San Pablo Bay Sovereignty

Napa Valley Bee Company

2012-02-29T16:04:00.002-08:00

Vallejo Food Co-op

2012-02-25T16:58:00.002-08:00

Vallejo Natural Food Co-op for wholesome and affordable food
[vallejocoop.wordpress.com]

2012-02-20T11:19:00.000-08:00

2012-02-20 "Slow-growth group: Smaller Napa Pipe plan may be too small" by Peter Jensen from "Napa Valley Register"
[http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/810c1d2e-5c38-11e1-a0ad-001871e3ce6c.html]
Napa County planning staff is touting its vision for a smaller Napa Pipe project as providing a compact, walkable neighborhood, but a local group is questioning if it’s too small to make that possible.
Staff and developer Keith Rogal are offering competing proposals for the project, with Rogal advocating a 2,050-home project on 134 acres, while staff supports a 700- to 945-home project on 63 acres.
The developer’s original proposal was for 3,200 homes, then 2,580, and finally 2,050. The project will be mixed-use and have a hotel, a living facility for seniors, and other retail and commercial spaces.
Both proposals will be offered at the county Planning Commission’s meeting Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Napa Valley Opera House, 1030 Main St. Members of the public are invited to question staff and the applicant. Another meeting will be held March 19, and residents can offer comments at that meeting. The commission will make a recommendation on the project after the public comments.
Planning Director Hillary Gitelman has said the smaller project allowed staff to strike a balance between providing the compact, walkable neighborhood the developer envisions with the reduced housing needs the county anticipates having.
Eve Kahn, chair of Get a Grip on Growth, said when she first read the staff proposal she was pleased with the vision for a smaller project. It didn’t require an exemption to limits included in the county’s growth management plan — “one of my big battles,” Kahn said.
But she questioned if the project’s size would be enough to support a school at the site and retail facilities, elements of keeping traffic off the roads.
“Once you cut it down small enough, you just put even more people on the road,” Kahn said. “A sustainable, walkable community goes out the door.”
Kahn’s group raised concerns about the project in a letter to county planners after the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Report was released in 2009. It did so again after a supplement to that report was issued last year.
The applicants propose possibly setting aside a 10-acre site for an elementary school, while county staff’s proposal does not.
Kahn said she was also concerned about what kind of tenants the development would attract, saying it might appeal more to people looking to purchase a second home, not working-class families.
“My fear is you’re going to have a lot of tourists and hotels and not the workforce housing we need,” Kahn said. “We need housing for our workers and it needs to be in a place that fits their lifestyles.”
Kahn said she was opposed to the project, and said building it would jeopardize opportunities to bring light-industrial development to the area.
“It’s the last big light-industrial space,” Kahn said. “This project should get turned down now.”
Bernhard Krevet, president of Friends of the Napa River, said his organization still needed to wade through the details contained in the voluminous environmental report for the project, but said staff’s proposal potentially posed less impact to the environment.
“In a way, I like the reduced (project) because it would reduce some of the pressures on our natural environment,” Krevet said.
Krevet questioned putting the residential units nearest the river, which both proposals do, as that area is prone to be the most impacted by flooding or sea levels rising.
Krevet said his group raised concerns about the project’s environmental impacts in two letters, one in 2010 and another in 2011. The group is still researching and Krevet couldn’t yet say if its concerns were adequately addressed.

2012-02-06T16:03:00.000-08:00

2012-02-06 "Tim Lincecum slims down with swim routine, loses appetite for McDonald’s" by 'Duk from "Big League Stew"
[http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/tim-lincecum-slims-down-swim-routine-loses-appetite-192300400.html]
Tim Lincecum's bank account may be getting a lot fatter, but the Freak's physique is headed the opposite way. After using 2011 to bulk up in an attempt to gain endurance, Lincecum appeared at the Giants fanfest this past weekend and said he had lost 22 pounds over the winter.
It's kind of hard to believe that Lincecum had 22 pounds to lose in the first place, though not as hard as believing the pitcher's claim that he weighed close to 200 pounds when taking the mound last season.
With the added poundage not providing the benefit he thought it might, Lincecum took to using a counter-current pool to get down to around 175 pounds from 197. He also cut down on his famous trips to In-N-Out while eliminating other outlets entirely.
Bad Ronald!
"You take your first bite of a McDonald's burger and it's like 'Why did I buy this?'" Lincecum said to reporters.
"You feel instantly sick. That's what ended up happening with all these places and why I started eliminating them. I take a bite and I'm like 'I can't even finish this.' So I just started going for stuff that made me feel better. I'm not crushing vegetables by any means, but I'm definitely eating better."
Lincecum said all of this while wearing a hat for Tacolicious [http://tacolicioussf.com/], a San Francisco dining phenomenon that relies on local farmers for their ingredients. So perhaps he really is easing his way past the drive-thru routine of an early 20-something.
Speaking of tacos, Lincecum also expressed doubt that Brian Wilson really eats Taco Bell despite endorsing it all of last postseason. But just like gordita enthusiast Justin Verlander, the super-fit Wilson said he's been known to make a run for the border.
"Yeah, I've had Taco Bell," Wilson told Bay Area Sports Guy. "C'mon, I'm human."

2012-02-05T18:41:00.000-08:00

2012-02-05 "Pay attention to how important agriculture really is" from "Vallejo Times Herald"
[www.timesheraldonline.com/opinion/ci_19898197]
Telling you that agriculture is important in Solano and Yolo counties is not news to any of us. But if we told you that agriculture is the engine behind a $2.5 billion sector of our economies, you might be interested. When we add that agriculture is our region's brightest promise to increase jobs and prosperity, we know that we now have your full attention.
That's exactly what happened when a study on this subject came out last year. It got the attention of farmers, processors, bankers, government and academia. They all wanted to know how they could be a part of growing this broad, yet integrated sector known as the food chain industry cluster, which makes up 10 percent of our shared economy. That interest resulted in a tremendous turnout for the Solano and Yolo Counties Joint Economic Summit in December.
"The Food Chain Cluster: Integrating the Food Chain in Solano and Yolo Counties to Create Economic Opportunities and Jobs" report describes the food chain as the full spectrum of economic activity related to agriculture -- from seed to the table -- from before the crops get into the fields, to the goods and services used in farming, to the value-added processing that converts crops into consumer goods.
The report highlights some opportunities and challenges to adding more value to agriculture. The opportunities range from increasing demand for high-value products that we grow, such as almonds and walnuts, to the fact that seven out of the top 10 seed producers in the world are located here. While having established food processing facilities is one of our strengths, the need for additional slaughtering facilities and other essential processors was identified as a weakness. Regulatory issues, costs of operations and the lack of a chilling capacity are some of the other challenges to overcome.
The purpose of the summit was to engage participants in building strategies that will preserve, promote and expand our agricultural industry and all of the value it brings to our communities. A key message we heard was the need for the urban public, the business community and economic development staffs to have a better understanding of the importance of bringing processing facilities to the region. This will bring growers much-needed contracts for their commodities -- an economic incentive to keep agricultural production local. New processing facilities will also generate a wave of other job-producing companies that will spur retail purchases, home sales and other positive drivers for our local economy.
The summit reinforced this region's capacity to continue to grow our food chain cluster. One speaker suggested we could make our Agricultural Valley the next Silicon Valley. For this to be possible, we need to capitalize on our competitive advantages -- highly productive lands, plentiful water, top-notch research at the UC Davis, an entrepreneurial spirit, and an unwavering passion to preserve and promote agriculture.
In addition, the summit underscored how agriculture -- farming and ranching -- has evolved to remain competitive. Agriculture is more mechanized and less people-intensive than it once was. The vast majority of the jobs along the agriculture food chain -- 77 percent -- are in processing, distribution and support services. On average, the future growth in these sectors represents jobs paying around $24 per hour. These jobs will more than likely be in our cities, but some -- in the best interests of both agriculture and the cities -- will be located in unincorporated areas. Both counties have already set aside areas for this type of growth.
Summit participants discussed obstacles, such as ready access to capital and competing regulatory interests of federal, state and local governments. Overcoming these obstacles will require a new kind of collaboration. Bankers and government need to rethink their roles to become even better partners in growing the food chain.
In the coming weeks and months, you will see more results from this joint economic effort. Our respective Boards of Supervisors received presentations on Jan. 24 on the basic road map of the most promising actions we can take together. You have our commitment to finding the funds for a public-private partnership for an agriculture ombudsman program to serve Solano and Yolo counties. We need an ombudsman to help agriculture-related entrepreneurs turn their ideas into reality and create better partnerships between our businesses and regulators.
In many ways, what we have in front of us is an old-fashioned barn-raising. Our challenge is how each of us can commit to adding more value to agriculture. This cannot be about what the "other guy" should be doing. In a barn-raising, everybody pitches in because that's what communities do to meet the need. Our communities are in need right now and agriculture is at the heart of the solution.

Mike Reagan
Supervisor, County of Solano

Duane Chamberlain
Supervisory, County of Yolo

John Vasquez
Supervisor, County of Solano

Don Saylor
Supervisor, County of Yolo

2012-02-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

2012-02-04 "Renewable energy costs are starting to come down" by David R. Baker from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/03/BUMP1N30MP.DTL]
The price of renewable power contracts signed by California utilities more than doubled from 2003 through 2011 but has now started to plunge, according to a long-awaited state report issued Friday.
The report is the most detailed accounting yet of the costs of California's push to use more solar, wind and geothermal power. Until now, most of those costs have remained hidden from the public. The California Public Utilities Commission, which issued Friday's report, has for years published quarterly updates on the number of contracts signed but has never before included the costs.
A state law passed in 2002 and expanded in 2006 required California utilities to get 20 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2010, a goal that has since been expanded to 33 percent by 2020. The law set off a scramble among the utilities to sign contracts with companies building wind farms and solar power plants.
As a result, contract prices rose steadily as the deadline loomed, according to Friday's report. In 2003, the utilities paid an average of 5.4 cents per kilowatt hour for renewable power contracts. By 2011, the average reached 13.3 cents per kilowatt hour.
But it is starting to tumble.
New contract bids submitted to the utilities last year were about 30 percent lower than in 2009, according to the report. Those contracts haven't been signed yet, so they weren't included in the 2011 average. More developers have entered the field, and the worldwide drop in solar panel prices has slashed the cost of building photovoltaic power plants.
"This shows it's an industry that is maturing, and the prices are now coming down," said state Sen. Alex Padilla.
Last year Padilla, D-Pacoima (Los Angeles County), authored a bill requiring the commission to issue an annual report on the costs of renewable power contracts. Until then, the contract details had remained confidential until three years after each facility began delivering electricity. California utility customers, who will ultimately pay for the increased use of renewable power, had no way to know how much was being spent.
"Sharing this additional information is a step forward," Padilla said. "There's a broad consensus out there that this is the direction the state of California should be going in, but there are still some naysayers."
Renewable power remains more expensive than electricity generated by fossil fuels.
The utilities commission uses a benchmark called the "market price referent" to represent the cost of buying electricity from a new natural gas power plant. In 2011, the market price referent ranged from 7.5 cents per kilowatt hour to 12 cents per kilowatt hour, depending on the length of the contract.
Last year's high renewable power contract prices may turn out to be a bit of a mirage. Now that prices are falling, some of the more expensive renewable power projects will probably be abandoned, analysts say. And California utility customers don't pay for a new wind farm or solar plant until the facility is up and running.
"Remember, some of the projects you were seeing in 2010 will never get built, said Matt Freedman, staff attorney for The Utility Reform Network consumer group. "In the short term, it's putting upward pressure on rates - that's the truth. In the long run, it potentially provides a lot of rate stability."
According to the report, the cost of renewable power actually delivered to the utilities last year, from wind and solar facilities, averaged between 8 and 9 cents per kilowatt hour, far lower than the contract costs for projects that had not yet been built.
Pacific Gas and Electric Co., the state's largest utility, estimates that renewable contracts will add about 1 to 2 percent to customers' bills each year through 2020, said spokeswoman Lynsey Paulo.

2012-02-02T11:16:00.000-08:00

2012-02-02 "Berkeley Jewish farm mixes agriculture, learning" by Carolyn Jones from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/02/BAAP1N2DK4.DTL]
Sometimes chard is something you saute in garlic, and sometimes it's a political and spiritual act.
On a vacant lot in West Berkeley, chard is all of the above. So are snap peas, carrots, beets and other vegetables. Chickens are, too. Even aphids.
Urban Adamah farm, located on a 1-acre lot on San Pablo Avenue, merges agriculture with education, charity and Judaism to create a Kibbutz-like fount of good food and comradery.
"I never planned to come back to Berkeley, but now that I've found this place I never want to leave," said Hayley Currier, 23, one of Urban Adamah's dozen or so volunteer farmers who live together in a communal house near the farm. "Now I want to do this forever - subversive farming, mixing agriculture with social justice."
The farm was founded a year ago by Adam Berman, a UC Berkeley Haas School of Business graduate who had worked on urban farms on the East Coast. Starting a farm was a way for him to combine his business background with his other passions: farming, the environment and helping the poor, with a twist of Judaism.
Urban Adamah (Adamah means earth in Hebrew) hosts Jewish celebrations, classes and guest speakers, and Hebrew-language banners adorn the farm fences. But the farm is open to everyone, regardless of beliefs.
"For me, part of being Jewish is to try to make the world a better place," Berman said. "The tradition is for every generation to work to improve the current realities they're living in. For us, we see a need right here."
That need is fresh food. Pockets of Berkeley, West Oakland and Emeryville have a dearth of grocery stores, so Urban Adamah gives away vegetables and eggs. In six months last year, the farm gave out 3,000 pounds of food to food banks, a church, a community health clinic and the public through a weekly giveaway. This year, they hope to give away 10,000 pounds.
"It's a great model," said Berkeley Councilman Darryl Moore, who represents West Berkeley. "It gives young people a chance to work in the community, and it's great for families and school kids in the neighborhood, too."
The farm offers field trips, camps and classes on growing vegetables, beekeeping, chickens, composting and other farming challenges. The volunteer farmers, who serve three-month stints and receive free room and board, lead many of the classes, deliver food and tend to the crops.
At a field trip Thursday, second-graders from the Oakland Hebrew Day School learned how to make pesto with parsley and arugula, fired their own pita bread and enjoyed lunch amid the rows of kale and bok choy.
"The Jewish connection is that we live on the earth, God created the earth and we take care of the earth just as we take care of each other," said Bat Sheva Miller, the school's director of Judaic studies. "This is a good, hands-on way for the students to learn that."
Urban Adamah pays for seeds, soil and other expenses through donations, class fees and by selling earthworms. The land is donated by Wareham Development in San Rafael, which eventually plans to build a laboratory on the site.
"We thought the farm was a fantastic short-term use for the site," said Chris Barlow, a partner in the firm. "I'm full of admiration for the place. Hats off to them."
When Wareham gets approval to build on the site, probably in 2013, Urban Adamah will move to another vacant lot. Berman ideally would like to see urban farms on vacant lots throughout the country, and he's planning one in Memphis.
It shouldn't be difficult to uproot the farm when the time comes. All the crops are planted in raised beds, and the office is a trailer. Even the fruit trees are in pots.
"For me, urban agriculture is a gateway to environmental and social issues," Berman said. "It's about sustenance, inspiration and education. Plus it's fun."

2012-02-01T14:36:00.000-08:00

2012-02-01 "Local Ports Lead the Way on Environmental Innovation" by Patrick Burnson from "Bay Crossings" newspaper
[www.baycrossings.com/dispnews.php?id=2693]
A major breakthrough toward a more sustainable cargo network has been announced by the Port of Stockton.
Two years ago, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the award of a $30 million TIGER grant for the ports of Oakland, Stockton and West Sacramento to develop the infrastructure necessary to establish a container-on-barge service between the Central Valley and the San Francisco Bay area. Now the Port of Stockton is making ready to take advantage of this development.
The port has selected Savage Companies to manage the M-580 Marine Highway Corridor between the Port of Stockton and Port of Oakland. Savage will immediately begin marketing the M-580 Marine Highway to potential customers of the container-on-barge service, and operations are scheduled to commence during the first quarter 2012.
"We are very pleased to have selected Savage to manage our Marine Highway program," said Port of Stockton Port Director Richard Aschieris. "The strength of their proposal combined with their existing supply chain capabilities insures the Northern California Marine Highway will offer efficient and extensive services to anyone shipping by container in our region and beyond."
The Port of Stockton received $13 million of the grant to support the purchase of two 140-ton mobile harbor cranes and to make the necessary improvements at the port to support the project. The port has purchased the two cranes with a scheduled delivery later this month. In addition to the cranes, the port has purchased two barges to be dedicated to the project. The barges are scheduled soon to undergo modifications in order to handle containers.
Spokesmen noted that the M-580 Marine Highway will help to reduce congestion along the I-580/I-5 corridors and the improve air quality and public safety in the region.
The Port of Stockton also sponsored the Association of Pacific Ports 2012 Winter Conference in Hawaii last month. Port Commissioner Elizabeth Blanchard was among the officers and directors, as were Executive Director Mike Giari and Commissioner Dick Dodge from the Port of Redwood City.

Redwood City Port Tenant Receives Geothermal Grant -
More port news includes the announcement from the Port of Redwood City that port tenant Potter Drilling has received one of 32 grants issued by the U.S. Department of Energy for projects to accelerate the development of promising geothermal energy technologies and help diversify America’s sources of clean, renewable energy.
Thirty-two innovative projects in 14 states will develop and test new ways to locate geothermal resources and improve resource characterization, drilling and reservoir engineering techniques, which will enable geothermal energy sources to help reduce the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Funded through Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, these advances will play an important role in achieving the national goal of generating 80 percent of U.S. electricity from clean energy sources by 2035.

