Here's a little game you might want to play the next time people are bragging about the places they live. Ask them this question: 

What do the following cities have in common? Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Chattanooga? + More

While they are pondering that one, ask them a second question:
What do these cities have in common? Overland Park, Kan.; Garden Grove, Calif.; Port St. Lucie, Fla.; and Chattanooga?

There are many answers to the first question: Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Chattanooga all are strong economically - in the case of Chattanooga its economic vibrancy has been aided by some major recent business relocations and expansions. All these cities have wonderful downtowns.

They have interesting histories and historic places that are worth a visit. They are beautiful cities with much public art, surrounded by lovely natural amenities (whether mountains, ocean, rivers or combinations of all three). They have highquality universities. Boston, San Francisco, Chicago and Chattanooga are cities that are full of tourists. And that is hardly a surprise. They have great restaurants, a vibrant arts and entertainment scene, and there is much for adults, families and kids to do.

The answer to the second question is much harder, and no one I have ever asked has been able to answer it. What do Overland Park, Garden Grove, Port St. Lucie and Chattanooga have in common? Actually, not much. About the only thing I can think of is that they all have roughly the same population.

Remarkable, isn't it? I couldn't get over it when I first discovered these facts. I visited Chattanooga for the first time two years ago as I began my role as consultant for Imagine Chattanooga 20/20, a community-wide cultural planning process. For years, I had heard about Chattanooga and just assumed it was one of the handful of "major" U.S. cities. That is because it is one of those cities people tend to talk about, and it has so much going for it.

When you compare the surrounding region, you get the same result. Hamilton County and Chattanooga's multi-county region are proof that it isn't population that matters - other things make communities and regions special.

My home is in the greater Boston area, and I spend many of my work weeks in New York City. Yet coming to Chattanooga regularly over the past two years has if anything enhanced my enjoyment of life. My particular interest is the arts, culture and history, and I have been so impressed by the quantity and quality of the scene here.

Most people know about the Hunter Museum of American Art, the historic battlefields, the Tennessee Aquarium, the symphony, and not one but two local ballet companies. But there is so much more here, including one of the few African-American museums in the country (the Bessie Smith Cultural Center), a great children's museum, an active, longrunning community theater, numerous wonderful choral groups, a large community of working artists, a major annual art festival (4 Bridges) that brings thousands of tourists to town each year, and a biannual literary festival.

One of the characteristics of great cities is not only that they have world-class arts, but, just as important, that local citizens are proud of this fact. When I visit great American cities, I find taxi drivers, concierges in hotels, people on the street - many who themselves may never attend an arts event - bragging about the arts of their cities. Elected officials boast, too, and newspapers devote space to the arts. People seem to understand that no matter what their own connection to the arts may be, the economic vitality of a city is enhanced by a vibrant arts scene.

Arts and cultural attractions bring visitors, and they are part of what attracts businesses. Kids who are offered arts in schools perform better on standardized tests, and there is growing evidence even of the power of the arts in quality health care.

Over the past year, I discovered that many Chattanoogans talk in this fashion. I learned about the so-called "Chattanooga Way" and saw it in action as people here came together to talk about the importance of the arts. I went to several meetings where "just plain folks" told remarkable stories.

One was about a young man who had been failing in school but whose life was turned around when he was assigned a minor role on the tech staff of the school play. He never missed a day of school for the rest of the year. I learned about several national arts organizations that had chosen Chattanooga for their local conventions because it was "arts-friendly," thereby contributing to the local economy. I heard about executives from an international corporation explaining their company's decision to come to Chattanooga, where the "intangibles" like the arts were part of what made this place such a compelling choice.

It has been quite an inspiring experience and for me an important lesson learned. Never take the good things in your community for granted. You may be surprised how quickly good can become great.

Thomas Wolf is a principal with WolfBrown, a consulting firm in Cambridge, Mass. Reach him at tom@wolfbrown.com  . - Less

A controversial educator will talk about putting students at the forefront of school reform efforts, a national poet laureate will argue for valuing art in economic tumult and a New York Times best-selling author will talk about food choices.

All are part of this year's George T. Hunter Lecture Series. Please click here for the full story. + More

In an effort to help Chattanooga area citizens identify and support locally-grown food in the marketplace, Gaining Ground is introducing the Harvested Here label. The label distinguishes food such as produce, meats, cheeses, and eggs grown or raised on farms within 100 miles of Chattanooga.

Gaining Ground is an initiative of the Benwood Foundation designed to promote awareness, purchase, and consumption of food grown within 100 miles of Chattanooga. New this year is Gaining Ground's Local Food Program which includes the introduction of the Harvested Here label.  + More

The program is free and open to farms located within that area as well as the restaurants, markets, grocery stores, and food artisans that feature their products.

The Agriculture Department estimates that locally-grown foods will generate $7 billion in sales in 2011, up from $5 billion in 2007. As the segment has grown, so has the need to define what “local” means when applied to food production. The Harvested Here label clearly indicates that, in Chattanooga, locally-grown means “within 100 miles.”

“People are definitely getting more educated about local food, where their food comes from, and wanting to know their farmer. The Harvested Here label is another way for people to know that the tomatoes they are buying actually came from a farm in the area and were not trucked in from Florida,” says Letty Smith of Circle S Farm, a member of Gaining Ground’s Local Food Program.

Participating farms, restaurants and grocers will be encouraged to use the Harvested Here label on their products or packaging, menus, and store displays, all in an effort to help citizens understand where their food comes from and to support local farms.

