The Boston Gardeners Council and The Roxbury Community College Service Learning Garden Project sponsor, with Boston Natural Areas Network, The Boston Urban Gardening Book Group on Monday, December 19, from 10:30 – 12 at Roxbury Community College, Academic Building #3, Room 130, discussing Oran B. Hesterman’s Fair Food: Growing a Healthier Sustainable Food System for All. A host of books and films in recent years have documented the dangers of our current food system, from chemical runoff to soaring rates of diet-related illness to inhumane treatment of workers and animals. But advice on what to do about it largely begins and ends with the admonition to “eat local or “eat organic.” Fair Food is an enlightening and inspiring guide to changing not only what we eat, but how food is grown, packaged, delivered, marketed, and sold. Oran B. Hesterman shows how our system’s dysfunctions are unintended consequences of our emphasis on efficiency, centralization, higher yields, profit, and convenience–and defines the new principles, as well as the concrete steps, necessary to restructuring it. Along the way, he introduces people and organizations across the country who are already doing this work in a number of creative ways, from bringing fresh food to inner cities to fighting for farm workers’ rights to putting cows back on the pastures where they belong. He provides a wealth of practical information for readers who want to get more involved. For more information contact Stephanie Bostic at sb2178@gmail.com, or Karen Chaffee at karen@bostonnatural.org.
