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San Diego 
Fri Oct 07, 2011 at 11:12:30 AM PDT
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As I noted the other day, San Diego is getting a much needed urban ag makeover. The current laws are silent on many issues and too restrictive on others. Fortunately, the city council has been incredibly responsive. They drafted up proposed rules which were heard by the Land Use and Housing committee this week.
As I've already noted, San Diego county cracked down on the proposal to allow backyard goats. I think even the goats will agree that this is very baaaaa-d.
However, the rest of the news is quite good. The proposed rules, plus some of the public comments made are below.
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Sat Apr 23, 2011 at 18:57:14 PM PDT
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No sooner than I heard about the concept of "food swaps" than a friend invited me to one right here in San Diego! The concept is simple: You grow or make a lot of something - more than you possibly need yourself - and you bring it to swap with others for whatever they brought.
I wondered what on earth I should bring. Right now is the season for strawberry jam, and if I could get super-ripe organic berries for $1/pint or less (which is possible at the end of markets, when the farmer has to sell them for cheap or lose them altogether), it would be worth it. But then I remembered the mountain of lemon marmalade piled up in our cupboard. So I RSVP'd, noting that I'd be bringing lemon marmalade to swap.
My table of lemon marmalade, with spoons for samples
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Sun Apr 10, 2011 at 03:58:09 AM PDT
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I've spent the past week immersed in local San Diego goodness. First off, there was the NBC airing of a Victory Gardens San Diego Garden build that I attended and wrote about here a few weeks ago. And on the same day, my city (a suburb east of San Diego) held a meeting where they requested public input on the future of our city, specifically focused on health & sustainability. Food issues where very much on the table in that discussion, so my roommate and I both went. And we both advocated for urban agriculture including legalizing chickens. The meeting, of course, gave me a migraine... but it was worth it if that's what it takes to make change.
The next day, around 11am, I heard a knock at the door. I was still in bed, dealing with that migraine. I got up, in my underwear, without my glasses, and ran to answer it. It was a reporter from the local ABC affiliate, and she wanted to do a story on my chickens. I told her I'd go put pants on. So my little chickees were on TV! The best part of the experience for me was the reporter's reaction to my chickens, because she was surprised how they did not smell at all and there weren't any bugs. I explained that chickens are natural composters and that compost, done right, should not smell bad. She was also impressed that the chickens were part of a larger, very well thought out plan for my garden.
But the big kahuna of local San Diego food activism came this weekend with the Cultivating Food Justice Event. This is a conference held annually that never fails to impress me. I attend food-related conferences around the country, and this one is unique. It's all local attendees, focused on local, national, and international issues. There's a mix between workshops that cover larger issues, like the farm bill, and workshops with immediate hands on applicability, like building solar ovens. In the past, I've attended workshops on backyard chickens and beekeeping.
This time, I went to one on farming in areas of scarce water and I learned some mind-blowing strategies for growing food without much water. For example, give your plants a few deep waterings a week instead of shallow waterings daily to encourage the roots to grow deep. Or direct seed when you can instead of growing or buying starts, because it will make the roots grow deeper, down to where there is moisture. But the craziest was a story about how people in some parts of Africa will trim the leaves and side shoots off of tomato starts until they have a 2-3 foot tall plant with leaves on top. They dig a narrow hole and lower the plant in, back fill it with rich compost, and give it some water to start it off. The result is that the plant is rooted deep enough to reach the moisture in the soil and survive without rain. Amazing!
The event was held in City Heights, a low income area with a large population of immigrants and refugees from all over the world. You can hardly walk a few blocks without seeing a thriving garden there. It's truly inspirational.
A new event this year was gathering into groups of people by their neighborhood in San Diego to make plans for how to improve our own communities. We gathered email lists for each neighborhood, so that activism can continue beyond the conference.
To me, the best part of the conference is its inclusiveness. It's always free, accessible via public transportation, with child care and translation available, and there is usually free food too. The result is that the attendees come from all segments of society, reflecting the diversity of our city. This is crucial, but it's not something that every conference like this achieves.
Saturday night, after the conference, we all gathered at a nearby home for a fundraiser for a new non-profit, Grow Strong. Founded by Amy and Malaki, a couple that is invaluable to our local food justice community, the organization is going to work toward food sovereignty in Malaki's home region in Kenya. The fundraiser included traditional Kenyan foods and locally brewed beer and mead, including an East African style beer made from millet and sorghum that was delicious.
