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The Cristo Rey/Amazing Grace Community Garden: An interview with Dominic Smith

Where there was once a block of run-down row homes in McElderry Park in East Baltimore, Maryland, there is now a burgeoning vegetable garden. The Amazing Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church started the garden to provide green space for the community and produce for the church’s food pantry.

Looking for a service opportunity for his students which would allow them to interact with their community and be active, Dominic Smith, a Spanish teacher at Cristo Rey High School in Fells Point, partnered with the church to help develop the plot. Dominic was kind enough to discuss with me his experience spearheading this innovative project.

Students Gardening

LPL: Let’s start with the basics. What sort of work do the students do in the garden?
DS: The volunteers work on all sorts of different tasks, like picking up litter, preparing the soil, weeding, pruning, planting herbs and produce, harvesting, planting cover crop, and so on. I estimate that, with about 10 student and teacher volunteers per service day, we’ve collectively committed several thousand hours to the garden over the course of the planting and growing season.

LPL: How do you see the project fitting in with the mission of Cristo Rey High School?
DS: This project really reflects the school’s commitment to improving our students’ health. We were recently awarded a grant to increase physical activity and promote better nutrition in the school. The garden fits right in with that since it gets the kids outside and gives them a chance to be active together while learning more about how fresh produce is grown. That’s especially important for our kids. A lot of them either don’t eat, or eat out of Styrofoam. By growing and learning more about fresh fruits and vegetables, the kids are being exposed to alternatives to processed junk.

LPL: How have you made junk food alternatives seem more attractive to the kids?
DS: We’ve made a real effort to connect the vegetables we planted to the foods they like to eat. Rather than tell them to eat something else, we’re trying to show them where their family dishes come from and how healthy they can be compared to the Burger King next to the school.

Weeding the Garden

LPL: What sorts of challenges have you faced?
DS: The primary challenges we faced up front were that the soil had fallen into bad shape and there was no water. We’ve been working hard to reinvigorate the land by planting nitrogen-rich cover crops and integrating native species. Our big success was getting water out to the plot. First, we made some rain barrels and then the church board and I worked through some connections we had with the city to set up a water line.

Despite all of that, we’ve still had a poor yield. Although we have had some moderate harvests, it would be great to walk into school with big bags of produce so that we’d be able to say, “Look at how much we’ve grown.” It’s really important to remember there are other ways of showing we’re successful – like physical activity and volunteer hours or the kids’ learning.

LPL: What are your plans for the future?
DS: I’m working on setting up propagating boxes to grow seedlings for planting next spring and I’m looking into plans to set up a drip irrigation system so that we use the water more effectively. In the future it will be necessary to find partners who can supply us with compost, soil amendments, landscaping materials, and the occasional use of a truck. Ultimately we’d like to have some low hoop houses to help us move to a growing calendar which better matches the school year.

The partnership between Cristo Rey Jesuit High School and the Amazing Grace Food Ministry is evidence of the community-building potential of urban gardens. With dedicated leadership from Dominic Smith, this collaboration adds to Baltimore’s growing green landscape.

-By Lisa Lagasse

A Former Teacher’s Take on The New Dietary Guidelines for America

Every five years, the United States Departments of Human Health Services and Agriculture jointly release the Dietary Guidelines for America in the hopes of encouraging every American to eat a healthy diet, however, chances are the average person will never set eyes on the report. As a former teacher and observer of arguably the most unhealthy generation in American history, I look at this document and immediately think, “How can I ensure that the crucial messages buried in this bureaucratic document will be delivered to the children and parents who need to hear it?” While the objective is to provide Americans with a guide to a healthy eating pattern, the recently released 2010 Dietary Guidelines places a heavy emphasis on the fact that a “guide” is no longer enough and lays out a “Call to Action” to help Americans make healthier choices. Much of that “Call to Action” should be aimed at our nation’s schools where the foundations of healthy eating and living are often built.

As a high school teacher of a low-income urban school in Richmond, California, I witnessed the front lines of the childhood obesity epidemic as it manifested itself in real time. I also observed the interactions between the food environment (the elements of our surroundings that influence what we eat) and my students’ choices. Often that food environment was exemplified by a lack of access to healthy affordable food, the ubiquity of corner stores and fast food locations and a school food environment filled with competitive foods and pre-prepared food service meals.

What I saw among the majority of my students was a lack of any active engagement with the food system that was supplying their daily calories. Nutrition was no longer taught at the school, there was no school garden, there were no health professionals (nurses) other than psychologists to help with counsel students regarding family and violence issues. Other than the few immigrant families that had home gardens to supplement their food purchases, students were either handed food or food was purchased with little thought about their consumption in a meaningful way.

