Good Food Is Emerging as a Real Alternative to the Dominance of Corporate Agriculture

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Grace Lee Boggs

Good Food Is Emerging as a Real Alternative to the Dominance of Corporate Agriculture
This good food evolution has usually been started by grassroots individuals who grew up in rural communities and now live in cities.

September 13, 2010 |


"Every year 76 million cases of foodborne illnesses occur, leading to about 300,000 hospitalizations and 5000 deaths." (New York Times, Sept. 4, 2010)

That's because most Americans still believe we have no alternative to the food produced by agribusinesses who care as little about our health as they do about the health of the chickens, turkeys, cows and pigs, so tightly packed in pens and cages on factory farms that the floor is scarcely visible, and where visible, is covered with excrement.

Fortunately, another healthier agriculture has been emerging in the last few decades.

This good food evolution has usually been started by grassroots individuals who grew up in rural communities and now live in cities.

In Detroit, for example, African American elders raised in the South saw the vacant lots in our deteriorating neighborhoods not as blight but as opportunities to plant community gardens that would also give city kids a sense of the time and patience that are a normal part of country life and that human beings now need for our continuing evolution. Detroiter Gerald Hairston, who grew up in W.Virginia. brought these elders together, and called them "Gardening Angels."

When we started Detroit Summer in 1992, a program to involve Detroit youth in rebuilding, redefining, and respiiriting Detroit from the ground up, these Gardening Angels provided the agricultural experience and skills needed to reconnect city youth with the Earth. Out of this reconnection of country and city, of oldsters and youngsters, the Detroit urban agricultural movement was born. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/food/148171/good_food_is_emerging_as_a_real_alternative_to_the_dominance_of_corporate_agriculture/

[Warpy]

1. The whole "good food" thing started in the 60s

and we suburban brats raised on canned everything took full advantage of the availability of fresh whole foods year around to build a whole movement around it. That it's spread to a larger culture is a good thing, but the suburban raised counter culture actually started it, gardens and all.

That the old folks are getting into the act in urban wastelands is really no surprise, since social security doesn't stretch that far these days. It's great that they're also teaching the curious younger folks what to do. We lacked that guidance in the 70s. Our parents grew lawn grass and shrubbery.

However, to pretend the good food movement started in Detroit eighteen years ago is in error. It's been springing up all over the place for 40+ years.

[marmar]

2. I don't think she's saying the good food movement started in Detroit 18 years ago..

She's just pointing out her experience as an example.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, marmar.

[Karenina]

4. TPTB are working very hard to make such cooperation

ILLEGAL.