Neelam Sharma is the Programs Director for CSU, Community Services Unlimited, an organization empowering South Central Los Angeles residents to eat and grow healthy food. The “Food Not Lawns” attitude towards neighborhoods, I must admit, is infectious. After hanging out with urban and suburban farmers in the last year, we see people watering grass and we gasp. What a waste! CSU encourages and empowers folks to start thinking this way by teaching backyard gardening and reclaiming un-used urban space for food production. Check out their other projects in our previous video ‘Community Services Unlimited: Rocking LA with Food and Beauty‘.
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Technorati Tags: community services unlimited, south central los angeles, south LA, urban gardening, urban farming, food justice, ryanishungry
I love these videos, I’m always checking my iTunes to see if you’ve posted something new. Only one problem - the sound is always really quiet (compared to, say, normal Mp3s or other videos). Why is that?
hey jonathan
thanks for the kind words, we’re glad you like our videos!
some of these have low sound because we’re using the Xacti camera, which doesn’t have an external mic input. so we can’t connect our nice lavalier mic like on this video: http://ryanishungry.com/2007/11/08/janet-brown-allstar-organics-farm/
the xacti helps us capture videos on the fly. but i will take your advice and try to boost the sound!
cheers!
-ryanne
Neelam makes such good points. Soon it will be tomato planting time here in Phoenix. I’ve got to convince my husband to nix the lawn and fill it with delicious food instead, only he’s so resistant. Urgh. Uphill battle. Thanks for continuing to inspire me.
I like this video a lot–good food, locally available.
This winter I’m going to try to eat for a week or a month without buying any food wrapped in plastic. Why would I do this? Is it even possible? Will I save money or go into debt? Will I loose weight? Will I die of starvation? If I make it through I’ll video blog it and let you know.
John (lives in Maine where the lobster season is in full swing and the fishermen don’t use plastic bags) Leeke
hey Jonathan, is the sound low when you watch on our website?
Anyone else having this problem?
I’d love to know if we could could food not wrapped in plastic.
is it possible these days?
Yes, it seems to be the same level (i.e. quiet) on the website Flash player and the podcast. (and yes, I set the Flash player volume to maximum)
wow great episode. Never thought about the lawn thing. Grass looks great, but you can’t eat the stuff.
Re: Buying food not in plastic. Check out TrashTalk at the frogdesign website. A bunch of staffers over there tried to see how little garbage they could collect in two weeks. Their rule is that they had to carry around with them any trash that they generated. It’s a pretty cool project:
http://www.frogdesign.com/frogblog/trash-talk-introduction.html
This is a cool project. Hope they document with photos or video. Be good to see how much trash a person gathers in 2 weeks. Plastic wrapping is the worst.
yes!
i love the idea of people having to carry around the trash they come in contact with. it would be mostly food containers. i’ve heard of people doing this and boy do they ever avoid packaged food! very cool, thanks for the link anne!
I grew up in Russia in the city of 2 mil population. I could not recall a single private backyard or front yard with just grass. Mostly edibles and flowers. I have traveled to 11 countries in the past few years and it seems that people truly appreciate the fact that they have a tiny piece of land where they can grow veggies, fruits and flowers. Often regardless of social status. Some do it as a recreational activity, some to eat organic goods, some strictly as an extra source of food that saves money. I grow all kind of stuff on my tiny balcony in NYC (mostly legal).