Spokane Food Policy Council

Spokane Food Policy Council > SFPC Blog > Urban Livestock and Market Gardening in the City of Spokane

Urban Livestock and Market Gardening in the City of Spokane

Written By: Pat Munts

May 2017- Urban Livestock and Market Gardening in the City of Spokane:     

“How cool would it be if you could walk down the street in your Spokane neighborhood and buy vegetables fruit and flowers from your neighbor who grew them right in their back yard? It can’t be fresher than that. Thanks to the city’s forward thinking City Council that is entirely possible in the City of Spokane. So is keeping small urban goats, sheep and pigs.In March of 2014, The City of Spokane established two urban agriculture ordinances to help the city’s residents expand their ability to grow food in the urban environment.”  Click to read the full blog. 

Nutrition? Or Is Food Medicine?

The right food is as important to the body as the right gas is for a car. We have gotten to believe that only a doctor’s prescription for a pharmaceutical is really what is going to make us well when in fact, the opposite is often true. Many of us have reactions to pharmaceuticals because, although based on plants, they have increased the potency of the chemical to a point that is often too strong for many of us. Also, the built-in safeguards that plant-based chemicals often have are removed in a lab-produced chemical that only mimics the plant. […]

Enjoy food. That’s a policy I can get behind.

What does food mean to you?  I ask my students to journal on this question during the first week of Nutrition.  Their responses range from “fuel” (those are usually the athletes) to “comfort” to “the enemy”.  Everyone has some relationship with food, and it varies over the course of our lives, and sometimes it is healthier than others.  My students tend to struggle with this question. […]

Spokane Food Policy Council’s Comment on the Farm Bill

On November 21, 2018, the Spokane Food Policy Council sent a comment to the Congressional Conference Committee leadership to let them know what kind of Farm Bill the Council would like to see come out of the reconciliation process. Here is the text of the comment. […]

Farm Bill Increases Hunger

In June the House passed a Farm Bill that increases hunger and poverty. By cutting $20 billion and strictly limiting eligibility for SNAP (food stamps), it takes food away from working-poor families, children, disabled people, veterans, seniors and seasonal workers. […]

The Many Ways to Shop at Your Local Farmers Market

By Kendra Dean, Catholic Charities Eastern Washington Food For All Project Manager There are a multitude of reasons to support your local farmers markets here in Spokane County. These include, but are not limited to, enhanced flavor, building your local community, reducing your environmental impact, and supporting local businesses – all great things! We are […]

Food & Politics: The Farm Bill

Written By: Linda Moulder Begun after the Dust Bowl and Depression years of the 1930s, Congress developed a complex set of safety nets for food, fiber, fuel and energy and named it the Farm Bill. $100 billion is allotted annually to support Farm Bill programs. Federal policies are complicated and the Farm Bill is no […]

What Food Policy in Spokane means for you

Spokane Food Policy “SFPC Update: The Spokane Food Policy Council (SFPC) first met October 2013, and since then has been engaged in council organizational/program development, research, and outreach. Some particular areas of current and future interest include: farmland preservation K-12 nutrition institutional purchasing policies policies that allow for local food processing in or near urban […]