Every year I am so inspired by the amazing people and knowledge of San Diego, which is, by and large, a conservative area where you wouldn't necessarily expect to find such an amazing food justice community. This year is no exception.
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Wed Mar 23, 2011 at 20:16:05 PM PDT
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Victory Gardens San Diego, or VGSD as it's known around here, is a group with a simple mission: to get people gardening! And one of the main ways they do that is by bringing a team of volunteers to someone's house or to a school or community garden site and, all in one day, building a garden from start to finish. I've been an avid gardener for about a year, but most of my training comes from books or trial and error. Thus, I went to the most recent VGSD garden build with 2 goals in mind: first, to help (of course) and second, to learn how the pros go about gardening.
Join me below with a photo diary of how a normal yard sprouted a garden all in one day.
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Tue Feb 22, 2011 at 14:55:04 PM PST
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At long last, after a multi-year effort by community gardening advocates, the city of San Diego is easing its regulations on community gardens. This issue first came to my attention several years ago, when the International Rescue Committee was in the process of founding its New Roots Community Farm. For the small community garden (under 3 acres) to get going, it cost $40,000 to get through the rigorous and often ridiculous permitting process. But once the garden got going, it was a huge success - so much so that Michelle Obama came for a high publicized visit. New Roots is located in an area with little fresh food and the gardeners are immigrants from all over the world. Many farmed in their home countries before coming to the U.S. and lack the money to buy the same quality produce they can grow themselves at New Roots. The success at New Roots just goes to show what a no-brainer it is to make it easier to establish more community gardens. Thank goodness the city has finally agreed! Now let's see if we can get them on board with friendlier rules for urban chickens :) More info can be found here and here.
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Tue Aug 10, 2010 at 14:22:18 PM PDT
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A meeting is going on as I write this. It's in Fallbrook, an agricultural area of San Diego county. While the meeting was advertised by the local Farm Bureau, it's being run by CDFA (the California Department of Food and Agriculture) and the USDA. We, in San Diego, are being quarantined.
The reason? The light brown apple moth, or LBAM. It's an invasive pest from Australia that the CDFA and USDA have been going bonkers over for the past few years, despite assertions from entomologists specializing in invasive pests that the government is using science from the 1960's and its tactics are, more or less, stupid and worthless. To date, quarantines by the government have harmed farmers in our state much more than the pest itself has. I've posted the specific rules of the quarantine below. Here's what the Farm Bureau website says about the impending quarantine:
As feared, another light brown apple moth discovery has occurred in the county. Instead of just one moth as was found in Bonsall, this time four were found in one trap, which exceeds the quarantine trigger of two. The site is near the intersection of the 805 and 15 freeways in the City of San Diego. Additional traps have been set to determine the intensity of the infestation and those traps will be read on Thursday.
Sometime next week the state will set the boundaries of the State Interior Quarantine, which will extend out 1.5 miles from the find sites and at this point doesn't appear to capture any commercial producers. However, after the state quarantine is declared, there will be the declaration of a federal quarantine and the feds are leaning towards placing the entire county under quarantine. Timing on that declaration is still unknown. County, state, and federal officials are currently working through the situation. 35 additional inspectors are currently en route to San Diego from other parts of the state and country to assist with the project.
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Sat Jun 05, 2010 at 22:05:18 PM PDT
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San Diego's got a new up-and-coming restaurant with a farm-to-table concept and a Mexican twist: El Take It Easy. I feel like this is the second generation of farm-to-table restaurants that occurs in a city. For the first few restaurants that source food locally, that alone is a novelty. Then when it catches on, you start getting sustainable seafood, Italian food, French food, Japanese food, etc. And since El Take It Easy is in the experienced, wonderful hands of Jay Porter, I feel confident it's going to be a smash hit. Jay's other restaurant, The Linkery, specializes in local, sustainable meats, and specifically house-cured sausages. (You get links of sausage, but you also get a link to the source of your food as the farms where they buy from are all listed on the menu.)
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Sun Apr 25, 2010 at 20:21:46 PM PDT
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Yesterday I had the privilege of hearing Raj Patel (yes, the Messiah) speak in San Diego. I'm always attracted to a man with a big brain, so of course I had to go hear him speak. And his speech was so great that I felt it was worth taking the time to transcribe the whole thing - with links to cite various references he made throughout the talk. This post does not contain the entire speech, mainly because it's just an awful lot to read at any one time. So here's the first 15 minutes, and I'll transcribe the rest soon.
