Tag Archives: food knowledge

advocate, Corporate control of food, Local and regional food economies

Real Food for Real Kids

Real Food for Real Kids

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday, 12th January 2013

It’s no secret that this country is facing a public health crisis of truly large proportions, much of it linked to diets based on so-called ‘energy-dense, nutrient-poor’ foods – aka junk foods. Anyone who’s watched the cricket over the Xmas-New Year break – and your kids, if they were watching too – will have been subjected to an extraordinary barrage of ads promoting these foods.

And now one company, the biggest of them all, is courting controversy by shamelessly wrapping itself in the national flag, not to mention utes, ambos and kids soccer teams, in the lead-up to Australia Day.

But the biggest scandal of all is that Maccas and the rest have carte blanche to promote their products to our kids, including in the most insidious ways. Last year my 7-year old son played soccer in Sawtell, and because the team was sponsored by Maccas, all the goals carried the logos, as did the adult volunteers and umpires on their backs. Why do even such wholesome activities like junior sports on weekends have to be commercialised in this way? Simple answer: because it promotes brand recognition amongst the kids, and increases sales.

This is no laughing matter – it’s a national crisis. We have gone beyond the stage of an obesity epidemic, and moved into the sphere of a pandemic. Latest figures show that a quarter of all our children are overweight and obese, with the numbers of obese children more than tripling. If current trends are maintained, two-thirds of our children and youth will be overweight or obese by 2020.

The current generation of children already have a reduced life expectancy compared to the previous generation, and the way things are going, that gap can only widen, This is a shocking legacy to pass on to future generations.

Because the food system is globalised and these companies operate everywhere, the problem is similarly globalised. But so too is consciousness of the problems, and actions to address it.

Real Food for Real Kids
Real Food for Real Kids

Toronto parents Lulu and David Cohen-Farnell didn’t want their son Max eating processed and frozen foods at his day-care centre, so they began packing him healthy lunches. The daycare director asked Lulu if she might help with getting healthier food for the other kids, and so the company Real Food for Real Kids was born in 2004.

The Farnell’s were motivated by the health of their own child and his peers, but they also tapped into a major business opportunity. From humble beginnings in their own home, they now run a highly professional and efficiency catering company, that serves over 8,000 children in daycare centres, schools and YMCAs around Toronto. In 2012, their sales reached $C7.5 million.

Last year, grants made available through Coffs Council saw edible gardens established at several schools and daycare centres in Coffs Harbour, Sawtell and Toormina, most recently with the community and school citrus orchards in Sawtell. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if an enterprising, woman, man, couple and / or team decided to take this process of connecting our kids with healthy living and eating one stage further, and followed in the footsteps of the Farnells in Toronto?

After all, there’s no shortage of wonderful fresh foods, produced right on our doorstep. All it will take are some visionary and committed individuals, and some organisations willing to take a risk and partner with them.

For more information about Real Food for Real Kids, visit www.rfrk.com

advocate, Coffs Coast, Community gardening, Fruit growing, Land sharing, Permablitzes, Resilience, Self-sufficiency

Community-run edible streetscapes

Community Spirit alive and well in Sawtell

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on Saturday 24th November, 2012

A quiet revolution is underway in Coffs Harbour and its nearby towns.

Supported by small grants from Coffs Council, first under the Local Food Futures Project and now via the ‘Our Living Coast’ Regional Sustainability Program, several primary schools and child care centres have established productive gardens for their children over the past year.

These intiatives build on longer-established school veggie gardens, such as those at Toormina Primary School and Casuarina Steiner School.

And now school veggie gardens are becoming edible streetscapes, with the planting of around 30 ctirus trees in two locations in Sawtell. First, on Friday 16th November, kindergarted and class 5 students from Sawtell Public School planted trees on the school’s boundary. Then, on Sunday 18th November, over 30 local residents of all ages worked for an hour and a half to plant lemonades, oranges, mandarins, lemons, limes, cumquats, grapefruits and blood oranges on the road verge off 18th Avenue, adjacent to the Richardson’s Park sporting oval. Thus was born the very first ‘Sawtell Community Citrus Grove’.

The Sawtell Citrus Orchard team!
The Sawtell Citrus Orchard team!

Both these initiatives were spearheaded by the Sawtell Healthy Homes community group, with the organising energy provided by Peter and Erika van Schellebeck. Advice on species selection and soil preparation came from Juliet Thomas, of the Coffs Harbour Regional Community Garden. Over the past year Juliet has worked with the school principal, Michael Cheers, as well as staff, students and parents, to set up a beautiful fruit and veggie garden inside the school.

