The Weblog
This page contains news, event information, and other announcements about our organization. If you have any questions about this program, please email us at littlerockfoodclub@gmail.com or call 501-396-9952.
The Market Is Open
Good Morning Friends,
The market is open for commerce.
Announcements:
Arkansas Natural Produce will be closing orders early this week due to travel. Consequently, if you want to order something from ANP, please finalize your orders no later than TUESDAY EVENING (8/4/15).
The Food Preservation Workshops in August and September led by The Root and Southern Center for Agroecology are still open for registration. You can get more information here.
As you make your orders this week, you might enjoy watching a 17 minute video produced this year from the Fair World Project that highlights the integral part small scale farmers can have in not only recreating sustainable food systems, but responding to climate change. One of my favorite food activists, Vandana Shiva, is in the video. The short documentary highlights the central role small scale farmers play in not only global food production, but in establishing regenerative agriculture, or agroecology, that provides real solutions to the damaging effects of modern agriculture on our planet. Our local farmers who grow genuine food for a local economy are part of a non-hierarchical network of producers around the globe who truly are central to helping resolve many of the problems we face with climate change and ecological degradation.
I’ve decided to start a small series on Food Sovereignty as the school year starts and we transition into the Fall. I hope to keep making connections and expanding what ALFN does as a mechanism for generating central Arkansas food sovereignty. I would like to start by suggesting our independence and freedom as eaters is severely limited today. Vandana Shiva, an author and food activist, suggests the global food system is based on a kind of “food fascism.” Shiva argues that patents on seeds by international companies such as Monsanto provide a context of totalitarianism in which research into the safety of GMO crops is curbed, and policies are implemented to safeguard the power of industrial agriculture through subsidies and laws. Food sovereignty is directly related to food sustainability in that local, small scale farmers respond more closely to their local consumers and help reduce the unsustainable production of food representative in modern agriculture.
As we start another week, consider the impact thousands of small, independent choices in favor of food sovereignty can make in our region as well as the larger climate and global food systems.
Take care,
Kyle Holton
Program & Market Manager