"HALIFAX AWAITS A WORLD CLASS FARMERS' MARKET"

In October 2009, Deconstructing Dinner descended upon the Halifax Farmers' Market. Founded in 1750, it is the oldest continuously running farmers' market in North America. The first market vendors were Acadian - the original European immigrants to the land.

In 1983, the vendors launched what is now a self financed cooperatively governed group of local producers, processors and artisans that has grown to over 200 vendors. The model is a unique one that ensures the market stays true to its roots as a food-focused venue.

Halifax Farmers Market With the rising demand for locally produced foods, the market has outgrown its current space and over the past 8 years has been working towards moving to a better location. That move is now expected to take place in June 2010.

Market management believes the new Seaport Market will be an ecological and cultural showpiece linking the Province's urban and rural economies in a seamless community focused on local food and sustainable principles. The market will be open six days a week at Pier 20, the busiest tourist entry point in the province, and it will be at the heart of the cultural, social and community centre that is emerging in the Halifax Seaport Development.

The building itself is expected to be the highest rated LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building on the eastern side of North America.

Guests

Fred Kilcup - general manager, Halifax Farmers' Market (Halifax, NS) - The Halifax Farmer's Market has been operating since 1750, and is the oldest farmer's market in North America. With approximately 150 weekly vendors and up to 9,000 visitors on a busy day, it is a vibrant and bustling shopping environment.

Gordon Michael - executive director, Farmers' Market Investment Co-operative - (Halifax, NS) - The FMIC is seeking to raise $2.25 million from the people of Nova Scotia to help fund the new Seaport Market. The model is a unique example of how local food projects can receive funding from the public at large.

Richard Rand - farmer, Foxhill Cheese - (Port Williams, NS) - Fox Hill Farm, a sixth generation family farm nestled in the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, is home to Fox Hill Cheese House. Specializing in aged and specialty cheddar, plain and herbed havarti and gouda, quark and quark dips, fresh curds, feta, Parmesran (a Parmesan style cheese), natural yogurt, and gelato.

Jude Major - farmer/pet baker, Katie's Farm - (Clam Harbour, NS) - A micro producer of Certified Organic Treats for pets. Katie's Farm is Canada's first Certified Organic bakery for pets. And it's the only operation to grow its own ingredients.

Jogi Mullner - baker (Nova Scotia) Jogi and his wife are immigrants from Germany and bake breads and blackforest squares in true German style.

Sass Minard - member, The Grainery Food Co-op - (Halifax, NS) - The Grainery Food Co-Operative is a non-profit, volunteer run organization dedicated to making local and organic food affordable and available to Halifax communities.

Peter Darnell - owner, Indian Point Marine Farms - (Indian Point, NS) - Indian Point Marine Farms Ltd. has been growing mussels in the waters of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia since 1982. They are a small family-owned business.

Bill McKibben - author, Deep Economy - (Ripton, VT) - In March 2007 McKibben published Deep Economy: the Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. It addresses what the author sees as shortcomings of the growth economy and envisions a transition to more local-scale enterprise. Bill was interviewed in 2007 on Corporate Change Radio and a segment from that show is featured here.

Musical Selection (name/title/album/label)
Theme/Soundclip - Adham Shaikh, Infusion, Fusion, Sonic Turtle (CDN)
Music - Flannery Brothers, Farmers' Market, Indy

"PEDAL-POWERED GROCERIES / TOM STEARNS ON HARDWICK, VT"

Pedal-Powered Groceries
Martin Gunst is an active cyclist in Vancouver. Throughout the summer of 2009, Martin joined Kevin Cooper in a unique project that offered bicycle delivery services to customers at Vancouver farmers' markets. Known as Marketcargo, the project also assisted the UBC Farm and an urban agriculture business with their bicycles and heavy-duty trailers. Martin then went on to launch Grocer Gunst - a bicycle delivery service for freshly harvested biodynamic produce from three Demeter certified farms in the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan: Biota Farm in Abbotsford, Forstbauer Family Natural Food Farm in Chilliwack, and Harveys' Orchards in Cawston.

