminaries of the Oakland food scene, who enjoyed an amazing bounty of locally-grown and (more importantly) locally-preserved and -prepared foods. Maybe if it were written with more recipes or resources, I wouldn’t have got quite such an off-putting vibe. It’s funny, because I actually have been at the periphery of the events described: I attended Slow Food Nation, went to the Meatpaper party at Camino, and, of course, have followed Forage Oakland from afar. I’m also looking forward to the Eat Real Festival, and am very interested in what I read about LiveCulture.

That said, the meal described is the other half of the Veggielution picture for me. At the end of the general meeting yesterday, I gave my feedback that I wanted to see more use of the food, both in people’s taking it home, and in our cooking it and eating it together. The logistics of the Sunday potlucks are difficult; we haven’t had our own plates and utensils, and most volunteers don’t bring any, either. But Lisa reports that she’s got many more plates now, and I want to make more concerted use of the kitchen at Prusch park. I’m going to start by bringing my Coleman stove on Sunday (given me by my mother years ago in an ultimately futile encouragement of camping) and cook up a stir fry with whatever we find. I’ll try to find a thrift-store cast iron pan to donate, as well. Soup would be easy to make but, given the lack of bowls, somewhat more difficult to eat.