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Wed Apr 21, 2010 at 20:08:03 PM PDT
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Michelle Obama visited a community garden in San Diego last week and she was featured on the front page of the local paper, the Union Tribune, the next day. I sent in a letter to the editor and urged others to do the same. Ultimately, three letters were published, mine and two others. I was the only food justice advocate who wrote in. The other writers had very different perspectives.
One refers to the case of John Gardner, a convicted sex offender who confessed to murdering 2 teenage girls in San Diego. He murdered them in February but only just confessed. Yet the newspaper put Michelle O on the cover, presumably instead of the murderer.
The same letter refers to the farmers at New Roots (the community farm Obama visited) as immigrants who hardly speak English in a rather derogatory way. That makes me mad, to be honest. These folks are refugees. They aren't people who crossed the border illegally. They came here legally with the help of the International Rescue Committee. No doubt many would rather be in their own countries, which are likely too war-torn to raise children in. And they should certainly be commended for growing their own food to provide their children with healthy diets.
The other letter is just plain insulting. Why does Michelle Obama need a staff with aides? Well if you think her job as First Lady is to stay home and to cook and clean at the White House and look pretty in photo ops, perhaps she wouldn't need aides. But that's not the role of the First Lady these days. Hillary Clinton took on health care. Michelle Obama has worked with military families and now she's focusing on children's health. If you want to look at a waste of taxpayer dollars, look to the Pentagon, not at the First Lady.
See the original article here and the letters that were published below.
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Thu Apr 15, 2010 at 08:49:54 AM PDT
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Michelle Obama to visit San Diego Community Farm
Michelle Obama is visiting San Diego to promote her campaign against childhood obesity.
The first lady will tour the New Roots Community Farm on Thursday afternoon as she promotes her campaign to encourage healthy eating for youngsters.
New Roots is the project of The IRC (International Rescue Committee), which is staffed by local heroes like Amy Lint and Ellee Igoe. They had to work like dogs to get this farm started and it's now the subject of a coordinated grassroots campaign to reform the city's laws around urban ag and community farms. You see, it cost tens of thousands of dollars to start this farm before spending any money on tools, seeds, or anything else. All that money was just to get through the various permitting processes required by the City of San Diego.
I don't have the details exactly, but it sounded to me that you need a good $10,000 or so to get a water meter installed, and then after that, you have to deal with various regulations that were not made with urban ag in mind at all. If you want to put up a structure, the city's laws were made for someone developing a condo building, not a tool shed. If you say you're doing agriculture, the city's laws worry about pesticide and fertilizer run-off, which isn't an issue if you're using sustainable methods. And so on and so on. At one point, San Diego even called a moratorium on new community gardens due to our water shortage - even though swimming pools, golf courses, and green lawns are all a-OK.
Despite this, the IRC still created New Roots Community Farm, which I believe is about 2 1/2 acres located in the City Heights neighborhood (an area with lots of immigrants from diverse backgrounds). I believe all of the folks who farm at New Roots are immigrants, often from Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
In another project, The IRC teamed up with Tierra Miguel (an absolutely amazing local farm) to provide Somali Bantu immigrants with a few acres at Tierra Miguel where they can farm. Tierra Miguel isn't as close to home as New Roots (it's quite a drive from San Diego actually), but the program's a huge success. From what I hear, quite a few of the elderly Somali Bantu immigrants had farming backgrounds and, without land to farm, felt lonely and depressed in their new country, surrounded by a new culture. Tierra Miguel offers them an escape from isolation and depression, and it also allows them to pass down their farming skills to their grandchildren and to provide their families with healthy food.
So I don't know what Michelle Obama will see or talk about when she's here, but I hope she learns a little about the background of the farm. The folks who made New Roots happen deserve the recognition they are getting today, and so do the farmers at New Roots. Now maybe the city government will pay attention to the First Lady, and get their heads out of their asses and fix local policies. (Last I heard, the city was saying that they've streamlined the urban ag permitting process and now all they need is a guinea pig with several thousand bucks to try it out and see if it is indeed better.)
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Wed Feb 17, 2010 at 21:44:48 PM PST
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The Association for the Advancement of Science is converging in San Diego this week, including a Monsanto Vice President who will be speaking. The San Diego Union-Tribune printed a (mostly) rah-rah biotech piece called "Bioengineering to crop up when science group meets." It's impossible to say all that needs to be said in one 150-word Letter to the Editor, but here's what I came up with:
The "titans of agribusiness" have delivered up decades of diet-related illness and unprecedented environmental destruction, not to mention a record number of hungry people (despite a simultaneous increase in the per capita amount of food produced), so why would we trust what they say now? We've had 30 years of biotech promises with little to show for it besides herbicide-tolerant and insecticide-producing traits that result in an overall increase in pesticide spraying and don't even increase crop yield. A 2008 UN/World Bank sponsored report written by over 400 scientists (the IAASTD report) found that biotech was incompatible with the needs of smallholder farmers who make up the majority of the world's hungry. Their recommendation for feeding the world was going organic, which would increase developing world crop yields by an estimated 80 percent. Yet, for some reason, even the U.S. government continues to listen only to the biotech industry and not to independent scientists who raise concerns about biotechnology.