Tom Stearns on Hardwick, VT
Hardwick is a town in Caledonia County, Vermont. The population is approx. 3,400 and has become a unique model of a small community that is sustaining a number of innovative agricultural and food security businesses. In September 2009, Tom Stearns of Hardwick's High Mowing Organic Seeds joined Deconstructing Dinner's Jon Steinman at an event in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Tom shared the history of Hardwick and the future of food security work both there and throughout North American communities.

Guests

Martin Gunst Martin Gunst - founder, Grocer Gunst (Vancouver, BC) - Martin grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and moved to British Columbia to attend the University of British Columbia (UBC). At 21 years old, Martin is a student of philosophy, economics, and Spanish. He loves good food, local economies, and active transportation. He's proud to be the only biodynamic produce distributor in Vancouver offering services to his neighbours.

Tom Stearns - president, High Mowing Organic Seeds - (Hardwick, VT) - Tom launched High Mowing Organic Seeds in 1996 with just 28 varieties. After tilling up a portion of his backyard and turning his shed into a seed packing area, he had no trouble selling the seed he grew that first year. Suddenly, what had started as a hobby became a practical business pursuit as Tom realized the growing and unmet demand for organic seed. This demand allowed Tom to expand the business beyond his backyard, renting parcels of land to produce the seed he was selling through a hand-made catalog. By 2001, business had grown to such an extent that Tom began to contract with other local farms to grow seed, in addition to continuing to produce seed himself on High Mowing's own 5 acres.

Musical Selection (name/title/album/label)
Theme/Soundclip - Adham Shaikh, Infusion, Fusion, Sonic Turtle (CDN)

"CANADIAN BEEF CONSOLIDATED FURTHER / BACKYARD CHICKENS V (FARMING IN THE CITY VII)" (encore)

Canadian Beef Consolidated Further
Deconstructing Dinner examines the recent takeover of Canada's largest beef packing plant - Lakeside Packers, located in Brooks, Alberta. The plant maintains a capacity to process 4,700 head of cattle each day (that translates to a whopping 43% of all beef processed in Canada... from one facility!). The takeover leaves Alberta-based XL Foods with 51% control of Canadian beef and leaves just two companies controlling 83%.

In light of the recent and largest meat recall in Canadian history, we now know just how much of an impact that a tainted product from one company (Maple Leaf Foods) can have on Canada's food supply. The idea of any further consolidation in the meat packing sector, would, understandably, leave an already shaky Canadian public quite concerned.

To learn more about how this takeover might impact Canada's beef producers and the beef-eating public, we hear from the Compeititon Bureau's Denis Courriveau and the National Farmers Union's Fred Tait.

Backyard Chickens V (Farming in the City VII)
Since March 2008, The Farming in the City series has been incorporating a focus on urban backyard chickens.

If the thought of two companies controlling 83% of Canadian beef produced from only five plants turns you off of industrial protein, there is of course the increasingly popular alternative of finding some protein in your backyard. While digging up insects may be an option, backyard chickens might be easier, and for Vancouver residents, much easier! On March 5, Vancouver's city council unanimously approved a change to the city's bylaw that has long prohibited backyard chickens. Vancouver is now preparing itself for a backyard chicken revolution.

We also hear from the familiar and entertaining Bucky Buckaw, as he responds to listener questions on whether chickens can be trained to do tricks!

Guests

Fred Tait - Manitoba Coordinator, National Farmers Union (NFU) (Rossendale, MB) - Fred and his wife have raised beef cattle all of their life on their farm in Rossendale, Manitoba (southwest of Portage la Prairie). The NFU "works toward the development of economic and social policies that will maintain the family farm as the primary food-producing unit in Canada". The National Farmers Union is the country's only voluntary, direct-membership national farm organization. Less than two weeks before Fred spoke to Deconstructing Dinner, he was in Ottawa speaking to the Standing Committee on Agriculture on the state of Canada's beef producers.

