Deconstructing Dinner

Bioneers was conceived to conduct educational and economic development programs in the conservation of biological and cultural diversity, traditional farming practices, and environmental restoration. Their radio programs are heard in over 200 cities.

Series III, PART 10: PLANTS AND PEOPLE – WHO'S CULTIVATING WHOM? Award-winning journalist for the New York Times Magazine, Michael Pollan, author of The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World, and The Omnivore's Dilemma, takes a fresh perspective on the co-evolution of people and plants.

Series I, PART 12: WISDOM AT THE END OF THE HOE – FARMING AS IF BIOLOGY MATTERED What is it like living at a plant's pace? Is the gardener growing the garden or is the garden transforming the gardener? John Jeavons, Starhawk, Cathrine Sneed, Bob Cannard and Penny Livingston point to the genuine solutions for farming in harmony with the Earth. They are restoring soils and restoring souls.

Many forms of urban agriculture have existed for thousands of years. As a matter of fact, for city dwellers growing food in their own backyards or even on their window sill, they are essentially, farming in the city.

As practical and environmentally friendly as growing food within a city can be, the art of gardening has seemingly disappeared in many urban settings. As current farming practices are proving to be unsustainable in the long-term, urban agriculture is looked upon by many as being a critical shift that needs to take place if we are to ensure a level of food security in the near and distant future.

This broadcast marks the first of an ongoing series that will explore urban agriculture in British Columbia, Canada, and around the world.

Guests

Wally Satzewich - Farmer, Wally's Urban Market Garden / SPIN Farming (Saskatoon) - Gail Vandersteen and Wally Satzewich are both long-time residents of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. They operate an urban market garden. One unique feature of the market garden is that it is located within the confines of a city. Their produce is grown on a number of residential garden plots scattered throughout the city. This allows them to practice an eco-friendly form of agriculture, one that puts less pressure on rural habitats, and fosters self-reliance in an urban setting. This form of agriculture makes it more feasible to utilise organic household kitchen wastes because much of this material can be composted and used for growing crops. Gail and Wally are also the co-creators of SPIN Farming - a business that assists others wishing to adopt a similar business model based on small-plot intensive farming.

Beth Sobieszczyk - Program and Social Enterprise Coordinator, Fruit Tree Project, LifeCycles Project Society (Victoria) - The Victoria Fruit Tree Project of the LifeCycles Project Society sees volunteers and a couple a ladders turning backyard fruit trees into a valuable source of food for the community. The project harvests fruit from private trees that would otherwise go to waste. The fruit is then distributed among homeowners, volunteers, food banks and community organisations within Victoria.

Jac Smit - President and CEO, The Urban Agriculture Network (TUAN) (Washington D.C.) - This information and consulting organization was founded in 1992. It has visited over 30 countries in its advocacy. The urban agriculture book they wrote for the United Nations is the 2nd best selling book ever published by the UNDP. TUAN operates in all media. It is engaged frequently in workshops and conferences. Jac is a regular contributor to the Vancouver based City Farmer web site - an extensive Canadian resource for urban agriculture information.

Launched in April 2006, a new DVD and CD set produced by bestselling author Jeffrey Smith (Seeds of Deception) shows that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) put our health and environment at risk. The release of The GMO Trilogy was in conjunction with Earth Day (April 22) and International GMOpposition Day (April 8)- a coordinated 30-nation campaign to raise awareness about genetically modified (GM) food.

Organizations will be asking hundreds of thousands of their members to buy the Trilogy to show at house parties and several manufacturers have sponsored the 3-disc set to keep it affordable.

Deconstructing Dinner will be featuring the 3-part series in audio format.

Part 1 - You're Eating What?

Jeffrey Smith, author of the world's bestselling book on GM foods, Seeds of Deception, describes how biotech companies rigged research, hid health dangers and pressured government regulators to approve food that even FDA scientists said was unsafe.

What is Food Security and how is it defined globally? Food Security is often perceived as the ability of a community to respond to poverty by feeding the hungry. But Food Security is far more than just the number of food banks operating within a community. This perception has additionally fostered the belief that the remainder of the population is "food-secure".

This broadcast will look to define Food Security and Food Sovereignty. To do so, the causes of hunger will be discussed and how nations and communities respond; we will look at examples of citizen movements taking action to defend their right to food; and ultimately, we will attempt to connect the struggles and efforts of others to our North American relationship to food. Are those of us who readily have access to food really food-secure? Are the food struggles and solidarity of others a glimpse into where our own food system has gone wrong? Can we look to these struggles as an illustration of how we as North Americans have lost our connection to food?