California Exporters Finish Strong in 2011-
California’s exporters turned in another strong performance in November, marking the 25th consecutive month in which the state’s merchandise export trade increased on a year-over-year basis.
The value of goods shipped abroad by California businesses in November reached $14.07 billion, a nominal gain of 12.7 percent over the $12.49 billion reported in November 2010, according to an analysis by Beacon Economics of foreign trade data released in January by the U.S. Commerce Department.
Total U.S. merchandise exports were up 12.1 percent over the same period. California’s exports of manufactured goods edged up 9.6 percent to $8.57 billion, while non-manufactured exports—chiefly raw materials and agricultural products—were up 16.3 percent to $2.14 billion. Re-exports, meanwhile, rose by 18.7 percent to $3.36 billion.
"Even in inflation-adjusted terms, 2011 will easily turn out to be the best year ever for California’s export trade," said Jock O’Connell, Beacon Economics’ international trade adviser.
Through November, the state’s merchandise export trade for 2011 amounts to $145.81 billion. The best previous year was 2008, when exports through the first 11 months totaled $141.26 billion (in 2011 dollars).
Overall, the California economy is showing strong signs of turning the economic corner. Beacon Economics’ Founding Partner Christopher Thornberg said job growth, consumer spending, non-residential construction and industrial vacancies have all showed signs of strong improvement in recent months. "Much of the momentum behind California’s economy can be traced back to the state’s resurgent export sectors," Thornberg said.
While Beacon Economics expects the state’s export trade to continue expanding in 2012, it warns that the pace of growth will likely slow. "The near-term outlook has some risks," O’Connell said. "Europe is flirting with recession, and the dollar has gained 10 percent in value since August as a result, reducing a portion of the newfound competitiveness of U.S. products."
"Fortunately, our two biggest foreign markets, Mexico and Canada, remain on more solid economic footing," he said.

2012-01-27T16:04:00.000-08:00

We can learn from our neighbors in Santa Cruz

[www.madeinsantacruz.com]

Community Garden guide

2012-01-25T21:21:00.000-08:00

Vallejo
People's Garden
[www.vallejopeoplesgarden.org]
Located at 1055 Azuar Drive, Vallejo CA 94592

American Canyon
Elliott Park
2234 Elliott Dr. (South of American Canyon Road)
The City of American Canyon set up this two-acre community garden as a place used by as many as 35 people each year to grow flowers and vegetables. The standard plot is 6' x 12' and costs $25 per year. This covers use of the land, water, and the city's tilling and preparing the soil each winter.

Benicia
Benicia Community Garden
Marilyn Bardet [mjbardet@sbcglobal.net] (current as of 2010-08)
News stories:
* 2012-01 "Community Supported Agriculture Program Brings Fresh, Organic Produce To Benicia" by Elena Karoulina, Acting Executive Director, Benicia Community Gardens [http://sovereignsanpablobay.blogspot.com/2012/01/2012-01-community-supported-agriculture.html]
* 2010-08 "Benicia’s Community Garden Considers Expansion" by Samuel J. Adams from Benicia Magazine [http://sovereignsanpablobay.blogspot.com/2010/08/2010-08-benicias-community-garden.html]

Richmond
North Richmond Lot of Crops
[http://sovereignsanpablobay.blogspot.com/2011/02/2011-02-08-north-richmond-garden.html]

2012-01-19T13:31:00.000-08:00

2012-01-19 "Reinstating Local Food, Local Rules" by Emily L.
[http://www.care2.com/causes/reinstating-local-food-local-rules.html]

NOTE: This is a guest post from Siena Chrisman, Manager of Strategic Partnerships and Alliances at WhyHunger, with excerpts from Andrianna Natsoulas’ Food Voices.
WhyHunger is a leader in building the movement to end hunger and poverty by connecting people to nutritious, affordable food and by supporting grassroots solutions that inspire self-reliance and community empowerment. Founded in 1975 by the late Harry Chapin & current Executive Director Bill Ayres, WhyHunger works to put an end to hunger suffered by 49 million Americans and nearly 1 billion people worldwide. Find out more at www.whyhunger.org.
Andrianna Natsoulas is an advocate for social justice and environmental stewardship. She has worked at several organizations, including Greenpeace, Public Citizen and the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance. Currently, Andrianna is a consultant. For more information, please visit www.foodvoices.org
---
In the spring of 2010, WhyHunger began a partnership with Andrianna Natsoulas, longtime food sovereignty activist and author of the forthcoming book Food Voices: Stories of the Food Sovereignty Movement. Food Voices captures the testimonies and images of farmers and fisherfolks across five countries who are fighting for a just, sustainable and sovereign food system; a food system that values quality over quantity, communities over individuals, and the environment over the corporate bottom-line.
Andrianna talked to Maine farmer, and WhyHunger partner, Bob St. Peter in 2011. After traveling and living in various places in the U.S. and around the world, Bob began to reject what he viewed as a privileged culture. He now farms to feed his community in Sedgwick, Maine. At a certain point, his interests in farming and living a simple life merged with his political leanings and Bob discovered a global movement of rural people and small farmers called the food sovereignty movement [http://www.whyhunger.org/portfolio?topicId=16].
“For me,” Bob says, “food sovereignty means being able to farm and care for a piece of land in a way that I feel is appropriate, without having market forces dictate what or how I grow. I get to make those decisions, as a steward of the land. I get to do that here in this place with my family in this time.”
Soon Bob began talking about food sovereignty principles within his own community and leading local efforts for change. On March 7, 2010, Sedgwick passed the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance — a food sovereignty ordinance. Bob is also the director of Food for Maine’s Future [http://savingseeds.wordpress.com/], a board member of National Family Farm Coalition [http://www.nffc.net/], and an active member of La Via Campesina [http://viacampesina.org/en].
“Rural Maine is known for being independent and willing to assert local control over governance. Through the organizing work — local farm, local food organizing work, this moment has arisen where people are being presented with a choice of the future for our community. On the one hand, there are regulations and market forces, including real estate, making it very hard to farm. On the other hand, we have people from across a political spectrum getting together and saying that we want to preserve this way of life.
“A group of us crafted a local food ordinance that would exempt direct farm sales – from the people who are producing it to the people who are eating it – from many state or federal licensing and inspection. Basically, regulations that are usurping our self-governance, our right to govern our own local food supply and to not have any undue burdens placed upon that. We are asserting our food sovereignty and saying that we have it under control and we can do a better job than the state and the department of agriculture and, certainly, the USDA and FDA.
“Generally, there’s the tendency to make things easy for the regulators. There is this tendency to concentrate and make everything so specialized, so you can judge it on quantitative measures, rather than qualitative measures. They say it is in the name of food safety, I think it is in the name of efficiency. It is easier to regulate one large operation than a bunch of small operations, but the regulations are making it difficult for small diversified farms who do a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
“I think there’s been an ongoing debate in this country since it was officially founded about the role of farmers. If you are going to colonize or conquer people, you take away their ability to feed themselves. It has been shown time and again. And that, coincidentally or not, pretty much has happened in this country for the last 70 years. Rural communities have been stripped of their ability to feed themselves because of very specific policy choices at the highest levels of government.
“It’s not so much as tyranny of government per se, as it is tyranny of the corporations who are aided and abetted by the government. And that’s what’s undermined our ability to feed ourselves. The bankers should really find something better to do with their time. Growing potatoes, raising chickens. There are all kinds of things people could be doing better with their time than finance capitalism.
“The more the system that we have collapses under its own weight, the next time we have a billion eggs recalled because of salmonella, the demand for local eggs is going to go up. Same with spinach, same with whatever. The more people get sick, the more clear it is that that’s not the best way to do things. Then, people will start asking other questions. How did it get that way? Does it have to be that way? And our job is to come in with the answers, or with a direction. If we are effective as food sovereignty advocates and activists, we are going to help those people understand why we need a local food movement.”
After Bob’s community passed the Local Food Ordinance, four other towns in Maine followed suit. But the State of Maine is challenging the ordinances. In November 2011, Dan Brown, owner of Gravelwood Farm in Blue Hill, Maine, where a Local Food Ordinance was passed, was served notice that he is being sued by the State of Maine for selling food and milk without State licenses. In response, small farmers and communities are organizing and fighting the lawsuit. Dan Brown continues to sell his products, and his farm patrons continue to buy them. For more information, visit Local Food Local Rules [http://www.localfoodlocalrules.org/].

2012-01-16T13:35:00.000-08:00

2012-01-16 "TimeBank & Trust: The Mira Luna Interview" by Willi Paul, presented by "Permaculture Exchange"
[http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1983]
Mira Luna is an alternative economic activist, organizer, researcher and writer with a wide range of experience in transformative economic projects and a focus on community currency systems. She is the founder and coordinator of Bay Area Community Exchange Timebank, community connector for Community Living Campaign, writer and adviser for Shareable.net, co-founder of Just Alternative Sustainable Economics, volunteer for the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives. She serves on the Board of the US Solidarity Economy Network and the San Francisco Community Land Trust and was formerly co-coordinator of the San Francisco Really Really Free Market for most of its duration. Mira has been an environmental and social justice activist for over 15 years and was coordinator and adjunct faculty for New College's Activism & Social Change program where she received her Master’s in Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community. Her internationally recognized blog on alternative economics is Trust is the Only Currency.
Mira Luna [Mira at sfbace.org]

---
Willi: Give us an integrated economic vision for a local bay area city in 2025? How are you developing and sharing such a vision?
Mira: I think there are tough times ahead, a lot of crises that will likely climax in the next 10 years. We need to build the infrastructure for the new economy while trying to imagine all the things that could go wrong. That's not easy or fun to do. The best way to deal with so many factors in flux is to design relatively simple and diverse solutions. Simple solutions leave less to go wrong and diverse solutions provide resiliency.

Willi: What would this look like in terms of economy?
Mira: A more simple economy with more direct flows from producer to consumer and vice versa. Less complicated goods to manufacture that can easily be produced locally by many people in many different ways. More services that directly meet our needs, rather than 5 middlemen, with many people being able to provide those services. We need to rapidly start replacing imports with local manufacturing and cottage production.
Let's take medicine as an example. Right now, you go to a doctor that had to go through a very expensive long training, she runs fancy tests and prescribes medicine. There are few people that can prescribe medicine, few companies who make the testing devices, few who do the tests and few that make the medicine. All of its expensive and there is a lot of scarcity in conventional medicine and too narrow flow channels for how many people are unwell. So if we had many people trained in barefoot medicine, like herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine, massage, homeopathy, nutrition, Qi Gong, saunas and sweats, yoga, Ayurveda, etc. then we would have a lot of direct flows and a lot of diversity. I would approach all of our economic needs that way. There's many ways to convert solar energy into usable energy for humans. I think the region of the greater Bay Area is a good, realistic size for a sustainable economy that can provide the variety of goods that most people need.
In the future, we will be shifting back to a relationship-based and to some degree peer-to-peer economy. This means that the economy will look more like vast, intricate web, with many interconnected functions, nested and overlapping. It looks inefficient to the capitalist, but efficient towards what? A web supports you much better than a single line or two of thread. One thread breaks and that's it. The Timebank is helping to develop this web through exchange and connected unconnected groups to help each other. The Network of Bay Area Worker Coops is doing this by creating a web of relationship and exchange within the network. Just Alternative Sustainable Economics, is a project we started to tie together all the pieces of the alternative economy to support each other at the regional level. The US Solidarity Economy Network attempts to do this at the national level.

Willi: What are the hurdles in your personal strategic plan as you promote your transition to localization?
Mira: There isn’t a lot of funding for the work that needs to be done – developing alternative economic projects, taking them to scale, and building community. Funders are behind the curve. In the meantime we need to build a realistic bridge to the new economy so that people can survive while doing it. It's challenging for people who still have to have jobs for health reasons, a mortgage, family, etc. The Timebank is great for building that bridge because it rewards people with hours for the work of building the new economy and therefore that work is more sustainable. Another hurdle is the psychosocial habits we have that hold us back in the old economy - distrust, separation, competition, fear of scarcity, etc. In order to get there, we need to reduce our dependency on the old economy as much as possible. Right now it holds so much power, take away ours, and keeps us treading the hamster wheel in old habits that are destructive.

Willi: Are you attracting potent partners these days? Who are the strongest?
Mira: There is a lot of interest from potential partner organizations in the Timebank and other alternative economic projects. Seniors, people with disabilities, low income communities of color. These groups all need the new economy and so are the most eager to pioneer. Their lives depend on a new economy. Environmentalists are interested, but because many are white, middle class, able bodied people they are still living comfortably in the old economy and haven’t been as willing to step up to the plate in general as much as I’d hoped. There is less of an urgent push from them although they seem to definitely seem to get it.

Willi: What qualities in permaculture do you see as critical to building an alternative economy?
Mira: Biodiversity is something that is lacking in the mainstream economy. We get our needs met through fewer and fewer channels. This is a big problem for resiliency. If one avenue fails, we have catastrophe. The more elements we have the same function, the better. At the same time, the most promising elements are those that stack functions – for example, a local CSA providing jobs to youth, low cost organic food in more neighborhoods, funding to expand organic farming, space for animals, delivering on bikes to reduce fossil fuel use, and healing the earth.
Zones are also helpful in thinking about the economy. We should focus most on the zones closest to us and develop them, redeveloping the local economy at many levels, but starting with zone one. The largest zone is really skewed in taking over what should be our closest zones. In thinking about how we steal from the future by a debt based and growing, malignant economy, we can reinvest in our local ecology by doing away with interest or even using negative interest so that it becomes more attractive to give your money to local sustainable projects that create real wealth.
I think the whole process of developing and planning a permaculture site, observation, visioning, mapping, etc. would be really useful for redesigning the economy. Right now we go with the flow and it’s going in all the wrong directions.

Willi: Are you pro or anti capitalism? Neither?
Mira: Anti-capitalism, but not anti-market. I am opposed to making money off money and exploiting people and the Earth, but not in aggregating money for projects for the common good. I am also opposed to the concentration of wealth that capitalism encourages, which lead to huge power inequalities. Democracy and capitalism in its current form are incompatible. Because capitalism encourages growth and exploitation, I also see it as incompatible with sustainability goals in its current form. Capitalism is a multi-faceted beast, some parts may be salvaged, while other parts need to be swiftly discarded.
Many folks decry the greenwashing in the business sector. How do you dissect corporations, organizations and individual behavior to uncover corruption?
In all my years of activism and policy work, I see working on large or distant corporations’ behavior as mostly futile. The only way to have transparency, accountability, and democratic oversight is through local and regional economies. The further from the local you get, the more corruption and the less trust.
I have been outspoken in my criticism of permaculture schools who offer costly trainings with little regard to employment support. How are your projects creating jobs? Do you have any examples?
The timebank is creating jobs with a currency called an hour that you create at the time you provide a service –it’s a mutual credit system. It requires someone else to pay an hour, but it’s really just a guarantee that the receiver will help someone else out in the future. This way people can create their own jobs by using their skills without having to wait for money to appear at a business and then apply for the job. There isn’t much money out there these days, which is ridiculous because there are plenty of workers and work that needs to be done. Worker cooperatives also create jobs and more than conventional businesses because there isn’t someone at the top making a lot of money and worker coops will usually keep their workers in tough times instead of laying-off or selling off the business. Coop housing means people invest in place and community.

Willi: Do we need new symbols, stories and/or language to engineer the new economy?
Mira: Yes, we need new stories that will be about how people are tied together by helping each other, making the whole community stronger. We need stories of collective will, heroic gifts and reciprocity. We need stories that help shift our identity from me to we and illuminate our interconnectedness.

Willi: What is the role of competition in your new economic vision?
Mira: It’s quite limited. We need to engineer the new economic system so that the most well taken care of people are those that are the most cooperative, generous, caring, community-oriented, sustainable, and so on. Reputation systems are very important in this re-engineering. Our current money system only has one reputation element – how much money you have in your bank account determines everything. It’s a very incomplete picture of social reality that leaves the best people suffering because they are defined by their small bank accounts. In the new economy, we need ways of communicating and perhaps converting into currency good deeds and reputation. The smallest unit of this model is a gift circle where everyone is witnessing each other's gifts and reciprocating directly. The Timebank is a larger scale gift circle that allows people to exchange with people they don't yet know, but may become part of their community as trust is built.

Willi: How does time work for us and against us in a timebank? Do you want government to play a role?
Mira: You can only spend what you earned in a timebank and everyone’s hour is equal. This means you can’t make time off time like in capitalism. If you don’t have time, you won’t have hours. You can save them up though for the future in some timebanks and this can be a form of social security in old age. Governments are interested in Timebanks because they can provide lots of services at a small cost and take over functions that governments spends lots of money on, like taking care of people who are ill. So sometimes timebanks get grants from the government, which is helpful to get off the ground, but can create precarious dependency. If the government wants to support the Timebank, that’s fine, but ours will always be a member governed timebank.

Willi: Tell us about the Bay Area Community Exchange (BACE). What successes can you point to? What is on the horizon for 2012?
Mira: We just passed 1000 members and trading is happening often several times daily. We are forging partnerships with all kinds of community service organizations. These partnerships can be a strong force to get more active members and provide needed services on the Timebank. Also, we have a decentralized organizing strategy, allowing anyone to organize in their neighborhoods throughout the Bay Area or as a community forming an interest group on the Timebank using our software and operating under the core principles. We are encouraging more of this organizing as autonomous but cooperating local nodes of a regional reciprocity economy. We hope to improve the geographic organizing capability of the Timebank if funding comes in to help transition to more locally self-sufficient and interdependent neighborhoods.
We also want to have more in person swaps after the enormously successful Timebank Holiday Fair. Look for a Homesteading Skillshare Festival this year and more work with the SF Free School. Carebanks for seniors and people with disabilities are on the horizon. We are working in partnership with SF’s computer access program called BTOP to expand the Timebank’s reach where it’s needed most.
During the Great Depression, in the US, hundreds of thousands of unemployed people that got together to form Timebank-like exchanges to provide the currency to support clinics, foundries, mills, schools and so on. One in Oakland, was called the Unemployed Exchange Association. It definitely can be done though it's a little harder because we are so dependent on big banks. Of course, that's all just an illusion. We don't need banks for anything. They don't do anything but enslave us to their scarce, debt-based money.