Denis Corriveau - Senior Competition Law Officer, Industry Canada - Competition Bureau - (Gatineau, QC) - The Competition Bureau is an independent agency that, according to their web site, "contributes to the prosperity of Canadians by protecting and promoting competitive markets and enabling informed consumer choice." Headed by the Commissioner of Competition, the Bureau is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the Competition Act, the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act, the Textile Labelling Act and the Precious Metals Marking Act. The basic operating assumption of the Competition Bureau is that competition is good for both business and consumers.

Jeff Nield - Operations Manager, FarmFolk/CityFolk (Vancouver, BC) - FarmFolk/CityFolk Society is a non-profit society that works with farm & city to cultivate a local, sustainable food system. They develop and operate projects that provide access to & protection of foodlands; that support local, small scale growers and producers; and that educate, communicate and celebrate with local food communities.

Bucky Buckaw Bucky Buckaw - Host, Bucky Buckaw's Backyard Chicken Broadcast (Boise, ID) - Bucky Buckaw gives advice on raising backyard chickens as just one example of how a locally based economy can work. Through this segment, he informs listeners about the downside of factory farming and what kinds of toxic chemicals you can expect to find in the resultant livestock. He promotes organic gardening and composting, and supporting local farmers.
Musical Selection (name/title/album/label)
Theme/Soundclip - Adham Shaikh, Infusion, Fusion, Sonic Turtle (CDN)
Music 1 - Little Miss Higgins, Slaughterhouse, Cobbler Shop Sessions, EON Music & Little Miss Higgins (CDN)

"FRANCES MOORE LAPPÉ - ENDING HUNGER, FEEDING HOPE" (encore)

In February 2009, Deconstructing Dinner descended upon Edmonton for a week of local and global food education. Every year, the University of Alberta hosts International Week, the largest annual extracurricular educational event on campus. International Week "fosters global citizenship through engagement with today's most pressing issues". In its 24th year, the theme was Hungry for Change: Transcending Feast, Famine and Frenzy.

As outlined by the event's organizers, "We live in an unprecedented, contradictory era. Hunger soars amid record harvests. At the same time, community-based democratic movements on every continent are showing the way toward a world without hunger. They are proving that it is possible to reconnect farming with ecological wisdom by enhancing soils and yields while empowering citizens to meet universal human needs for both food and dignity. In such a dark and disorienting time, solutions are still evident. The only real problem we have to worry about is despair arising from feelings of powerlessness. As we dig to the roots of the global crisis, we protect against despair and find our own power. Only then can we perceive how our individual and group actions can dissolve the forces that brought us here and plant the seeds of lasting solutions."

Deconstructing Dinner recorded the event's keynote address, delivered by well-known democracy advocate, Frances Moore Lappé.

Voices

Frances Moore Lappé, co-founder, Small Planet Institute (Boston, MA) - Frances Moore Lappé is a democracy advocate and world food and hunger expert who has authored or co-authored sixteen books. She is the co-founder of three organizations, including Food First: The Institute for Food and Development Policy and more recently, the Small Planet Institute. In 1987, she received the Right Livelihood Award. Her first book, Diet for a Small Planet, has sold three million copies and is considered to be the first book to present a modern-day approach to more conscientious eating.

Her most recent books include Hope's Edge, written with her daughter Anna Lappé, about democratic social movements worldwide and Getting a Grip: Clairty, Creativity and Courage in a World Gone Mad.

