This is by Adamahnick Jackie Topol, x-posted from Heeb’N'Vegan.

Before I began my fellowship here at Adamah, I was beginning to make the transition to veganism. I have been a vegetarian for almost 7 years and decided that if I truly was against animal cruelty then I needed to not consume dairy and eggs anymore. When I was awarded the fellowship at Adamah, I knew that animal husbandry would be a part of the program but I didn’t really know what that meant until I came here. Moreover, I did not expect it to have such an impact on my final decision to go vegan.

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A friend once told me that she thinks our generation is missing mega-heroes. “Of course, of course,” she agreed to the point that there are countless men and women doing world-changing work. Still, she insited that we are lacking that charismatic, almost mythic leader - Martin Luther King, Ghandi, Susan B. Anthony, Nelson Mandela - who can unite and energize a movement towards a common goal.

Well, chef Dan Barber (left) and environmental and food writer Dan Imhoff (right) might not yet be household names, but after a mere hour in their presence last week, I felt a renewed fire to change the world.

Barber and Imhoff were the featured speakers last Wednesday on an NYU-sponsored panel called, “Sustainable Agriculture vs. Industrial Food. ” Despite the 4:00pm weekday start time and lackluster title, the room was packed to capacity - testament both to the mushrooming interest in all things food (and the impending Farm Bill vote), and also to Barber and Imhoff’s growing star power. Here’s what these, if I may, budding heroes had to say:

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This shabbat is called “Shabbat Nachamu” (Shabbat of Comfort), named after this week’s haftarah which offers consolation following the devastating events of Tisha B’Av, commemorated last week.

Since my first visit to Jerusalem, prior to beginning cantorial school, I’ve been torn about the purpose and method for observing Tisha B’Av. On the one hand, I have no desire to see us return to a patriarchal system of priestly castes, with animal sacrifice as the primary form of Jewish spiritual expression, and on the other hand, we Jews can now rejoice in Jerusalem rebuilt in our own time. Read more »

My brother Matthew, age 6, with giant zucchini

We try to keep up. Lazily spread out from a gnarly stock, the zucchinis live a life of luxury, in sundappled shade, air moistened by the damp shelter of their leaves, beautifully dark green and speckled, and GROWING. We’re out there every two days, harvest bins and totes, carrying armloads of 7” or 8” long zucchinis up to our fridge.

But sometimes, we slip up. A zucchini goes unnoticed. Maybe it should have been harvested on Tuesday, but we missed it, and again on Thursday it got overlooked… by Sunday when we peer through the leaves we’ll find a sea-creature! A leviathan! Bigger than my forearm, bigger than a rolling pin or a jumbo bottle of wine, these turbo-zukes aren’t exactly sellable, but they do make good props for caveman re-enactments.

And, thank God, they’re good for zucchini bread – which is easy to make parve, and therefore a completely versatile and awesome snack to have around, frequently, this time of year.

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The Center for a New American Dream recently launched a sustainable - and tasty - campaign. Carbon Conscious Consumer (C3) “challenges individuals to establish climate-friendly daily habits and inspire their friends to do the same. Participants who most creatively and effectively spread the word will win prizes including:

Grand Prize: An eco-friendly landscape design package valued at over $6000 from Jim Pollack Design
Second Prize: A gas grill valued at $400
Third Prize: A package of goods from Patagonia valued at $100

July’s challenge is to buy 1 pound of locally grown food a week. Future challenges include downshifting driving, ditching junk mail, breaking the bottled water habit, green cleaning products, and using sustainable bags instead of plastic.

Find out more and take the pledge here.

Watch the Farm Bill now on CSPAN or at:http://www.cspan.org/watch/cs_cspan_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS

The Democratic Leadership seems to have made enough deals and bought off enough interests to think they have the votes to pass this bill; nobody thought this was possible as late as yesterday. As Chairman Peterson is saying as I type, “There’s something in this bill for everyone to like. There’s probably also something in this bill for everyone not to like.” Although we haven’t seen the reform needed to create a better food system, we have seen the advancement of good proposals pushed by many disparate groups: mandatory Country of Origin Labeling, needed changes to food stamps (though not for immigrants), Pigford claims redress, new money for organics and obesity research and many others; but no reform for our corn, soy, cotton, peanut and sugar addictions.