Willi: Are there unique urban and rural needs and solutions to the present unsustainable economy?
Mira: Personally, I don’t think urban living is sustainable in the long run. It relies too heavily on resource import and export of waste. Most people employed in urban areas are inadvertently exploiting elsewhere in order to be able to have a job that provides no needed goods or services to society in a kind of pyramid structure. They are also disconnected with nature and cannot sense their disharmonies with it. The ecological feedback loops are missing in an urban culture. In the meantime, we need to build community in urban areas to make the transition. That is true for rural communities as well. Both have been disconnected and we need to be working together towards the transition. Urbanites need to start learning survival and homesteading skills and how to work with nature. These skills have almost been entirely lost in urban culture. Again, it’s a crisis of resiliency. We now have less than 1% of people that know how to grow food. We need training programs that train trainers in all the neighborhoods.

Willi: “New Hydrids: Paths to 21st Century Socialism from the Bottom Up” and a piece on OWS are on the home page of the US Solidarity Economy Network. Are you a supporter of Occupy? What is your understanding of their economic strategy?
Mira: Yes, I am a supporter of Occupy, although all OWS camps have their own ideals. I do think we need to occupy what’s ours collectively to build the new economy. We will need those resources. Some Occupiers are now moving from occupying the streets to occupying their economy – homes, workplaces, schools, clinics, etc. Although this phase is just beginning, US SEN is supplying information about alternatives to Occupy groups to move this initiative along.

Willi: How do you critique Wilson Riles’ Radical Alternative Currency System for Oakland?
Mira: Regular people need to be able to earn currency through work, otherwise the currency will not help much to eliminate problems of scarcity and unemployment. This needs to be built into the currency system to a greater extent. In particular, you need a way for low income people to get their hands on ACORNS without having to have cash. All of this can be easily changed in the design of issuance or by hiring lots of people to work for ACORNS on public projects that don't have jobs and accepting the ACORNS in taxes. For a similar model that was wildly successful, see the miracle of Woergl, Austria during the Great Depression.

2012-01-14T20:49:00.000-08:00

2012-01-14 "Banning McDonald's to Keep the Faith? Seventh-Day Adventists in Loma Linda, Calif., fight against the fast food chain" from "ABC News"
[http://news.yahoo.com/video/us-15749625/banning-mcdonald-s-to-keep-the-faith-27881044.html]

2012-01-10T14:39:00.000-08:00

2012-01-10 "Get Out And Buy Local! Winter Farmers Markets Are Thriving" by Suzi Parrasch
[http://www.care2.com/causes/get-out-there-and-buy-local-winter-farmers-markets-thriving.html]
Not so long ago, the end of summer meant the end of fresh, local produce for most of the country, as farmers markets tapered down operations in early fall when the ground started to harden. But not anymore. According to the US Department of Agriculture, winter farmers markets have seen a 38% increase since 2010, and today there are more than 1,200 winter markets operating across the country.
“Consumers are looking for more ways to buy locally grown food throughout the year,” Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan said. “Through winter markets, American farmers are able to meet this need and bring in additional income to support their families and businesses.”
As the USDA’s blog points out, winter farmers markets provide an opportunity for consumers to enjoy winter crops such as squash and pears, fresh from their local farmers. “Our sales at the winter market even out our income over the year, eliminating some of the highs and lows of our financial situation,” Skip Paul, a farmer at Wishing Stone Farm in Little Compton, RI, told the USDA.
Many markets move inside for the winter months, but not all. “We have a fire pit to help people keep warm and a very loyal following,” Judy Stroske of the Loudoun Valley HomeGrown Markets Cooperative, which runs a winter market in Leesburg, VA, told USA Today. Stroske acknowledged the weather plays a role in what’s available week to week, but there’s always a selection of meat, honey, salsa, baked goods and dairy — and, as she asserted, no refrigeration worries.
As Merrigan told USA Today,”It’s a win-win for consumers and farmers.”
The USDA credits some of the growth in winter markets to the rise in hoop house technology. Hoop houses — simple, inexpensive steel tubing draped with plastic sheeting — allow smaller farmers to extend their growing season at low cost, especially in colder climates. In fact, as USA Today reports, the USDA began helping farmers pay part of the costs for hoop houses in 2009, and has since co-funded about 4,500 — many of them in Wisconsin and Alaska.
And here’s something that may surprise you, many of the states with the most winter markets are in chillier parts of the country. Take a look at the top ten list:
1. New York
2. California
3. Pennsylvania
4. North Carolina
5. Ohio
6. Maryland
7. Florida
8. Massachusetts
9. Virginia
10. Michigan
Don’t know if there’s a winter farmers market near you? Check out the National Farmers Market Directory [http://search.ams.usda.gov/farmersmarkets/] and make it a New Year’s resolution to buy local — even in the winter.

2012-01-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

[http://www.newrules.org/about-new-rules-project]
About the New Rules Project -
A program of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, the New Rules Project started back in 1998 and continues to bring fresh new policy solutions to communities and states to ensure that they are "designing rules as if community matters".
* It Takes a City – How better rules and regulations promote local self-reliance- this excellent article by David Morris published in In Character magazine (February 2007) provides a fantastic overview of the reasons behind our New Rules Project [http://www.ilsr.org/columns/2007/0207incharacter.pdf].
* Communities: Building Authority, Responsibility, and Capacity [http://www.newrules.org/resources/ARC.pdf]. A good overview article on the concept of local self reliance by David Morris, published in State of the Union, 1994.
The New Rules Projects features a number of policy areas [http://www.newrules.org/policy-areas] and several key programs and initiatives [http://www.newrules.org/new-rules-project-programs], including: The Hometown Advantage, Telecommunications as Commons Initiative, Biofuels and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles, and Climate Neutral Bonding. Meet our staff [http://www.newrules.org/about/staff].

Why New Rules?
Because the old ones don't work any longer. They undermine local economies, subvert democracy, weaken our sense of community, and ignore the costs of our decisions on the next generation.
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) proposes a set of new rules that builds community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics. The rules call for:
* Decisions made by those who will feel the impact of those decisions.
* Communities accepting responsibility for the welfare of their members and for the next generation.
* Households and communities possessing or owning sufficient productive capacity to generate real wealth.
These are the principles of "new localism." They call upon us to begin viewing our communities and our regions not only as places of residence, recreation and retail but as places that nurture active and informed citizens with the skills and productive capacity to generate real wealth and the authority to govern their own lives.
All human societies are governed by rules. We make the rules and the rules make us. Thus, the heart of this web site is a growing storehouse of community and local economy-building rules - laws, regulations, and ordinances - because these are the concrete expression of our values. They channel entrepreneurial energy and investment capital and scientific genius. The New Rules Project identifies rules that honor a sense of place and prize rootedness, continuity and stability as well as innovation and enterprise.
Click on any of the sectors listed and you will be taken to a web page that contains a list of categories of policy tools appropriate for that sector.

Questions and Answers -

Isn't it unrealistic to expect communities to be self-sufficient?
Yes, it is. Localism does not mean self-sufficiency. Nations are not self-sufficient, and neither are communities. But nations that are self-conscious and self-determining are stronger because of it. The same holds true for communities.

But aren't there economies of scale?
Yes, but empirical evidence has shown us that in many important areas--education, health, manufacturing, farming, the generation of power, for instance--it is not globalism and bigness, but localism and smallness that are more cost-effective, more profitable, more environmentally benign, more democratic, more enduring. The only thing that smallness lacks is power, the power to make the rules.

Doesn't localism pose a threat to those who are not in the majority? Doesn't it allow those with means, or power, to secede from responsibility for the whole, leaving the powerless behind?
If localism were absolute, yes, it would do that. But it is not. Localism is an approach that allows us to sort out which roles are appropriate for which levels of government. Guarantees of basic rights must come from the federal level. Higher levels of government appropriately should set floors--e.g., a minimum wage or a minimum level of environmental compliance or minimum guarantees of political rights-- but not ceilings. They should not pre-empt lower levels of government from exceeding those minimums (as international trade agreements do, for instance.)

Why would localism guarantee efficient, environmentally benign development?
It doesn't. There are no guarantees in a true democracy, because power rests with the citizens. But it does create the possibility. And without localism, we are guaranteed the opposite: rootless corporations with no allegiance to place, other than to the place with the lowest wages and least environmental restrictions; long lines of transportation, which are inherently polluting; and out-of-scale development that wrecks neighborhoods and destroys habitat. By its very nature, localism would shorten transportation lines, encourage rooted businesses, demand an active citizenry. Localism is a development concept that would enable humanly-scaled, environmentally healthy, politically active, economically robust communities.

Isn't localism simply nostalgia for a simpler time?
No. Just as globalism is mistaken for progress, localism is often confused with a desire to reverse technology, or turn back the clock. There is nothing inherently progressive about globalization, and there is nothing inherently backwards-looking about localism. Localism has to do with (1) where decisions are made, and (2) the principles guiding those decisions. Those are issues that will and should remain central to society throughout time.

Is localism anti-technology?
The new localism relies on some of the most sophisticated technologies (e.g. integrated pest management, flexible manufacturing, solar cells.) At the end of the 19th century, as we switched from wood to steel, from water wheels to fossil fueled central power plants, and from craft shops to mass production, technology seemed to demand larger scale production systems and economies. At the end of the 20th century, as we switch from minerals to vegetables, from fossil fuels to solar energy, and from mass production to batch production, technological progress encourages decentralized, localized economies.

2012-01-08T19:09:00.000-08:00

Cornucopia Food Forest Gardens[http://cornucopiafoodforest.wordpress.com/about/]
Cornucopia Food Forest Gardens provide a continual abundance of beauty, nourishment, healing, fertility, and fun! while functioning as an ecosystem- taking care of the Earth and the People. It is a service by John Valenzuela.
John Valenzuela is a horticulturist, consultant and educator who has returned to live in Northern California after being based in Hawai’i for 15 years.
First introduced to the sustainable design theories and methods of permaculture in 1989, John studied and practiced tropical permaculture and taught extensively in the Hawaiian Islands. He has been a lead permaculture design course instructor at the Bullock Family Homestead in Orcas Island, Washington for over 10 years, and also has experience teaching in Costa Rica and now throughout urban and rural California, collaborating with leading permaculture organizations (see the Colaborative Community page on this site)
His special interests are rare fruit, home gardening, trees, traditional agriculture, plant propagation, and ethnobotany. He is active in the Golden Gate chapter of the California Rare Fruit Growers where he has been the Annual Scion Exchange coordinator for the last two years, and now serves as Chapter Chairperson.
He now lives and grows in North Eastern Marin County California, where he is diversifying a food forest garden with over 150 varieties of fruit on multi-grafted trees, along with a small nursery, while practicing photography, developing educational materials, freelance consulting, team teaching, planting and maintaining gardens.
John is known for an engaging enthusiasm that matches his depth of plant knowledge.
More on Food Forests:

Food Forests- growing an ecosystem of abundance, by John Valenzuela
Also known as ‘Door Yard Garden’, ‘Mixed Garden’, Huerta Casero, and Kampong, ‘Food Forest’ is an term coined by Englishman Robert Hart to describe the intensive food, medicine, craft, and ornamental gardens of trees, shrubs, herbs and annuals that surround homes in Kerala India, Meso-America, Indonesia, and many other cultures. He recreated this, with appropriately selected species, at his own home in a cool Northern European maritime climate. The archetypical food forests found in the rainy and sun soaked tropical climates can encourage a very dense spacing of plants, this density may not be appropriate for all climates. For the more limited water and lower sun angle found in a Mediterranean climate, plants could be placed farther apart as found in the Mission Gardens of old California.
Of course the original food forests in this area are the native oak and pine forests, with understories consisting of patches of berries, green herbs and edible bulb crops adapted to California’s varied ecosystems, which were sustainably managed by local indigenous tribal cultures for thousands of years. With the Spanish missionaries came the ‘biblical trees’ common to Southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle east, and beyond: olives, figs, grapes, pomegranates, citrus and date palms, along with deciduous fruit like apples pears, peaches plums, apricots, cherries. Also many fruits from Mexico and Central and South America were brought by the missionaries, including avocado, white sapote, bananas, capulin cherry, guava, and papaya, among others.
Later immigrants from the Eastern, and Mid-Western US, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas, brought increasing numbers of varieties and species. It was common in many communities to find mixed gardens of nuts, fruits, herbs, flowers and vegetables. Especially in neighborhoods with smaller yards, there was no choice but to have all their favorite plants all growing very closely together. Later, industrial economies put people to work in factories so they could buy produce from farmers, but they began to neglect their own gardens. Yet perennial food gardens such as food forests persist even when abandoned or forgotten, ready to provide when another generation is ready to tend and harvest. Tending a garden is something very basic to much of humanity. Even with all of our modern distractions, home gardening is still one of the most popular activities in the US.
The physical structure of the food forest imitates a wild forest, with many layers of vegetation, from tall canopy trees to smaller trees, shrubs, herbs, ground covers, root crops, fungi, and climbing vines. In addition, many of the forest ecosystem functions are replicated in a food forest: including enhancing the resources of water, fertility, and beneficial habitat. Basins are used to allow water infiltration for `zero runoff’, and recycled water is used from rooftop rain catchment and gray water sources. Mulch and compost crops contribute to the soil fertility cycles. Various habitats for beneficial creatures are enhanced in the food forest, providing pollen and nectar for pest predator and pollinator habitat, in addition to shelter for other pest predators including amphibians, reptiles, chickens, ducks, raptors and even bats. Human needs the food forest provides for feature a continuous year ’round harvest of a nutritionally diverse diet, culinary herbs, medicinal herbs, fragrant and colorful flowers, lumber, fuel, fiber, dye and other useful materials for craft.
Food forests are really nothing new, some version of them are still to be found in our very own neighborhoods today, many originally planted generations ago. We are reviving this tradition with new plantings of diverse, productive and resilient ecosystems providing a backyard cornucopia in these uncertain times.
-JV

Collaborative Community: Excellent groups and individuals I am proud to work with-
* Bullock Brothers Permaculture Homestead with Douglas Bullock [http://permacultureportal.com/]
* Regenerative Design Institute with Penny Livingston [http://www.regenerativedesign.org/]
* Occidental Arts and Ecology Center with Brock Dolman [http://www.oaec.org/brockdolmanbio]
* Earthflow Design Works with Larry Santoyo [http://www.earthflow.com/]
* Jay Garden Designs with Jay Bretz
* Living Mandala with Jay Ma [http://www.livingmandala.com/Living_Mandala/Living_Mandala.html]
* California Rare Fruit Growers Golden Gate Chapter [http://crfg.org/]
* Sentient Landscape with Geoff Hall and Kamala Bennett [http://www.sentientlandscape.com/]
* Mendocino Ecological Learning Center with Maximillian Meyers [http://www.melc.us/index.html]
* UC Davis, ANR Cooperative Extension Marin County with Steve Quirt [http://www.sarep.ucdavis.edu/organic/directory.asp?ID=92]
* Indian Valley Organic Farm and Garden with Wendy Johnson, Jenna Braeger, Henry Wallace [http://indianvalleyfarmandgarden.blogspot.com/]
* Richmond Grows Seed Lending Library, Hall Middle School Food Forest, Larkspur with Rebecca Newburn [http://www.richmondgrows.org/]
* Merritt College Permaculture with Christopher Shein, Anders Vistrand, Ken Litchfield [http://www.merrittlandhort.com/permaculture/permaculture.html]
* Earth Repair with Lindsay Dailey [http://edgeecology.wordpress.com/bios/]
* Alameda Master Gardeners Seminar with Delia Carroll [http://acmg.ucdavis.edu/Fall_Seminar/]
* SF Permaculture Guild with Kevin Bayuk, Fred Bove [http://www.permaculture-sf.org/]
* Common Vision Fruit Tree Tour with Michael Flynn [http://www.commonvision.org/index.php]
* Earth Action Mentor with Doniga Markegard [http://www.earthactionmentor.org/]
* Permaculture Marin with Dustin Kahn [http://www.permaculturemarin.org/]
* Urban Permaculture Guild [http://www.urbanpermacultureguild.org/], Esalen Institute [http://www.esalen.org/info/sustainability.html] with Kat Steele
* Benjamin Fahrer [http://www.benjaminfahrer.com/Benjamin_Fahrer/Home.html]
* Planting Justice
* Villa Sobrante
and many others. . .

