Category Archives: Food and Drink

Who will pick Vidalia onions now that immigrants are scared away?

Could Georgia’s anti-immigration law already have ill effects?

AP wrote May 20, 2011, Immigration crackdown worries Vidalia onion county:

Signs point to an exodus in Vidalia onion country. Fliers on a Mexican storefront advertise free transportation for workers willing to pick jalapenos and banana peppers in Florida and blueberries in the Carolinas. Buying an outbound bus ticket now requires reservations. While most states rejected immigration crackdowns this year, conservative Georgia and Utah are the only states where comprehensive bills have passed. With the ink barely dry on Georgia’s law, among the toughest in the country, the divisions between suburban voters and those in the countryside are once again laid bare when it comes to immigration, even among people who line up on many other issues.

Guess who wanted this crackdown even though rural south Georgians didn’t:

The crackdown proved popular in suburban Atlanta, where Spanish-only signs proliferate and the Latino population has risen dramatically over the past few decades. Residents complain that illegal immigrants take their jobs and strain public resources.
That’s right: Atlanta, not content with lusting after our water, now scares off our workers.

Do immigrants really take jobs from locals? Such claims never seem to have data to back them up. I tend to agree with Carlos Santana:

“This is about fear, that people are going to steal my job,” Santana said of the law. “No we ain’t. You don’t clean toilets and clean sheets, stop shucking and jiving.”
In south Georgia local people won’t pick Vidalia onions for the wages immigrants will, and the wages locals want the farmers can’t afford.

Remember who profits from this crackdown, at the expense of Georgia farmers and taxpayers: private prison companies and their investors.

We don’t need a private prison in Lowndes County. Spend those tax dollars on education instead.

-jsq

PS: Vidalia onion story owed to Jane Osborn.

U.S. drug war afflicts Latin America and rebounds on U.S.

The war on drugs causes violence, poverty, and illiteracy in Latin America that drives illegal immigration into the U.S., for the profit of Monsanto, military contractors, and private prison companies. Does that seem right to you?

Neal Peirce wrote a syndicated column 22 May 2011, Misguided U.S. drug policies afflict Mexico, Central America:

The war on drugs in Mexico, partially funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government assistance, has not only failed to curb the trade but intensified horrific violence, corruption and human rights abuses, writes Neal Peirce.

For most Americans, the recent news of popular demonstrations in Mexico was probably a small diversion from the daily tide of bloody global reports from such faraway hot spots as Pakistan, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and Bahrain.

Why worry, most of us likely concluded, if thousands of Mexicans are marching in the streets, protesting the horrific violence and high death toll in their nation’s raging drug war? Isn’t that their problem?

It’s true, the news reports focus less on the American role, more on growing anger with the government of President Felipe Calderón and the meager returns from the massive police and military crackdown on the drug trade he inaugurated in 2006.

Since then, more than 37,000 Mexicans have been murdered, often tortured and brutalized before their deaths, as cartels battle for control of drug smuggling routes and brazenly assassinate anyone, official or average citizen, they think is in their way.

The hard lesson is that the war on drug dealers, decreed by Calderón and partially funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. government assistance, has not only failed to curb the trade but intensified horrific violence, corruption and human-rights abuses.

So what can be done? Continue reading →

Chastity tells us about Healthy Options of Days Gone By

Healthy Options had a table at the first Valdosta Downtown Farm Days, and Chastity told us about their products with no preservatives and no synthetics.

Here’s the video:


Chastity tells us about Healthy Options of Days Gone By
Downtown Valdosta Farm Days, Courthouse Square,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 May 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Neither wind nor solar power “need to be purchased by Halliburton”

Continuing to see what “the indigenous” think about solar power:
Today, a number of Native tribes, from the Lakota in the Dakotas to the Iroquois Confederacy in New York to the Anishinaabeg in Wisconsin, battle to preserve the environment for those who are yet to come. The next seven generations, the Lakota say, depend upon it.

“Traditionally, we’re told that as we live in this world, we have to be careful for the next seven generations,” says Loretta Cook. “I don’t want my grandkids to be glowing and say, ‘We have all these bad things happening to us because you didn’t say something about it.’

