SPONSORED BY NAVITAS
PGC Notes: As a reminder, you must follow all submission instructions in order to be considered for a daily prize. This means including your name, username, email address, and school in every submission. Please be sure to fully read the instructions for each challenge! Thanks.
“Organic farming is a 100% solution to the health problem, the unemployment problem, the poverty problem, the biodiversity problem and the water problem.” ~ Dr. Vendana Shiva
Food is powerful. The choices we make when we sit down for a meal shape our planet, our communities, and our people. But most people don’t think about where their food comes from. As consumers, we’re told a certain set of stories about our food supply that keep us disconnected from conventional agricultural practices. Add in flashy marketing and smart packaging, and it gets easy to feel removed from the food on your plate.
Understanding the origins of our food is critical, because the food choices we make daily create and reinforce the current culture of food production and consumption in our world.
Imagine how different our approach to food would look if we recognized and honored its intricacy and importance.
Our historical food culture has taught us to treat food with reverence, both by growing food in a way that respects our bountiful earth and by cooking food that nourishes our bodies and brings communities together. However, the emergence of intensive industrial agriculture that prioritizes profit over quality has disrupted many of these age-old traditions.
How?
First, the way we grow food has changed drastically. The current food system is dominated by large-scale monoculture, coupled with the heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. These practices are harmful to the environment and cause soil erosion, loss of biodiversity and water pollution. Second, industrial agriculture also negatively impacts people, leading to social problems including antibiotic resistance and high exposure of farm workers to pesticides.
When agritechnology is the default, food production becomes one of the biggest threats to our environment and our planet. But the picture is not completely bleak.
When farming is managed with sustainability in mind, food production can enhance workers’ quality of life, improve soil health and water quality, restore habitats, and provide healthy, nourishing food for us to eat.
In fact, organizations like Center for Food Safety and Friends of the Earth are working tirelessly to protect our planet by fighting the industrial model and promoting ecologically sound and sustainable alternatives. Companies like today’s partner, Navitas Organics, are working to reinvent the culture of food by supporting small, cooperative, and indigenously owned farms. They build partnerships with farmers to ensure that workers are paid fair wages, and the land is being farmed sustainably. Rather than defaulting to highly processed foods, many companies are prioritizing people and planet by returning to the tenets of a true food culture.
The good news is that you get to choose what foods you buy and consume daily. Consumers (YOU) are demanding to know what’s in their food, who grew it, how it was grown, and where it came from. We’re undoubtedly in the midst of a real food revolution. We’re remembering that food is at the core of our diverse cultures and has the power to shape our future.
This power is at the tip of your fork and in your shopping basket. Be discerning about your food choices. We deeply support the consumption of fresh, local, certified organic, non-GMO, pasture-raised, grass-fed, biodynamic, local, and sustainably grown food. It may not always feel like it, but your individual buying habits add up in massive ways.
Turning Green has put this practice to work with our Conscious Kitchen program. Conscious Kitchen partners with schools to shift the paradigm around food service working to replace processed pre-packaged school food with healthier, chef prepared scratch cooked meals for elementary and middle school students based on five foundational terms — fresh, local, organic, seasonal, and non-GMO (FLOSN). Here’s a video to give you a glimpse into this magnificent program if you have a few minutes.
There is a common misconception that industrial agriculture may be harmful, but how else are we going to solve world hunger? This is a common misconception – industrial agriculture has massively failed in its initial promises to “feed the world”. Although it is the most prevalent form of agriculture, the industrial food chain provides a mere 30% of the world’s food. Even decades after industrial ag came into existence, a billion people worldwide still go hungry, with the rate of hunger in the United States the highest of any developed nation. Closer to home, food insecurity on college campuses in the United States is shockingly high, with 42-60% of college students unable to afford food (click here to learn more).
Perhaps a way to repair our damaged food system is to focus on improving the sustainability practices of the smallholder (small scale) farmers that produce the remaining 70% of the world’s food. Agroecology is one way to do this. By working with – instead of against – nature, this way of farming is demonstrating increasing evidence of its ability to feed the world.
Watch this short video explaining agroecology.
Upload a PDF Document with your responses. Include your name (or team name), username, email address, and school.
Submission Guidelines
You might think that eating FLOSN (fresh, local, organic, seasonal, non-GMO) food is too expensive. But if you plan ahead, that might not be the case. For example, buying seasonally, in bulk, and from local organic farmers (at farmers markets), are all great options to cut back on your costs while reducing your ecological footprint. Not to mention, making choices such as these are better for your health, for farmers and for the planet. Unprocessed foods are nutrient dense and filled with vitamins and minerals that your body craves.
First get really informed with these resources
Upload a PDF Document with your responses. Include your name (or team name), username, email address, and school.
Submission Guidelines
Now that you are beginning to understand the impact of your food choices on so many systems, we want to invite you to curate what a FLOSN diet might look like in your life for 5 days.
Imagine you are alloted $50 for 5 days of FLOSN food. Create a meal plan for yourself. Based on your choices, create a shopping list. How far can you make $50 go?
Upload a PDF Document with all requested responses including your name (or team name), username, email address, and school to be eligible for daily prize packages.
Submission Guidelines
Due on 10/22 at 6am PT. We will award up to 75 bonus points based on quality of work.
Knowing what you know now about food, it’s time to put your cooking skills to the test. Using the Conscious Kitchen FLOSN criteria as your guide, we want you to prepare a delicious meal for you and 3 or more friends, keeping it under $4 per person. Check out the Conscious Kitchen Cookbook for some ideas.
We hope that you are beginning to think more critically about the food that you put on your plate. For this challenge, we want you to recreate a familiar and delicious meal – which we will call a PGC Sustainable Supper – but using ingredients that are better for you, the environment, farmers, animals and all species.
Here is an example of the impact of an iconic meal. Americans love burgers, and eat at least 20 billion of them a year. Unfortunately, most of those burgers come from animals raised on popolluting factory-farms that are fed a diet of water-intensive, genetically modified corn and soy. Growing vast monocultures of feed uses enormous amounts of toxic chemicals that pollute our water, land, soil, animals, insects, and us, humans. It also generates major greenhouse gas emissions and destroys precious biodiversity that supports pollinators and other living creatures.
This is just one example of what might seem like a simple choice that in reality has an enormous impact. So be creative and prepare a meal that you would love to share with friends that honors our food system and the people that grow our food.
Next Steps:
Upload a PDF Document with all requested responses including your name (or team name), username, email address, and school to be eligible for daily prize packages.
Submission Guidelines
Navitas Organics Organic Super Food Blend Vanilla
Navitas Organics Organic Cashew Nuts
Navitas Organics Organic Gogi Berries
Navitas Organics Organic Blueberry Power Snacks
Navitas Organics Tote Bag
Simple Ecology Organic Cotton Produce Bag
Amy’s Kitchen Organic Country Vegetable Soup
Amy’s Kitchen Free Product Coupon
RW Garcia Sweet Potato Crackers
Harmless Harvest Free Coconut Water Coupon
Hachette Books Country Egg City Egg Cookbook
Navitas Organics Organic Super Food Blend Cacao
Navitas Organics Organic Daily Focus Boost
Navitas Organics Organic Golden Berries
Navitas Organics Organic Citrus Power Snacks
Navitas Organics Organic Superfood Bars
Navitas Organics Tote Bag
One Degree Organics Sprouted Corn Flakes
Nutiva Organic Coconut Flour
Nutiva Organic Coconut Sugar
Chronicle Books Cookbook (assorted titles)