2012-01-08T18:51:00.000-08:00

Golden Gate Chapter, CRFG
[http://www.crfg.org/chapters/golden_gate/index.htm]
Growing unusual edibles in the San Francisco Bay Area -
The California Rare Fruit Growers (CRFG) is a non-profit organization headquartered at California State University, Fullerton, with chapters throughout the State of California (and elsewhere) and with members throughout the world. The members of the CRFG are professionals and amateurs all dedicated to the propagation of unusual fruits and vegetables, the acquisition and spread of knowledge about these plants and the enjoyment in doing so.
The Golden Gate Chapter of CRFG conducts meetings throughout the northern San Francisco Bay Area, usually in the odd-numbered months on the second Saturday of the month. Meetings almost always include speakers, tastings, a raffle of unusual plants and the chance to talk to people who live in your area and who share your interests. The major event is the chapter scion exchange in January, where cuttings from fruit trees, seeds, tubers and rootstocks are available, along with grafting instruction and expert advice on selecting, planting and growing these plants..
All are welcome. You need not be a member to attend, although membership in CRFG is encouraged. To receive our bi-monthly newsletter is only $10/year. For more information, contact us at:
Golden Gate Chapter, CRFG
2209 McGee Ave
Berkeley, CA 94703
email: kpyle@sonic.net
or call Katherine Pyle at (510) 843-1657

2012-01-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

[http://www.planetshifter.com/], founded by Willi Paul
"About Willi" biography from Planet Shifter magazine's website:
As a green certified business and sustainability consultant, Willi Paul launched PlanetShifter.com Magazine [http://planetshifter.com/] on Earth Day 2009 to build a database of interviews and articles about innovation, sustainability, and the mystic arts.
His bliss renewed in 2011 when he designed openmythsource.com [http://openmythsource.com/] to produce new mythic stories with modern alchemies.
His work now focuses on what is sacred is to us, the community building power of permaculture and the transformative energy in the new alchemy (ex: soil, sound, digital) and global mythologies. His online sacredpermaculture.net course [http://sacredpermaculture.net/] is also offered to all at no charge.
Please see his cutting-edge article at the Joseph Campbell Foundation [http://www.jcf.org/new/index.php?categoryid=37&blogid=24] and his pioneering videos on YouTube. Enjoy [http://www.youtube.com/my_playlists?p=0FAEA97D12725FB0]
Willi earned his permaculture design certification in August 2011 at the Urban Permaculture Institute, SF [http://www.upisf.com/].
He is the founder of the Permaculture Guild - San Mateo County [http://www.meetup.com/Permaculture-Guild-San-Mateo-County/].
Please experience his Mythic Map: A Transition Tool for Creating Culture [http://planetshifter.com/node/1948], Chrysalis Songs for The Permaculture Age: Transmuting the New Myth [http://openmythsource.com/2011/09/05/chrysalis-songs-for-the-permaculture-age-transmuting-the-new-myth-alchemy-symbols-sacred-willi-paul-2011/], Alchemy, Symbols & Sacred, his collection of new mythology [http://www.planetshifter.com/node/1855] and Mythic Mandate: online workshop & documentary [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuGQKFe_d4A&p=0FAEA97D12725FB0].
Mr. Paul launched his new job creation & innovation portal called the PermaculturExchange.com [http://permaculturexchange.com/] in late October 2011.
Early 2012 works include a new eBook called Tribes: 15 Illustrated New Myths for the Permaculture Age. [http://communityalchemy.com/TRIBE/TRIBESWilliPaul.pdf] and a Model & Initial Questions for Convergence 2012 + [http://planetshifter.com/node/1978].
Enjoy Sirens. Kristina Bennett's Interview with Mr. Paul [http://www.templeilluminatus.com/profiles/blogs/kristina-bennett-interviews-willi-paul-from-planetshifter-com].

2012-01-08T13:22:00.000-08:00

2012-01-08 "Public Park Helps Feed 200,000 People Every Month" by Beth Buczynski
[http://www.care2.com/causes/public-park-helps-feed-200000-people-every-month-video.html]
Thousands of people go to bed hungry in the United States every day. Even though America is one of the richest countries in the world, many of its citizens don’t have the means to secure high quality, healthy foods for their families.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles of land sit vacant or unused. Some of these vacant parcels have market potential, writes Michael A. Pagano [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/03/28/the-incredible-shrinking-city/ways-to-reuse-vacant-lots], but many won’t rebound soon, if ever. What if instead of allowing these lots to collect weeds and litter, cities helped residents to transform them using edible landscaping [http://www.care2.com/causes/urban-gardens-sprout-in-mall-food-courts-on-office-rooftops.html]?
The City of Irvine decided to try just such an experiment. In 2008, the city was looking for a way to develop a 7-acre vacant lot that cost taxpayers over $4,000 a year to maintain (i.e. control the weeds). By collaborating with Southern California Edison and the Second Harvest Food Bank, among others, the City created the Incredible Edible park. Just over three years later, produce harvested from the park helps the food bank feed 200,000 hungry people every month [http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/06/incredible-edible-park/]. The site now also includes a bike trail that connects to the Irvine trail system and the City has plans to add additional acres in the future.
Watch the video below to take a tour of the park with John from Growing Your Greens [http://www.growingyourgreens.com/], and ask yourself why there isn’t a park like this in every city.

2012-01-04T15:02:00.000-08:00

2012-01-04 "A Bill of Rights for Occupied Communities: A bill of rights that protects the rights to people and nature, but removes them from corporations? Your community could be next" by Thomas Linzey and Jeff Reifman from "YES!" magazine
* Thomas Linzey is the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund [http://www.celdf.org/], a nonprofit law firm which provides legal assistance to communities struggling to protect community self-government and the natural environment from corporate decision-making.
* Jeff Reifman is co-founder of Envision Seattle [http://envisionseattle.org/], a rights-building effort modeled after CELDF’s work. He’s also a technologist, freelance writer and organizer. Visit his wesbite here [http://www.reifman.org/].
---
When communities try to keep corporations from engaging in activities they don’t want, they often find they don’t have the legal power to say “no.” Why? Because our current legal structure too often protects the “rights” of corporations over the rights of actual human beings.
If we are to elevate our rights and the rights of our communities above those of a corporate few, we, too, need to transform the way laws work.
As we wrote in Turning Occupation into Lasting Change [http://www.yesmagazine.org/people-power/turning-occupation-into-lasting-change], mainstream progressive groups have failed by constraining their activities within legal and regulatory systems purposefully structured to subordinate communities to corporate power. Truly effective movements don’t operate that way. Abolitionists never sought to regulate the slave trade; they sought to transform the legal structure that supported it by treating slaves as property rather than people under the law. Suffragists did the same with the legal status of women.
This style of organizing moves away from traditional activism—mired in letter writing campaigns and lowest common denominator federal and state legislation—toward a new activism in which communities claim the right to make their own decisions, directly.
To help them do so, we’re offering the model Community Bill of Rights template below, a legislative template for communities that want to protect their own rights. It’s based on real laws already passed from the municipal to the national level—from Pittsburgh stripping drilling corporations of Constitutional “rights” to Ecuador including legal rights for nature in its Constitution. Think of the template as a menu to pick and choose what’s important in your community. It’s meant to provide a framework and a starting point, not necessarily to be used in its entirety.
Passing a new bill of rights is a way for activists to “occupy” their cities with new legal structures that empower community majorities over corporate minorities, rather than the other way around.
Community Bill of Rights of [your city]
This model was developed by the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund. You can learn more about CELDF’s theory of change, its democracy school educational programs on corporate power and its global organizing efforts for community rights at their website: www.celdf.org.
You can also find the model Community Bill of Rights template for Occupy Communities as a google doc [https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Pu71zzggB_qqDlf2FNfobFy2P10jTIXJd2qxBE_12DQ] or as a pdf [http://envisionseattle.org/files/Model-Community-Bill-of-Rights-Template.pdf].

Section 1 - Authority
This Community Bill of Rights is enacted pursuant to the inherent right of the residents of the City of [your city] to govern their own community, including, without limitation, the Declaration of Independence’s declaration that governments are instituted to secure the rights of people, and the [your state] Constitution’s recognition that all political power is inherent in the people.

Section 2 - Findings and Purpose
Whereas, the citizens of [your city] recognize that environmental and economic sustainability cannot be achieved if the rights of municipal majorities are routinely overridden by corporate minorities claiming certain legal powers; and Whereas, the citizens of [your city] believe that local legislation that embodies the interests of the community is mandated by the doctrine of the consent of the governed, and the right to local, community self-government; Whereas, the citizens of [your city] believe that the protection of residents, neighborhoods, and the natural environment constitutes the highest and best use of the police powers that this municipality possesses; Therefore, the residents of the city of [your city] hereby adopt this ordinance which creates a community bill of rights for the residents and communities of the City, and removes certain legal powers from corporations operating within the City of [your city].

Section 3 - Statements of Law - A Community Bill of Rights
3.1. The Right to a Locally-Based Economy
Residents have the right to a locally-based economy to ensure local job creation and enhance local business opportunities. The right shall include the right to have local monies reinvested locally by lending institutions, and the right to equal access to capital, credit, contracts, incentives, and services for businesses owned by [your city] residents.
3.2. The Right To Affordable And Safe Housing
Residents have the right to affordable housing, the right to a safely-maintained dwelling, and the right to be free from housing discrimination. The City shall ensure the availability of low-income housing stock sufficient to meet the needs of the low-income housing community. People and families may only be denied renting or buying of a dwelling for non-discriminatory reasons and may only be evicted from their residence for non-discriminatory causes.
3.3. The Right To Affordable Preventive Health Care
Residents have the right to affordable preventive health care. For residents otherwise unable to access such care, the City shall guarantee such access by coordinating with area health care providers to create affordable fee-for-service programs within eighteen (18) months following adoption of this provision.
3.4. Rights for Nature
Ecosystems and natural communities within the City of [your city] possess inalienable rights to exist and flourish. The rights of rivers, streams, and aquifers shall include the right to sustainable recharge, flows sufficient to protect native fish habitat, and clean water. The City of [your city] and any resident of the City or group of residents have standing to enforce and protect these rights.
3.5. Right to Water
All residents, natural communities and ecosystems in [your city] possess a fundamental and inalienable right to sustainably access, use, consume, and preserve water drawn from natural water cycles that provide water necessary to sustain life within the City.
3.6. Right to Sustainable Food System
All residents of [your city] possess a fundamental and inalienable right to access, use, consume, produce and distribute foods generated from sustainable farming practices, and to be free of infection, or infestation or drift by any means, from genetically engineered life forms or genetically modified organisms.
3.7. The Right To Affordable And Renewable Energy
Residents have the right to access affordable and renewable energy sources.
3.8. Right to Constitutional Protections in the Workplace
Employees shall possess United States and [your state] Bill of Rights’ constitutional protections in the workplace within the City of [your city], and workers in unionized workplaces shall possess the right to collective bargaining.
3.9. Right to Determine the Future of Neighborhoods
Neighborhood majorities shall have the right to approve all zoning changes proposed for their neighborhood involving significant commercial, industrial, or residential development. It shall be the responsibility of the proposer of the zoning change to acquire the approval of the neighborhood majority, and the zoning change shall not be effective without it.
3.10. Right to a Free, Open and Accessible Internet
(a) All residents of the City of [your city] shall possess the right to a free and open internet, which shall include, but not be limited to, the right to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer lawful content, applications, or services of the user’s choice.
(b) All residents of the City of [your city] shall possess the right to be free from provider service and performance level discrimination based on the identity, source or type of individual content or service providers.
3.11. Right to a Citizen Managed and Accountable Police Force
All residents of the City of [your city] have a right to a police force managed by a civilian police chief held fully accountable by an elected panel of citizens.
3.12. Right to Clean and Fair Elections Free from Corporate Interference
Residents of [your city] possess the right to fair elections, which shall include the right to an electoral process free from corporate involvement.
3.13. Right to Clean Government
Residents of [your city] have the right to clean government, which shall include the right to a City legislative process free from corporate lobbying and involvement.
3.14. Right to Marriage Equality
Residents of [your city] have the right to gender-neutral marriages for both same- and opposite-sex couples.

Section 4 - Prohibitions and Corporate Legal Privileges
4.1. Prohibition on Corporate Personhood and Privileges
Corporations and other business entities which violate the rights secured by this Community Bill of Rights shall not be deemed to be “persons,” afforded by the United States and [your state] Constitutions, nor possess any other legal rights, privileges, powers, or protections which would interfere with the enforcement of rights enumerated by this Charter.
4.2. Ban on Electioneering
It shall be unlawful for any corporation to make a contribution or expenditure to influence any election within the City of [your city].
4.3. Ban on Lobbying
It shall be unlawful for any corporation to communicate with an elected official within the City of [your city] urging support or opposition to pending legislation. This ban shall not be construed to prohibit open forum communications between corporate lobbyists and elected officials.

Section 5 - People’s Right to Self Government
All residents of [your city] possess the fundamental and inalienable right to a form of governance where they live which recognizes that all power is inherent in the people, that all free governments are founded on the people’s authority and consent, and that corporate entities and their directors and managers shall not enjoy special privileges or powers under the law which make community majorities subordinate to them.

Section 6 - Enforcement
6.1. The City of [your city] may enforce this Community Bill of Rights through an action in equity brought in the [your court of jurisdiction]. In such an action, the City of [your city] shall be entitled to recover all costs of litigation, including, without limitation, expert and attorney’s fees.
6.2. Any resident of [your city] shall have the authority to enforce this Community Bill of Rights through an action in equity brought in the [your court of jurisdiction]. In such an action, the resident shall be entitled to recover all costs of litigation, including, without limitation, expert and attorney’s fees.

Section 7 - Severability
The provisions of this Community Bill of Rights are severable. If any court of competent jurisdiction decides that any section, clause, sentence, part, or provision of this Ordinance is illegal, invalid, or unconstitutional, such decision shall not affect, impair, or invalidate any of the remaining sections, clauses, sentences, parts, or provisions of the Community Bill of Rights.

Section 8 - Repealer
All inconsistent provisions of prior Ordinances adopted by the City of [your city] are hereby repealed, but only to the extent necessary to remedy the inconsistency.

2012-01-03T15:57:00.000-08:00

2012-01-03 "Community garden program set to branch out"
[http://www.chicoer.com/news/ci_19663714]
CHICO — As part of a grant program being run by Chico State University, the hope is that more people will learn how to grow their own fruit and vegetables.
The $500,000 grant includes community gardens, cooking classes and better access to locally-grown food by low-income buyers.
For the community gardens, it's early in the process and people can suggest locations. One of the most important things is to find people who are willing to be volunteer coordinators and helpers. The program helpers can access plants, seeds and resource guides.
The focus is on the Chico area.
Examples of existing community gardens include one at 14th Street and Mulberry, used by the Jesus Center. This was a vacant lot where food is now grown.
Another is at the Murphy Commons housing complex, on Notre Dame Boulevard.
Another garden has a partnership with the ARC, where people from the independent living program help grow the food. Yet another works with Opt for Healthy Living, http://www.optforhealthyliving.org/.
Monica Bell is handling phone inquires, and can be reached at 588-0441.
One of the key people working with the gardens will be Stephanie Elliott, who works with GRUB (Growing Resourcefully, Uniting Bellies). The group has helped community members with various projects over the years.
What they are looking for are people who say, "Wow, I like this idea. I want to be a part of it and am willing to run that garden," Elliott said.
"We give them the tools and techniques."
The location can vary from a front yard, to a quarter acre in someone's back yard, or a shared area.
Other aspects of the program include cooking demonstrations and about two events a month over the next two years. Those involved with the grant also will form a group that will continue to look at the nutritional needs of the community.
The idea for community gardens already has begun to generate phone calls.
The grant was awarded by the specialty crop program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The funding is part of $55 million delivered nationwide, including $18.6 million in California.

2012-01-02T19:55:00.000-08:00

2012-01-02 "Is Organic Agriculture Bad for the Environment? Another Reason to Eat Locally" by Rachel Cernansky
[http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/organic-agriculture-bad-environment-another-reason-eat-locally.html]
The New York Times ran an important story about a growing shift in the organic agriculture industry away from sustainable practices. There are still no synthetic chemicals, but large farms growing organic crops often use monocrop agriculture, an inherently unsustainable practice that erodes soil quality, or use water resources so heavily that local aquifers become depleted.
The Times explains more [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/31/science/earth/questions-about-organic-produce-and-sustainability.html]:
[begin excerpt]
The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.
[end excerpt]
But it's a complicated issue, as The Times story, which is based in part on a trip to Mexico, further explains:
[begin excerpt]
Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.
They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.
[end excerpt]
Organic Vs. Conventional -
Organic agriculture, even when produced on large-scale farms that are not necessarily sustainable, is still ultimately better for the environment than conventional agriculture, according to most experts. But conventional agriculture is not a baseline to be working from. A small car produces fewer emissions than a large SUV, but that doesn't mean everyone should be looking to cars as a sustainable means of transportation.

Eating Locally -
What this Times story does is point back to the argument for getting to know the farms in your area and buying from them whenever possible. You eliminate the emissions associated with transporting food the long distances that imports have to travel; chances are good that if a farm (organic and local farms are best) sells at farmer's markets and other small, local venues, it is using more sustainable practices than its large-scale counterpart; and when you buy locally, you're just about forced to also buy in-season produce.
As The Times story points out, the demand for tomatoes in the middle of winter is part of what drives the demand for importing tomatoes from far-away places that don't have the water resources to grow tomatoes on a large scale.
(Buying locally also allows you to eliminate some packaging waste, since imported organic produce often comes wrapped in plastic, like in the container above, or since many supermarkets do the extra packaging themselves to distinguish organic produce from conventional.)
So: by eating locally and in-season, you don't have to worry about whether the farm supplying your organic produce is depleting the water and soil in far-away places in ways that defy one of the founding principles of organic agriculture—sustainability.

