Friday, March 16, 8:00 pm

Carnegie Institution for Science, Elihu Root Auditorium

1530 P St. NW, DC 20005

Friday, March 23, 6:00 pm

Town Hall Education Arts & Recreation Campus (THEARC)

1901 Mississippi Ave. SE, DC 20020

Both screenings will be followed by a Q&A with director Kip Pastor, Bernie Prince of FRESHFARM Markets, and Jennifer Mampara of the FoodPrints program at Watkins Elementary School.

The film features DC organizations like Natural Resources Defense Council and the Center for Food Safety. Our goal is to inspire viewers to get involved with local organizations working on sustainable food solutions, and to take action at the community level.

Synopsis from Website: We can no longer stomach our food system. It’s killing more and more Americans and costing billions in healthcare. 73% of Americans eat organic food, because they think it’s healthier. But is organic really better for us or just a marketing scam? When corporations went into the business and “organic” became a brand, everything changed. The philosophy and the label grew apart. Can gummy bears or bananas flown halfway across the world truly be organic? 

This film looks beyond organic for practical solutions for me and you. Local farmer’s markets, school gardens, and urban farms are revolutionizing the way we eat. Change is happening from the soil up.

In Organic We Trust – Teaser #1 from Pasture Pictures on Vimeo.

Rooting DC 2012 Photo Booth Video

Thank you for sharing your energizing feelings of friendship, creativity, inspiration, connection, love, and support to make this event possible! Here is to a great kickoff for the 2012 season!! 

The Beet Street Gardens clan at Rooting DC 2012

When: 7-11pm on 2/11/12

Location: the JamJar
1719  Lamont Street NW, DC

Metro: Columbia Heights + 10 min. walk
Bus: H3, H4 Crosstown / S2, S4 16th Street
Car: advised to park on 16th street & walk west 1.5 blocks
Bike: parking plenty

Beet Street is jazzed to focus this season’s local growing/eating around building edible forest gardens and an outdoor kitchen. Your donations will help make that possible! $10-20 suggested.

Questions: email annabeth@beetstreetgardens.org

Blooming echinacea at Sasha Bruce.

See you on the 11th!

Beet Street Gardens

fb invite here

www.beetstreetgardens.org

Follow us! Pass the word along!

Twitter: @RootingDC

Facebook: www.facebook.com/rootingdc

Rooting DC 2012 Flyer

Please come! Rooting DC is an annual, FREE, community and urban gardening focused forum, with over 500 attendees! Come, attend sessions to learn and get information about what is going on in your communities and how you can get involved. Want to know how you start your own garden or how to compost? Come to Rooting DC 2012!

Please feel free to pass this information and flier along to others – Hope to see you all there!

Follow us on Twitter @RootingDC as well as on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/rootingdc

Click here for more information and to apply.

In case you haven’t heard, the Food Council aims to bring together a diverse representation of stakeholders in a public and private partnership to improve the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of Montgomery County through the creation of a robust, local, sustainable food system.

The Council will be comprised of 13 – 17 diverse stakeholders including individual members, professionals, private businesses, government officials, community organizations, and educational institutions that represent and/or work on food issues in our county.  We would particularly love to see council members who represent urban/suburban agriculture and community food production, so if you are involved in any of these, please consider applying!

The first meeting of the Council will be on Wednesday, February 15, location to be announced; all meetings will be open to the public, with community involvement encouraged.

Again, Council member applications are being accepted through next Friday, January 13.  Click here for more information and to apply.

Where: Madam’s Organ, 2461 18th St NW in Adams Morgan

What: Neighborhood Farm Initiative fundraiser to support Rooting DC 2012. Suggested donation of $15 includes entrance see and a Rooting DC t-shirt. Come to Madam’s Organ to eat, drink and enjoy the company of fellow RDC supporters. Madam’s Organ will graciously donate $1 per drink (including soda and juice) that is sold during happy hour, as well as 20% of all food sales! As always, seeds will be available from NFI!

Here is a great article for Thanksgiving reading and contemplating the way we cook and eat around this holiday, and how it can help improve our eating habits to make them more sustainable throughout the year: Written by Tamar Adler, an op-ed author for The New York Times, “Thanksgiving Thrift: The Holiday as a Model for Sustainable Cooking”

And currently this bill is being discussed in Congress behind closed doors and possibly will be enacted without any legislative debate.

So what are we, as consumers, supposed to do about this? First educate yourself. Know what the Farm Bill is (a challenging task, I know) but there are many resources and websites which have done a great job at unpacking the legislation into manageable bites of information. Second, write to your Congressman or Congresswoman. Already there has been a bipartisan group that has spoken out against this “secret” Farm Bill, but there needs to be more support. Third, continue to support your local farmers and urban growers. By supporting the local food system, we keep money in our communities as opposed to in the pockets of large multinational agribusiness corporations. As Wendell Berry is often quoted: “eating is an agricultural act.” It is true: where you choose to purchase your food is an agricultural choice as you are choosing to support a farmer and her/his agricultural practices. It is also a political one as well, as you can help to shape the kind of agriculture that U.S. policy supports and funds.

A few resources to help understand the Farm Bill:

Food and Water Watch’s Fair Farm Bill webpage.

Also the Facebook page Understanding the Farm Bill is an excellent wealth of news and information.

Understanding the Farm Bill Starts Here: All Our Articles in One Handy Place, May 25, 2011, by the Simple, Good and Tasty blog

An EXTENSIVE list of readings, articles, reports and explanations of the history of the Farm Bill, the programs within the omnibus bill, from the Community Alliance for Global Justice (CAGJ) out of Seattle, Washington. I would go here first for information.

Article on commodity subsidies (i.e. corn, soy, rice, milk) is a required read as well. By the Northwest Farm Bill Action Group.

and

An amazing website on the Declaration of the Youth Food Bill of Rights,  which was the product of this summer’s Rooted In Community (RIC) Leadership Summit. The Summit was hosted in Philadelphia, PA and attracted 37 different groups of youth gardeners, food justice advocates and urban gardeners from across the U.S. This raises the question of is our Farm Bill supporting the people’s right to food access and security? If not, then perhaps it needs to.

A few recent articles on the “Secret” Farm Bill. A quick search online will turn up many more.

Budget cuts could be recipe for change or disaster, October 24, 2011 & Digesting OWS: Why Food Lovers Need to Come to the Table, October 29, 2011, by Slow Food USA

27 Bipartisan Members of Congress Unite to Oppose “Secret Farm Bill”, November 3, 2011, by Oxfam America

Memo to Congress: No Secret Farm Bill, November 2, 2011, by The Nation‘s Mark Hertsgaard

And for some satire via political cartoon (thank you www.MisaSaburi.com and Slow Food USA):