Part of this family and spiritual obligation to preserve

Continue reading →

Amanda Peacock explains it all (Downtown Valdosta Farm Days)

Food and other vendors on the historic Lowndes County Courthouse Square, in Valdosta, Georgia, every first and third Saturday, 9AM to 1PM.

Here’s the video:


Amanda Peacock explains it all (Downtown Valdosta Farm Days)
Downtown Valdosta Farm Days, Courthouse Square,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 7 May 2011.
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

More about that in this previous post.

-jsq

I sold 40 pounds of potatoes in an hour! —Gretchen Quarterman

People said they’d come back, but I sold out in an hour and had to tell them you need to come at 9! Downtown Valdosta Farm Days is a success.

I don’t have any pictures of me or my potatoes, though; sorry. But here you can see me digging the same potatoes.

Lots of vendors of food-related items, such as Continue reading →

Local foods, local economy, local community

Local food is more than healthier, it’s even more than tasty. It’s also local economy and local community.

In the U.K., small local shops are being replaced by big-box supermarkets. A widespread argument for this conversion is that consumers get more choice. Peter Wilby wrote in the Guardian 3 May 2011 about why that’s not good enough:

Even the “good for consumers” defence of the big stores requires scrutiny. Supermarkets may offer mangoes and kiwi fruit as a blessed relief to generations who recall the surly greengrocer grunting “no demand for it” when asked for anything out of the ordinary. But the option to buy locally grown produce is increasingly closed off; many varieties of English fruit disappeared long ago. Supermarkets stock food not for its taste, but for its longevity and appearance. Conventional economists count numbers, assuming that a huge increase in toilet roll colours represents an unqualified gain to the consumer. They neglect more subtle dimensions of choice.

The central issue, however, is whether “what the consumer wants” should close down the argument. What people want as consumers may not be what they want as householders, community members, producers, employees or entrepreneurs. The loss of small shops drains a locality’s economic and social capital. Money spent in independent retail outlets tends to stay in the community, providing work for local lawyers and accountants, plumbers and decorators, window cleaners and builders.

He then cites U.S. research that shows local stores promote the local economy. Are we just consumers? Maybe we do other things than just buy stuff? Especially, do we do other things together? Continue reading →

Local businesses help the local economy

Here’s a long list of studies that show that:
Independent businesses have been found to generate between 60% and 300% more local economic activity that chain retail stores do.
Somebody remind me why VLCIA’s main efforts are on bringing in big chains?

Or why people are so fascinated with Olive Garden, for that matter?

Well, I suppose if you want lower wages, big box retailers are good for that.

Hm, so the ultimate big box would be a private prison: a literally captive audience paid for by captive tax dollars and hirable at the lowest possible wages.

-jsq

May 7: Downtown Valdosta Farm Days

Downtown Valdosta Farm Days begin two weeks from tomorrow:
Bringing the best of the country to the heart of the City!

Downtown Valdosta Farm Days is a bi-weekly farmers’ market featuring local farmers and artisans and also serves to educate the community about eating local, nutrition and food choices.

Downtown Farmers Market
First and Third Saturdays from May to September
9:00 a.m. until 1:00 p.m.
Lowndes County Courthouse Square, Downtown Valdosta

There’s a calendar on their website, along with how to become a vendor. And everybody is purring now. Agriculture, economy, and a festival! And, it costs the county nothing.

More on this story as it develops.

-jsq

Valdosta Downtown Farm Days —Mara Register

Mara Register came to the Lowndes County Commission regular meeting to talk about Downtown Valdosta Farm Days, following up from the Farm Days organizational meeting Monday.

I think her main points were:

  1. Provide additional information about healthy eating with food from local farmers, thus helping solve the epidemic of childhood obesity in Georgia.
  2. Economic development opportunity for small farmers.
  3. Promote downtown district.
When? The Saturday after First Friday and the Saturday after Art After Dark.

Where? The parking spaces around the historic courthouse.

No livestock. Local produce. Here’s video of the first part of what she said.


Regular Meeting, Lowndes County Commission, Lowndes County, Georgia, 12 April 2011
Videos by Gretchen Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

Logistics, such as no cooking, because Continue reading →