2012-01-01T21:25:00.000-08:00

2012-01 "Community Supported Agriculture Program Brings Fresh, Organic Produce To Benicia" by Elena Karoulina, Acting Executive Director, Benicia Community Gardens. published in "Benicia Magazine"
[http://www.beniciamagazine.com/Benicia-Magazine/January-2012/Community-Supported-Agriculture-Program-Brings-Fresh-Organic-Produce-To-Benicia]
For all kinds of good reasons, the best food to buy is what's grown closest to us, and it's even better for our health and for the planet if the food is raised by organic methods. Small farms practicing sustainable agriculture in our region deserve support and need our dollars to stay in business. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is a program that provides such an opportunity, beneficial to both farmer and consumer alike: urban folks can make a difference in a farmer’s life and livelihood while enjoying a variety of very fresh, in-season, sustainably raised fruits and vegetables that come from the land around us.
Benicia Community Gardens, our local non-profit, which currently supports two community gardens downtown (Swensen Garden, located behind Heritage Presbyterian Church, and Avant Garden, a “moveable” garden on First & D Streets), has chosen CSA as a new project to provide more choice for sustainable food to local residents. Our CSA partner, Terra Firma Farm, is located 40 miles from Benicia on 200 acres in Yolo County. Terra Firma sustainably grows over 100 diverse crops each year. You can learn more about the quality of their operation at terrafirmafarm.com/about.html. Choosing to purchase organically raised food directly from the farm, Benicia residents can support a small, diversified farming operation that follows ecological land management practices. Unlike industrial agriculture’s methods, Terra Firma’s are truly sustainable: they encourage biodiversity, save energy and water, protect wildlife habitat, preserve and build topsoils through composting and cover-cropping, and therefore, do not involve use of toxic pesticides, herbicides or petroleum-derived fertilizers that end up depleting soils and contaminating groundwater. (Occasionally, the farm is allowed to use a very limited number of natural pesticides and fertilizers approved by the National Organic Program; you can read more about the rules at the Terra Firma website)
A CSA program wouldn’t be possible without a central drop-off and pick-up site for the farm’s weekly deliveries and for the retrieval by CSA members of their individual boxes of fruits and veggies. Benicia Community Gardens has teamed up with Heritage Presbyterian Church, whose pastor, Beverly White, is proud to have her congregation helping to provide for more sustainable food sources for Benicians, and to be “involved as much as possible in the community.” Heritage Presbyterian has been host to Benicia Community Gardens’ first garden, founded by Dr. Ed Swenson in 1999, and provides for public use of their buildings, as well as helping to cook and serve meals once a month at St. Paul’s. They also sell fair trade tea, coffee, chocolate and olive oil to their members and friends to support various mission projects. Heritage Presbyterian’s participation in our “CSA-Central” program will extend their church’s good will even farther into our community.
For the program to get started in January, we need at least 15 people to sign up with Terra Firma Farm. To become a member, please go to Terra Firma’s signup website, click on “New Members Sign Up,” choose “Benicia” and register. You’ll be asked to make your first payment; once we have 15 people registered, you’ll be notified about the delivery start date.
Produce boxes come in 3 different sizes: small ($14), medium ($24) and large ($32). You pre-pay for a few weeks of delivery ($100 and up) and you can get a discount based on the prepayment amount. New customers can try CSA for 2 weeks; you’ll be asked to deposit $28 to cover 2 weeks delivery of a small box. Once you’ve spent all of your pre-payment, you receive an email notiﬁcation requesting a new deposit. Alternatively, you can sign up for automated payments. For more details go to www.terrafirmafarm.com. Boxes will be delivered every Wednesday, by 3pm, to Benicia Presbyterian Church and held there to be picked up by CSA members before 9pm. You will receive detailed instructions once you sign up.
We hope that many of you reading this may want to give CSA a try and enjoy a unique opportunity to support one of our regional sustainable farms and have fresh organic produce from Terra Firma delivered almost right to your door!

2011-12-28T15:55:00.000-08:00

2012-01-03 "Grant aims for better food for low-income people" by HEATHER HACKING
[http://www.orovillemr.com/ci_19630355?source=most_viewed]
More fruits, nuts and veggies in local hands is the goal of a new $500,000 grant awarded to Chico State University.
Specifics of the program include more community gardens, cooking classes and better access to healthful food for low-income buyers.
The grant was awarded by the specialty crop program funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The funding is part of $55 million delivered nationwide, including $18.6 million in California.
Julie Estep, of Adept Professionals, wrote the grant, combining ideas she had gathered from people working in food and nutrition.
One aspect will be expanding current programs that allow use of EBT cards (food stamps) at local farmers markets. When these funds are spent locally, it increases the market share for local growers, and also helps people eat better, Estep explained.
Lower-income people tend to eat more grain-based, processed foods because they're less expensive. But fresh fruits and vegetables are important in tackling obesity, she continued.
Building markets for local foods will allow growers to expand and compete with larger producers. The goal is that local food, of which there is plenty, could provide for local schools, restaurants, hospitals and grocery stores, Estep said.
Lee Altier of the College of Agriculture and director of the Organic Vegetable Project, will host field days at the University Farm. He'll also help people form more community gardens.
Especially for people who are low-income, growing their own food and buying local tends to lead to better eating, Altier said.
Altier said the hope is to find people willing to start, and maintain, more local gardens, including working with GRUB (Growing Resourcefully, Uniting Bellies, grubchico.org).
Karen Goodwin, a nutrition education specialist, will head up cooking demonstrations, including use of a cooking cart she'll take to schools and other events.
Those involved with the grant will also form a group that will continue to look at the nutritional needs of the community.

2011-12-27T18:54:00.000-08:00

2011-12-27 "Hyper-local markets provide big economic boost" by Stacy Finz from "San Francisco Chronicle"

[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/26/BUCV1MCFLB.DTL]
In 1997, only 70 people were employed at businesses on the block of 18th Street between Dolores and Guerrero streets in San Francisco. Today, when California's unemployment rate is nearing 12 percent, there are 400 jobs.
Many in the city credit Bi-Rite Market, a specialty grocery store, with fueling the neighborhood's economy, not just by bringing other businesses to the street but by supporting other Bay Area companies.
"Our (mission statement) is knowing the person behind the product, and having them be local makes that possible," said Kirsten Bourne, marketing director at Bi-Rite. "Surely we sell Italian wines and French cheeses. But as much as possible we go with local."

Model of the future -
Michael Shuman - an economist, author and research director for Cutting Edge Capital, an Oakland company that specializes in innovative financing - calls a business such as Bi-Rite a "community food enterprise" and says it's the model of the future.
So-called CFEs are locally owned, employ locals, and use mostly local goods and services.
"There's good evidence to show that CFEs generate more jobs - two to four times the amount per dollar of sales - and generate more income and wealth for (their) communities than non-locally owned businesses, even ones that source goods from the area," said Shuman, whose report "Community Food Enterprise: Local Success in the World Marketplace" shows how these types of businesses grow local economies while becoming more competitive globally.
The report was issued by the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies and the Wallace Center at Winrock International and studied 24 local food enterprises across the country, including Swanton Berry Farm in Santa Cruz County.
While Bi-Rite was not part of the study, it fits the mold. The San Francisco grocer uses local printers, local sign makers and local designers, and 90 percent of its employees live within walking or biking distance of the market.
The store is well known for supporting and promoting regional purveyors - everything from produce and chocolate to jams and barbecue sauces. Last year it spent $6.9 million doing business with small companies, most of them from Northern California, according to owner Sam Mogannam.

Food startups take off -
And the cycle continues. Last year Bi-Rite started showcasing Michele Manfredi's SFQ Original San Francisco-style Barbecue Sauce in its store when her company was a tiny startup and she did everything by hand.
SFQ is still fairly small, but now Manfredi can afford to outsource her kitchen work, jarring and label making. She could probably save money by scouring the Internet for cheap labor, cheap jars and even cheaper labels.
But she's decided to go regional - most of her ingredients are sourced in the Bay Area, her jars are from an Oakland company, her labels are from Napa, and her preparation and jarring are done in Healdsburg.
"I looked even closer to home," she said. "But it was a challenge finding someone to work with a small producer."
Dafna Kory of Inna Jam, a Berkeley company, also sells her fruit spreads at Bi-Rite and 49 other specialty markets, mostly in Northern California. Kory's philosophy is simple - the ingredients for her jams have to come from within 100 miles of her kitchen. She said she spends about $50,000 a year just on produce.
"It's hard to be a farmer," she said. "As a high-volume buyer - I'll buy 30 flats of strawberries at a time - they're able to sell to me without a distributor and that means more profit for them, which enables them to pick longer and keep pickers on their payroll."
Kory also buys her jars locally, rents commercial kitchen space in Berkeley, and employs 10 people from the East Bay during her jamming season. She's not making a big dent in the unemployment rate, but she only launched last year.
"I've already had to quadruple my production this year to keep up with demand," she said, adding that she produced 30,000 jars of jam this year. "Next year I plan on having year-round staff."
Kathleen Merrigan of the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the government values local food businesses so much that it's willing to help with the cost of doing business.
In fact, Congress has mandated that 5 percent of the money set aside for the USDA's Business and Industry Loan Guarantee Program go to farmers who sell their products regionally.
There's a good reason for it, she said.
"Studies show that farmers who sell locally and regionally employ 13 full-time workers per $1 million revenue earned," she said. "Farmers who don't sell locally or regionally employ three workers for every $1 million in revenue earned."
Economists suspect that local sales require more employees to work farmers' markets and fruit stands and to deliver to local stores. Because it fuels the market - a 2009 Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship study showed that farmers' markets in that state pumped more than $71 million into the economy - the USDA is committed to farmers who practice the model.

Guaranteed loan -
That's why when Watson Coast Produce - a wholesale fruit and vegetable company that buys from local farms, distributes to 13 counties in California and has $30 million in annual sales - couldn't get a loan to expand, the USDA stepped in to guarantee a $4.6 million note.
"We basically left no risk to the bank because we believed in what this company is doing," Merrigan said.
There are dozens of USDA programs through the "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative geared toward helping local food businesses, she said.
"This is about jobs, the economy and community vitality," she said. "It's created a renaissance in agriculture and that's very exciting."

Shoppers stock up on produce at the Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco's Mission District. Economists say "community food enterprises" like Bi-Rite benefit their local economies significantly more than a typical non-locally owned business. Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle

In addition to supporting local food producers, the Bi-Rite Market uses local printers, local sign makers and local designers, and hires workers who live nearby. Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle

Inna jam, available at Bi-Rite, is made solely from fruit picked within 100 miles of the company's Berkeley headquarters. Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle

Local organic dried flower bouquets are for sale at the Bi-Rite Market in the Mission District. Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle

Liz Ryan, of San Francisco, shops the cold section at Bi-Rite Market in San Francisco, Calif., Wednesday, December 14, 2011. The market uses mostly local goods and local services, so their business has added jobs to the neighborhood. Photo: Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle

2011-12-26T18:18:00.000-08:00

2011-12-26 "Foragers Mia Andler, Kevin Feinstein, now authors" by Jonah Raskin from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/26/DD5G1M78UD.DTL]
Even the most gentle-looking plant can reach out to bite an unsuspecting forager. In their new book, Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein offer stern warnings about poisonous plants that can cause death or severe illness.
"The Bay Area Forager: Your Guide to Edible Wild Plants of the San Francisco Bay Area" (Foraging Society Press, 320 pages, $24.95) is filled with descriptions of oleander, camas and poison hemlock that can "paralyze the whole body." For those not deterred by such advisories, the lavishly illustrated guidebook about identifying, cooking and eating plants in the wild is essential to the pursuit.
Andler and Feinstein are bound by a fierce attachment to the outdoors and have all the necessary credentials to write about it. Andler, 31, comes from Helsinki, where she foraged with her parents when she was a child. She returns home about once a year to forage in the forests not far from the center of her native city.
"It's normal for Finnish families to forage together," she says. "The countryside is blissful in summer."

To the forest -
When she first moved to the United States, she was stunned to discover that people didn't go into the forests to find food.
Feinstein, 34, grew up in Tennessee playing video games and feasting on TV dinners. He says he "didn't eat fresh fruit from a real live tree" until he was in his 20s. When he moved to Florida to go to college, he embarked on a self-taught crash course in botany. "Almost everything I know is self-taught," he says. "That's how I learn."
He and Andler met in 2008 at an event at TrackersBay - an organization that provides outdoors education, walks and camps in the Bay Area - and discovered they shared a passion for plants and a desire to teach others about the cycles of nature. A year ago, they began to collaborate on their book.
"It's rare to find someone as excited about this stuff as I am," Andler says. "Kevin and I live at opposite ends of the Bay Area - he's in Walnut Creek and I'm in Fairfax. We used to have really long conversations on the phone in which we shared what we knew about plants."
Feinstein says his curiosity about foraged foods was sparked by "My Side of the Mountain," Jean Craighead George's 1959 novel about a New York City kid who learns to live off the land when he runs away from home and hunkers down on his great-grandfather's farm in the Catskill Mountains.
"I was crazy about that book," he says. "But my main teacher has been and still is the woods. I'm ecstatically happy to be out there in the hills, foraging for supper or just eating what I find in the open air."
Like Feinstein, Andler loves to graze - walk, pick and snack on leaves and berries. She says she occasionally harvests "a huge pile of prickly pears" and then figures out "what to do with them."
Both have translated their love of plants and open spaces into paying jobs. Andler takes adults on weekend wild food walks. During the week, she teaches kids in Bay Area schools about birds, herbs, seeds and flowers.
"Kids get really excited about the wild," she says. "It's tangible and immediate and, without prompting from me, they think they were always meant to be in the woods."

ForageSF -
Feinstein, a prominent member of ForageSF, the Bay Area's leading foraging organization, also teaches foraging classes. He started in 2007. Back then, only a handful of people showed up for his classes. By 2009, his classes were full and teaching out in the wild became his full-time business. His blog and videos are well known to Bay Area foragers (feralkevin.com).
After dispensing warnings about the poisons of the natural world, "The Bay Area Forager" provides descriptions of plants that are nutritious and tasty: the abundant acorn that was once an essential source of protein for Northern California Indians, the powder from cattail heads that can be used to make crepes and pancakes, and clover that provides vitamins similar to C and E. The book lingers over wild onions, wild plums and wild radishes that Feinstein pickles and ends with a section on Yerba Buena, the native plant that means "good herb" in Spanish and was the original name of San Francisco. The mint-like herb can be used medicinally or in teas or cooking.
The color photos make identification of the plants simple. There are also concise descriptions of the physical aspects of each plant; when, where and how to harvest; and how to use. The authors remind readers that foraging is illegal in parks and on private property, and while they don't condone trespassing, they do suggest ingenuity. Rule 1 of the "respectful harvesting ethic": Harvest only if the plant is clearly growing in abundance.
The 50-plus recipes are aimed at gourmet chefs as well as common cooks who want to branch out from store-bought ingredients and experiment with the likes of hawthorn, toyon and western black walnut that Feinstein uses to make vin de noix.
Once a vegetarian turned vegan, Feinstein now eats meat. "My goal is to go on a hunt for wild boar," he says. "I really love how it tastes."

Top picks -
Foraging is illegal in public parks. Mia Andler and Kevin Feinstein urge novices to begin the search for edible plants in their backyards, parking lots or community gardens. It helps to know someone with a farm, orchard or vineyard who will grant free foraging rights.
-- The best acorns are found inland, east of the Caldecott Tunnel or in the dry hills of Marin from September through November.
-- Miner's lettuce and chickweed usually grow together and are abundant during the rainy season in wilderness tracts and along the sides of country roads.
-- Mushrooms grow best in coastal forests after fall and winter rains. They will grow back each season if only the tops are harvested.
-- Nettles like wet areas along the coast, near streams, and can be foraged in winter and spring. Wear gloves to avoid stings from picking the plant.
-- Yerba Buena, which means "good herb" in Spanish, grows abundantly in most Bay Area hills, often under the shade of oak and bay trees, and it's available most of the year.

Kevin Feinstein, who barely ate produce at all growing up in Tennessee, demonstrates his expertise in finding and cultivating thistles during an outing with Mia Andler in the East Bay hills.
Photo: Lance Iversen / The Chronicle

2011-12-25T18:48:00.000-08:00

2011-12-25 "California's young farmers break traditional mold" by Stacy Finz from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-12-25/news/30556010_1_farmers-age-young-farmers-farms-and-ranches]
The average age of a farmer in California is creeping toward 60, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture is trying to attract newcomers to work the land.
The need is especially acute, given that experts are forecasting that the world will have to double its food supply to keep up with a booming population - growing from 7 billion people to 9 billion by 2050. California is a significant player in feeding the globe, providing 12 percent of the nation's agriculture exports.
Farming also is a $37.5 billion business in California, employing 800,000 people. With the average age of the primary farm operator now 58 - nearly 20 percent are 70 or older - it's crucial that the state's farms and ranches get fresh blood, said Karen Ross, California's agriculture secretary.
"We are leaders," she said. "Being one of only five Mediterranean climates in the world, we produce the food - fruits, vegetables and nuts - that have the greatest health benefits."
But how do you convince people that back-breaking work, risky conditions and low profit yields are a good career move?

Bucking the norm -
Oddly enough, Ross said, there's a whole crop of greenhorns willing to take the reins. But they're decidedly different from the face of the traditional farmer or rancher. And their methods - everything from urban rooftop gardening to the latest in conservation and sustainability practices - buck the old norm.
"We're seeing an interest from young people who don't come from farming families," Ross said, adding that last year a record-breaking 70,000 students enrolled in their high school Future Farmers of America program.
Craig McNamara, an organic walnut and olive grower and president of the California State Board of Food and Agriculture, knows the difficulties of farming and is concerned.
"Our nation needs 100,000 new farmers in a short amount of time," he said.
The 61-year-old doesn't know if his own three children will take over his farm, Sierra Orchards in Winters (Yolo County), when he retires. So he and his wife founded the Center for Land-Based Learning. The nonprofit is an incubator in which young people study the rudiments of agriculture and the importance of watershed conservation. McNamara hopes the program inspires others to start their own farms or take over existing ones.

California's advantages -
Poppy Davis, the USDA's national program leader for small farms and beginning farmers and ranchers, said California might hold more advantages for the new farmer than any other state. It's not just the temperate climate. Unlike other states, where future generations are expected to take over the land and outsiders aren't always welcome, the agriculture community here has more tolerance for change and few preconceived notions, she said. Almost anything goes.
"The next generation doesn't have to be lineal descendants," she said. "While it might be good public policy to say this land needs to stay in farming or ranching, who are we to say, 'This land needs to stay in the same family.' "
While California is looking for fresh young faces to till the ground and drive the cattle, Davis said youth is in the eye of the beholder.
"There are lots of people starting whole different lives in their 50s," she said. "And for a lot of the new farmers in California, this is a second career. Some of these people can be very successful. While they may not know much about farming, they are seasoned in life and make really good business people."
There are other changes, too. It used to be that farming and ranching required large swaths of land and expensive equipment. Not anymore.
"A young man came to me four years ago and said he wanted to farm," McNamara said. "He was a graduate from UC Santa Cruz. To this day, he's farming without owning land or a tractor." McNamara leases the young farmer some of his Winters land. As for the tractor, McNamara pitches in with his.

