Today! Green Drinks Bloomington: Ben Brabson on climate change

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Today! Green Drinks Bloomington: Ben Brabson on climate change

On Wednesday, February 22 at 6 pm, at the Upland Banquet Facility of Upland Brewery, Ben Brabson, emeritus professor of the Physics of Climate Change, will provide a short presentation titled “Climate Change and Bloomington.” The talk will focus on ways that those of us who live in or near Bloomington can take full advantage of our capacity to think, understand and benefit from specific actions to both mitigate and adapt to our changing climate.

Click here for an interview with Professor Brabson. Green Drinks Bloomington is a great way of catching up with people you know and also for making new contacts. Feel free to bring friends. There’s always a different crowd—Green Drinks Bloomington is an organic, self-organizing network.

Ben Brabson, IUB physics professor

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Green Drinks Bloomington is a lively, informal social networking event for people from all walks of life who are interested in making a greener world. Folks gather every month to share libations and ideas. They discuss, debate, explore, and connect with both new and old friends.

Local GDB meetings feature a short presentation by the representative of some organization or business. We also make time for ten 30-second announcements about upcoming events that have a focus on sustainability.

Green Drinks groups exist in many countries and communities. They represent a lively mixture of people from NGOs, co-ops, academia, government and business. Come along and you’ll be made welcome.

GreenDrinks Bloomington is held the 4th Wednesday of every month from 5:30 – 7:30 pm at the Banquet Facility of the Upland Brewing Company, located at 350 West 11th Street, Bloomington, Ind. There’s a $5 suggested donation, and some food, catered by Upland Brewery, will be provided.

To receive an email reminder, write greendrinksbloomington[at]gmail[dot]com. Click here to learn more about Green Drinks around the world.

We are actively looking for sponsors for the 2012 series of Green Drinks meetings. Sponsorship is affordable, and it gives your group or business visibility with potential customers or supporters.

For additional information, contact:

Marcia Veldman, Green Drinks Bloomington, 812-988-4956

“On the Future of Food”: Prince Charles’s Landmark Speech

Rodale Books Publishes His Royal Highness Prince Charles’s Landmark Speech “On the Future of Food”

Prince Charles "On the Future of Food"

with a forward by Wendell Berry, and afterword by Will Allen and Eric Schlosser

We recently received a press release from Rodale Books about a book we look forward to reading.

NEW YORK, NY—February 14, 2012 — Rodale Books is proud to announce the publication of THE PRINCE’S SPEECH: On the Future of Food by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, with a foreword by Wendell Berry and afterword by Will Allen and Eric Schlosser (ISBN: 978-1-60961-471-3; February 14, 2012; Paperback with flaps; $6.99; 64 pages, also available as an e-book ). On May 4th 2011, HRH the Prince of Wales delivered a landmark keynote speech to “The Future of Food” conference at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. upon which this special commemorative edition of the Princes’ speech is based.

Said CEO and Chairman of Rodale Inc., Maria Rodale, “For over 30 years, Prince Charles has challenged the assumption of industrial agriculture and questioned the behavior of large agribusiness. These are the same tenets upon which my own grandfather founded Rodale Inc., therefore we felt it important that Rodale make The Prince’s message accessible to as many people as possible via this publication. THE PRINCE’S SPEECH embodies his genuine passion for the topic of the future of food; it also provides readers with an incredibly smart, powerful, comprehensive, and practical look at the challenges we face and how we can put our concern into action in order to secure a sustainable future for generations to come. All of us at Rodale are honored that HRH Prince Charles chose to partner with us to get this essential message out to the world.”

In the book, HRH Prince Charles underscores the need for a more sustainable approach to agriculture while recognizing the wider and important social and economic parameters—how we can feed a global population approaching 9 billion people and still safeguard public health, keep jobs, and protect our environment. THE PRINCE’S SPEECH brings into focus the perilous state of our current food system and provides a convincing argument to support immediate action.

Advocate, author, award-winning producer, and THE PRINCE’S SPEECH guest editor Laurie David was in the room the day HRH Prince Charles delivered his powerful manifesto. She said “Really, my jaw dropped along with everyone else’s because the speech was such a clear and comprehensive explanation of what has gone so wrong with how we produce food in this country and what we need to do to get back on track. It was very clear to me that this speech needed to be read by everyone who eats! And while this book may seem small in size, it seeks to answer a very big question: How do we reclaim the integrity of our food and get back to producing good, clean, fair food for everyone and the planet?”

In THE PRINCE’S SPEECH, HRH Prince Charles lays out a persuasive case to support the fact that sustainable and organic agriculture can, indeed, feed the world and addresses the real reasons why an industrialized system-one deeply dependent on fossil fuels and chemical treatments-is promoted as viable while a much less damaging one is condemned. THE PRINCE’S SPEECH provides a concise and convincing roadmap for how individuals and nations can achieve a situation where food production is at once affordable, available to all, and not overly taxing of the Earth’s quickly diminishing natural resources.

