Hunger Justice Series Week 5: Sustainable Farming!

The last speakers for our series here at Grace were Lisa Troy from Gaining Ground and Julien Goulet from The Food Project.

Gaining Ground is a volunteer run community garden in Concord Massachusetts. All the food that is grown on the farm is given away to people who need it. Gaining Ground combines hunger relief and community volunteerism. They work hard to grow high quality produce and work hard to provide exceptional experiences to their volunteers.

The Food Project works with youth and adults in different cities around the Boston area to produce healthy food for the poor in their community. While Julien was here he gave us some interesting facts about farming and why sustainable farming is important:

The wind blows for anyone who likes to eat vegetables.
25% of the vegetables consumed by children and teenagers are French fries.

The wind blows for anyone who has eaten dinner last night.
1 out of 3 children will eat dinner at a fast food restaurant tonight.

The wind blows for anyone who thinks you can make a healthy meal with one dollar.
The U.S. government gives your school $2.47 to pay for the cost of lunch and $1.56 to pay for the cost of breakfast per student. Nearly 60% of this funding goes toward labor, leaving roughly one dollar to create a nutritious meal of protein, milk, fruit, vegetables and bread.

The wind blows for anyone who thinks you need a kitchen to prepare a healthy meal.
There are 122 schools in the Boston Public Schools. Only 42 of these schools have kitchens and 80 of these schools do not. Meals served in the schools without kitchens are prepared by a food manufacturer in Pennsylvania, and travel to Boston each day.

The wind blows for anyone who thinks that fruits and vegetables are part of a healthy diet.
Only two percent of the budget of the Boston Public Schools Food and Nutrition Services Department is spent on fresh fruits and vegetables.

The wind blows for anyone who likes eating fresh fruits or vegetables.
Of the 316 foods available to schools through the USDA commodity foods program, only 9 of them are fresh fruits or vegetables. Of the 9 available, 4 are potatoes.

The wind blows for anyone who knows how many nickels are in a dollar.
U.S. poultry farmers who produce the chickens used for chicken nuggets are paid only five cents for each bird. These farmers typically raise 240,000 birds a year, which means they make only $12,000 a year.

The wind blows for anyone who lives in a town that has a farm in it.
Between 1982 and 2002, Massachusetts lost 30% of its farmland, 149,000 acres, to development.

The wind blows for anyone who has ever been to the Big Apple.
New York is the second largest apple producer in the country, growing approximately 25 million bushels every year. Yet 97% of the apples sold in New York City are shipped in from other states and countries as far away as China and Chile.

The wind blows for anyone who has grown his or her own food.
Massachusetts grows only 15% of its own food, but it could grow at least 35%.

The wind blows for anyone who has ever had a “milk mustache”.
Dairy farmers milk their cows 365 days a year. They work and average of 90 hours per week, 14 hours a day for an average hourly rate of $3.65 an hour.

The wind blows for anyone who has ever lived in a city.
The Rodale Institute estimates that if transportation systems are disrupted, most U.S. cities on the east coast will have less than two days’ worth of food available for urban residents.

The wind blows for anyone whose parents are older than 30 years old.
Scientists predict that today’s youth will have a shorter life span than their parents because of type 2-diabetes.

The wind blows for anyone who has ever complained that the lettuce at the supermarket looks wilted or brown.
Supermarkets mark up the price of farm produce as much as 90 percent. When you buy a head of lettuce for $1.90, the farmer is paid only 19 cents. If you bought that same head of lettuce at a farmer’s market, the farmer would get $1.90 and the head of lettuce would be a lot fresher.

The wind blows for anyone who enjoys eating strawberries, pineapples and mangoes in the middle of winter.
Growing, processing and delivering the food consumed by an average American family requires 3,367 gallons of gas each year; that’s enough to fill up your car 224 times, or once every day and a half.

The wind blows for anyone who has ever grown his/ her own food.
The U.S. now has more prisoners than farmers.

The wind blows for anyone who thinks there is not enough food to feed everyone in the world.
The world harvest of wheat, corn, rice and other grains produces enough to meet the nutritional requirements of every person in the world. In spite of this, 841 million people suffer from hunger worldwide, including 30 million in the U.S.

The wind blows for anyone who hates to go to the doctor.
14 million children in the U.S. do not have enough food to maintain good health.