Voices

Anuradha Mittal - Executive Director, The Oakland Institute. A native of India, Anuradha is an internationally renowned expert on trade, development, human rights and agriculture issues. She worked for ten years as the policy director and then the co-director at the Institute for Food and Development Policy (Food First). In 2004, she established The Oakland Institute - a policy think tank located in Oakland, California. This footage is courtesy of RadioActive at WERU Community Radio in Blue Hill/Bangor, Maine.

Refugio Gregorio - Mixteca Elder, Representative of the Indigenous Women's Cooperative - Margarita Magón (Oaxaca, Mexico). In 2002 protests succeeded in keeping a McDonald's out of the central square of Oaxaca. McDonald's was seen as a threat to the cultural heritage of the indigenous people in and around Oaxaca. Refugio participated in this protest and continues to found her resistance in the celebration of food and tradition.

Antonio Villanueva Feliciano - Zapotec Migrant Indigenous Leader, Youth Representative, Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca (CIPO-RFM) - CIPO-RFM is an organization representing 24 indigenous communities. They use non-violent resistance to exercise autonomy and direct action, and defend their human, territorial, economic, social, political and cultural rights, as communities and as individuals.

Emilie Smith - The Ecumenical Task Force for Justice in the Americas (Vancouver) - Emilie worked for 22 years in Mexico and Guatemala helping to improve conditions of indigenous people. She represents the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca (CIPO-RFM), and is currently supporting CIPO-RFM leader, Raul Gatica Bautista, who is now a refugee in exile in Vancouver. Emilie acted as the translator in the studio for Antonio Feliciano and Refugio Gregorio.

Charles Levkoe - SunRoot Farm (Nova Scotia). Charles was most recently the Urban Agriculture Coordinator at The Stop Community Food Centre in Toronto. Charles received a Masters degree in Food Security and Popular Education from the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. He sits on the board of the American Community Gardening Association. As of July 2006, Charles is now part of SunRoot Farm - a community-supported agriculture co-operative in Kennetcook, Nova Scotia.

South Central Farmers (Los Angeles) - Since 1992, 14 acres of property located in the middle of Los Angeles has been used as a community garden or farm. The land has been divided into 360 plots and is believed to be one of the largest urban gardens in the country. On June 14, 2006, an eviction notice was carried out by hundreds of LA riot police.

Launched in April 2006, a new DVD and CD set produced by bestselling author Jeffrey Smith (Seeds of Deception) shows that genetically modified organisms (GMOs) put our health and environment at risk. The release of The GMO Trilogy was in conjunction with Earth Day (April 22) and International GMOpposition Day (April 8)- a coordinated 30-nation campaign to raise awareness about genetically modified (GM) food.

Organizations will be asking hundreds of thousands of their members to buy the Trilogy to show at house parties and several manufacturers have sponsored the 3-disc set to keep it affordable.

Deconstructing Dinner will be featuring the 3-part series in audio format between June and September.

Part 2 - Unnatural Selection

Produced by Bertram Verhaag and Gabrielle Kroeber. This stunning European documentary made available for the first time in North America, reveals several harsh consequences of genetic engineering worldwide.

• A failed GM cotton crop prompts farmer suicides in India.
• Windborne GM canola contaminates organic and conventional farms in Canada. One farmer fights Monsanto in the Supreme Court.
• A company seeks approval for giant GM salmon that may threaten the survival of the natural species.
• GM pigs are born with ghastly mutations.
• And experts reveal how inadequate testing and regulations put us at risk.

The film features... Vandana Shiva - Navdanya, New Delhi, India Andrew Kimbrell - Centre for Food Safety, (Washington, D.C.) Percy Schmeiser - Saskatchewan Farmer Marc Loiselle - Saskatchewan Farmer, Saskatchewan Organic Directorate Martin Pratchler - Saskatchewan Farmer Larry Bain - Nextcourse, Acme Chophouse (San Francisco) Joseph McGonigle - Aqua Bounty Technologies - (Boston/Newfoundland/PEI) Terje Traavik - Norwegian Institute of Gene Ecology Richard D. Howard - Purdue University and others...

Music by Salt-Spring Island musician Phil Vernon will be featured on this broadcast, including an exclusive live recording prepared by Deconstructing Dinner correspondent Andrea Langlois.

The second of an ongoing series that will take a look behind the world's largest packaged food and beverage producers. In the first episode, we took a look at global giant PepsiCo.

