Join Congregation Kol Ami in Elkins Park, PA for a book talk with Oran Hesterman, author of Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainble Food System For all. Click image for larger view. Event sponsored by Hazon CSA Elkins Park, Creekside Coop, Transition Cheltenham Food Action Group and Congregation Kol Ami
Wednesday, July 20 from 4 – 5 pm ET Online Webinar Join Live Here http://www.anymeeting.com/hazon1 The Farm Bill affects a wide range of issues -from what food is readily available to how much it costs and from how we provide for the hungry to maintaining open land for conservation. The Bill contains billions of dollars in funds for agricultural subsidies and farm relief programs, hunger relief and emergency food aid, environmental conservation programs, and many other government programs. Oran Hesterman, author of Fair Food, will explore the key elements of the Farm Bill, how it shapes our food system, and how it is could help create a healthy, sustainable food system. The Fair Food Network, led by Oran, and Hazon will explore why we, as a Jewish people, should make our voices heard for support of farm and food initiatives that will bring fair food to all.
By Judith Belasco, Director of Food Programs, Hazon My first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) pick up of fresh, local, organic veggies is a few days away. In mid-winter, I plunked down $550, signed up for my volunteer slots, and felt good that I was voting with my fork for a healthier, more sustainable food system. During the 2011 growing season, I’m joined by a network of 56 Hazon CSAs and thousands more CSAs in communities across the country. While I am excited for the East Coast season to begin, I’m aware of the many people who are unable to access CSA shares and those who are unable to access healthy food at all. Our food system is broken. Joining a CSA is a great first step, and there is more we can do in order to fix it. Enter Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All, a practical guide to changing not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed and sold. Author and founder of the Fair Food Network, Oran B. Hesterman, shows how our food system’s dysfunctions are the unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit, […]
The period of counting the omer is drawing to a close. It’s one of the many times that Jewish tradition uses cycles of seven to encourage a balance of work and rest. The most famous, by far, is shabbat itself. I love that the Italian word for Saturday is “sabato.” One of the online Italian-English dictionaries has this: “Saturday is considered the last day of the week in some countries.” By “some countries” I think they mean the State of Israel. It was the Jewish Sabbath, on Saturday, that first marked the day of rest, and as Christianity and then Islam spread across the world, shabbat moved to Sunday or Friday. The lexicographical evidence of its origins has its own charm. I think it’s impossible for most of us to understand how radical the idea of shabbat must have been. We grow up with two-day weekends (a day and a half in Israel, depending on your age), plus public holidays, school vacations, summer vacations, parental leave, disability. None of these existed in the first 100,000 years of biological humanity. Each of them has undergone the arc of a new idea: introduced by someone; considered crazy, ridiculous, impossible; gradually people argued […]
Fair Food Network is excited to be partnering with Hazon on the following three calls to action. You can learn more about all of these issues by reading Oran Hesterman’s Fair Food: Growing a Healthy, Sustainable Food System for All. Together, we can move from being conscious consumers to engaged citizens and transform our food system! The first call to action is in your kitchen. Make a commitment to spend an additional $10 per week on food the source of which you can trace and trust. It may be $10 at the farmers’ market where you’ve just had a discussion with the grower; it may be $10 toward a buying club or a CSA. This $10 is not just for you and your satiation. It is a transformative $10 spent with intention, or kavannah, toward a fair food system. The second call takes place in YOUR Jewish community, whether it be a synagogue, havura, Hebrew school or even where you volunteer. Make a commitment to engage the leadership of that institution (maybe it’s you!) to view food as a critical issue in the development of your community (because it is). Find one way you can make a change in the […]