Inspired by Costa Rica -
Marisa Alcorta, 34, of Davis has wanted to farm for the past 10 years. She did her undergraduate studies at Cornell and spent three months in Costa Rica examining the farming methods of a small mountain village.
"I came back completely inspired," she said.
Getting the capital to start a farm was overwhelming, but when she met three women with a similar goal, they joined forces. The owner of Bridgeway Farms in Winters leased them 16 open acres and 4 acres of peach, nectarine and apricot trees at a very low price, Alcorta said. The women plan to pitch in about $5,000 each to start a community-supported agriculture business. They will sell 20 to 30 public shares in Cloverleaf Farm at Bridgeway in the form of weekly or monthly produce boxes.
"It's the first farming opportunity that I've come across that feels doable," she said.
There are even smaller operations taking root across the state, including public vegetable gardens in city vacant lots, rooftop gardens and urban farms, said Ross, the agriculture secretary.
"Eighteen to 20 percent of California is food insecure," she said. "So farmers of the future won't necessarily be just in the (rural areas). We need big and large to sustain the world's need for food."

Cooper Funk (left), Molly Nakahara and Paul Glowaski are among California's crop of young farmers. Photo: Anne Chadwick Williams / Special To The Chronicle

Dinner Bell Farmer farmer Molly Nakahara rolls up a row cover that was protecting kale, bok choy, and flowers from cold weather and deer as they got started in Grass Valley on Wednesday, December 21. Photo: Anne Chadwick Williams / Special To The Chronicle

Young farmers l-r Cooper Funk, Molly Nakahara, Paul Glowaski met in 2006 at a UC Santa Cruz farm apprenticeship program and started Dinner Bell Farm in Grass Valley two seasons ago. Photographed on Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2011. Photo: Anne Chadwick Williams / Special To The Chronicle

2011-12-21T17:44:00.000-08:00

2011-12-21 "THE HIGH COST OF FREE FOOD: HEALTH DEPARTMENT STUMBLES IN CRACKDOWN ON FORAGED DINNERS" by Peter Jamison
[http://digitalissue.sfweekly.com/article/Sucka+Free+City/925950/93945/article.html]
Iso Rabins has always done a delicate tango around environmental and food regulations. Rabins pioneered the Bay Area’s burgeoning wild-foods movement when he founded ForageSF in 2009, but city health inspectors, noting the potential hazards of eating products gathered in the wild — the best-known of which come in the form of poisonous mushrooms — were never thrilled with his organization or its various commercial offshoots.
Earlier this year, one of Rabins’ signature ventures — the Underground Market, a wildly successful event at which various sub-professional food producers peddled their wares — was shut down by the Department of Public Health, which had previously given the market its tacit blessing. Rabins has since been working to bring the Underground Market into compliance with city law.
But this fall, during that process, he suddenly faced persecution on another front. In October, city officials sent a letter informing him that another series of foraging get-togethers, his so-called Wild Kitchen dinners, could subject him to thousands of dollars in fines. The dinners typically served dozens of patrons, each paying $40 or more for a prix fixe menu of hunted and foraged local foods such as squid, mushrooms, and nettle soup. (Disclosure: SF Weekly profiled Rabins for a cover story in 2009. I attended two Wild Kitchen dinners in the course of reporting for that article, and have since attended one more. They were tasty, and I never got sick.)
In a letter dated Oct. 26, Richard Lee, director of Environmental Health Regulatory Programs for DPH, told Rabins that the dinner series “constitutes an existing and ongoing violation of state and local law.” Each two-day Wild Kitchen event, Lee said, could bring a fine of $1,063. Lee noted that at least six such events had been recorded by health inspectors this year alone.
Rabins took his case before DPH Environmental Health Director Rajiv Bhatia at a hearing last week, arguing that he had not been properly notified of potential legal violations before being hit with the fines. “I was never informed I had to get a permit until Oct. 26, after which I did get permits,” Rabins said.
Turns out he had a point. “When is the first time he was notified, verbally or in writing?” Bhatia asked health inspector Alicia Saam, who testified against Rabins at the hearing. “That’s a good question,” Saam replied. Bhatia, not impressed, let Rabins off the hook. “I’m going to go ahead and waive the fee, because he wasn’t told he had to get a permit,” he said.
Rabins’ Wild Kitchen dinners are now officially on the right side of the law, with all food prepared in commercial kitchens under strict safety guidelines. (He maintains that the dinners were always “very safe” before the Health Department showed up.) But the new veneer of regulatory compliance has changed the dinners’ spontaneous atmosphere, Rabins says.
“Unfortunately, it really takes away from the life of the dinners, but I guess that’s what [health officials] need,” he says.

2011-12-02T16:19:00.000-08:00

2011-12-02 "Introducing Megapolitanism"
[http://www.thinkurban.org/category/regionalism/]
A recent article from John King at the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the concept of using the Megalopolitan scale for planning purposes [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/25/BA271M30IG.DTL]. The article references the new book by Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang entitled ‘Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography‘ (APA, 2011) [http://www.amazon.com/Megapolitan-America-Understanding-Metropolitan-Geography/dp/1932364978].
As an example, King mentions the Sierra Pacific Megapolitan Area, seen below as a large geographical area that extends from the San Francisco Bay area all the way into Western Nevada, around Reno. The region includes 27 counties and includes over 12.4 million people, and its expected to grow substantially in the next 30 years.

As mentioned in the article, the significance of the concept of megapolitan areas is to look more broadly at a larger scale, King, quoting Nelson, mentions that “regions can be more proactive in everything from transportation planning to economic strategies… to have people look at things a little differently, the whole rather than the parts.”
While explicitly not a model for mega-regional government, there are some possibilities of what this might mean for regions by looking at larger areas. As mentioned by King, “It’s too early to say whether the concept of megapolitan areas will catch on as a framework for government policy, much less in terms of how regular people define where they live.”
The significant of megapolitan areas, thus is undetermined. The overall ambiguity of the defining characteristics of a ‘city’ has led to a lot of questions related to city centers, sprawl, and other hybrid urban agglomerations like edge cities, exurbs, and the shift from urban area to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). This leads to a lot of diversity in definition (outlined in the SF Gate article) - including the largest megapolitan area (NY-Phil 33.9 million people) to the smallest, fastest growing (Las Vegas 2.4 million). While Vegas booms, the Steel Corridor of wester PA is creeping along slowly. In terms of diversity, not surprisingly, the Southern California region has the largest percentage of minorities (62.7%) and the Twin-Cities are the least diverse with 15.5% of minorities.
The terms megaregion, megalopolis, megapolitan area, while similar in nature, are somewhat different historically, spatially, and statistically, so it is worth a look at some of the designations. A map of megaregions shows the eleven areas in the United States as determined by the Regional Plan Association.

This differs somewhat from a more recent version of Megapolitan areas from a recent essay by Lang and Nelson on Places from Design Observer [http://places.designobserver.com/feature/megapolitan-america/30648/]) They identify 10 megapolitan clusters that exist in 23 megapolitan areas that are similar but slightly different from those above.

The different terms, definitions, and geographical extents makes the concepts a bit difficult to parse, but in general terms, the areas are defined by a population of more than 10 million people that exist within a ‘clustered network of cities’ typically delineated through transportation corridors.
The new interpretation of Megapolitan area builds on earlier concepts to describe a more general ‘transmetropolitan geography’ which is typically thought of more commonly in larger, global areas such as China, Japan, Brazil – which include megaregions of 120 million (Hong Kong, Shenzen-Guangzhou), 60 million (Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe) and 43 million (Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo). While the concepts are similar, the scale of these new global areas are immense in comparison to the US.
Interestingly enough, the term has been used since the 1820s, and the conceptual usage of the concept of Megalopolis as a grouping of urban areas within a region dates back almost 100 years. This includes references by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1918) and Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities (1938). The most popularized recent usage was from 1950s and 60s, in the book on the Northeast United States by Jean Gottmann entitled ‘Megalopolis’ (1961).

2011-11-22T22:42:00.000-08:00

2011-11-21 "A Quiet Push to Grow Crops Under Cover of Trees" by Jim Robbins from "New York Times"
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/science/quiet-push-for-agroforestry-in-us.html]
HELENA, Mont. — On a forested hill in the mountains north of Montana’s capital, beneath a canopy of pine and spruce, Marc and Gloria Flora have planted more than 300 smaller trees, from apple and pear to black walnut and chestnut.
Beneath the trees are layers of crops: shrubs like buffalo berries and raspberries, edible flowers like day lilies, vines like grapes and hops, and medicinal plants, including yarrow and arnica.
Turkeys and chickens wander the two-acre plot, gobbling hackberries and bird cherries that have fallen from trees planted in their pen, and leaving manure to nourish the plants.
For the Floras, the garden is more than a source of food for personal use and sale. Ms. Flora, an environmental consultant and former supervisor for the United States Forest Service, is hoping it serves as a demonstration project to spur the growth of agroforestry — the science of incorporating trees into traditional agriculture.
The extensive tree canopy and the use of native plants, she says, make the garden more resilient in the face of a changing climate, needing less water, no chemical fertilizers and few, if any, pesticides. “It’s far more sustainable” than conventional agriculture, she said.
The idea is to harness the ecological services that trees provide. “Agroforestry is not converting farms to forest,” said Andy Mason, director of the Forest Service’s National Agroforestry Center. “It’s the right tree in the right place for the right reason.”
The Department of Agriculture, the Forest Service’s parent agency, began an initiative this year to encourage agroforestry.
Depending on the species, trees make all sorts of contributions to agriculture, experts say. Trees in a shelter belt reduce wind and water erosion. Some trees serve as fertilizers — they take in nitrogen from the atmosphere, or pump it from deep underground and, when they drop their leaves, make it available upon decomposition.
Trees planted along streams can take up and scrub out polluted farm runoff. They increase species diversity by providing habitat, and some of those species are friendly to farmers — bees and butterflies that help pollinate crops, for example. (One study showed that 66 species of birds benefit from windbreaks on farms.) Trees can keep a field cooler and more moist.
Some research also shows that cattle farmers can improve their income by introducing trees, both by selling timber and by cooling cows in the shade.
And trees in general help the environment by absorbing greenhouse gases and by cleaning up polluted water — countering some of the effects of large-scale agriculture.
“The biggest problem with food production is environmental degradation,” said Gene Garrett, an emeritus professor of forestry and former director of the Center for Agroforestry at the University of Missouri.
Properly placed belts of trees and other vegetation along streams can filter out 95 percent of the soil sediment that washes off farm fields, studies show, and up to 80 percent of phosphate and nitrogen that runs off.
While the idea of farming with trees is being reborn in the United States, it is not new. It got its start here in the Dust Bowl era, when trees were planted in shelter belts to stop severe wind erosion, Mr. Mason said. And around the world, agroforestry goes back centuries. “Many generations have been on the land,” said Jill M. Belsky, a professor of rural and environmental sociology at the University of Montana who has studied forest farms. “They have deep ecological knowledge and many cycles of these seasons.
“For example, they taste the soil and say, ‘We need a few more chickens in here’ ” for fertilizer.
Elsewhere, “working” trees are being used to replenish eroded or desert landscapes. A program in Niger has greened millions of acres in the last 20 years.
There are several approaches to agroforestry. Grazing livestock under a canopy of trees is called silvo-pasture, for instance. In alley cropping, an ancient technique that is becoming more common in the United States, rows of commercially valuable hardwood trees like oak are alternated with rows of corn, wheat or grasses for biofuel.
Agroforestry operations are also helping raise specialty crops. Nicola MacPherson raises timber in the Ozarks, and grows shiitake and oyster mushrooms on the waste branches; she is also establishing a truffle orchard. Then there are forest gardens like the one the Floras are creating.
Agroforestry is not just as simple as sticking trees in the ground — it can be a sophisticated form of management. “The key to a lot of systems is how they manage shade and light,” Dr. Belsky said. In one common system — teak trees over vegetable crops — as the over-story closes, limiting light, “the types of crops below change.”
Here in Montana, the Floras say they hope that their garden will evolve as conditions change. The climate of the northern Rockies, though, is a world away from tropical forest farms, and the Floras are pioneers.
They have had their share of learning experiences. Bees left their hives and never came back; the Floras had to pollinate their fruit trees by hand, with paintbrushes. One October, trees were killed by a snowstorm and bitter cold. And there are rodents.
“Gophers do a lot of damage,” Ms. Flora said. “They eat tree roots, carrots and potatoes.” Her Yorkshire terrier, Rocky, has been the best remedy so far.
The soil is nutrient-poor, but a forest garden turns marginal soil into much more fertile ground. As the needles and leaves fall and animal waste collects, nutrients increase over time.
One major hurdle to widespread adoption of agroforestry, though, might be conventional thinking about trees.
“Families spent generations removing trees to practice agriculture, and we’re up against that,” said Dr. Garrett, the emeritus professor here. “We have to stress that if you don’t put them in the way, you can use working trees to benefit agriculture.”

Photograph by Anne Sherwood for The New York Times: Gloria Flora's forest garden includes berries and medicinal plants.

2011-11-13T17:14:00.000-08:00

2011-11-13 "City's little boxes, but these look pretty good" by John King from "San Francisco Chronicle"[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/12/BAIJ1LTA4J.DTL]
It's a sign of our continued economic torpor that San Francisco's most engaging new buildings are nine shipping containers slung across two parcels where the asphalt poured for parking lots remains.
And it's a sign of the disconnect in our society between ideas and implementation that the innovative development dubbed Proxy took nearly two years to reach its present form.
But while it's here, enjoy an architectural work-in-progress that uses sturdy hollow metal to convey a core truth of big cities: often, what we savor aren't individual landmarks or buildings so much as the overall sense of place.
The still-evolving compound lines a block of Octavia Boulevard framed by the shops and cafes of Hayes Street on the north and the small but lively Patricia's Green on the west. An alleyway runs through it. There's a car-sharing lot in the back.
The lots are to be filled with housing as part of the transformation of the former Central Freeway path into a landscaped boulevard. But by the time the Board of Supervisors approved a neighborhood development plan in 2008, the recession loomed.
Now's there's an alternate reality, one that merges high style with roll-the-dice spunk.
The first customized containers debuted this spring, back to back, one housing artisanal coffee and the other a maker of ice cream by the scoop. A museum shop followed in July with outdoor exhibition space. Last month saw the opening of the largest component so far, a beer garden where five containers are deployed around picnic tables and a transplanted Redbud tree.
The guiding hand in all this is Oakland architect Douglas Burnham, whose firm Envelope A+D infused the container forms - most of them roughly 20 feet long and 9 feet high - with a new purpose. The goal was "flexible urbanism," composed of simple elements easily revised or removed.
"This is an experiment in a way, to see how cities can adapt to how people today live," said Burnham, who doesn't anticipate Proxy being on Octavia past 2015. "The pace of society has really ramped up, and whether that's good or bad this is an attempt to create a physical framework that can accommodate that."
If the emphasis is on utility, neither design nor setting were neglected.
Glass ends were added to the spaces filled by Ritual Roasters and Smitten Ice Cream, allowing views to and from Patricia's Green across the way. Outside Ritual is a clearing of decomposed granite with movable tables and chairs. Smitten opens onto a concrete patio framed by low benches that also serve to corral the toddlers brought here by parents.
As for the beer garden, it makes the most of its minimal elements: the mature Redbud is a visual anchor, a counterpart to the surrounding chain-link fence. A container used to store the picnic tables walls off one end of the site.
The shame is that all this took so long.
Burnham devised his concept in 2009 and it was embraced promptly by officials at the Mayor's Office of Economic Development, who sought ways to activate the boulevard while construction lagged. But every item on the bureaucratic checklist that followed came with some obstacle to surmount.
"Interim uses don't fit the structure of the building code," Burnham explained. "Everything became a negotiation, and every negotiation takes time."
The same holds true for utility hookups: a full year passed between the application filed for the beer garden, and the lights coming on last month - barely ahead of autumn rains.

Proxy is still evolving -
The museum outpost along Octavia closes Nov. 20 and will be replaced in the spring by retail kiosks. A containerized art gallery is slated for one now-open spot, a double-height shoptainer on another. Next fall, Burnham hopes to replace the car-share lot with a tented event space.
Already, though, the promise is being fulfilled.
This isn't about architecture so much as urban place making: you're less aware of the structures than of the surroundings. The containers aren't treated as sculptural elements, as is the case recently in other international cities. They're content to add layers to the landscape, enlarging the Hayes Valley experience without making a fuss.
Skeptics can say the end result is precious, but so is the ever-more-rarefied Hayes Street scene. An interim use like this takes cues from the setting, then follows through in unpredictable ways. Every neighborhood has sites of similar potential. All we need is to find ways for them to happen.
More details on Proxy are at proxysf.net.

Sarah Rice / Special to The Chronicle
The Proxy project, a set of shops in repurposed shipping containers in San Francisco's still-on-the-way-up Hayes Valley, is the work of Oakland architect Douglas Burnham who made the containers serve as a flexible format for small businesses.