The Packaged Foods Exposed series places corporations in a critical light, hoping to provide a more balanced image to the advertising and PR campaigns launched by some of the most influential food corporations on the planet.

In this second episode of the Packaged Foods Exposed series, we take a look at the largest food manufacturer in the world - Nestlé. What products fall under their banner; how has their influence shaped economic policy, society and culture; how have they affected the environments they operate in; and what relationships do they foster within the countries they are located?

Guests

Karl Flecker - Education Coordinator / Director of the Water Program, Polaris Institute - Polaris is designed to enable citizen movements to re-skill and re-tool themselves to fight for democratic social change in an age of corporate driven globalization. Essentially, the Institute works with citizen movements in developing the kinds of strategies and tactics required to unmask and challenge the corporate power that is the driving force behind governments concerning public policy making on economic, social and environmental issues. Karl Flecker has worked with the institute for 5 years.

Sugar is close to becoming a cultural institution here in North America and is found in a countless number of foods that we consume daily. The media looks to sugar on a rather frequent basis to satisfy the "declining population health" segments of the nightly news. While these segments could arguably not be frequent enough, there is a whole side to sugar rarely touched on.

Like with many crops, fruits and vegetables, sugar production comes with hidden costs. Sugarcane represents the primary crop from which refined sugar originates, and its current methods of cultivation and production are taking a toll on the environment and on the human beings who are part of the process.

Join us as we look past the health concerns of our sugar-driven food system, and look to solutions and alternatives to a commodity that seems to present very little choice for the general public.

Guests

Dr. Jason Clay - Vice-President, Center for Conservation Innovation, World Wildlife Fund (WWF) - Jason has spent more than 20 years working with human rights and environmental organizations. More recently, Jason has been engaged in detailed examinations of the social and environmental impacts of commodity production. Clay was founder and editor of the award-winning Cultural Survival Quarterly, the largest circulation anthropology and human rights publication in the world. Jason studied anthropology and Latin American studies at Harvard University, economics and geography at the London School of Economics, and anthropology and international agriculture at Cornell University where he received his Ph.D. in 1979. Jason sits on the Board of Protected Harvest and is the author of "World Agriculture and the Environment".

Adony Melathopoulos - Research Technician, Agriculture & Agri-Food Canada - Working out of the Beaverlodge Research Farm in Beaverlodge, Alberta, Adony studies ways to manage pests and diseases on Honey Bee farms. Adony graduated from Burnaby's Simon Fraser University and sits on the Communications committee for the Canadian Assocation of Professional Apiculturists (CAPA). Adony recently compiled an article for the Canadian Honey Council's web site titled "Honey as Canada's Sustainable and Ethical Sweetener."

Reykia Fick - Public Education & Outreach, TransFair Canada - TransFair Canada is a national non-profit certification and public education organization promoting Fair Trade Certified to improve the livelihood of developing world farmers and workers.

David Richard - Publisher, Vital Health Publishing - Vital Health publishes authors who can expose health-related problems accurately and with integrity, clarify the issues, and provide workable solutions. David first authored the book "Stevia Rebaudiana: Nature's Sweet Secret" in 1996. David was featured in a New York Times headline story on the food disparagement laws (June 1, 1999), and he also made national news in 1998 when his Stevia book was nearly burned by the FDA in the warehouse of one of his Texas distributors.

Howard Lyman (aka The Mad Cowboy) is a figure to pay attention to. If converting from a Montana cattle rancher to a strict vegan is not enough of a reason to raise an eyebrow, Lyman has since devoted his life to educating the public on the dangers of animal-based diets.

Lyman has been a fourth-generation family farmer in Montana for almost 40 years. Using personal experience, he denounces chemically based agricultural production methods, calling them unsustainable and ecologically disastrous. His experiences range from working in a large organic dairy to raising registered beef cattle to owning a large factory feedlot. He has farmed thousands of acres of grain and reproduced a herd of over one thousand commercial beef cows. Lyman has raised chickens, pigs, and turkeys, and grown crops such as wheat, barley, oats, corn, alfalfa, and grass.

Howard Lyman was farming at the time when it was either get big or get out. Educated on the modern industrial methods of agriculture, Lyman saw his organic soil go from a living, productive base to a sterile, chemically-saturated, mono-cultural ground.

In 1979, a tumor on his spinal cord caused him to be paralyzed from the waist down. Realizing that the farming methods he used were the problem, he decided to become a voice for the family farmer and the land. That led him to work for the Montana Farmers Union and from there to Washington, D.C. as a lobbyist for the National Farmers Union.