 

 

Erika highlighted the social and community-building aspects of the citrus tree plantings. “The project has been a great opportunity for us to get to know our neighbours, and I hope that the grove will become a community space where neighbours meet and walkers and cyclists stop for a rest and some shade”, said Erika. “This pathway is very popular, and so we designed a pathway through the grove to encourage people to move through it and enjoy the space. We also designed a small circular space in the middle that hopefully will one day have a seat and table to encourage neighbours to meet up in the space – maybe for Friday night drinks.”

 

Sawtell Public School kids planting citrus trees
Sawtell Public School kids planting citrus trees

Planting and caring for fruit trees also brings clear health and educational benefits for children. “I hope that the nature strip planting at the school will build on all the work the school is already doing to educate the students about healthy eating, and growing fresh fruit and vegies”, said Erika. This is part of raising levels of food literacy amongst children – an understanding where food comes from, how it’s grown (and raised), what healthy eating involves, and the importance of composting food scraps, so that soil fertility can be maintained and enhanced.

Erika hopes that these initiatives in Sawtell will help inspire other groups of residents in other parts of Coffs Harbour and its surrounds to also get behind the push to make this region ‘edible’ – and for the Council to support them with small grants and making the paperwork easy.

“The grove already looks great – it has turned an unloved and unused piece of swampy land into a space for the whole community to enjoy, and, in a few years, to enjoy a wide variety of free citrus. I hope that the grove and school nature strip planting will encourage Council to consider the merits of growing food in public spaces.”

This work in Sawtell builds on the Bellingen Edible Streetsacpes project begun in 2011, as a collaboration of Northbank Rd Community Garden, the Bellingen Chamber of Commerce, Transition Bellingen, and with funding from the Local Food Futures Project. Bellingen Council has also embraced the spirit, with a raised veggie garden at the entrance to Council Chambers.

Further afield, the trail has been well and truly blazed by Yorkshire café owner Pam Warhurst and her army of volunteers in the market town of Todmorden, with the Incredible Edible Todmorden project.  In Pam’s words, “I wondered if it was possible to take a town like Todmorden and focus on local food to re-engage people with the planet we live on, create the sort of shifts in behaviour we need to live within the resources we have, stop us thinking like disempowered victims and to start taking responsibility for our own futures.”

Amazing things have been achieved in Todmorden, and they’re just getting started. Makes you wonder what’s possible for Coffs Harbour, with our climate, water and soils.

For more info on Incredible Edible Todmorden, search for Pam Warhurst’s TED talk on www.ted.com.

advocate, Aquaponics, Backyard Gardening, Coffs Coast, Self-sufficiency

Backyard Aquaponics

A version of this article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate on 12.11.10.

Aquaponics in Coffs Harbour

Last weekend I was at the Sustainable Living Festival at the Coffs Harbour Botanical Gardens. I was there with Kirsten Larsen, Research Manager of the Victorian Eco-Innovation Lab (VEIL), which is run out of Melbourne University.

VEIL have produced some quality research over recent years around food-sensitive urban planning and design, and food supply scenarios assuming certain policy settings and priorities, e.g. ‘business-as-usual’ vs. local and government adaptations taking changed circumstances into account.

In its submission to the Federal Government on the proposed National Food Plan, VEIL stated that ‘substantial, unavoidable and imminent changes in our food supply systems require fundamental shifts in how we manage land and resources for food production and other critical needs’. The combination of a series of key drivers, including increasing constraints in the availability of oil and fresh water, climate instability, soil degradation, and the ongoing loss of farmers and good farmland, led VEIL to conclude that ‘our existing systems of food production and distribution [are] increasingly brittle’.

All of which means, as Kirsten pointed out last weekend, that we are entering a period of probably large volatility, in which there is no guarantee that the future will look like the past or the present.

Those listening to Kirsten certainly took this message to heart, and many were motivated, like thousands more around the country and around the world, to start taking matters into their own hands.

As I’ve written previously in this column, the coordinator of the new Coffs Harbour Community Garden at Combine Street, Steve McGrane, is a pioneer in showing what can be achieved in a small urban setting.

Steve’s latest project is aquaponics: the combination of small-scale (i.e. back-yard) aquaculture with the hydroponic growing of vegetables.  His system involves three ponds, each raised above the other, connected by halved lengths of long-lasting PVC pipe in which the vegies grow on a base on gravel, drawing their nutrients from the fish waste. Depending on the numbers of fish, plant growth can be remarkable: ‘as much as seven times faster than vegies grown in ordinary soil’, according to Steve.

Aquaponics 1

The water flow, whose purpose is also to return adequate amounts of dissolved oxygen to the fish, is regulated by a 20-watt pump, powered from a 40-watt solar panel, with four lithium batteries of 4 watts each. Running at lower rates of intensity, these can last for as long as 40 years. The entire micro-energy system cost $500 to set up.