Musical Selection (name/title/album/label)
Theme/Soundclip - Adham Shaikh, Infusion, Fusion, Sonic Turtle (CDN)

"FARMING IN THE CITY XI (Nelson Urban Acres / Massachusetts Avenue Project)"

Nelson Urban Acres
Nelson Urban Acres is bringing fresh produce closer to home. They are a multi-plot urban farm in Nelson, British Columbia that launched into operation in 2009 based on the SPIN farming model. Co-founders Paul Hoepfner-Homme and Christoph Martens are working backyard gardens within the city using low-impact, organic farming techniques to grow fresh produce. This year they have been growing a variety of vegetables throughout the season for Nelson's community markets. Deconstructing Dinner checks in with Paul to learn of the challenges and opportunities learned from trying to make living as an urban farmer.

Massachusetts Avenue Project
The Massachusetts Avenue Project hosts the Growing Green Program, a youth development and urban agriculture program about increasing healthy food access and revitalizing the Buffalo community through urban farming, healthy nutrition, environmental stewardship and social enterprise. In addition to its urban farm, Growing Green also hosts a youth enterprise, a farm to school initiative, a mobile market and runs various workshops related to urban agriculture.

Guests/Voices

Paul Hoepfner-Homme Paul Hoepfner-Homme - urban farmer, Nelson Urban Acres (Nelson, BC) - Paul is 28 years old and was fortunate to grow up in a gardener's oasis uncharacteristic of the norm in suburban Oakville, Ontario. His mother, a passionate gardener, transformed the lawns into a thriving landscape consisting of native plants and shrubs, vegetables and berries. Being raised in this environment gave Paul an early appreciation for what grows out of the ground. During university he developed a passion for sustainability when he read the novel Ishmael, and upon completing his computer science degree he made it his mission to learn how to live sustainably. This passion led him to enrol in a 7-month internship at Everdale, an organic farm in Ontario, where he gained valuable skills and knowledge in operating an organic vegetable farm. In 2008 he moved to the Kootenay region of British Columbia and took a Permaculture Design course in Winlaw where he gained a deeper understanding of growing food in relationship with ecosystems.

Diane Picard - executive director, Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) (Buffalo, NY) - Diane has been with MAP since 1997. She was instrumental in opening the Neighborhood Outreach Center in 1998 and she currently directs Growing Green. She received a Masters of Social Work from Boston University, specializing in Program Planning and Community Organizing. Her undergraduate degree in International Agriculture and Development from Cornell University prepared her to teach agriculture and art at a rural secondary school in Botswana, where she served as a Peace Corps volunteer from 1986-1988. Diane is devoted to grassroots community-building as a means of making positive change.
Musical Selection (name/title/album/label)
Theme/Soundclip - Adham Shaikh, Infusion, Fusion, Sonic Turtle (CDN)
Soundclip - Zeb, Disco Patel, Stop the Earth I Want to Get Off, Wonderwheel

"THE LOCAL GRAIN REVOLUTION X (Retail Supported Agriculture? / Sprouting Grain)"

What is Retail Supported Agriculture?

As far as the North American local food movement is concerned, it's not a concept that has yet been coined in any notable way. The Kootenay Grain CSA (community supported agriculture) project located in the Kootenay region of British Columbia is now changing that.

Community Supported Agriculture is most often a model exclusively serving individual eaters (shareholders), whereby the eater invests in their food at the beginning of the season, providing the farmer with much-needed revenues up front when expenses are highest. The CSA model guarantees the farmer a market and secures the eater with whatever the harvest unearths. While eaters might not be used to such an idea, it's not a stretch for most eaters to commit to such a model. Retailers on the other hand are in a different position as the volumes of food used by bakeries, grocers and restaurants are substantially higher, requiring a much more significant investment. At the April 2009 meeting of the Kootenay Grain CSA, farmers and steering committee members discussed how businesses might be incorproated into the CSA project and the discussion that ensued was fascinating to say the least. Could this mark the beginning of a new model? Deconstructing Dinner sat in on the meeting to find out.