The new Dietary Guidelines recognize this fact. Chapter 6, titled, “Helping Americans make healthy choices,” opens by stating, “Today, Americans must make these choices within the context of an environment that promotes overconsumption of calories and discourages physical activity. In fact, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines’ Call to Action includes three guiding principles, all of which are absolutely essential for our schools and communities to develop over the next decade. They are:

1. Ensure that all Americans have access to nutritious foods and opportunities for physical activity

2. Facilitate individual behavior change through environmental strategies

3. Set the stage for lifelong healthy eating, physical activity and weight management behaviors.

Calories added by the way we prepare food.Set the stage for lifelong healthy eating, physical activity and weight management behaviors.

Being a teacher, I immediately look at these principles and the way they apply to our school environment. What the Dietary Guidelines are telling us (and they actually state it) is that our schools need to be empowering our students and families with “improved nutritional literacy, gardening, and cooking skills to heighten enjoyment of preparing and consuming healthy foods.”

The question is why aren’t we teaching our kids how to cook? Why aren’t we engaging our students with food production and while it’s happening, talking about the nutritional benefits of healthy food. Look at Figure 5-2. Why aren’t students analyzing food nutrition labels and charts like these and talking about why our processed foods have so much added fat, sugar and salt. Then they could discuss common sense purchasing decisions that can be made in order to be healthy. But those duties have been relegated to whom? Parents? Advertisers? Providence? New research is telling us that the influence that parents have on their children’s eating habits is weak, pointing to the complex social and physical environment and our children’s interactions with it. Institutions, like our schools need to stop being a passive participant or even a negative influence on our children’s eating habits and start being a positive influence, potentially strengthening the influence of parents again. I view these basic skills as an investment in future health for families and our nation. (To view a school-cooking project in Baltimore, click here and in New York City click here)

Most initial reporting on the new Dietary Guidelines has been positive; even the experts are surprised at the way the administration has put getting control of the obesity epidemic on the front burner. In a recent Washington Post article, Marion Nestle, the distinguished professor of Nutrition at NYU states, “I never would have believed they could pull this off…The new guidelines recognize that obesity is the number one public health nutrition problem in America and actually give good advice about what to do about it: eat less and eat better. For the first time, the guidelines make it clear that eating less is a priority.”

Just looking at the differences in the table of contents from the 2005 guidelines to the 2010 guidelines you can see a significant shift. In 2005, one third of the chapters related to specific nutrients (fats, carbohydrates, sodium, potassium) while in 2010, a third of the chapters are about developing healthy eating patterns and helping Americans make better choices. Just from that first glance a reader gets the sense that the 2010 document is much more accessible for the average American, with real common sense advice about how and what to consume, in place of confusing statements using nutritional jargon. Now, this isn’t to say that the document does not cover in depth the scientific and nutritional backing of their guidelines nor that the nutritional jargon is gone, but the document appears more approachable. In addition, for the first time the general message is first and foremost to eat less. In the very first sentence of the executive summary the document states, “eating and physical activity patterns that are focused on consuming fewer calories, making informed food choices, and being physically active can help people attain and maintain a healthy weight…”

Not many Americans end up reading the Dietary Guidelines, but they are important for shaping many of the food programs that our government delivers. And in the sense that our government must know what needs to be done before they can actually help individuals accomplish these changes, this is a step in the right direction.

-Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl

Understanding foodborne microbial hazards for smarter food policies

One in six Americans contracts a foodborne illness each year (CDC). Such illness can mean an unpleasant day of vomiting, diarrhea, fever, and/or worse— hospitalization or death in rare cases. “There’s something that can be said about the problem of foodborne illness, that can’t be said of many other public health problems of the day” said Elisabeth Hagan, Under Secretary for Food Safety at USDA, who opened a January 25^th foodborne hazards conference convened at the Pew Charitable Trusts offices in Washington DC, “and that is: Foodborne illness is preventable.”

The day-long conference “Managing the Risk of Foodborne Hazards: STECs and Antibiotic-Resistant Pathogens” was organized jointly by Pew and the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI). Hagan and other conference speakers focused their attention on antibiotic-resistant pathogens and shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (E. coli). A key message that I heard from several speakers was that we know enough today to develop policies that can enable action in addressing the most pressing foodborne hazards.