Steve solar system

The system runs with special software that controls the maximum input and output of each battery, to prevent overheating.  The time the pump runs is determined according to the amount of sunlight: on cloudier days, the fish are less active, and so there will be less need for oxygen. On average, the pump runs for 10 mins every 20-30 minutes, leaving 15 minutes for the trays to empty.

aquaponics 2

Steve’s largest pond is 1500 litres, and over the summer he plans to stock it with up to 30 silver perch fingerlings, which will take approximately 12 months to reach an edible size of 500 grams. He’s also looking at installing a slightly larger system, in which he can raise up to 100 fish per year. About half of the total water surface area of the large pond, where the fish are raised, needs to be covered with plants such as water lillies, to return oxygen to the water.

aquaponics 3

Like conventional aquaculture, Steve’s fish depend on fish-meal, though he’s also looking at home-grown sources of protein like meal worms and comfrey. The fish may  not grow as fast, but that’s not the point. For Steve,  being sustainable means greater self-reliance:

“I’m all about not leaving your block to eat, having your food at your back door.”

advocate, Bellinger Valley, Community gardening, Self-sufficiency

Herbal wisdom in a community garden

Recovering the Wisdom of the Herbs in a Community Garden

Nick Rose

This article first appeared in the Coffs Coast Advocate, 23.10.10

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When we think of sustainability, we think of the environment. Yet it’s personal sustainability – of our own health and well-being, mental as well as physical – that’s increasingly challenged by the nature and pace of modern life. According to some estimates, the incidence of major depression has increased 10-fold since 1945.

Without in any way denigrating the vital role that primary health care and pharmaceutical drugs play once we are ill, preventative health care is based, above all, on a healthy and balanced diet. Herbs, like parsely, basil, coriander and sage, are an essential part of that diet. These herbs don’t just add flavour to our food; they are full of beneficial nutritional – and medicinal – properties that augment our physical and mental health.

Then there is the huge diversity of the purely medicinal herbs. At the North Bank Road Community Garden in Bellingen, local resident Penny Burrows has been working hard on creating a diverse medicinal herb garden since February 2010. In a space about 6 metres square, she – with various helpers – has planted an astonishing range of medicinal herbs, from lavenders, thymes, echinacea, evening primrose, rosella and parsley to borage, motherwort, valerian, Californian poppy, tansy, mugwort, yarrow, mullein and angelica.

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Obtaining many of her seeds from a specialist supplier near Lismore and Eden seeds in Beechmont, Penny has propagated the vast majority of the herbs herself, with the help and generous donation of time and seeds of local permaculture expert Aleasa Williams. “It’s been incredibly satisfying to see [the plants] all the way through, from seeds to harvest, and now be drying the flowers, and making remedies”, says Penny.

The flowers Penny has been drying recently are chamomile and calendula, which is a popular remedy for wounds, rashes and various skin complaints. She is making a calendula salve at home, drying the flowers in a dehydrater and soaking them in almond oil, then mixing the product with beeswax.

“It’s really beautiful, and fantastic for insect bites and stings, and skin rashes for the kids – I’m always using it for that sort of thing”, says Penny. “[Also] as a tincture it’s great to put on cuts, scrapes and sores, [as] it has cleansing/ disinfectant properties.”

Nearly all the herbs are multifunctional. Take borage, for example. Borage, says Penny, “is a good adrenal tonic – the classic saying is, ‘Borage for Courage’ .” It can be taken – like most of the herbs – as an infusion, using either fresh or dried leaves.

Then there’s chamomile, which “is really good for calming and soothing, and one of the reasons for that is because it’s quite high in calcium”, says Penny. She adds, “People [also] take it for cold and flu symptoms, [and] pain relief – it’s [also] great for the digestive system.”

Recently planted in the garden is the common herb sage. This herb has a reputation for enhancing mental acuity. It is an excellent gargle for colds, and is good for breastfeeding mums who want to cut back on their supply of breastmilk. Then there are herbs which stimulate the supply of breastmilk, like thyme, fenugreek, and cumin. And those herbs have other properties: thyme is good for sore throats and coughs; fenugreek helps with respiratory complaints and is also a nitrogren-fixing legume; and cumin is both a digestive tonic and is also a remedy for colds.

A lifelong gardener since her late teens, this is the first opportunity Peny’s had to really dedicate herself to growing herbs. “One of the things I love about this garden is that I have the luxury to grow the herbs because other people grow the food.”

Penny’s motivation, she says, is to create a diverse root stock of medicinal herbs for the area, sharing the knowledge and the benefits.

““[I want to] make sure that all these herbs are growing and available to us in this area. So many of the medicinal herbs used in Australia are imported.”

“The other thing about the herb garden which I really love is just the effect it has on people. Being involved in the gardening process is a therapy of its own”, says Penny. “Even if they’re not involved in the hands-on growing, just being here and hanging out – it’s a beautiful place to be, whether you’re involved in the gardening or not.”