Margaret Atwood Joins Prison Farms Campaign / Vancouver's Backyard Chickens I
Release Date: 06/21/2010
Deconstructing Dinner
Across the US and Canada, there is an exciting emergence of a unique type of food festival – a festival for garlic! When looking at a map of where garlic festivals are emerging, it’s clear that garlic knows no geographic boundaries – it’s a food that grows well in most climates across the continent. This popularity of garlic festivals appears to be communicating an important story – a story of our longing to connect and celebrate with one another around food, a story of people wanting to make more flavorful dinners, and a story of a food that has become an incredibly important crop...
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Honey – one of the most natural foods. In the supermarket, honey is found labelled as coming from clover, buckwheat, alfalfa or maybe orange blossom. The label might just read ‘honey’ without any indication of its source of nectar. But is the nectar source even important to those of us wishing to become more conscientious eaters? As Deconstructing Dinner has discovered, there is a curiosity surrounding honey – a curiosity, which has rarely, if ever, been spoken…. until now! It turns out, in Canada, 80% of all the honey produced in the country is from the nectar of canola – yet,...
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Deconstructing Dinner's sits down with Mark Kastel - the co-founder of the Cornucopia Institute - a populist farm policy research group based in Wisconsin. Mark and Jon discuss the changing face of organic food. Using eggs as an example - Mark explains how eaters can exercise a more discriminating awareness when purchasing 'organic' eggs. Features: Mark Kastel, Co-Founder, (La Farge, WI)
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It's not uncommon for most of us eaters to view the system supplying us with food as being separate from us, but on this podcast, one of Canada's most recognized food policy analysts offers his perspectives which suggest otherwise. Instead, the food system has in many ways been designed to satisfy the demands that we make every day to eat the same food, year-round, regardless of season, geography or climate. It seems that we eaters, have become so accustomed to that fresh tomato slice on our sandwich, that glass of orange juice in the morning, or that salad of fresh greens, that these...
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On this all-new podcast, Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman examines some of the key differences between conventional and organically produced wheat. Features: Stephen Jones, Director, Washington State University Research Station (Mount Vernon, WA) Kevin Christenson, Owner, Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill (Burlington, WA) Sam Lucy, Farmer, Bluebird Grain Farms (Winthrop, WA) Roy Lawrence, Farmer, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC) Scott Mangold, Baker, Breadfarm (Edison, WA)
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This episode #193 marks the final broadcast of Deconstructing Dinner before we embark on a much-needed break. Producer & Host Jon Steinman speaks about the need to step away from producing new shows and what future might lie ahead. Jon also shares some reflections on the past 5 years of producing this weekly one-hour radio show and podcast, and offers suggestions to those involved in the responsible food movement - a movement which this show has helped track its evolution and certainly one that this show has in many ways been a part of. Also on the show - a brief update (regrettably...
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Since March 2008, Deconstructing Dinner has been tracking the evolution of the Kootenay Grain CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) in the interior of British Columbia. The project is Canada's first community supported agriculture project for grain and it's been quite a while since we've checked in with how it's evolved throughout it's third year. Also on this part 12 of the series, we learn about the many grain projects underway elsewhere in Canada and the United States, all of which have been inspired by this very Local Grain Revolution series! Specifically, we travel to Lopez Island,...
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Exploring Ethnobiology is a new series Deconstructing Dinner has been airing since June. Through a scientific lens, ethnobiology examines the relationships between humans and their surrounding plants, animals and ecosystems. With seemingly more and more people becoming interested in developing closer relationships with our surroundings (our food, the earth), there's much we can all learn from ethnobiologists, and in particular, from the symbiotic human-earth relationships that so many peoples around the world have long maintained. Food sovereignty is also a subject that permeates much of what...
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has become an incredibly popular series of conferences featuring inspiring speakers from around the world. TED is a small non-profit devoted to what they call - "Ideas Worth Spreading." Starting out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment & Design, TED has since broadened its scope to include two annual conferences in California, a global conference in the UK and many on-line resources where more than 700 TEDTalks are now available. TED believes in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and ultimately, the world. With a number...
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Deconstructing Dinner has long been exploring the many ways through which farmers, businesses, organizations and communities are accessing food using new and innovative models. On today's broadcast we hear more of those examples shared as part of the March 2010 panel - Produce to the People, hosted by the San Francisco based CUESA. The Produce to the People panel examined a few inspiring models for getting fresh, local food to residents in the San Francisco Bay area of California and featured Grayson James of Petaluma Bounty, Melanine Cheng of FarmsReach and Christine Cherdboonmuang of the...
info_outlineMargaret Atwood Joins Prison Farms Campaign
As part of our ongoing coverage on the future of Canada's prison farms, we check in on the campaign where well-known Canadian author Margaret Atwood has now joined the fight. We'll listen in on the June 6 rally in Kingston, Ontario and the subsequent rally in Ottawa one week later. Updates on the campaign include the recently put in place 24-hour citizen watch - set up across the street from Kingston, Ontario's Frontenac Institution, where residents there are keeping a close eye on the prison farm, ensuring that the 300 animal dairy herd does not get trucked off the property to auction.
Vancouver's Backyard Chickens I (Backyard Chickens XII)
The first of a two-part feature on the City of Vancouver's multi-year process to approve backyard chickens. On June 8, it became official... Vancouver residents are now permitted to raise 4 chickens per household. Because of the many similar debates underway within city councils across the country, we'll launch this first of a two-part feature on Vancouver's efforts by looking back over the past few years to track just how this process first began. Perhaps other hopeful or illegal backyard chickeners can glean some pointers from Vancouver's efforts.
Voices
The Future of Prison Farms
Andrew McCann Urban Agriculture Kingston (Kingston, ON)
Margaret Atwood author Margaret Atwood (Toronto, ON)
Jeff Peters farmer / director National Farmers Union Local 316 (Inverary, ON)
William Commanda spiritual & hereditary chief Algonquin Nation
Sister Pauline Lally Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul (Kingston, ON)
Aric McBay farmer Root Radical Community Shared Agriculture (Howe Island, ON)
Wayne Easter member of parliament, Malpeque, Liberal Party of Canada
Mark Holland, member of parliament, Ajax-Pickering, Liberal Party of Canada
Alex Atamanenko member of parliament, BC Southern Interior NDP
Maria Mourani member of parliament, Ahuntsic Bloc Quebeçois
Vancouver's Backyard Chickens I
Barbara Joughin, past member, Vancouver Food Policy Council (Vancouver, BC)
Carol Christopher, member Vancouver Food Policy Council (Vancouver, BC)
Andrea Reimer, councillor City of Vancouver (Vancouver, BC)
David Cadman, councillor City of Vancouver (Vancouver, BC)
and others...