Central to the development of smarter food policies is incorporating our understanding the ecology of foodborne microbes. For example, understanding the ecology of toxin-producing E. coli strains can improve our ability to detect the right types of E. coli in tainted foods. In another example, nontherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animal production creates a persistent collection of antibiotic-resistant bacterial genes or a ‘resistome’ on farms that is difficult to dismantle. Antibiotic-resistance genes transferred to pathogenic bacteria creates a health hazards for animal workers, slaughterhouse workers, farm neighbors, and to consumers who handle or prepare raw meat in their kitchens.

Antibiotic-resistant pathogens

The Pew/CSPI conference focused on antibiotics in food animals because in 2009 nearly 80% by weight of all antimicrobials were sold for use in food animal, and the remaining 20% by weight were used in human medicine, as reported last year by Ralph Loglici on the Livable Future Blog.

Resistance is an inevitable result of using antibiotics on food animals or humans. In the words of Quijing Zhang of Iowa State University, “[it is] always going to happen.” Once gut bacteria become resistant to antibiotics, they can trade the blueprints for resistance to other beneficial bacteria or with pathogenic bacteria in a giant microbial swap meet called ‘the resistome.’

The microbial world’s resistome and our own human-centered biome collide more often than we think—just talk to a health care provider about hospital-acquired antibiotic resistant infections or read the latest 2008 report on the quality of retail meats from the U.S. National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System.

When humans take antibiotics or animals are given antibiotics, these are individual decisions—and as Dr. Stuart Levy of Tufts University pointed out, “[these individual decisions have] societal effects when antibiotics are mismanaged, such that every dose of antibiotics has a consequence.” Levy underscores the severity of current practices, saying, “the fact that we are still practicing [the use of antibiotics in animal production] is an embarrassment and a mistake.”

Leading U.S. Food Service Provider Introduces Meatless Monday to Potentially Millions of Customers

The national non-profit Meatless Monday campaign is proving to be “The Little Engine That Could” in the environmental public health world. In just the last two years national awareness of Meatless Monday more than doubled. According to a commissioned survey by FGI Research more than 30 percent of Americans are aware of the public health campaign, compared to 15 percent awareness in 2008. No doubt the announcement last week that Sodexo, a food service company which serves more than 10 million North American customers a day, has adopted the campaign will only help to increase Meatless Monday’s popularity.

A number of Sodexo facilities including the Johns Hopkins Hospital’s Cobblestone Cafe′ conducted their own Meatless Monday campaigns. However, starting this month Sodexo expanded the initiative to all of its more than 900 hospital clients, “as part of its ongoing effort to promote health and wellness.” In the spring, the company will offer menus and materials to all of its corporate and government clients and in the fall it will officially implement Meatless Monday at its “Sodexo-served” colleges and schools.

Sodexo joins a growing list of Meatless Monday supporters. Some of the most recent high-profile Meatless Monday converts include Moe’s Southwest Grill; Mario Batali, Celebrity Chef and restaurateur; Laurie David, An Inconvenient Truth producer and dozens of municipalities, universities, colleges, and restaurants. Read More >

Happy Holidays from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future

Can Organic Farming Feed the World?

Charles Benbrook, PhD, visiting CLF’s offices earlier this week, sat down with CLF staff to discuss a wide variety of topics, including the future promise of organic farming. Following his keynote lecture at the Polly Walker Ecology Fund, the Livablefutureblog asked the Organic Center’s Chief Scientist if organic agriculture could feed the rapidly increasing population, and to outline the importance of soil in the equation. A full video of Dr. Benbrook’s December 7, 2010 presentation at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will soon be available on the Center for a Livable Future’s website.

Is There a CAFO in Your Neighborhood?

National consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch (FWW) just released the latest version of its Factory Farm Map, which charts the concentration of factory-farmed animals across the country and their subsequent affect on human health, communities and the environment.

As most factory farmers and the state and local agencies that regulate them are often unable and/or unwilling to provide information about the locations of factory farms, researchers at FWW analyzed data from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Using USDA Census data from 1997, 2002, and 1997 for beef and dairy cattle, hogs, broiler meat chickens and egg-laying operations, FWW researchers calculated the number of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) in each county in the United States. In addition to county-by-county analysis, viewers can filter the map by species of animals farmed, zoom in to the state or county level, and view maps by year.

The user-friendly Factory Farm Map shows that, though the total number of farms raising livestock in the United States has declined in recent years, these farms have increased in size. In other words, independent animal farmers are disappearing while large factory farms are getting bigger, and bigger factory farms mean more pollution and economic hardship in many rural communities across the nation.