Gaining Ground is supporting the introduction of the Harvested Here label with public service announcements for television and radio. The television spots feature local farmers and farms and serve to enrich the community’s relationship with the people who grow their food.

Learn more or apply for Gaining Ground’s Local Food Program: www.growchattanooga.orglocalfood

 

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If we are what we eat - and by the measure of our health outcomes, we most assuredly are - then Dr. Vandana Shiva's message here this past week in support of sustainable and organic natural foods and healthier agricultural practices merits urgent attention.

Shiva is a globally renowned scientist and authority on sustainable and organic food and its increasingly toxic nemesis, the world's industrialized, corporate-driven food system. She spoke Tuesday to an overflow audience at UTC in the last of the season's Hunter Lecture Series, which is funded by the Benwood Foundation. Her address was riveting. + More

Shiva's work, primarily in her native India but often on a global stage, is to protect and nurture the type of healthy, sustainable, nutrient-rich food systems that are rooted in ecological diversity, traditional organic region-specific seed stocks, and naturally occurring pest-and-weed-resistant organic soils. That, alone, has made her an international champion of organic farming and sustainable, community-based agriculture and food variety.

A battle of food systems

But it has also pitted her campaign against the politically powerful systems of industrialized agriculture, global food commodity markets, and this system's vast taxpayer subsidies, which artificially cheapen the store price of food stuffs in America while hiding the true cost of the industry's harmful health effects and its residues of toxic soils and groundwater, dying pollinators and depletion of water and energy resources.

In explaining why natural food systems are far superior to industrialized agriculture, she has been effectively forced to give an accounting of the dark side of industrial agriculture. It is based, she has explained in such forums as the World Trade Organization and the recent World Economic Forum in Melbourne, on the use of increasing levels of chemical fertilizers and genetically modified seed stocks and crops.

Commodity profits vs. farms

This is all highly profitable to the seed companies (Monsanto and DuPont are the world's largest) and the industrial food system's global commodity brokers, but it has devastated small farmers, their land and water resources, and the prospects for a healthier sustainable food system.

The lower nutrient value to consumers of industrialized agriculture everywhere around the world, moreover, has intensified food deserts of all sorts - of quantity and diversity of foods in poorer countries, and of nutritional value in food in rich countries, worsening hunger and starvation in the former and obesity in the latter.

The seed industry's genetically modified seeds, fertilizers and crops, though billed as producing abundant harvests and pest-and-weed-resistant crops, actually do the opposite, Shiva's research has shown, even as seed companies and commodity brokers align to crowd out sustainable farming and to bend agriculture to a cog in the industry's profit scheme.

The foremost harm, says Shiva, is the vicious cycle of so-called pesticide-and-weed-resistant crops. These are now found to promote super-pests and super-weeds that evolve apace with genetically engineered seed stocks, Shiva reports, and subsequently require increasingly potent fertilizers and lethal pesticides, even as they devolve in nutrient content.

As farmers have learned the vicious spin-off effects, she says, they find themselves in India and many other countries unable to decouple from their reliance on the expensive engineered seed-stock monopolies, because their collateral heavy use of chemicals has destroyed the naturally occurring bacteria of healthy organic soils, which traditionally replenished itself with simpler farming techniques that used locally evolved seed stocks and multipurpose crop rotations.

From ruin to suicides

One result in India, she recounted, has been the suicides of more than 250,000 farmers whose land and water supplies had been ruined by the industrialized food system's monocultures and the failure of genetically modified seeds they had been encouraged to adopt by the Indian government. When they were no longer able to buy the higher levels of fertilizers and pesticides needed to sustain industrialized agriculture, they were left with depleted land and toxic water that would not again yield their traditional native crops. Their despair, she says, has driven waves of suicide, even as the country's younger population is experiencing a quadrupling of obesity rates due to low-nutrient, industrialized food systems.

Rich countries also suffer

The hidden costs of our industrialized food systems, her research shows, has hit industrialized countries just as hard. It has contributed to the loss of small farmers and sustainable agriculture, and to toxic soils and depletion of water resources. It's driven the loss of healthy, sustainable, ecologically diverse seed stocks, and the core base of agricultural knowledge needed to revive sustainable farming. And it's led to more unhealthy and obese populations whose health care costs are soaring.

Shiva contrasts this modern dilemma of industrialized agriculture with the sustainable agriculture model which has been stupidly cast aside for the seemingly cheaper convenience of industrial farms. Foods from the sustainable model may cost more at the produce and meat counters, but their inherent quality and nutritional value proves to be far more economical when weighed against the cost savings of improved health and nutrition, the conservation of water and energy resources, the value of added local farming jobs.

Boost community agriculture

Shiva strongly advocates a resurgence of community agriculture and local farms before our vital seed varieties and farming knowledge are lost. She believes, with reasonable logic, that ecological and human health can be vastly improved by a resurgence of community agriculture and the nurture of a variety of seed stocks, crops and healthy, free-range farm animals.

In her visit to Chattanooga, she encouraged the work of groups already involved in that mission - Crabtree Farms, Gaining Ground and groups of local, natural and organic farmers whose healthier, tastier foods are increasingly the choice in the city's restaurants and farmers' markets. She spoke, as well, of the intrinsic value of gardening and teaching our children to garden - at home, in schools and on communities' common grounds - both for healthy food, and a healthy spirit. If the world gets the message that gardening is "the new Prozac," she asserts, we'll all be healthier in body and spirit.

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