The Grazing Mind

We’ve touched on urban farming before, mostly discussing success stories. Great stories, no doubt. But great stories don’t always have to be about success, as this recent article from GOOD about a failed urban garden points out.

A guy named Manny takes to his backyard and attempts to grow enough food to sustain himself for a month. He starts with a promising plan, but issues with aquaponics, low-libidoed rabbits, and the first tornado to hit his town in 118 years (high winds = low crop yield) unfortunately lead to Manny failing.

But as premised earlier the story here isn’t about the garden’s failure as much as it is about Manny rekindling his relationship with food. After seeing first hand how hard it is to bring food from seed to table, I bet he has a much deeper respect for the food he eats and where he gets it.

It’s an idea that echos the current state of urban farming – it isn’t about feeding the world (yet). The current state is about people connecting with what they eat, with where it comes from, and not just what they grow in the backyard. Urban farming, famer’s markets, home gardens – they bring us closer to all food, from the grocery store to the deli. That’s a big first step in how society is beginning to shape the future of food. More and more people are starting to pay attention and ask questions. As a food company we’re paying close attention to that, and thinking about the bigger question of how to best feed the world.

If you’re hanging in or around Boulder this week, before the LOHAS conference next week, swing by Bombay Bistro this Thursday night where we’ll be hanging out with friends from Gaiam, Elephant Journal and W1SDØM. Great libations, great conversations. Also, Door prizes and a chance to win a free one day pass to the LOHAS conference.

For more details, and to RVSP…

This might surprise some of you that know me, but I once sold grilled cheese sandwiches at Phish shows. It was a short lived little venture in my twenties, but I tell you this because I know firsthand about spreading joy via grilled cheese.

Reading Triple Pundit the other day, I realized I had missed an opportunity to be more altruistic with my grilled cheese sales. I stumbled upon this article about other people harnessing the universal power of a grilled cheese made with local and organic ingredients.  Feel Good World is founded on faith in the innate goodness of people, coupled with the belief that given the right tools we can all be agents of change. They believe they can end world hunger one grilled cheese at a time.

Just like the same Cafe here in Denver, the Feel Good student-run Delis work on the “pay what you can” principle with a donation jar instead of a cash register. The Delis, which are located on college campuses,  donate 100% of proceeds to “organizations with a proven track record of sustainably eradicating extreme global poverty and empowering self-reliance.”  Since its inception, FeelGood has donated almost $1 million to help end world hunger.

There are currently 23 chapters on college campuses across the country, including Penn State, Clemson and Berkeley with plans to add 10 more in the upcoming school year. It’s just such a cool idea, I wish I was in college so I could start a chapter. I already have the mad grilled cheese skills.

Last Friday, a couple hundred WhiteWavers partnered with more than 15 Denver/Boulder organizations for our first annual Impact Day – a volunteer event designed to get out of the office and help out in the community. We’re hearing so many great stories from the day, which we’ll soon share here on The Grazing Mind… but in the meantime, check out a few snapshots of what went down:

Kris LaFirenza helping clear a community garden plot at Boulder's Growing Gardens. The organization's mission is to enrich the lives of Boulder County residents through environmentally sustainable gardening programs that empower people to experience a direct and deep connection with plants, the land and each other. www.growinggardens.org

Tyler Holm pulling weeds at the Shoenberg Farm in Westminster, Colo. The Farm creates a community performance venue for music, theatre and film, and provides an ideal location for a year-round Farmers’ Market

Deanna Bratter and Sarah VanHouten plant trees and shrubs in a wetlands preserve near Boulder, Colo.

One of the larger WWFC groups at Feed Denver, helping build an urban farm plot in a parking lot downtown. Feed Denver’s mission is to foster local food security and sustainability through the development of urban farming by providing innovative tools, techniques and training for individuals, organizations and disadvantaged communities. www.feeddenver.com

In 2003, I was at a PR firm in Chicago working on several food company accounts. That work required that I travel to Colorado on a regular basis. I loved Colorado. Open skies, big mountains, lots of sunshine. I loved it so much that I began looking for a new job. Outside of location, though, I had one requirement: the company needed to be honest about food and honest about its story. Then I read a profile about Horizon Organic.

An opportunity presented itself and before I knew it, I landed a job with Horizon, tasked with the responsibility of helping tell the company’s story. I was thrilled, and quickly came to find out that people across the company shared a common desire to do better, and in Horizon’s case that was to change the world one organic acre at a time. I loved talking to the press, who at the time felt we could do no wrong – vocal advocate for organic agriculture, proponent for the humane treatment of animals, partner to family farmers, champion for healthy foods for kids.  Anyway you sliced it our story was positive and it felt good to tell.

During that time Horizon was owned by Dean Foods, a parent company that had a pretty hands off approach to its individual divisions – at least that’s what it felt like where I sat. About a year later, Dean decided to merge Horizon with some other national Dean brands (International Delight) and also with WhiteWave Inc. (makers of Silk Soymilk). At that point WhiteWave Foods was born. During that process the spotlight was on us and all of a sudden we were now “Big”.  I’d worked with “Big” food companies before, and seen first-hand the negative association. Admittedly, that made me a little nervous. But looking back, it’s interesting to see that since then our story hasn’t only evolved it’s gotten better. And a lot of it has to do with being “Big”, combined with what we learned when we were “Small”. Balancing the two has been one of the most interesting, challenging and energizing aspects of my career.

Back then, Silk purchased renewable energy certificates to offset the electricity used in the production of the product. And now our Horizon, International Delight brands and WhiteWave’s corporate headquarters have followed suit – all now purchase renewable energy certificates and carbon offsets to help balance the electricity usage and emissions created by doing business.

