“Decatur’s Kitchen Garden”, located on over an acre of land owned by the United Methodist Children’s Home just outside of the Decatur city limits, plans to break ground next Wednesday morning.

According to a press release put out yesterday…

Decatur’s Kitchen Garden is designed to foster community, offer education about healthy food traditions and growing practices, and enhance biodiversity through cutting-edge sustainable resource management. Through a Global Growers market initiative, good produce will generate supplemental income for community producers when it is distributed directly to DeKalb County residents through local markets, restaurant liaisons, community food co-ops and a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program.

“The Garden will host more than an acre of urban market garden space, to be cultivated by culturally diverse community producers from our local refugee communities and nearby neighborhoods,” stated Susan Pavlin, Director of Global Growers Network. “A range of annual and perennial foods, with an emphasis on specialty cultural crops, will be grown at this community market garden site,” she continued.

Greg alerts us to this time change for Decatur’s Saturday Farmer’s Market…

Due to the cold mornings we are changing the market hours to 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. until the spring when Daylight Savings Time goes into effect.

This morning the AJC profiles Decatur’s Sugar Creek Garden in an extensive article about the city’s burgeoning community gardens.

The slender finger of land alongside Sugar Creek, tucked away in Decatur’s southwest corner, is practically invisible from two nearby roads. Sugar Creek itself, with those concrete embankments engineers were so fond of during the 1960s, looks like an open gash.

A leaning, rusted sign post, maybe 30 years old, says “Warning Stay Out” which, to conventional eyes, appears like sound advice. But when Lindsey Mann first scanned this same Sugar Creek vista she saw a virtual Eden.

Nice piece.

Ah, there’s nothing quite as invigorating as a real-world story that results in an ultimate clash of ideals.

If you’ve yet to hear, the world’s largest food retailer is now openly promising to put a good deal more “local food” on its store shelves in the coming years, reopening the debate about the role or place of large corporations in the “local food” movement.

If you’ve seen Food, Inc. or found yourself on the receiving end of a “what’s evil about Whole Foods” rant , you are probably already pretty well-versed in this dilemma, which pits the money that large businesses can inject into local and/or organic farms against the often foggy larger purpose of the local food movement.

In the New York Times article, Linda Berlin at UVT sums up the major issue thusly…

“The local-food movement has been, certainly, about taste and quality of food, about providing good incomes for farmers, and also about other things that have to do with building smaller economies so we as a society aren’t dominated by the more industrial complexes,” she said. “This initiative doesn’t necessarily address that.”

If you listen to environmentalist Bill McKibben in his “Deep Economy“, the local food movement originally grew out of a deflated organic movement that felt a loss of purpose when larger corporations jumped onto and exploited that successful bandwagon.  Upon reflection by its 1970s founders, “organic” was too narrow – and reactionary honestly – a vision for what they were hoping to achieve.

“Local food” was seen as a way to tighten the qualities and mission of the movement, which, inadvertently or not, would make it less easily adaptable by larger corporations, who’s primary interest wasn’t in the local communities and relationships that were built around this most basic of human necessities, but the bottom-line.

However, like organic before it, local food’s current image in America has become vulnerable to being co-opted by major corporations, thanks to the natural fragmentation of the movement as it has gained in popularity across the continent.

Read the rest of this entry »

In a note from the organizers of Decatur Farmer’s Market posted on The Decatur Minute…

Since Labor Day there has been a drop off in the number of shoppers at both the Saturday and Wednesday markets, particularly the Saturday market. School starts, kids get busy with activities, and the number of events increases. This is the first year the Decatur Markets have been open year-round so remember to stop by and shop. You gotta eat, right?

Hmmm.  From the front page of Sunday’s AJC…

When Atlanta gardeners pick their pumpkins and gourds next month by hand, landscaper Brian Barth will harvest his bounty by net.

Barth has raised more than 100 tilapia and a dozen catfish in a 1,200-gallon tank in a Decatur backyard, his first adventure in aquaculture.

Unlike vegetables, there’s no weeding or watering. Unlike chickens, there’s no clucking or running away. The tank’s churning water soothes by sound and promise. Barth knows exactly where his protein will come from.

“I really think this is the next thing in urban food farming,” said Barth, 31, whose Tree of Life Ecological Services installs edible landscapes. “I can see this in basements or office buildings. Restaurants have always had fish in huge tanks. It will be tank to table.”

Wicked.  From the Gainesville Times…

Sustainable agriculture groups have seized on the opportunity of the first open agriculture commissioner seat in more than 40 years.

Georgia Organics and Emory University on Thursday will hold what they are calling Georgia’s first sustainable agriculture debate.

They say the three men seeking to be Georgia’s second agriculture commissioner in more than 40 years have agreed to participate in front of a packed house at Emory University School of Law’s Tull Auditorium.

…Some 600 people responded to an invitation from the Atlanta-based organization to come to Thursday’s debate, [Georgia Organics Communications Director Michael] Wall said.

The response has been such that Cinnat Howett, Emory’s director of sustainability initiatives, had to hire security guards and extra custodians.

A bit more info on the event HERE.