I'd also like to rebut the idea in the article that we need a soybean with extra omega-3s. Our problem is not a lack of plants with omega-3s. Flax seed has plenty. But omega-3s are not very shelf-stable. Flax oil has to be kept in a dark bottle in the fridge and it still has a short shelf-life. THAT is why we don't get enough omega-3s in our diet. A GM soybean won't solve the problem, as any omega-3 added to a crop will make the crop less shelf-stable and thus less attractive to food manufacturers. Of course, omega-3's and shelflife are trade offs with one another that must be balanced, but there's nothing a GMO will accomplish that existing plants don't already do.
If other folks in San Diego want to submit letters to Letters at Uniontrib dot com, please CC me and I will publish them on this blog in a future post. Remember to keep your letters under 150 words and include your full name, address, and phone.
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Tue Jan 12, 2010 at 22:34:37 PM PST
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For months (if not years) I've heard great things about the San Diego Unified School District's food service director, Gary Petill. Now I've finally had the chance to meet him (over the phone and soon in person). And... wow!!!! San Diego school mean programs are not perfect - which he readily admits - but his heart and mind are in the right place, and he's doing all he can given the budgetary and logistical constraints facing him. And some of the schools are up for a school lunch makeover beginning with a visit by Ann Cooper next month, so it's only going to get better from here.
Here are some of the great things going on in San Diego's schools...
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Thu Aug 06, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT
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San Diego Roots held an AMAZING event this past Saturday. We called our celebratory blending of art, music, and food "Growing Places." The afternoon, which was a fundraiser for an educational farm that doesn't exist yet but may soon, began at 3pm with urban homesteading workshops. Participants learned to make sauerkraut, cheese, wheat flour, hot sauce, and ginger ale. At 5:30, we convened together for a discussion with community leaders about food policy and challenges and successes in our food system. At 7pm, local bands began playing and local, sustainable food was served. (The food was made by YUM! Super Foods Co and all of the food and cooking was donated.) Throughout the night, attendees bid on food-themed art in a silent auction.
So, without further adieu, please enjoy the pictures from Growing Places...
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Mon Jul 20, 2009 at 03:46:56 AM PDT
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An article about community gardens in Flint, Michigan describes a situation that we in San Diego are more familiar with than we wish:
Growing the vegetables and flowers is the easy part. But just ask Meekins what the group went through to build a simple greenhouse with donated materials.
It's a three-year tale of permits, reviews, site plan requirements and endless rounds of meetings with the city Planning Commission...
It's not that Flint officials are opposed to residents growing their own food in backyards or on nearly 2,800 vacant residential lots within the city limits (a list that's still growing to the tune of about 500 vacant lots per year).
The problem is the laws on the books simply predate the city's new urban reality.
"The zoning ordinance hasn't been revised since 1968, when we were a booming industrial city and didn't have to think about agriculture as part of city planning," said Erin Caudell, a technical assistant for the urban agriculture collaborative and the outreach coordinator for the Ruth Mott Foundation's Applewood program.
The entire article is a fascinating and worthy read. I'm thrilled Flint is addressing this, and I wish San Diego would too. I don't know the extent of the difficulties in San Diego, but I know they exist. You can spend a lot of money on all of the necessary permits and whatnot before you even plant a seed. Regulations here are not intended for community gardens and that's why they are so unsuitable and difficult for them. The question is how do we fix the laws so that we can meet our needs?
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Sun May 03, 2009 at 08:00:00 AM PDT
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Friday and Saturday, San Diego held its second Cultivating Food Justice conference. I went to the first one two years ago and it was spectacular. When talk started about doing a second one, I wondered how the hell we could pull off something as fantastic as the last one. It was a HUGE undertaking. And yet... it happened.
I was on the periphery of the planning, occasionally chatting with the main organizers but not really doing any of the work myself. It's really not a large group of people, and yet, the conference itself was intended to be BIG. And it was. My jaw totally dropped as I walked in the first night and saw what they had in store. Details below.
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