2011-11-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

2011-11-05 Sonoma sustainability leadership series

2011-10-24T16:04:00.000-07:00

2011-10-24 "UC Davis West Village touts zero net energy living; UC Davis enclave plans to generate all its power" by John King from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-10-24/news/30318903_1_shutters-zero-buildings]
Davis --
Sustainable design is often measured by the use of recycled materials and power-saving gadgets. But architecture itself can embody the quest for conservation, as is the case in this university city 80 miles east of San Francisco, where a new 130-acre development aspires to be the nation's largest zero net energy community.
The first 23 buildings have just opened, so it's too early to say whether the enclave will consume no more energy than is generated by the on-site solar panels. But the goal takes form in the sunshades that rake shadows across large windows and in the park's artful circular courtyard, which doubles as a basin where rainwater can be absorbed into the earth - touches that give a flavor not found in other Northern California projects of this size.
Though the "village" is the work of private developers, it occupies land owned by UC Davis. The site west of the campus across Highway 113 is conceived as a neighborhood unto itself, with three- and four-story student apartment buildings radiating out from the village green. The green is flanked by ground-floor space reserved for shops and university offices, along with a free-standing outpost of Sacramento City College that will open in January. Land north of the green is being readied for what will be 343 houses reserved for UC Davis academics and employees.
The target population is part of what sets UC Davis West Village apart from such recent mixed-use projects as those erected near BART stations. Another difference is that zero net quest - a desire that adds layers of site-specific architectural detail.

Stylish shutters -
You see this at the village green, designed by SWA Group amid buildings by Studio E Architects of San Diego.
The residential structure on the east edge is cloaked in loose-fitting corrugated metal that's open at the base and roofline, allowing surface heat to rise up and out rather than be absorbed by the units inside. Other surfaces are stucco, yet they have a more substantial presence than the infill norm. There's a reason: The building's plywood-clad form is wrapped in an extra half inch of insulation before the outer skin is applied.
Then there is the assertive use of sunscreens.
Building rooftops extend 6 feet beyond outer walls. Slatted screens that form upside-down L's deflect afternoon sun. Other facades come with shutters that rest flat on rollers against the building; a resident can open a window, reach out and pull the shutter into any position he or she desires.
"We've wanted to do shutters like this forever, and we finally got the chance," said Eric Naslund of Studio E. He described the airy corrugated wall as "a pretty dumb ventilated facade, and pretty inexpensive to do."
As for the central open space, one corner slopes down to a landscaped nook reached by a circular path with low walls ideal for seating. It's one of several "bioswales" planned for the district - low spots that will capture rainwater that otherwise would go into storm drains.

Design for climate -
Another subtle touch: SWA's master plan arranges buildings in loose clusters so as to allow afternoon breezes from the delta to filter through the site.
These moves are keyed to the Davis climate, where summer days often are accompanied by triple-digit temperatures. And while the cumulative effect is to conserve resources, the units fit within the market-rate budget of developers Carmel Partners and Urban Villages.
As exotic as zero net energy might sound, the concept is taking hold as a tool to lessen development's impact on the environment.
One example is in Emeryville, where an 8-acre industrial site slated for housing is the subject of a zero net energy design competition sponsored by Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and the San Francisco chapter of the American Institute of Architects. Looking into the future, California's Public Utilities Commission has called for all new buildings in the state to meet this standard by 2030.

Selective zero -
To be sure, the zero net notion can be viewed with a skeptical eye.
At UC Davis West Village, the record keeping won't tabulate the embedded energy of the giant wall-mounted televisions in the lounge or the exercise machines that fill the gym on the floor above. Or the full bathroom that comes with each bedroom in the undergraduate suites.
But as long as a large subset of Americans want and expect the latest in creature comforts, designers must take advantage of every tool that reduces the amount of energy we consume in the process. If an added bonus is distinctive buildings and landscapes with a fine-tuned sense of place, all the better.
Online resources

UC Davis West Village: Zero net energy community. [http://westvillage.ucdavis.edu/energy].
Architecture at Zero: Design competition. [http://www.architectureatzero.com/Architecture_at_Zero/Home.html].

West Davis Village in Davis, Ca., on Friday October 21, 2011. West Davis Village is reported to be the largest community in the country to be a "zero net energy" community, that is one that generates as much energy as it consumes.
Credit: Michael Macor

2011-10-22T15:52:00.000-07:00

2011-10-22 "Changers' Maroshi changes up solar power" by Klaus Werle from "San Francisco Chronicle"
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-10-22/business/30312221_1_solar-power-maldives-social-networkers]
The young entrepreneurs behind green startup Changers are from Berlin, but they're launching their product in California, where they can take advantage of the sun - and social-network thought leaders.
On Thursday, they were in San Francisco to unveil their new device: a small, solar-charged system designed to power smart phones and other USB-enabled devices. The module, called Maroshi, can be attached to any window or sunny surface.
The energy is stored in a solar battery, which can power up a smart phone or tablet via USB, recharging the device as quickly as a wall socket will. There also are eight adapters in the kit, which sells for $149. In all, the company says, the product can connect to more than a thousand devices.
But Changers, backed by German solar-tech company Centrotherm and founded last year by Markus Schulz, Daniela Schiffer, Dirk Gamboa Tuesta and Hans Raffauf, is not about technology. It seeks to set up a green social system.
"We want to enable every single person to produce their own energy, and in doing so, think more consciously about it," Raffauf said.
The battery, called Kalhuohfummi, tracks how much power it generates and uploads the data to an energy marketplace at Changers. com, where users can compare and share their savings via Facebook or Twitter.
"People like to compete, and here they can compete in something sustainable," said Kushtrim Xhakli, who oversees digital media for Changers.
The goal: to make shrinking your carbon footprint as valuable to social networkers as increasing your number of Twitter followers.
"If you really want to have an impact on global warming, you've got to start with the end customer and change their behavior," Raffauf said.
In essence, Changers is looking for a few popular users to help their idea go viral. That's one reason the company is introducing its product in the Bay Area, a hub for renewable energy enthusiasts.
"The Bay Area assembles the opinion leaders in social-network technology," Raffauf said. "It's here we can find the most early adopters."
In fact, at the Web 2.0 summit this week, the company nabbed its first customer: Mary Meeker, a partner with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
By the way, there's a meaning behind the components' names. Maroshi is the name of a Maldive island. Hundreds of years ago, during the Maldives' fight for independence from Portugal, Maroshi was a key port for Kalhuohfummi, a vital supply ship during the battles. Today, the Maldives are under a new threat: global warming and a rising sea level.
Some would say that the techie Maroshi and Kalhuohfummi carry on the tradition.

2011-10-06T16:47:00.000-07:00

2011-10-06 "Oakland allows urban farmers to sell produce" by Matthai Kuruvila from "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/05/BA331LDR4P.DTL&tsp=1]
Oakland -- You can now legally sell peas grown from your backyard in Oakland.
The City Council voted Tuesday to eliminate the ban on selling homegrown produce, a relic of an era when cities wanted to distinguish themselves from rural areas.
But the old code, which was updated, has come into conflict with a growing but relatively new movement, urban farming. Urban farmers generally seek deeper connections to their food by growing it themselves, and the money helps. Kitty Sharkey harvested 80 pounds of heirloom tomatoes Tuesday from the 3-by-24-foot raised bed at her home in the Havenscourt neighborhood of East Oakland. She thinks she could make up to $400 at a farmers' market, which would help her finances.
Until now, she gave away or bartered what she couldn't eat, cook or can.
"A little bit more money makes it more enticing," said Sharkey, 47, who devotes time to being an urban homesteader and growing almost all of her own food. "I might work a little harder on that winter garden."
Others saw a larger significance in the change.
"It's the first step in legitimizing urban agriculture in Oakland," said Esperanza Pallana, 37, who has a 1,200-square-foot backyard plot in the Grand Lake neighborhood and has been pushing for the change. "It's also preserving our right to grow our own food for ourselves and our community."
The code change altered the definition of "home-based businesses," which previously required that it had to be indoors. The new code allows outdoor vegetables as long as farm equipment isn't needed to produce them. Previously, all it took was one phone call from a neighbor to bring down the city's wrath on someone selling backyard carrots.

Not a primary occupation -
Eric Angstadt, the city's deputy planning and zoning director, said that anywhere from one-half to three-fourths of urban farmers in Oakland will be protected by this change.
"These are people for whom urban farming is not a primary, money-making occupation," he said. "These are maybe people who are just trying to recover their own costs of growing, or maybe people who are trying to see if it can be a possible commercial occupation."
There's little if any controversy over this code change - the first and perhaps least disputed element of the city's desire to revamp its urban farming rules. But that's partly because of what this does not address.
Farmers whose operations are so big they need a tractor won't be covered by this code change. Nor are cooperatives that sell produce boxes or people who grow on vacant lots - because those lots aren't considered yards.

Farm animals not addressed -
But the biggest reason Tuesday's change attracted little hubbub was because it didn't address the issue of farm animals.
The city's vegans and farm animal lovers have been battling over this issue. The vegan farmers say animals should not be used in farming because they are almost always slaughtered. Those who want to have animals on their farms say they help the vegetables, by tilling soil, eating bugs or providing manure.
Livestock prompted complaints to the city against Novella Carpenter, who wrote about the creation of her West Oakland farm in the book, "Farm City." Rabbit rights activists complained about her rabbits and other farm animals after learning that she was slaughtering rabbits and offering rabbit pot pies from her farm to people willing to donate cash.
The city forced Carpenter to apply for a $2,800 conditional use permit to grow vegetables and raise a small number of animals. None of Tuesday's changes would have helped her because her farm is on an empty lot adjacent to her apartment - but the lot is not considered a yard at her home.

2011-09-29T17:20:00.000-07:00

San Francisco’s District 11 Supervisor John Avalos told Occupy SF, “Yes, we can” create a municipal bank at an Occupy rally on Sept. 29.

2011-09-28T15:03:00.000-07:00

2011-09-28 "Acorns: Not just for squirrels anymore; Ethnobotanist says acorns poised for comeback as a sustainable food aided by state's plentiful and adaptable oaks" by Jessica Carew Kraft from "San Francisco Chronicle" newspaper
[http://articles.sfgate.com/2011-09-28/entertainment/30211167_1_ipad-app-print-edition-sfgate-com]
It's acorn season. They're falling by the barrel-load into our yards and parks, littering the ground with squirrel food. But Jolie Lonner Egert doesn't see this as a nuisance. She calls acorns the "original California cuisine." And the Fairfax-based ethnobotanist is betting that they'll be the next locavore sensation. "I think in 10 years, you'll be able to walk into any farm-to-table restaurant and order acorn pancakes," she said.
Egert runs Go Wild, an ecological education company that offers classes on foraging and preparing edible wild plants across the Bay Area. For the past four years, she's spent her Septembers gathering the harvest from oak trees and teaching others how to do the same.
Sporting a felted acorn cap and gesturing with a squirrel puppet, Egert led a lively presentation earlier this month at Hidden Villa, an organic farm in Los Altos, in which she explained to a group of families how oak trees used to provide an easy, plentiful crop for native Californians. A mature oak tree can produce 300 to 500 pounds of acorns per season, yielding a massive surplus even after a vast network of insects, birds and mammals have been fed.
The trees are also extremely adaptable. California has at least 20 species of oak, growing in every part of the state and covering over a third of the land mass. "Oaks are shape-shifters - they can grow in the desert, or in wet, cold climates," Egert said.
She believes that if we can re-plant and sustainably manage our oaks the way native Californians did, then today's residents will have a secure and abundant food source during the coming decades of unpredictable climate change. It's simply a matter of getting Americans to try them.
"In Mexico, Korea and all across the Mediterranean, people eat acorns," she said. Audience member Jing Zhou said that he grew up eating acorn jelly in central China, and currently buys it at a local Korean market in Los Altos. "You make it like tofu," he said. "You cut it and serve it with ginger and soy sauce."
Egert prefers her acorns in baked goods. Acorn flour can be used in any recipe that calls for corn meal or nut meal. She also likes to saute chopped acorns in sugar and butter, roast the nibs with honey, or boil them into an oatmeal-consistency porridge.

So how do they taste? -
Egert served the crowd a range of acorn goodies. A tray full of cakes disappeared quickly, and the adults were offered a taste of Spanish-made acorn liqueur.
After sampling a handful of chopped and dried acorns, Rebecca Sherwood of Los Altos had some difficulty nailing down the flavor. "They're not like walnuts, which have more oil and fat and a creamy taste. They're just very mild and chewy."
Nutritionally, acorns are a good choice. They're gluten-free, low-fat, and loaded with vitamins and minerals. But they do take a lot of preparation. And a specific set of tools.
First, they must be dried until their insides rattle. A good dehydrator can accomplish this in two days. Then the nuts have to be cracked open, scanned for burrowing bugs or mold, and the inner kernel ground into coarse flour.

Bitter-tasting tannins -
Egert and her husband, David Egert, who teaches biology at the College of Marin, are constantly experimenting with new methods for each of these steps in order to perfect the process.
"People tell me that acorns take too much work. But then I ask them, 'What would you have to do to grow wheat right here?' " she said, pointing toward a majestic Oregon white oak.
She ran through the requirements: "You'd cut down the trees, destroying the rich and complex ecosystem here. You'd till the soil and have to water, weed, and kill the pests - often with nasty chemicals. Then you'd have to gather, thresh and grind the flour. Every year, you'd do the same thing over and over again."
By contrast, native oaks require only occasional pruning and weeding, and they keep local flora and fauna thriving.
"It's better for the land and way easier just to pick acorns off the ground."

Acorn workshops -
For future acorn events, go to [www.gowildconsulting.com].

2011-08-17T19:31:00.000-07:00

2011-08-17 "Study Finds Local Businesses Key to Income Growth" by Stacy Mitchell
[http://www.newrules.org/retail/news/study-finds-local-businesses-key-income-growth]
Stacy Mitchell is a senior researcher with the New Rules Project, where she directs initiatives on community banking and independent retail. She is the author of Big-Box Swindle and produces a popular monthly bulletin called the Hometown Advantage.
---
The results of a new study suggest that the key to reversing the long-term trend of stagnating incomes in the U.S. lies in nurturing small, locally owned businesses and limiting further expansion and market consolidation by large corporations.
Economists Stephan Goetz and David Fleming, both affiliated with Pennsylvania State University and the Northeast Regional Center for Rural Development, conducted the study, "Does Local Firm Ownership Matter?" It was published in the journal Economic Development Quarterly [http://edq.sagepub.com/content/25/3/277.abstract].
Goetz and Fleming analyzed 2,953 counties, including both rural and urban places, and found that those with a larger density of small, locally owned businesses experienced greater per capita income growth between 2000 and 2007. The presence of large, non-local businesses, meanwhile, had a negative effect on incomes.
"Even after we control for other economic growth determinants … the non-resident-owned medium and large firms consistently and statistically depress economic growth rates … The other major result is that resident-owned small firms have a statistically significant and relatively large positive effect" on income growth, the authors report. Small firms are defined as those with fewer than 100 employees and large firms as those with over 500 employees.
"Subject to the caveat that the 2000-2007 period was unique in American economic history, results presented are remarkably robust in terms of the positive link between small firms that are locally owned and per capita income growth. Medium and larger firms appear to have the opposite effect, especially when they are not locally owned. These include big boxes as well as other chain and nonchain operations that are owned by individuals who are not also residents of the community. Although these types of firms may offer opportunities for jobs, as well as job growth over time, they do so at the cost of reduced local economic growth, as measured by income. Small-sized firms owned by residents are optimal if the policy objective is to maximize income growth rates," the authors conclude.
Previous studies by Goetz have found that the number of Walmart stores in a county correlated with both higher poverty rates [http://www.newrules.org/retail/key-studies-walmart-and-bigbox-retail#5] and reduced social capital [http://www.newrules.org/retail/key-studies-walmart-and-bigbox-retail#6].

2011-08-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

2011-08-14 "4-H clubs flourish with crop of urban locavores" by Lisa Wallace from "San Fracisco Chronicle"
[http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/08/11/HOQJ1K7MTU.DTL]
Elsa Rafter, 9, has no illusions about the messy process of raising livestock. For Elsa, clad in a sundress and jelly sandals, climbing into her family's backyard chicken coop to collect fresh eggs for breakfast is nothing but a brush of hay off her golden pigtails. The Rafter household keeps one Buff Orpington and two Ameraucana chickens in San Francisco's Hayes Valley.
"You can tell the difference between Sunshine and Chicky-Chicky because Sunshine has a dirty bottom," Elsa explains matter-of-factly, holding Sunshine in her arms for everyone to get a good look. This doesn't put Elsa off; she and her brother Roan, 6, share responsibilities for taking care of the chickens, feeding them and collecting their eggs. The two joined San Francisco's only 4-H program, started this year, to share their knowledge of chicken raising with other children in the city.
Animal husbandry is probably not what first comes to mind when thinking about the extracurricular interests of urban youth, but the Bay Area's 52 4-H clubs are flourishing, with city kids raising rabbits, lambs, goats, chickens and turkeys - some destined for dinner tables. It's another sign that urban agriculture has taken hold in the Bay Area's food culture and is trickling down to a new generation.
In a city with a strong locavore and DIY ethos, 4-H seems like a natural fit, according to Megan Price, who, along with fellow parent Lauren Ward, co-founded the San Francisco Urban chapter just this year.
"With the whole urban farming movement blossoming, there are a lot of people with backyard chickens, beekeeping, etcetera," says Price. "It just seems like a really good time to start exploring these things with our kids."
Established in 1902, 4-H - which stands for head, heart, hands, health - is a national youth development program predicated on a "learn by doing" model. Members run the clubs and design and set goals for their own projects, which can range from building robots to home economics to raising rabbits.
Over the past few years, 4-H membership has been on a steady rise, especially in urban areas. According to 4-H National, about a third of participants are now from cities of at least 50,000 or their surrounding suburbs.
Raising animals is part of 4-H's agri-science curriculum, where members are responsible for daily tasks such as feeding and grooming, as well as learning about anatomy and breeding. Summertime is the wrap-up of months of hard work, with kids showing their animals at county fairs and selling them at auctions.

