Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the Nautilus 2012 Gold Award for Green Living, given to books that promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and positive social change; stimulate the imagination; and offer new possibilities for a better life and a better world.
Named by Booklist as one of the top 10 books on the environment in 2012.
Reclaiming Our Food tells the stories of people across the United States who are finding new ways to grow, process, and distribute food for their own communities. Their successes offer both inspiration and practical advice.
Reclaiming Our Food is a practical guide for building a local food system. Where others have made the case for the local food movement, Reclaiming Our Food shows how communities are actually making it happen. This book offers a wealth of information on how to make local food a practical and affordable part of everyone's daily fare.
The projects described in this book are cropping up everywhere, from urban lots to rural communities and everywhere in between. In Portland, Oregon, an organization called Growing Gardens installs home gardens for low-income families and hosts follow-up workshops for the owners. Lynchburg Grows, in Lynchburg, Virginia, bought an abandoned 6.5-acre urban greenhouse business and turned it into an organic farm that offers jobs to people with disabilities and sells its food through a local farmers' market and a CSA. Sunburst Trout Farm, a small family business in rural North Carolina, is showing that it's possible to raise fish sustainably and sell to a local market. And in Asheville, North Carolina, Growing Minds is finding ways to help bring fresh foods into schools.
Author Tanya Denckla Cobb offers lessons and advice straight from innovative food leaders of more than 50 food projects across the United States. Photographic essays of 11 community food projects, by acclaimed photographer Jason Houston,
Review
After finishing this immersive, inspiring, and educational book, readers will feel empowered to address the food systems in their lives and encourage a more responsible approach to consumption and production. Charlie Jackson, Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
Review
In the last decade we have seen the budding efforts to transform our food system emerge into a full blown movement. As complicated and multi-faceted as the food system it seeks to change, the movement takes many shapes and differing strategies to “reclaim our food.” With a keen ear and thoughtful insight, Tanya Denckla Cobb not only showcases some of the most promising work, she explores the motivations and theoretical models that are leading the charge to fundamentally and permanently transform the way we grow and eat food. Charlie Jackson, Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project
Review
If you ever wondered about the depth, breadth, and creativity of the local sustainable integrity food and farming movement, this book dispels all doubt. I've known Tanya for years as a fearless advocate for regenerative food systems, and this is truly a crowning jewel in that agenda that I'm honored to share with her. Insightful, empowering, emotional, Reclaiming our Food is awonderful boost to our collective healing. Joel Salatin, Polyface Farm, author of You Can Farm and Salad Bar Beef
Review
It is always a delight to read the stories of people engaged in redesigning our food system at the grass roots---farmers, ranchers, gardeners, chefs, educators, community organizers---all demonstrating how we can work together to build a more resilient, healthy, community-based food system. The stories are all here in Tanya Cobb’s book. Together they tell---as Gary Paul Nabhan puts it in his introduction---a “refreshing story about America.” Especially heartening is the way these new food adventures are addressing the problem of making healthy, affordable food available to people in many of our resource-poor communities. If you want to feel good about America again, read this book! Frederick Kirschenmann, Author of Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays From a Farmer Philosopher
Review
Now is the time for bravery. Seize your destiny. Join the fleet of farmers, makers, doers, eaters and connectors who are reclaiming America, one shovelful at a time. Severine Von Tscharner Fleming, Greenhorns
Review
If Michael Pollan convinced you that we’ve got to do something to repair our relationship to food, land, and water, then read this book. Tanya Denckla Cobb will inspire you to act. She takes you on a journey all over America, up and down the food chain, and shows you dozens of ways that people are taking plants and animals into their own hands, and producing better food, better land, and better relationships. You’ll come to admire the genius, passion, and hard work of dozens of food innovators. More importantly, wherever you live and whatever your lifestyle, Denckla Cobb shows you simple steps for reclaiming your food. Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia, and author of The Happiness Hypothesis
Review
This is one-third chicken soup for the soul, one-third chicken poop for the soil, and three thirds great stories of real people doing positive practical and transformative work with food. Wayne Roberts, Canadian food policy analyst and writer, former manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council
Review