THE PRINCE’S SPEECH will include a foreword by noted author and farmer Wendell Berry and an afterword by urban farmer Will Allen and bestselling author Eric Schlosser—available only in this special commemorative edition. Beautifully packaged as a small-format paperback with flaps, the book will retail for $6.99 and will also be available as an e-book. This stirring, thought-provoking, and ultimately hopeful call to action is a must-have for anyone who cares about the survival of our planet and its people.

A Request from the Campus Garden Initiative at Hilltop Gardens

Dear Local Growers,

Campus Garden Initiative

My name is Stephanie Hopkins and I am the coordinator for the Campus Garden Initiative at Indiana University Bloomington. I am writing to ask for your support as the Initiative transitions from a pilot to its first growing season as a robust program, through your donation of heirloom seeds.

In its pilot growing season, the Campus Garden Initiative included a 900 square foot garden at the Bryan House, where 92 volunteers contributed 286 hours tending to and harvesting 75 pounds of produce. The 28 vegetables and herbs grown at the Bryan House where donated by local growers like yourselves, providing IU students with an impressive representation of the variety of produce capable of being grown in Indiana.

This year, the Campus Garden Initiative will focus its efforts on an 8,500 square foot garden at Hilltop Garden and Nature Center. Here, Garden Initiative organizers hope to create a place where the campus community can engage in food production through curricular and co-curricular programming, providing food for a variety of campus vendors. Without a doubt, this ambitious endeavor will require the support of campus and community stakeholders.

As volunteers begin planting in the greenhouses this month, we find ourselves in need of heirloom seeds. In particular, we hope to find seeds that represent the bounty available in Indiana, especially those seeds that come with an interesting story! This is where we could really use your help. Your seeds will be planted in the garden this year and your stories will be featured on the garden blog.

If you wish to contribute seeds with (or without!) stories to the Campus Garden Initiative, you may either mail or deliver your contribution to the address below or arrange a pick up at the Bloomington Winter Farmers Market by contacting iugarden[at]indiana[dot]edu.

Thank you,

Stephanie Hopkins

Campus Garden Coordinator

iugarden[at]indiana[dot]edu | iugarden.wordpress.com

Hilltop Gardens

c/o Campus Garden

2367 E. 10th Street

Bloomington, IN 47408

Local Growers’ Guild classified ads

Classified ads at our website

Looking to buy, sell, or trade something having to do with local foods? Advertise it here with a FREE classified ad.

We have a process that allows you to place a classified ad here at the LGG website.

On the Classifieds page you can place, edit, browse, and search ads for employment, internships, farm rentals and land sales, and buy/sell/trade items.

“If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em!”

With the warm spring-like weather here in Indiana right now, there’s a lot of wild onion greening up in the yard or garden. While looking for recipes about how to use this plant, we came across invasivore.org, a blog that includes recipes and links. We’ll let the writers speak for themselves:

photo of wild onion by Glenn Hardebeck, Department of Agronomy, Purdue University

Our mission here at Invasivore is to be your one-stop guide for devouring Invasive Species, those organisms which have been moved around the world, damaging their new surroundings. Think of it as reasonable revenge for the harm these species cause. The word “invasivore” comes from combining “Invasive Species” with the latin for “devour” as in “carnivore”. Thus invasivore = one who eats invasive species.

From prehistoric times, humans have had an amazing track-record of severely reducing the populations of species we eat. Indeed, it seems that much of the time we can’t stop ourselves. Can we tap that hunger to reduce the impacts of harmful invasive species? We think the answer is Yes!

Of course, the reality is more complicated than “if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em!” and this blog will explore the many dimensions of this issue in ways we hope will surprise you—and your taste buds. Our organizing principle is the knowledge—courage even—to harvest, prepare and consume invasive species. It is this awareness we think will lead to decreasing the impacts of invasive species by preventing new introductions, reducing spread, and encouraging informed management policies.

At the center of the Invasivore approach are recipes proudly featuring invasive species. But that’s not all; you can also expect exposition and commentary on related topics such as species’ profiles, histories and cultural significance, harvesting tips, interviews with Invasivores-at-large, and summaries of relevant scientific research. We’ll also be doing round-ups of applicable news and other media to keep our readers informed.

This blog is an experiment for us, and we hope it inspires and supports you in experimenting as well—by keeping invasive species in your mind and on your plate.

Want to learn more about the editors of Invasivore.org? Check out our bios page.

You’ll find more about wild onion—and its cousin, wild garlic—here at the Purdue Plant and Pest Diagnostic Laboratory.