Grand champion -
At the San Mateo County Fair in June, urban 4-Hers showed animals alongside those of their peers from more rural areas. Peri Wong, 17, of Menlo Park, a 4-H state ambassador, had this year's grand champion market lamb, sold at the fair's youth livestock auction along with the grand champion turkey, raised by Thomas Rivette, 19, of Pacifica.
While Rivette kept his Broad Breasted White turkey in his backyard, finding the pasture required for sheep presented a logistical challenge for Peri as it does for many other city kids interested in keeping larger animals.
Mary Meyer, 4-H coordinator for San Francisco and San Mateo, worked out a solution with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and UC Davis, affiliated with 4-H through the national Cooperative Extension System, to set up five locations in the area for 4-Hers to lease land - in Pacifica, Daly City, San Bruno, San Carlos and near the Crystal Springs Reservoir in San Mateo County. The rent is kept low, usually around $6 per month. Because there is no caretaker on the land, it's up to the 4-Hers to feed and groom their animals daily.

San Bruno commute -
This year, Peri commuted from Menlo Park to San Bruno every day because the closer San Carlos farm was overcrowded. Raising a lamb for market involved a host of tasks for Peri, including feeding, watering, halter training, grooming and keeping detailed records on its growth. The Hampshire lamb, bred at the Casarotti Ranch in Santa Rosa, is a breed prized for its large frame and hearty cuts of meat. Peri was responsible for exercising her lamb to keep it at market weight and monitoring its food intake.
It's standard practice for animals raised for meat, something Peri understands now. "When I had my first goat, I was really sad, but then I realized if it was going for meat anyway, it should still have a better life."
Jenette Masarie, 13, of Redwood City, had similar responsibilities raising a 1,253-pound Pen Pride steer with three other girls for Redwood City's 4-H. Pen Pride steers are donated by local businesses and raised collectively by each of the Peninsula's clubs. The auction revenue generated by the Red Angus steer, donated this year by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, goes to the club's scholarship fund.
Throughout the eight years she's been a 4-Her, Jenette also has raised Blue Butt pigs and Red Wether goats - all destined for the slaughterhouse.
"I do get attached," Jenette admits. "My first year I cried and it was sad; as you go on through the years it gets easier. With the steer it was really hard because I was with him longer, and I bonded with him more."
Like Peri, she has come up against her share of adversity. "I have had people come up to me at the fair and say, 'How could you do that?' but I just say I know where my food comes from, and I know the way of life and everything now.
"I think it's a great experience. I've been doing it since I was 5 years old and I love it."
Participation in 4-H is designed to develop leadership skills by fostering collaboration and personal initiative, but it also emphasizes citizenship. Rivette, for example, donated the proceeds from the sale of his turkey - $500 - to the Bryan Stow Fund, set up to help the beaten Giants' fan.
"I like that (4-H is) focused on service, that it's nondiscriminatory," Price of SF Urban 4-H says. "I like that it is focused on earth and agriculture and animals and helping - it is something that kids don't necessarily have access to in the city."

"Run by children" -
Jenette's mother, Katey Masarie, takes pride in watching Jenette hold her own in the urban farming movement. "Four-H is basically run by children," Masarie says, "and Jenette works really hard to raise those animals and become close to them, and having to learn about different meats and things - what she's really doing is learning about how life works."
The Rafter children joined 4-H because of their family's backyard chickens, but through their participation they saw several other aspects of growing and preparing food.
"When you live in a city, you're exposed to cool stuff like museums, but you have to go out of your way to see a farm, or experience milking a goat," says Price, who organized several outings to Hayes Valley Farm for SF Urban 4-H.
This year, Elsa learned to milk a club member's backyard goats and make homemade ice cream from the milk. With Price, who is a pastry chef, she baked an apple and blackberry galette with fresh fruit and an egg wash from her own chickens.
Price puts 4-H in what she refers to as "the return-to-the-earth movement."
"Like the whole Chez Panisse thing with the urban gardening and Hayes Valley Farm and people canning their own vegetables and backyard goats and chickens ..." she spouts giddily. It's reminiscent of the '60s, she explains, and laughs: "It's why the parents seem to be just as interested as the kids are."

4-H clubs -
Contact SF Urban 4-H at sfurban4h@gmail.com and visit them on Facebook at on.[fb.me/phMpiT]
To learn more about 4-H and for a listing of local offices, go to 4-H.org.
For a listing of upcoming county fairs, go to [1.usa.gov/oMreY6]

2011-02-08T19:58:00.000-08:00

2011-02-08 "North Richmond garden project nourishes bodies and spirits" by Robert Rogers
[http://richmondconfidential.org/2011/02/08/north-richmond-garden-project-nourishes-bodies-and-spirits/]
Hope and life are springing up in North Richmond with an ambitious plan to create a host of community gardens.
Organizers hope to use grant funding to create about 10 community gardens over the next two years.
They say producing fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs in a neighborhood where both whole foods and natural spaces are scarce could be a powerful force for improvement.
“This is a community of color, one that has had poverty and neglect weighing on its collective conscience for decades,” said Iyalode Kinney, a director for Communities United Restoring Mother Earth and the project manager for the North Richmond Lot of Crops project. “This lifts the community in so many ways.”
CURME is a nonprofit urban gardening project based in Richmond, and the North Richmond effort has been underway for several months.
On Third Street just north of Grove Avenue last week, about a dozen administrators, volunteers and local workers tilled several hundred pounds of fresh soil. They used the soil to enrich the wooden planters that contain a variety of crops, including kale, collard and mustard greens, cabbage, turnips, peppers and a number of healthful herbs and edible flowers.
Kinney said the garden can provide both low-cost produce in an area largely without and opportunities for education and healthy living.
“We will soon begin holding little community classes out here in the gardens,” Kinney said. “To open people up to the health benefits of the natural plants growing out here and cooking ideas.”
Unincorporated North Richmond is the poorest community per capita community in Contra Costa County. The roughly one-mile square area has no grocery stores or restaurants.
Residents who wish to buy fresh produce and other groceries must travel to San Pablo or Richmond proper.
Organizers say the community garden project, which relies on private property owners who essentially lend the use of their vacant lots lands for the gardens, is a key step toward building community pride in an area long maligned by violent crime.
“The way North Richmond has been depicted has served to drag the people here down,” said Saleem Bey, co-director of the project. “This is really building a sense of pride and excitement. People drive by and cheer us on.”
The Lot of Crops project was given life in part with money from a much less healthy enterprise. The nearby West Contra Costa County landfill pays annually into a mitigation fund, which is to be used in the community to offset the effects of the landfill’s pollution.
The community garden project was awarded $56,000 in 2010 and $100,000 from the mitigation fund this year, Kinney said, money that pays for materials, transportation, administration and, perhaps most importantly, jobs for young workers in a community that has for decades had virtually no labor market.
Five young adults were hired Jan. 10 on five-month-long contracts to build and maintain the gardens, Kinney said. Work is also occurring on a vacant lot on Vernon Street, and the hope is that as many as 10 gardens may be in some stage of development by the end of the year.
One of those employed with the grant money is Ervin Coley, 21, a soft-spoken man who sheepishly admits he loves to smell the different leaves and flowers.
“My father loves that I am learning and helping on this project,” Coley said. “In his eyes, it’s amazing that I have a job in my own community.”

Ervin Coley, 21, is one of five young locals employed as a garden worker.

Iyalode Kinney, 62, is the director of the community garden project.

2011-04-15 "North Richmond lays to rest a native son" by Robert Rogers
[http://richmondconfidential.org/2011/04/15/north-richmond-lays-to-rest-a-native-son/]
Ervin Coley III had a natural curiosity, and a curious favorite animal: Earthworms, the slimy invertebrates that burrow into the soil, enhancing its richness with organic matter.
Coley would gently handle the tiny worms, one at a time, and place them in patches of soil that he hoped to improve.
“We called Ervin the ‘Worm Man,’” remembered a tearful Iyalode Kinney, Coley’s manager and mentor on the North Richmond Lots of Crops project, where Coley worked since December, “because when he first came out, and I taught him about what purpose the worms served, he just loved that philosophy of enriching the ground so more life would come out of it.”
Coley had found something of a calling in his work as a gardener in North Richmond, friends and family say. He had put in a day of work on March 29.
That evening he was killed.
More than 500 people filled Hilltop Community Church on Thursday to mourn Coley, 21, a lifelong North Richmond resident who was killed by a hail of bullets on March 29 while walking near the corner of Silver Avenue and Second Street.
Many people wore t-shirts with Coley’s smiling faced embossed on the front and back. Coley’s mother, father, and 5-year-old brother sat up front in the two-story worship hall. Several of the neighborhood’s most prominent religious figures attended.
“I am just getting hit with mixed emotions here,” said Jelani Moses, 30, Coley’s co-worker on the community gardening program. “I know we’re here to celebrate Ervin’s life and remember how beautiful he was, but this hurts real bad. Ervin was young and had it all ahead him and it all just got destroyed … totally senseless.”
Coley’s death was the first homicide in the tiny neighborhood of unincorporated North Richmond since May, 2010, but was part of a spate of crime that rocked the neighborhood with three shootings in three days. One night later, Jerry Owens, 22, was shot and killed less than two blocks away.
No one has been arrested in connection with either killing.
Police and neighbors have speculated that the deadly violence has origins in a simmering feud between rival neighborhood gangs in Central Richmond and North Richmond. Among the casualties were central Richmond native Joshua McClain, who was shot and killed in San Francisco; and Coley and Owens. Two other men were shot and wounded during the chaotic 72-hour period.
Friends and family have maintained that Coley was not an intended victim. “They come through, and they were just looking for a target,” said Saleem Bey, who supervised Coley in the gardening program.
Police have said that retaliation attacks between the neighborhoods have been known to target any young man found on the street at a given moment, and that the victims do not necessarily have ties to gang activity.
The service Thursday was a mix of laughs and celebration—thanks mostly to a slideshow featuring pictures of Coley’s irrepressible smile—and solemn reflection.
Bey told the crowd that North Richmond is under siege, and that despite glimmers of hope, violent crime continues to decimate the community.
“This young man was part of the positive change that was occurring in North Richmond,” Bey said. “I can’t tell you how much it hurts to see someone who had such a future get cut down like this.”
Before the spate of shootings, North Richmond seemed to enjoy a sustained period of calm. A one-square mile unincorporated community of about 3,000 people, North Richmond has the lowest per capita median income in Contra Costa County, according to Census data. Crime rates remain down from recent years, according to Sheriff’s Department statistics, but there is new unease about the prospect of future violence.
Several people in attendance Thursday expressed concern about the potential for retaliatory violence, given the raw emotions and the assemblage of so many hundreds of people for the service, many in their teens and 20s.
“We just have to do our best and hope that things don’t flare up again these next few nights,” said Joe McCoy, a longtime North Richmond resident who works for the city’s Office of Neighborhood Safety, a crime intervention program.
Coley was born in San Pablo in 1990, but his family’s roots in North Richmond run deep. As a young child, Coley spent periods living with a great-grandmother on Sanford Avenue. He attended the local elementary school, and later graduated from high school, an event featured in a slew of photographs during a slideshow commemorating his life.
In recent years, he lived mostly with his mother, Mariecelle Lowery, 37, and his baby brother in a unit in the Las Deltas Public housing project.
In December, he was hired as a community gardener in the Lot of Crops program, an initiative funded with money that comes from a nearby county landfill to mitigate economic and environmental impacts from the waste disposal. The job gave Coley a jolt of confidence and hope. During an interview in February, Coley enthusiastically told reporters how fulfilling it was to work to better his community.
“He wasn’t afraid to say, ‘I don’t know—can you teach me?’” Kinney said. “He was so open and so eager to learn, he was a sponge.”
After the services, Coley was buried at Rolling Hills Memorial Park in El Sobrante.
Kinney said Coley will be commemorated for his work in the neighborhood where he lived all of his 21 years. The day before his death, Coley worked at North Richmond’s newest garden, which he helped build in a vacant lot on Vernon Street. On April 23, his co-workers will dedicate the garden to Coley, with a yet-to-be-determined symbol honoring him.
“That garden will be a special place that will honor Ervin and symbolize the healing and growth of the community that he was a part of,” Kinney said.

2010-08-01T21:24:00.000-07:00

2010-08 "Benicia’s Community Garden Considers Expansion" by Samuel J. Adams from Benicia Magazine
[http://www.beniciamagazine.com/Benicia-Magazine/August-2010/Benicia-rsquos-Community-Garden-Considers-Expansion/]
A Little Old-fashioned Step Back into the Future -
Even though you can see Nations and Baskin Robbins and the Police Station over its vine-shrouded white fence, the Benicia Community Garden is easy to miss. It’s on a small hill tucked back from the road, and walking there feels not unlike trespassing through a churchyard. But the garden’s secrecy has nothing to do with exclusion; one would be hard pressed to find an arena in town more welcoming toward strangers.
Soon after I entered the garden gates, Judy Sullivan, a Benicia Community Garden member, pulls me a few sprigs of lemon verbena, and instructs me on its uses. “I just hang it upside down in a north-facing window. I dry it but I also use it fresh for tea. You just shuck it like you would a thing of corn.” The plant has a soft papery feel and smells mysteriously of lemonheads.
Mrs. Sullivan is soft-voiced, silver-haired and considerate enough of my amateurism to spell out V-E-R-B-E-N-A. She came here with her husband Sam, a well-tanned man watering the tomatoes, arugula and Swiss chard in their lot. Both garden here regularly, and in doing so they belong to a motley but select club whose membership includes a trained biologist, four homeschooled children, and a retiree in her eighties. And their ranks are growing: two recent members have been learning how to garden with upside-down tomato bags.
“We call it an oasis,” says Community Garden Board member Marilyn Bardet. “We’re in the busiest intersection in Benicia, full of car traffic and fumes, and we have a picnic on the first of every month, religiously, rain or shine…it’s a little old-fashioned step back into the future.”
As we crunch our way over a woodchip path that runs past rosemary bushes, squashes and serpentine tomato plants, the paradoxical phrase rings true: a healthy and palpable sense of atavism pervades the place. Here old knowledge is being unearthed for explicitly modern purposes.
“We’re trying to recover lost arts,” says Bardet. To her the art seems to have been lost in the late fifties and early sixties, when the national reverence for things grown was buried under a giant tomb of meatloaf and Wonder Bread, when highways and cheap fuel eliminated the meddling of the seasons, and when the delicacies or horticulture gave way to readymade meals and preserved foods that seemed never to go bad, even if they never tasted good to begin with.
Bardet recalls those days with a smile that winces. “My mother actually has a cookbook by Peg Bracken called The I Hate to Cook Book.”
But the work members do amounts to more than a personal hobby and culinary advantage; gardening is serious business, and with the looming ecological and economic troubles facing humanity, it wouldn’t take too great a shaking of the world’s foundation to make one’s relaxing hobby turn into a vital means of sustenance, much like the victory gardens were for citizens in WWII.
“Five years ago I felt like I was hit by the cosmic meatball when I really began reading seriously about the energy crisis and what the future holds. I don’t believe that the future’s going to resemble the past. There’s going to be a need for people to know basic things.”
Such statements suggest something Bardet readily acknowledges. Seclusion and intimacy notwithstanding, she sometimes wishes this private oasis were a little more like a public plaza, a low-pressure environment people regularly visit to garden, talk shop or just enjoy the company of the vegetative world. Lucky for her, and for Benicia, her group might soon come into a second property capable of fostering such an atmosphere.

A Plot to Make a Better World -
Members of the Benicia Community Garden have had discussions with Estey Real Estate, who manages the property, about acquiring a lease on a prime piece of land located at the apex of downtown’s pedestrian traffic. The lot is located at 1st and D Streets across from the Union Hotel and, in the twenty four years Bardet’s lived in Benicia, it’s never been sold. The owners have occasionally leased it for Christmas trees, pony rides, and even for a small nursery. Now only weeds grow, and they grow there so abundantly that it has to be mowed every month to comply with city fire code. With so many talented gardeners willing to mow it for free, pursuing the property seemed a logical step.

“If we pay them a nominal fee and eliminate their monthly mowing charge we could have a beautiful garden that could be ripped out if anybody ever wanted to buy the land,” says Bardet. The Presbyterian Church charges $1 for their current property, and to get the project off the ground, BCG may have to dip into the $20,000 they received from the 2010 settlement agreement between the Good Neighbor Steering Committee and Valero.
Though a second garden would be larger than the current one, the group’s inclusive policy wouldn’t change. BCG’s only rules are the minimal ones of common sense and neighborly conduct. Each person maintains their own bed and contributes to water costs. If people leave their beds fallow in winter, gardeners will sometimes ask them to use that bed to plant fava beans, something that gives nitrogen back to the soil. Sharing is strenuously encouraged; hassling is not. And it’s all organic. Whatever adulterants enter the soil will likely be inherited by the next gardener, so pests meet their end by soap sprays and lady bugs.
There would be one significant change though: the new garden, should it move forward, wouldn’t have costly raised garden beds. “Instead we’d build rounded mounds, and irrigate them by putting straw down to keep down the weeds and create a definition between the path part and the garden,” says Ms. Bardet. But she won’t say much beyond that, not because she doesn’t want to speculate, but because she doesn’t want to impose. “Whatever anybody wants,” she says. “We’re not saying what this garden should be. What we need is to get the word out.”
She hopes the new garden would be more than just the public face of the organization, and starts a movement that causes satellite gardens to sprout up around the city. She has been keenly following San Francisco’s innovations in urban gardening, where every nook is fair game for growing and, “even median strips are being planted.” The BCG would aim to increase membership with a second location, but more than that they want to spread their wisdom as far as they can.
“There’s an ebb and flow here. People come and learn and they stay a couple of years and then they might leave the garden and we get someone new in. It’s a training place. We’re growing gardeners. It’s kind of our motto.”
Those interested in gardening, or in donating their shoulders, tools, or supplies to BCG can contact Marilyn Bardet at mjbardet@sbcglobal.net. Novices and fans are also encouraged to visit the garden on Wednesdays from twelve to two to learn the tricks of the trade, says BCG co-founder and master gardener Meg Grumio.