As a newbie to the Capitol Hill bubble, I sort of feel like this moment is like the High Holidays of farm policy… Peterson put on his good pin-striped suit, everyone’s gathered round (ok, so only a few rows are full), they’ll be stuck in a room together for hours….

If so, then who’s G-d? Nancy Pelosi? If it actually passes, maybe we’ll find out if the Senate gets a bill to their chamber in September… around the time of Yom Kippur, if they ever hope to make it out of conference by the end of FY ‘07.

And then there’s always the veto threat…

(Thanks to our friend, Michael Croland from Heeb n’ Vegan, for this guest post)

The other night, I walked around the Norfolk Tides’ minor league baseball stadium, ran out onto the field, and climbed on top of both dugouts. I danced the Macarena with young children, showed off my air guitar skills to a thousand or so spectators, and put ketchup on a veggie dog when I could barely peer out of my carrot costume’s eye holes. Prancing around as Chris P. Carrot is a lighthearted way to tell people to “Go Veg!” and “Eat Your Veggies, Not Your Friends,” as the placards on my costume’s torso read.

Every opportunity I get, I advocate vegetarianism through sports teams’ Mascot Mania events. In 2004, I made my less-than-kosher debut as PETA the Pig, joined by Ronald McDonald, the Chick-fil-A cow, and other unlikely comrades. PETA’s Chris P. Carrot was in Boston then to “campaign” for vegetarianism outside the Democratic National Convention, but ever since, I’ve been the go-to guy to be Chris P. Carrot at baseball, soccer, and hockey games in my hometown of Norfolk, Va.

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Borrowing a page from Jewschool’s “Motzash Mishegaas,” I’m starting a new weekly post “rounding-up” relevant news from the past week called “Ready for a Roundup?” because the world is NOT ready for any more Roundup Ready crops.

This week’s version focuses on the confluence of religion, sustainable agriculture projects and farm policy.

• Last Wednesday, an “interfaith” group released a letter to Speaker Pelosi demanding Farm Bill reform. Noticeably absent: all non-Christian/Catholic faiths, with the exception of Sojourners which is truly interfaith.

With Jspot’s recent post on Jews and the environmental movement and recent efforts by large Jewish institutions and demoninations to begin working on the environmental issue, can we do more than hope that the good work of Hazon, Mazon and others is finally recognized within the larger Jewish community?

• While doing some research at work, I recently came across this Eco-Halal Project organized by a group called Faith in Place in Chicago. While the concept of Eco-Halal now seems completely obvious, it had never occurred to me as a parallel movement to eco-Kashrut, proabably partially because the number of certified Halal products  is far fewer than those that are Kosher.

Thanks so much to The Jew and the Carrot blogger Tzimmes-Maker for her in depth and ongoing coverage of the Farm Bill throughout the summer.  I recently wrote a post for Lilith Magazine’s blog that talks about the most recent high profile case of industrial food poisoning (from a can of chili sauce), (read the full thing here).  The post also talks about a disturbing provision in the Farm Bill which, if it passed, would wipe out state and local authority to protect food safety.  Since I wrote the  post, the provision has been removed from the Farm Bill (things change fast around here!), but there are still many aspects of the bill that support agribusiness and leave the majority of small family farms behind.

Today is the Day to Take Action
The House of Reps is voting on the Farm Bill this week.  Meanwhile, The Fairness in Farm and Food Policy Amendment offerred by Reps. Ron Kind and Jeff Flake is being offered in the House.  The amendment offers reform that will benefit small farmers, struggling rural communities, hungry people in America, and farmers in developing countries. 

Please call your representative by NOON, Thursday (tomorrow) to ensure your voice is counted in this critical vote.

For an easy-to-read summary of the amendment, and steps on how to call your representative go to Seeds of Change. 

Links from all over the web and Jewish blogosphere:

• There’s a food fight over at Jewcy.com: Isa Chandra Moskowitz, queen bee of ethical veganism and author of Vegan With A Vengeance, versus Charles Eisenstein, pioneering theorist of environmentally motivated meat-eating.
• Thou Shalt Snack offers kosher, GMO-free and (moderately) healthy snacks for the holy palatte. Portions of proceeds go to Mazon: Jewish Response to Hunger, the Grameen Foundation USA, and the JCC Association. And hey, with a name like that, who can argue otherwise?
• The Canadian Jewish News covers the Tzedek Hchsher and its cheif champion, Rabbi Allen Morris.