Lyman has made many trips to British Columbia, and this broadcast will feature his speech given at the Taste of Health event hosted by EarthSave Canada in 2002. The recording is courtesy of the Necessary Voices Society.

"The question we must ask ourselves as a culture is whether we want to embrace the change that must come, or resist it. Are we so attached to the dietary fallacies with which we were raised, so afraid to counter the arbitrary laws of eating taught to us in childhood by our misinformed parents, that we cannot alter the course they set us on, even if it leads to our own ruin? Does the prospect of standing apart or encountering ridicule scare us even from saving ourselves?" - Howard Lyman

What alternatives exist to the standard grocery store excursion? Farmers' Markets are certainly one option, but how about food delivered right to your door! While many home grocery delivery services have failed miserably, the most successful operations seem to be those fostering more sustainable food systems. Let's explore some of these options.

Also to explore is Community Supported Agriculture (CSA); yet another form of sourcing fruits and vegetables from a location other than the inanimate grocery store shelves. The CSA movement sees customers sharing the costs and benefitis of farming by investing in the growing season of a local farm.

Guests

David Van Seters - Founder and CEO, SPUD (Small Potoates Urban Delivery Inc.) - In business since 1998, SPUD is Canada's largest organic grocery home delivery service. The business serves over 5000 customers in the Lower Mainland, Greater Victoria, Vancouver Island, Calgary and Seattle. SPUD is committed to protecting the environment by buying local, organic, minimally packaged, and eco-friendly products. They build community by creating more direct connections between food producers and consumers; reduce traffic congestion and pollution by delivering groceries on a set route; and ensure their customers know where their food is coming from.

Mark Bomford - Program Coordinator, UBC Farm at the University of British Columbia - The UBC Farm is a 24- hectare teaching, research and community farm located on the UBC campus in Vancouver. As a new project launched in the summer of 2005, the UBC Farm now offers a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) box program. The initiative acts as a working example of the benefits of sustainable food systems.

Velvet Kavanagh - Organic Goddess, Endless Harvest Organic Food Delivery - Launched in 1998 just outside Nelson, British Columbia, Endless Harvest is an example of a small-town organic grocery delivery service that looks to foster sustainability through its business practices. Endless Harvest was started to provide people with an easy, affordable way to eat organic and locally grown food; to help people make informed decisions about food; and to help local farmers reach new markets.

Some of British Columbia's most productive agricultural land could turn into highways and parking lots in the coming years unless changes are made to the Province's Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), says a new report by the David Suzuki Foundation.

"B.C.'s farmland is facing death by a thousand cuts," says Ann Rowan, director of the sustainability program at the David Suzuki Foundation. "We need decisive leadership from the province to ensure our best farmland doesn't get paved over."

The report Forever Farmland shows how in recent years farmland that is nestled along the edge of towns and cities has fallen prey to regional development. Between 2001 and 2006, thousands of hectares from Courtenay to Invermere have been eliminated from the ALR and converted into subdivisions. The pressure to remove land from the ALR is greatest near the major population centres where the most productive farmland is predominantly located.

While supporting local farming may seem to be the first step in creating a sustainable food system, local farming can only be supported if there is adequate land on which to farm.

Guests

Ann Rowan - Director of Sustainability, David Suzuki Foundation - Since 1990, the David Suzuki Foundation has worked to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us. Given our rich natural assets and the strong environmental values, Canada should be a world leader in sustainability. However, in a recent study comparing the environmental performance of Canada to other developed countries, we finished 29th out of 30.

Erik Karlsen - Chair, Provincial Agricultural Land Commission (ALC) Erik Karlsen is a professional land use planner with over 35 years experience in advisory through management level positions in federal, provincial, regional and local levels of government and private sector. Mr. Karlsen worked for the BC Provincial Government for 29 years leaving in April 2002. Since then he has been a consultant, a member of advisory committees and taught at Royal Roads University in the Masters of Environment and Management Program. Erik Karlsen has been awarded several awards of distinction for his contribution to sustainable development planning and management in BC and Canada.

Heather Stretch - Northbrook Farm / Saanich Organics - Located in Central Saanich, Heather has been growing fruits and vegetables at Northbrook for 6 years. Heather is a co-owner of Saanich Organics - a collection of small-scale farmers selling their produce through a home-delivery service and at local restaurants and grocery stores.

Robin Tunnicliffe - Feisty Field Organic Farm / Saanich Organics - Feisty Field grows a variety of fruits and vegetables near Prospect Lake within the city limits of Victoria. Robin is also a co-owner of Saanich Organics.