One day one of our staff members brought in a bottle of name brand apple juice she’d been given at a conference that morning.  The label read: “these apples are from….” and then listed SIX COUNTRIES.  In this tiny bottle.

Sometimes there is a sticker on your food that says where it comes from, and sometimes there is not. The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture has created a nifty tool for learning about the origins of the produce you’ll find in your supermarket. It’s a great way to see which things are absolutely never produced here (bananas let’s say), and which things the U.S. is a leading producer of (apples!).

Some Thursday links for your all:

• Slow Food Nation’s Victory Garden is complete and it’s beautiful. And Alice Waters talks up the street food section of the event.
• But can edible gardens save our broken food system?  Check out this very interesting article from one of the people who had his lawn transformed by artist Fritz Haeg’s Edible Estate project.  He says that “to repair the broken system that supplies the bulk of the nation’s diet will require Americans to step out of the garden and into the public arena.”
• A Montana environmentalist spends the day with some ranchers and opens her eyes to the threats that ranchers are facing out west.
• Check out the new “Eco-tube” and watch a video about you can reduce energy use in your home.

by Slow Food USA intern Sara Hoffman

Two items recently caught my eye and seem connected–big companies making efforts to make their practices sustainable. But are they going far enough?

1. The fast-food chain Chipotle’s recent decision to use more locally sourced food from small and midsize farmers has garnered a lot of media attention recently. In fact, Slow Food USA’s Communications Manager Kate Evanishyn was interviewed for an article on this subject by the Associated Press.

As Kate pointed out, it is the reality of America’s food system that when a fast food chain decides to source even a little of its food locally, the change can affect thousands of people. Chipotle’s “Food with Integrity” mission statement bears a lot of similarities to many of the changes that Slow Food wishes to see in the American food system; the hallmarks of Food With Integrity are “unprocessed, seasonal, family-farmed, sustainable, nutritious, naturally raised, added hormone free, organic, and artisanal” foods.

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An email that farmer David Perkins from Wisconsin shared with us about the flood damage on his property articulates perfectly the importance of the concept of a co-producer.

Here’s what David wrote: “A theme near and dear to Slow Food that you may want to follow up on is the support that exists between those farms with direct relationships with their co-producers. Our farm would be taking a significant financial hit if we sold by the pound. Our model is Community Supported Agriculture. It is the best “flood insurance” possible. Our members expressed concern for us as the rains fell; we’ve have wonderful supporting communications with the people we feed. There are several CSA farms that have had greater losses that would be extremely badly off without their members continued support. So I’d suggest to use your network of people to find and highlight these stories. In times of stress (floods, hurricane…) the producer to co-producer relationship is key to weathering the storm. Unfortunately, few farms have that producer/co-producer relationship; and flood insurance does not save the farm. ”

For more on the CSA model, and how the purchase of a share provides major financial support to the farm, see this recent article from the NY Times.

Now, to David’s above suggestion: can you share with us stories of the CSA model saving a farm from the ruin of a natural disaster? We’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

The fact that undocumented workers are:

a) indispensible to several industries in this country, especially food and

b) working in horrible conditions

is becoming impossible to ignore, or at least one hopes.

Over here we’ve got agricultural workers dying of heatstroke out in the fields.

Over here the kosher meat supply is dwindling after an immigration raid, and the plant workers are being processed as criminals.

The mainstream media likes to make a lot out of what our presidential frontrunners eat (usually beginning with “As Brillat-Savarin once wrote, “You are what you eat…”  True, yes, but zzzzzzzzzzz).

We have shied away from this topic, because more interesting than the state fair corndogs they might eat (to seem down with the people) would be their stance on the food system, something that is usually much harder to ascertain, and less interesting a photo op.

This upcoming short piece in The New Republic is less about Barack Obama than it is about the neighborhood he hails from and its local supermarket culture, as well as the link between arugula and elitism.

It’s hot out there.  Should you need to take a break from your gardening, farming, grilling, etc. this weekend, you can sit down at your computer with an ice cold lemonade and and check out the following:

1. Five Great Websites for Farmers, Wannabe Farmers, and Consumers

2. How to navigate the mysterious origins of those nuts you buy at the store.

3. Talk about rose colored glasses: Have you heard about this miracle berry that makes everything taste sweet?

Stay cool….

by Slow Food USA staffer and blog editor, Jerusha Klemperer

Check out this thoughtful article from The American Conservative magazine. Its embrace of Slow Food may be surprising to some, but it’s a welcome addition to the conversation.

It reminds me of a lunchtime visitor we had a few weeks ago, a farmer from South Carolina who noted that when it comes to Slow Food, conservatives and liberals may be on common ground. Everyone from homeschooling homesteaders to harvesting hippies can get behind good, clean food and the virtuous revival of sitting down together over a meal and appreciating its bounty.

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To add to yesterday’s post about planting an edible garden on the White House lawn:

Roger Doiron, over at Kitchen Gardeners International (whom we wrote about earlier this year) also has a petition for you to sign, as well as a fleshed out plan for getting our next President to roll up his sleeves and find his inner farmer.

Also, we heard that Alice (Waters) has gotten a verbal commitment from Obama to do just that…

The main civic garden on our minds these days is the Victory Garden being planted on the front lawn of City Hall in San Francisco, for Slow Food Nation.  However, there’s a group out there that has its eyes on a bigger prize: the White House Lawn.*

Most interesting might be their PR tactics–in an effort to ride the immense PR coattails of the new iPhone that debuts this Friday, they are linking their campaign  for an organic garden on the White House lawn to Apple’s big push. They call themselves “Waiting for Apples,” and although this article paints them as a bit unclear on how these two things mesh beyond their Apple-ness, it provides an opportunity to think about how small grassroots campaigns can piggyback on big corporate ones.

To join the effort, you can, er, buy yourself a new iPhone, or sign a petition here.

To follow the progress of the Slow Food Nation Victory Garden, check out their blog.

* For a fun account of Alice Waters’ efforts during the Clinton administration to have Bill plant a garden at the White House, read Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, by Thomas McNamee.