October is National Farm to School Month! For the next 31 days, we’re celebrating local food in school cafeterias, gardens in schoolyards and food & ag education in classrooms. To kick the month off right, we wanted to share some of the great stories from our FoodCorps service members, Meghan McDermott and Lianna Bowman.
In the dizzying array of ever-evolving studies about which foods are healthiest, eating more fruits and vegetables is one fundamental piece of advice that health experts all agree is important in preventing chronic disease and living a vibrant, healthy life.
In Northern Michigan Kids news, schools across northwest Michigan have been serving up local food experiences in cafeterias, classrooms, and school gardens, and we’ll be sharing some of those stories each month. It’s a concerted effort to get kids excited about eating healthy food. And, wow, does it show.
Yet despite technology’s advancements, the last time I checked food isn’t grown by the judicious application of ones and zeros. Websites don’t plant seeds, and microchips don’t worry about organic certification audits. I’ve never known a software company to bring a handful of loam to its nose and smile at its richness, or let slip a tear of joy at the birth of a calf. With technology taking over our lives, is agriculture still relevant in a world racing to leave old ways behind? Solidly I say the answer is yes.
On October 11, MLUI will present Harvest@theCommons, a community farm-to-table event that will feature the best ingredients northern Michigan has to offer. You are invited! Not only to the event, but to help generate a buzz about all the good work this community is doing. The task is simple:
“Rebuilding the Foodshed: How to Create Local, Sustainable, and Secure Food Systems,” by farmer and university professor Philip Ackerman-Leist, is the third book in the Bob Russell Resilience Reading Project. He discusses how we came to the largely industrial food system that we have today, where it’s often easier for a school in our region to purchase lettuce from California, for example, rather than from farmers right down the road.