Urban Foraging in Asheville, NC

While accompanying my fiancé to Asheville, N.C. for one of her residency interviews, I found myself bouncing around from coffee shop to coffee shop in downtown Asheville, scooping up free internet, downing coffee, handling bits of work, bits of personal business and trying to think about whether I could live here for the next 4+ years. Then I remembered an article we had read in the New York Times about an “Edible” park in Asheville. I quickly looked it up, and found out that Asheville indeed had embarked on an edible park based on the foundations of permaculture and “edible forest gardens”

Canopy of Fruit Trees

I drove five minutes out of downtown and found a small park with a recreation center, looking out onto city hall. As you walk down a path through the park, what you see are grapes lining the fence of a basketball court with fig trees, elderberry trees, and kiwis both growing and vining through fence-like structures. Further down the path are apple trees, peach trees, berry bushes and other edible plants that I couldn’t recognize due to the coming winter season. Everything in this area of the park is both edible and representing of mini-ecosystems called “edible-forest gardens.” Planted next to the fruit trees are plants that work in symbiosis with the fruit tree, much like the different species in a forest. I saw herbs that attract pollinators, ground cover like lemon balm and strawberries that keep the ground moist, avoid evaporation and block out weeds. Other perennials like borage, comfrey and purple tree collards act as dynamic accumulators, which bring important minerals from the soil and make them available to the surrounding plants, while plants like artichoke act as natural “mulchers” that continually feed the soil. I did not see all of these plants present, but I can understand that is their vision. Read More >

On Tuesday, the US Department of Agriculture National Resources Conservation Service (USDA-NRCS) released a draft report that, given their usual alignment with agricultural interests, is surprisingly straightforward in its assessment of the inadequacy of conservation practices in place on farms in the Chesapeake Bay region. The report titled “Assessment of the Effects of Conservation Practices on Cultivated Cropland in the Chesapeake Bay Region” is the second in a series from the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP), initiated by the USDA in 2003.

Through the CEAP, USDA aims to (1) take stock of conservation practices currently used in watersheds and the effects they have on water quality, (2) estimate the need for additional conservation practices, and (3) calculate the potential outcomes if additional conservation practices were put into place. To generate data for the report, the USDA employed various methods including a farmer survey to assess current usage of conservation practices; a statistical survey of conditions and trends in soil, water and other natural resources; and three environment and watershed models. Read More >

Reading between the lines: FDA indicates consumer preference not a reason for salmon labeling

FDA hosted a hearing on Tuesday, September 21 to discuss the hypothetical labeling of genetically engineered (GE) salmon. Just fifteen hours earlier the FDA finished hearing the debate on GE salmon approval, which gave the impression that FDA was moving faster on the issue than it actually is. This compressed schedule caused frustration among experts, leading George Kimbrell of the Center for Food Safety to say “it is inappropriate to hold hearings on labeling before [GE salmon] are approved.”

In oral statements made before the FDA panel, Food and Water Watch (FWW) speaker Patty Lovera and the Alexis Baden-Mayer of Organic Consumers Association were not in favor of GE salmon, although if approved, Lovera recommended mandatory labeling of GE salmon. When pushed by the FDA panel on the material reasons for labeling, pro-labeling advocates often cited a lack of data on allergenicity of GE salmon or consumer preference. In a major break with other consumer advocacy groups, Gregory Jaffe from the Center for Science in the Public Interest indicated a preference for no GE labeling.

Salmon fillets in the grocery store (source: http://www.ctbites.com/home/2009/10/14/the-fresh-market-opens-in-westport.html)

If GE salmon is approved, the FDA has indicated that labeling will be based only on material differences in GE salmon compared to non-GE salmon, and not based on consumer preferences for GE labeling. These views may not be consistent with surveys that show 70% of American consumers want GE food to be labeled, from data reported by Jaffe.

Industry groups, including Richard Carnevale of Animal Health Institute, stood in line to argue that there were no material reasons why GE salmon should be labeled. The CEO of AquaBounty, Richard Clothier gave a series of other arguments against mandatory labeling, including the “slippery slope” that may lead to labeling of all GE foods and if labeling “complicated the process it would be a pity.” It appears that all stakeholders, including the FDA, realize this is a complicated process, and are willing to work through the difficult decisions.

If GE salmon is approved, consumers will have the ultimate say in its success. Salmon is the 3^rd most consumed seafood product in the US and its popularity and high market price will likely continue,whether or not consumers know what kind of salmon they are eating. It remains to be seen if the aquaculture industry realizes that the rising interest in communicating where and how our food is raised may be a benefit as opposed to a liability. Elliot Entis, the founder of AquaBounty, indicated he would be in favor of voluntary labeling as a type of product branding. Entis was in favor of calling their salmon “Panama Reds,” although one can only wonder if this is just a red herring.

- Dave Love

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