And how! The rows of zucchini, with their bright orange star flowers poking out here and there are one of the most beautiful sights in our field. Zucchini plants reproduce sexually – that is, they have both male and female flowers on the same plant. Sperm from the male flower is carried to the female flower by honey bees; the female flower is actually the ovary of the plant, and once the pollen is spread, the magic begins! The fruit actually grows in the place between the female flower and the stem – so you can see baby zucchinis that still have a wilting flower at one end as flower makes way for fruit.

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Last night I listened to the Book of Lamentations/Eichah. Today I read the words of Barbara Kingsolver:

Set down a platter of country ham in front of a rabbi, an imam, and a Buddhist monk, and you may have just conjured three visions of damnation. Guests with high blood pressure may add a fourth. Is it such a stretch, then, to make moral choices about food based on the global consequences of of its production and transport?

As Naf posted earlier, the ritual of fasting on Tisha B’av and other major fast days presents an interesting question for those who already use their food choices to represent their values, Jewish and otherwise. While I have traditionally fasted on Tisha B’av, I felt that the fast would weaken me too much to be at my “fighting weight” for a full day of work as the Farm Bill moves to the House Floor this Thursday.

Making connections between the mourning of the destruction of the Temple and the idea of Tikkun Olam as a substitute for the rebuilding of the Temple that many in the post-Messianic diaspora age make, I’ve recently viewed Tisha B’av as a moment to take a look at what is falling apart around us, as Anna posted earlier today.

However, as my teacher in Mexico used to say, when you dream about the world you imagine is possible, you should wake up and live it the next morning. Since the world I want to live in would have a wholly different food system, I decided that whatever food I would eat today should be representative of that world, Read more »

On this day, we ask a lot of questions. Not like Passover, when we sit and eat, laugh and make jokes, and drink our wine. On Tisha B’av we mourn our loss, as Jews, and Humans, and as Pieces of an Ecosystem. This Holiday is not meant to prod us to ask questions, but yet, when we mourn we can do almost nothing but ask, “why?” I won’t try to answer any”why?” questions, but the next question that I heard today moved me. We were discussing what it means to be mourning for the human loss, and not just the loss, and asking what we can do. What can we do, to give our lamentation meaning that lasts beyond the day of official, enforced mourning.

To the question of “what can we do?”, the only answer that I can think of is to empower ourselves, and to empower those around us. Every day, we make choices in our live that impact our world, both close to home and far away. The things we do as we attempt to feed and clothes those dear to us have ramifications that go beyond the spiritual work of mourning and have the power to uplift lives everywhere. In our workplace, we can recognize the links that we play in a global or local chain of goods and services and seek to purchase true “economic goods.” I’m not talking about a washing machine that lasts for ten years, I’m talking about a washing machine that is good for me because it uses less water to wash my clothes, it’s good for the manufacturer because she uses recycled parts, it’s good for my brother in Bangladesh because it uses a fraction of the electricity that most machines use and doesn’t raise the sea level outside his field.

On a day when I choose not to eat (freeing up about 3 hours), I have time to reflect on the deep impact of my food choices on the world around me. Buy the tomato that’s really “good”. Food doesn’t have to be a commodity. Buy a tomato from a farmer who cares; it’s not just better for you, it really makes a difference.

Today is Tisha B’Av, the 9th day of the month of Av. At the peak of summer, in the middle of the week, all of a sudden we turn our thoughts to pain, hurt, loss, sorrow, emptiness.

I’m struck by this practice of bringing up the sorrow on a specific day, this holiday/Holy Day, recalling it on purpose, dredging history and the far corners of the world to remember all the ways we are and have been broken. We put a lot of energy into NOT feeling the sorrow most of the time. We change the channel, cover our ears, flip the page when bad news comes through and for good reason: there is so much tragedy in this world, we don’t know where it will end, and we can’t function if we are stuck in the brokenness.

Because when life is good, but the list of tragedies and terrible things in the world seems to never end, how do you hold joy and sorrow at the same time?

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