eat local for the holidays

Join the Greater Kansas City Food Policy Coalition and your neighbors in supporting our local food system.

Sign the online pledge to have at least one local food item in your holiday meal. It might be the sweet potatoes, the pecans for your pumpkin pie, or even the turkey itself. Whichever you choose, you can make a difference by supporting local farmers and vendors.

Find out what items are fresh now in Greater Kansas City, and check out recipes using some of those ingredients.

Not sure where to find local foods? Check out these vendors and stores and restaurants specializing in local foods.

You can find food items for your holiday meal right here at home. They're local, they're tasty and they're easier to find than you might think!

Support urban farming in KC

Support Urban Food Production in Kansas City!!

The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, one of our community partners from Rock Out Reach Out is getting the word out about urban farming in our city. Whether you grow local food or buy local food, this information is very important to you. Come to BADSEED, Tuesday, October 20, 6:00-7:30 pm, to discuss proposing City Code changes that will benefit Urban Agriculture.

BADSEED has gotten a lot of flack and legal pressure lately about farming in the city, and I want to invite Kansas City friends and allies to support Kansas City urban farming by coming to this initial meeting.

Katherine Kelly of KCCUA says, "In our meetings with the Urban Planning and Development staff, and with various city council people, they expressed a willingness to work with us to develop codes that more accurately fit the ways that urban food production is developing in Kansas City, MO. They are in a review period looking at the revised codes, so the timing is good for refinements.

The Kansas City Center for Urban Agriculture, Bad Seed Farm, and the Food Policy Coalition for Greater Kansas City are organizing a meeting of any interested community members who would like to have input into this process. You are invited to attend, Tuesday, October 20, 6:00-7:30 pm, at the Bad Seed Market at 1909 McGee, Kansas City, MO."

The goals of the meeting are:

· To look at existing codes that impact urban agriculture,

· To brainstorm about changes that might be useful and supportive of the benefits of urban agriculture, and

· To put together a volunteer committee of Kansas City, MO residents to lead the codes revisions process. This committee would work with KCCUA, the Food Policy Coalition, and city staff to research possibilities, prioritize, draft, and build political support for more urban ag applicable codes.

· Start a process that other municipalities in the metro area can use as inspiration and as a model for creating more urban ag friendly cities.

At the meeting, we will have KCMO Councilwoman Beth Gottstein, Patty Knoll from the Planning and Development Department of the city, and possibly other city representatives.

PLEASE RSVP to Katherine Kelly! They want to have some idea of how many folks to expect. And, if you can, bring a folding chair, Bad Seed will have some on hand, but depending on the numbers, we may need more.

If you have any questions about this, you can contact:
Katherine Kelly, KC Center for Urban Agriculture, 913-831-2444, or katherine@kccua.org
Gretchen Kunkel, Food Policy Coalition of Greater Kansas City, ghkunkel@kc.rr.com
Dan Heryer & Brooke Salvaggio, badseedfarm@hotmail.com

Even if you can't make commitments to the long process ahead, I hope we can have lots of people show overwhelming support for this initial meeting. Hope to see you there!

Welcome back!

As we gear back up for the school year here at Jewell, we're also gearing the blog back up. I encourage you to subscribe, follow (in the right column), or check back often to see what we're blogging about here. Or, become our fan on Facebook and get updates from the blog there. Either way, make sure to leave us comments and let us know what you think about it!

I thought we'd start the year of blogging with a bit of information about cardboard recycling, since we're expanding that on campus this year. We started in the residence halls last spring, and now with the help of two CJS Recycling Interns, we're taking it campus wide, so look for the new bins throughout campus, next to the paper and plastic bins. So, here is some information to spur you on as you're breaking down those boxes.

"Recycling cardboard (like any other type of paper) reduces the demand for new paper from virgin pulp, thereby saving trees and decreasing the amount of pollution generated in new paper production. Finally, because cardboard is such bulky waste, recycling it saves significant amounts of space in landfills and reduces pollution in areas where trash is incinerated." (www.riverwired.com)

"Facts about recycling 1 ton of corrugated cardboard:
Saves 17 trees from having to be cut down and used for pulp
Saves 7000 gallons of water
Saves 11 barrels – 462 gallons – of oil
Saves more than 3 cubic yards of landfill space
Corrugated can be recycled an average of 7 times before the fibers become too short and they are filtered out as sludge during the pulping process, which is then used as cover at landfills." (www.papertrail.com)

According to the EPA, paper products take up 34% of landfills. (www.epa.gov)

Making the pulp used in unrecycled cardboard creates sulfur dioxide, a gas that contributes to acid rain. (www.valleyrecycling.org)

Finally, it is important to buy recycled cardboard (and other recycled products) in order to close the loop. If we don't create a market for recycled products by buying them, companies cannot afford to use our recyclables in their manufacturing, which defeats all of our effort in the first place.

Take out

We are always especially on the lookout here for things our students can do to lower their carbon footprint (since they don't have houses to weatherize or backyards to grow food). Here's a good article about the pros and cons about containers for the inevitable take out meal.

http://www.chow.com/stories/10870

The best advice NOT included in the article is: get out of the habit of eating take out in the first place! We all do it of course, but the more times you sit down to eat somewhere with reusable utensils the better it is all the way around. And honestly, no matter where or what you're eating, food tastes better with real silverware anyway!

Socially Conscious Shopping

Confident that you are buying good, socially conscious brands? Find out the real story behind all that marketing money and store visibility.

Burt's Bees, Tom's of Maine, Naked Juice: Your Favorite Brands? Take Another Look -- They May Not Be What They Seem
http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/131910