Backyard farming business touts healthy food, healthy bodies, happy mind
By Julia Fairclough
Gabriel Erde-Cohen and Jessie Banhazl were onto something when they thought about how today's earth and health conscious people would appreciate growing the vegetables that they put on the table. They really hit it on the nail when they decided to do the actual farming for people and in a space as little as four-by-four feet...
more at TheSomervilleNews.com
Fermentation lecture and workshop:
Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods
Join Sandor Ellix Katz (aka Sandorkraut), author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, for this workshop. Learn how easy it is to make sauerkraut, pickles and other live-culture ferments in your own kitchen. Highly nutritious and filled with life, fermented foods have a long history and a promising future. Empower yourself to create these delicious and healthful foods!
2:30 PM - 5:00 PM
808 Commonwealth Avenue (Fuller Building)
Demonstration Room
Seating limited | $30 includes signed copy of Wild Fermentation | $20 without book.
Lecture, book-signing and dinner:
Cooking with a Conscience
Featuring ec0-chef, author, and food-justice activist Bryant Terry
Bryant Terry is a nationally recognized eco chef, author, and food justice activist. He is currently a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation. He is co-author, with Anna Lappé, of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen and author of the recently released Vegan Soul Kitchen. With the help of a Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellowship, he has started the Southern Organic Kitchen Project in order to educate primarily African-Americans living in the Southern United States about the connections between diet and health.
Dinner will feature recipes from Bryant's Vegan Soul Kitchen
5:30 PM - 7:30 PM
808 Commonwealth Avenue (Fuller Building)
Demonstration Room
Seating limited | $45.00 includes signed copy of Vegan Soul Kitchen
Film Screening and discussion:
King Corn
King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.
In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America's most-productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat - and how we farm.
Film-screening will be introduced by Ian Cheney, filmmaker, and followed by discussion with Aaron Woolf, director.
8:00 PM - 10:00 PM
Boston University Law School
Auditorium | Barristers' Hall
765 Commonwealth Avenue
[Directions]
Free and open to the public | Reception to follow
Note: These events are taking place in conjunction with an international conference on "The Future of Food." Detailed conference description here>>
International Conference:
The Future of Food: Transatlantic Perspectives
Free and open to the public
(includes all panels, breakfast, coffee breaks, reception)
8:00 AM - 8:45 AM: Breakfast and Registration
8:45 AM - 9:00 AM: Introductions
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM: Opening Keynote Address9:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Session I: From Farm to Fork: The Global Food Chain
This session traces the increasingly obscure path of food from farm to fork. The focus is on “food production” and the industrialization of agriculture. It will consider the growing influence of “agribusiness” and the “politics of food,” comparing the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union with agricultural policy in the United States. We will explore the alignment (or lack thereof) of business and consumer interests and the impact of the transformation of the food system on culture.
Participants:
Arie van den Brand, President, Biologica and former Member of Parliament, the Netherlands
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
Mark Winne, author of Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty
Moderator: James McCann, Professor of History and Associate Director for Development, African Studies Center, Boston University
11:00 AM – 11:30AM: Coffee Break
11:30 AM – 1:00 PM: Session II: The End of Cheap Food: Food and Geopolitics
This session will center on “food security.” It will address the rising cost of food and the “fuel vs. food” debate. Is the growing demand for biofuels responsible for food inflation? Other threats to food security will also be explored, namely, fossil fuel dependence, loss of biodiversity, and water shortages.
Participants:
Benedikt Haerlin, Foundation on Future Farming | Save Our Seeds
Jim Harkness, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy
Tim Wise, Director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University
Moderator: Cutler Cleveland, Professor of Geography and Environmental Science, Boston University
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM: Vegetarian lunch with guest speakers
Seating limited | $15.00 | Please indicate when registering whether or not you will attend the lunch.
2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Session III: What’s in What You Eat? Food Safety in a New Ecology
This panel focuses on “food safety” with an emphasis on regulation in the United States and Europe, the GMO debate, recent “food scares,” and the looming threat of bioterrorism.
Participants:
Simone Gabbi, European Food Safety Authority
Helen Holder, GM Campaign Coordinator for Friends of the Earth Europe
Andrew Kimbrell, Executive Director, Center for Food Safety
Moderator: Adil Najam, Director of the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, Boston University
3:30 PM – 4:00 PM: Coffee Break
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM: Session IV: Eating Green: Food and Climate Change
This panel looks at the relationship between food production and climate change, addressing issues of deforestation, soil degradation, and factory farms and considers whether what we eat can make a difference.
Participants:
Daniel Hillel, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Björn-Ola Linnér, Linköping University, the Tema Institute
Mia MacDonald, Founder and Executive Director, Brighter Green
Cynthia Rosenzweig, Center for Climate Systems Research, Columbia University
Moderator: Henrik Selin, Professor of International Relations, Boston University
5:30 PM – 6:00 PM: Coffee Break
6:00 PM – 7:30 PM: Session V: What Is “Good” Food? The Ethics
of Eating
Is “good” food healthy, sustainable, delectable or cheap? This panel explores why our food choices matter. It addresses the “ethics of eating” and the health and environmental costs of “cheap food.” It looks at some of the grassroots alternatives including the rise of organic farming, locavorism, and the “slow food” movement.
Participants:
Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved
Harriet Lamb, Executive Director, Fair Trade Foundation
Helena Norberg-Hodge, founder and director of the International Society for Ecology and Culture (ISEC)
Moderator: Molly Anderson, independent consultant on science and policy for sustainability
8:00 PM - 8:30 PM: Reception
Please join us! Location, registration, and conference description availablehere>>
All Saturday events, with exception of lunch, are free and open to the public. Registration in advance is appreciated and helps us with planning.
Conference is funded by the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC with additional support from the Ford Foundation.
In cooperation with the Center for International Relations at Boston University, Boston University’s Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy and programs in food studies, and Slow Food BU
If planting flowers at 2 AM under the cover of darkness sounds like a great time, check out Richard Reynold's radical approach to beautifying neglected green space: GuerrillaGardening.org 
Saturday, May 16th 6-9pm
at the Charles River Museum of Industry, 154 Moody St. in Waltham
Fabulous silent auction, great food and an open bar!
Ticket Prices: $35 for members, $45 for non-members.
Purchase Tickets Now through Wainwright Bank's secure website. When you go to the site - skip down to #2, enter the dollar amount, and make sure to WRITE THE NUMBER OF TICKETS AND MENTION SPROUT IN THE SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS BOX.
