field notes: news & resources for re-linking the food chain

The White House has posted a video about the progress and impact of the garden.

Michelle: “The garden is really an important introduction to what I hope will be a new way that our country thinks about food.”

White House Chef Sam Kass: “Thomas Jefferson, more than any one man, changed the way we eat in this country and the way we grow food.  When his ambassadors would go out in the world, he would ask them to bring back seeds.  And he’s the first person to start seasonal growing, that is something people are coming back to now and thinking about ways to use a diversity of crops and keep  growing throughout the year.”

via The Ethicurean

Obama Foodorama writes of the “under the radar” coordination of the White House efforts with Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.  Merrigan’s recent memo, Harnessing USDA Rural Development Programs to Support Local and Regional Food Systems, takes an “imagine the possibilities” approach to three USDA funding programs that, as Eddie Gehman Kohan points out, has an echo of Michelle Obama:

Imagine an NGO receiving USDA grant money to construct a community kitchen where farmers drop off produce and families join cooking classes that teach about healthy eating while everyone prepares fresh nutritious meals to bring home…Imagine a community using USDA money to construct an open-sided structure to house a farmers market…Imagine a school using USDA loan money to set up cold storage as part of a larger effort to retrofit the school cafeteria to buy produce directly from farmers and return cooking capacity for school lunch…Imagine…