A recent webinar series, “Healthy, Climate-Friendly School Food: Strategies for Success,” hosted by Friends of the Earth highlights experiences of food staff and stakeholders in creating healthy meals for students. The final panel last Thursday, focused on a new report, “The State of School Meals in California”, that finds a significant disparity between California’s climate […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has been hard on many, especially those in the food industry. A report by the Independent Restaurant Coalition finds that 5.9 million restaurant jobs were lost between February and April of last year. And according to the National Restaurant Association, 17 percent of restaurants in the United States have closed permanently due […]
In nature, composting occurs naturally. Vegetation falls to the ground and decays, becoming humus, which provides minerals and nutrients to feed plant life. In society, however, our urban trappings often get in the way. We rake leaves off our lawns and shovel them into plastic bags, which we shove into garbage cans to be picked […]
Long Beach has the opportunity to enact California’s new Homemade Food Act (AB 626) this year, which creates a permit process for the previously illegal occupation of selling homemade meals. The bill, signed into law by Gov Jerry Brown, took effect in January 2019, but requires a local ordinance to establish permits here in Long […]
-- --Long Beach Fresh is now accepting proposals for our first Foodways Summit, which will consist of community gatherings across the city to explore ways to innovate our local food system from May 24-31, 2018, in Long Beach. This is an open-source Summit – meaning that it’s purely based on proposals we receive from you! […]
NOTE: Due to COVID19, regular crop swaps are on hold. For now – free tomato and pepper plant distribution has been announced by North Long Beach Crop Swappers. “Thanks to the generosity of the Fullerton College horticulture department, we again have a large, varied and very robust supply of tomato and pepper plants to give […]
Long Beach is a city of neighborhoods, and many of those neighborhoods have fruit trees! Some residents are happy to share their fruit, and others yet have fruit trees that spill over into alleyways and other public properties. Meanwhile, many Long Beach residents go without food. What if there were a way to better account for […]
Can we grow food, community, and the local economy all at once? Of course! Using space more creatively for food production is a big piece of the puzzle of changing our food system for the better – and it’s just what the newly approved Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones program, launched in November 2017, aims to encourage. On […]
If you have ideas about the little things that people can do to engage in healthier behaviors and become better connected with their food, we encourage you to write a guest post for us (click here for the interest form)! There are a lot of perceived barriers to buying local food and eating well; time, cost, and convenience […]
Did you know that it’s perfectly legal in Long Beach to grow and sell home-grown produce directly to neighbors, chefs, and friends? In this post, we describe some of the background, and how to get started. In 2015, The Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services began accepting applications for the Community Food Producers license […]
We’re working to help get better snacks for sale at Long Beach school student stores. At many high and middle school in Long Beach are “stores” or “cafes” which are outside the federal lunch program’s rigorous standards and complex inter-level bureaucracy. The student store is highly independent, typically selling small bags of nuts, chips, fruit […]
Growing a food business is a lot easier when you have affordable access to a commercial kitchen! Here are some tips and best practices, as well as the shared commercial kitchens that we are of aware of. Stay Small: Produce at home (support passage of Microenterprise Home Kitchen Act, or use the Cottage Food program. […]
One of the best ways to change the food system on a large scale is to change the way the government spends its food dollars. On October 24, 2012, the City of Los Angeles adopted a Good Food Purchasing Policy. Soon after, Los Angeles Unified School District followed… Two years later, they have tested the […]
The relationship between food and our culture, lives and history are so intricate and inexplicable — these stories need to be told. There are places in Long Beach preparing and sharing traditional time-honored ancestors, growing cultural and medicinal herbs, reveling in farm-to-table delights, supporting fair trade and local workers with their purchasing power and more. […]
To truly change food in Long Beach, it will take resident and organizational leaders championing for local, healthy food. Long Beach Fresh wants to connect with food-minded individuals who want to help their neighborhood, business, church, school or social group eat more local, healthy food. The Food Champion Program will create a stronger relationship between […]