Back then, Silk and Horizon offered recycling programs in the buildings in which they were housed.  At WhiteWave we take that to another level by partnering with Eco-Cycle and A1Organics to institute a state-of-the-art Zero Waste Recycling and Composting Program at our Broomfield headquarters. (From recycling and composting alone, we’ve diverted more than 386,000 pounds of waste from landfills to date.)

Back then, recycling and the impact of our carbon footprint was not top of mind for our manufacturing facilities. Today, our plants reduce their impact on the environment. Take our Bridgeton, New Jersey, location – in 2008 that plant reduced its annual waste by 21 percent.  Another example took place last year when our plant in City of Industry, Calif., conducted a water audit. As a result of the findings, the team implemented several water saving measures that will save more than 11 million gallons of water annually.

These are just a few examples. It’s not all we’ve done, but it gives you an idea of what we’re about and how things started changing once WhiteWave was created. Can we do better? Absolutely.  I’m proud to work for a company that struggles with the issues we have – from where we procure our ingredients to how we transport our products to the packages in which we sell them. The discussions we have across this company continue to energize me. I love that we struggle to find the “and” as we like to say. How can we be a profitable business AND do what’s right for the planet? We don’t get it right all the time, but we’re constantly challenging ourselves. That’s a story I can get behind.

It’s been about five months since we launched The Grazing Mind, and over the course of that five months, and aside from developing our own posts, we’ve been paying close attention to some other blogs and outlets that we think make a lot of sense. Here’s a list of who we’re reading…

The Atlantic

DesignBoom

The Cleanest Line (patagonia)

Nau: The Thought Kitchen

Kottke

GOOD

INHABITAT

Chez Pim

Eat Me Daily

Elephant Journal

Fast Company

Immaculate Infatuation

PSFK

Eater National

TREEHUGGER

Oddity Central

TED Blog

Cool Hunting

Ever since we got hold of the PBS documentary series, E2, we’ve been keeping an eye on greenroof development and green building in general. Watching the series we were blown away by Chicago’s commitment to innovative building techniques. Of course, the Windy City has a long history of leading the country in big buildings, but it seems as if they’ve got some competition, at least when it comes to making greenroofs. According to this blog from PSFK, a 6,000 square foot roof of an industrial building has been transformed not into a meadow or field or Zen garden, but an actual working organic vegetable garden.

I, for the record, am one that enjoys a little social interaction at work. This might simply be an excuse to do less work, or even more likely my Attention Deficit kicking in, but sitting quietly for more than a half hour makes me a little nuts. I crave contact. Which is why this article from treehugger.com piqued my interest.

The questions posed are intriguing – What the heck do we have against actually talking to each other at work?

Your guess is as good as mine, but I think it’s cool to see that architects aren’t only into building buildings… they’re into building relationships through the long lost art of human interaction. No doubt equaling positive work results. Not to mention positive environmental results by saving energy, space and wasted cube materials.

I like your style, architects… and your stylings.

BIG NUMBERS don’t have much appeal anymore. Let’s face it; in a world of mega-million dollar jackpots and mega-billion dollar deficits we’ve become desensitized to the shock value of a good million, billion, trillion stat. So hats off to the good people of GOOD and their ability to visually convey this tragic information in a pretty compelling yet simple way.

Click to enlarge

May, 2009 in America – more than 34 million people can’t afford to eat.

That’s pretty scary. Even scarier that this kind of news usually falls under the radar. Even if it is on your radar, unless you have Bono-like funds and humanitarian celebrity (Irish accent included) you’re not feeding 30-plus million people. Good news is you don’t need to save the world. Just focal on the local, man. Odds are people in your neck of the woods are already doing some great things.

Our local food bank for instance – Community Food Share (CFS) – is run by an amazing group of people (We actually hope to have someone from CFS contribute to this blog in the near future), who help keep less fortunate families in the Boulder, Colo. area fed. Just last year they delivered more than five million pounds of food.

WhiteWavers volunteer at CFS off-and-on all year long, and every spring we participate in the Compete to Beat Hunger CFS Corporate Challenge, a campaign that brings local businesses in our area together to raise money and volunteer time at the food bank. It’s designed as a contest to see who can raise the most/volunteer the most, but obviously the real winners are the ones that won’t have to worry about their family’s next meal. The real “win” for us I think is that in volunteering our time and money locally, we actually get to see the people we’re helping, and we have a window into the perspective of the struggles they face. And thanks to the people at CFS that window stays open all year long.

Check out this site to see what people are doing to fight hunger in your area…

Safe from threat of veering Subaru

At age 14 William Kamkwamba of Malawai, Africa, went to the library and learned how to make his own electricity. “A simple farmer in a country of poor farmers,” Kamkwamba recently shared his story of facing adversity and the brave decision to not accept the looming dread of an impoverished future at the TED Conference.

Using resources from the library, and materials from a scrap yard William was able to build a windmill and create enough electricty to power lights and radios for his home. This didn’t change the world, but it did change his world. And in doing so, he helped change the world of others around him as well: “Queues of people, start lining up at my house to charge their mobile phones…”

Obviously cell phones don’t necessarily create or sustain life but in looking at the bigger picture, you can imagine the evolution of the situation.

• William builds windmill, powers his home. Later builds additonal windmill to power irrigation system and pump clean water…
• William’s neighbors cruise by, plug phones in to charge, ponder the possibility of maybe asking William to help them build their own windmills….
• William and his neighbors build a slew of windmills, power the whole village…
• Village famine ends. Farmers are able to feed their families, and sell extra crops for profits…
• William becomes very popular; opens a taco bar, ladies night and free margaritas on Thursdays…

You get the idea.

William’s story is just one of the many amazing videos featured on the TED website. Good place to start if you need some inspiration…