Sprouting Grain

When shareholders in Canada's first CSA for grain received over 80 pounds of five varieties of whole grains in late 2008, many were left wondering what to do with it all. In comes Lorraine Carlstrom, a Nelson, B.C., resident who saw an opportunity to share her experience and create some part-time employment at the same time. Lorraine offered a series of workshops to CSA shareholders and on this episode, we listen in on a class on the ins and outs of sprouting grain. As Lorraine points out, sprouting grain has significant health benefits.

Voices

Lorraine Carlstrom, Chapter Leader, Weston A. Price Foundation (Nelson, BC) - Lorraine is a member of the Kootenay Grain CSA and a chapter leader of the Weston A. Price Foundation - a nonprofit, charity founded in 1999 to disseminate the research of nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price, whose studies of isolated nonindustrialized peoples established parameters of human health and identified characteristics of what he saw as optimum human diets. Dr. Price's research sought to demonstrate that humans achieve perfect physical form and perfect health generation when they consume nutrient-dense whole foods. The Foundation is dedicated to restoring nutrient-dense foods to the human diet through education, research and activism.

Matt Lowe, co-founder, Kootenay Grain CSA (Nelson, BC)
Brenda Bruns, co-founder, Kootenay Grain CSA (Creston, BC)
Drew and Joanne Gailius, farmers, Full Circle Farm (Canyon, BC)
Keith Huscroft, farmer, Huscroft Farm (Lister, BC)
Roy Lawrence, farmer, Lawrence Farm (Creston, BC)
Wayne Harris, farmer, Mountain Valley Farm (Lister, BC)
Abra Brynne, foodshed animator (Nelson, BC)
Jenny Truscott, miller (Creston, BC)
...and others

Musical Selection (name/title/album/label)
Theme/Soundclip - Adham Shaikh, Infusion, Fusion, Sonic Turtle (CDN)

"WHOPPER VIRGINS / BACKYARD CHICKENS IV (FARMING IN THE CITY VI)" (encore)

Whopper Virgins
Since early December, controversy has been strirring in newspapers and on Internet blogs about a recent marketing gimmick launched by Miami-based global fast-food giant Burger King (BK). The marketing ploy is called Whopper Virgins and is being waged via www.whoppervirgins.com as well as a series of television ads directing people to that site.

So what is all the controversy?

BK hired PR firm Crispin-Porter and Bogusky to take a film-crew and travel the globe. The purpose? To introduce BK's flagship Whopper hamburger to people in some of the world's most far-flung places. The film, which is posted on the Whopper Virgins web site, shows Inuit of Greenland, Transylvanian farmers of Romania, and the Hmong of Thailand as the subjects for the Whopper feeding experiment.

It was hoped that Americans would be fascinated to see the reactions of such 'foreign' people tasting this homogenous staple of American fast-food - the hamburger.

Deconstructing Dinner comments on these latest efforts by Burger King and presents a reworked version of their 7-minute film. We hope that our version tells a more revealing and accurate depiction of why Whopper Virgins has generated so much controversy.

Backyard Chickens IV (Farming in the City VI)
Since March 2008, The Farming in the City series has been incorporating a focus on urban backyard chickens.

Mad City Chickens Raising poultry within an urban setting provides eggs, fertilizer, garden help and meat with a minimal environmental footprint. Having suffered decades of disconnection from our food, bringing the farm into the city (and in this case animals), can provide a much needed dose of agriculture and food awareness. It's this very disconnection that has allowed for the appalling conditions now found in factory egg and chicken barns.

On this Part IV, we meet the producers of what is perhaps the first feature-length documentary film about the growing backyard chicken movement. Since its release in late 2008, Mad City Chickens has screened at a number of North American film festivals and will be available on DVD in early 2009.

Guests

Tashai Lovington & Robert Lugai - Producers, Mad City Chickens (Madison, WI) - Tashai & Robert collaborate to form Tarazod Films. When not producing films, Tashai is a Program Producer and NLE Editor for a Madison-area television station. Robert is the Education Director and Program Coordinator for a Madison-area television station.