Food - growing it, eating it, sharing it - has pretty much been the whole story for the last ten years. Reclaiming Our Food takes that story to yet a higher level with its superb collection of photos and clearly written "how-to" tales of local food heroes and their epic achievements. From cover to cover one feels like you have just opened a tantalizing menu well-provisioned with a dazzling selection of tasty morsels. Join the movement, dig in, and enjoy the feast! Mark Winne - author of Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin' Mamas: Fighting Back in an Age of Industrial Agriculture
Review
People constantly ask me what kinds of things they can do to get involved in the food movement and where to start. Now I can just hand them Reclaiming Our Food. The projects it describes, from growing-it-yourself to public health, should inspire readers to get busy doing similar projects in their own communities. Marion Nestle, Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University, and author of What to Eat
Review
This broad survery of actual people, doing actual work to build a more sustainable agriculture highlights the diversity of approaches that we will need to take back control of the process all the way from seed to table. The many voices of Denckla, her collaborators and subjects are in harmony on the central theme of returning the humanity to an overly industrial food system. Shepherd Ogden, Adjunct Lecturer in Sustainable Agriculture, Shepherd University, and Agricultural Development Officer, Jefferson County, WV
Review
"Cobb discusses ingenious approaches to solving health social and environmental issues including community supported gardens urban farming and the raising of backyard chickens and goats" Publisher - ' - s Weekly
Review
"The reason I use Reclaiming Our Food is because it has the same lush, visual appeal as many of the current coffee table books, but unlike so many of those books, it is so much more than a few stories with a bit of text about the ails of our food system.
Review
"The reason I use Reclaiming Our Food is because it has the same lush, visual appeal as many of the current coffee table books, but unlike so many of those books, it is so much more than a few stories with a bit of text about the ails of our food system.
Synopsis
Reclaiming Our Food tells the stories of people across the United States who are finding new ways to grow, process, and distribute food for their own communities. Discover how abandoned urban lots have been turned into productive organic farms, how a family-run sustainable fish farm can stay local and be profitable, and how engaged communities are bringing fresh produce into school cafeterias. Through photographic essays and interviews with innovative food leaders, you ll be inspired to get involved and help cultivate your own local food economy.
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Synopsis
Join the Revolution!
All across America, concerned eaters are rejecting heavily processed, nutrient-poor foods and embracing fresh, local edibles. Community-based food projects from Boston to Nashville to Birmingham to Seattle are offering reasonably priced organic produce to local residents and restaurants, providing valuable jobs, preserving cultural traditions, giving residents the knowledge and tools to grow their own food, and educating school-children. Profiles of more than 50 groups offer a broad look at the many reasons to create and nurture local food systems and serve as an inspiring guide for everyone hoping to join the movement.
Synopsis
Join the Revolution!
All across the country, Americans are demanding more fresh, local foods--at home, in their schools, in restaurants, and at food markets. Community food projects from Boston to Nashville to Birmingham to Seattle are rising to meet this need. Led by innovative, creative people from all walks of life, these projects are strengthening communities by creating valuable jobs, preserving cultural traditions, building local knowledge about growing food, and educating schoolchildren. Inspirational stories of nearly 60 grassroots food programs provide hundreds of useful "lessons learned," offering an enduring handbook for everyone hoping to join the movement.
About the Author
Tanya Denckla Cobb is a writer, a professional environmental mediator at the Institute for Environmental Negotiation, and a teacher of food system planning at the University of Virginia. She is passionate about bringing people together to find common ground and create solutions for mutual gain. She co-founded a community forestry nonprofit organization, served as Executive Director of the Virginia Urban Forest Council, and facilitated the birth of the Virginia Natural Resources Leadership Institute and the Virginia Food System Council. At home, she enjoys the restorative energy of gardening and cooking from her garden. She lives in Virginia and is the author of Reclaiming Our Food, The Gardener’s A to Z Guide to Growing Organic Food, and Organic Gardener’s Home Reference.
Table of Contents
Foreword
Food and Community: Growing a Grassroots Movement
1: Food from Home: Supporting Backyard Gardeners
2: Community: Coming Together around Food
3: Urban Farming: Growing Food in the City
4: Empowerment: Food Movements in At-Risk Communities
5: Education: Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture in Schools
6: Food Heritage: Preserving Cultural Identities
7: Sustainability: Food for the Long Term
8: Infrastructure: Building Local Food Networks
Notes
Acknowledgments
Resources
Contributors
Index