The status of rural women

Just now reading a spam blast from Episcopal Church world headquarters, I learned that this year's UN meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women, from the end of February into March in NYC, will have the primary theme of empowerment of rural women. There'll be lots about agriculture and food security on the agenda.

The papers of the pre-conference can be accessed here:
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/csw56/egm.htm

I have not had time to read them, so this is a note as much to myself as to my readers. About a third of the papers seem to be directly on agricultural topics and who knows how many indirectly. Several are on ecological topics.

Anglican women will be represented among the ngo's meeting at the same time as the UN conference in the center ring. One question I have, though, is why rural poverty in the US is seen by the Episcopal Church to be an issue primarily for indigenous peoples. True, there's no poverty like reservation poverty - but there's lots of rural poverty among other racial and cultural groups. But then, the Episcopal Church is not known for its rural consciousness - in fact, less and less so.

For some time I've had on my list of concerns the post harvest waste in the 2/3 world. Seems like our food waste here in the U.S. is concentrated in the retail and consumer sectors, while so much waste in the developing world is because of poor storage and refrigeration of harvested crops. So I was very interested when a Worldwatch video led me to Compatible Technologies International http://www.compatibletechnology.org/ . I was even more interested when I read about their many projects, and saw that two of their corporate sponsors are Cargill and Monsanto. Compatible Technologies do seem to be compatible with the resources and cultures where they are placed - so that they can be used effectively and maintained easily.

I wonder if anyone reading this blog has some insider knowledge about CTI? It seems the kind of organization worth supporting.

good news from the North Coast

I was in Crescent City this weekend - not for the start of the crab season, but coincident with it. Boats are back in the harbor - about 90 of them - and crabbing began on January 15. This is a boost to community morale as well as economy.

The season began late because the crabs were small this year. But that allowed a little more of the work of tsunami recovery to be done. Reliable sources report that the recovery work will be completed next year.

Sometimes you have to start small

especially when getting a congregation engaged with an issue. I've been racing ahead with all I've learned in the last five or six years about food system issues, but my congregation doesn't even fill up the basket of non-perishables for the local FISH pantry each week. Encouraging people to shop the sales and bogo offers wasn't working.

So I decided to create a food-of-the-month club. I interviewed Leona, volunteer manager of the pantry at FISH in Boyes Hot Springs. What do people really want? What items are rarely donated, or expensive to buy from the Redwood Empire Food Bank, or simply not available there? Turns out about 65% of the visitors to FISH are Latino. Things old white people drag out of the back of their pantries - canned beets, pork and beans are a couple of examples - aren't real hits. Folks ask for cooking oil - which is not available from REFB. They'd like some masa flour, or some sweetened condensed milk - not my fave, but there you go.

So I've put together a calendar of food pantry favorites, culturally appropriate foods, and healthful choices - and I'll use each month's item to do a little teaching. December was peanut butter month - an opportunity to talk about why p.b. prices are on the way up. This month, healthful cereals, and some conversation about whole grains and nutrition. This actually had me going where I never do - to the conventional cereal section at Raley's - and reading the boxes. Cheerios are way over rated. How do you tell if a cereal is whole grain? not by the front of the box, that's for sure. The first item on the list of ingredients should be a whole grain or whole grain flour. And the percentage of rda of fiber should be 10% or more - preferably 20%. One store brand cereal I found was named "Healthy Morning" - and had 2% of the rda for fiber. You have to eat pounds of fruits and vegetables to make up for that, when you could have had shredded wheat.

Stay tuned - I think I will post my notes for each subsequent month's food item here.

Thinking beyond the usual year end giving

Yes, there are drives for non-perishable food donations at every food bank in the land at this time of year, and it is important that we give, and encourage giving. Money is good, too. Being mindful that the percentage of food insecure people on the home front is roughly the same as those hungry globally (1 in 7) is a good thing.

And there are the feel good charities that move toward sustainability, such as Heifer http://www.heifer.org/ and its ilk. Even on Glee - Finn gave vegan, Jewish Rachel a sow!

But I'm thinking about giving to some groups that push the envelope. Non-profits that teach small scale sustainable agriculture, like Ecology Action http://www.growbiointensive.org/ based in wonderful Willits, but reaching folks in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East...

And to groups that watchdog global food justice, like the Oakland Institute http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/ doing particularly important work these days exposing land grabs in Africa.

I'm not going to repeat the cliche about giving a fish, but I will ask:

How many times can we multiply our charitable dollars to work toward food justice?

on the home front

Last week we completed the sprucing up of my kitchen. Well, almost. The hood that arrived was the wrong size, and I have a storage piece I bought at IKEA this week which needs to be assembled. Do that or put up the tree? What a choice.

The walls are whiter, the lights are brighter, the counter tops are no longer yet another faux wood grain, and the stove is white, clean and more energy efficient. (I did not replace the cabinets, not wanting to add to the landfills, but they were refinished and repaired earlier this year.)

The oven actually bakes things at the time and temp recipes say - quicker if I use the convection feature, which I have yet to experiment with. And I won't need to get a dehydrator - something I'd been thinking about, but wondered if I would use enough - because the manual that came with the stove includes full instructions and time tables for drying most everything. I went cookie mad the first couple of days, and have been carrying tins everywhere. I slowed down when I realized I didn't have enough occasions or friends to eat them all!

I'm usually not house proud at all. It takes company coming to motivate me to clean, and redecorating comes in very small spurts about every ten years or so or when I move. I've now lived here longer than anywhere - except the house my family moved to when I was two and a half - so it is time to do something. But I LOVE to be in the kitchen, and it is so much more pleasant now. I wonder if I love it too much... But then I think, good tools are important for living simply and frugally - and perhaps that's the embraceable rationale.

And I thought Costco Coffee Hours were bad!

This article in the NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/dining/store-bought-spoils-the-potluck-spirit.html

A friend and I were talking about potlucks just a few weeks ago - about the trend toward bringing high-end takeaway, rather than something simple and homemade. I don't see this much in my church circles, but I certainly do at other potlucks. My friend was commenting on the food brought to a women's hiking group lunch. Pricey takeaway salads and the like. Whatever happened to gorp? or mabye a homemade granola cookie? The only thing "slow food" about such meals is, one assumes, slowing down to stop at the grocery deli.

But what takes the cake - sorry - is this trend of bringing purchased baked goods to bake sales. I am thoroughly glad that I have never seen baggies of oreos at a charity bake sale. The reason some apparently give for the trend - that you know what's in purchased foods - seems spurious. What about that catchall "natural flavoring"? The fact that some children prefer commercial cookies - well, fie on their parents. If you are going to give the kids a treat, teach them to appreciate something good.