Upcoming Events:

PLACE Book Club: Learning about Food and Place

Beginning this year, PLACE will be hosting a monthly book club on the third Tuesday of every month.  Discussion will begin at 8:00pm.  In January, February, and March, we will be meeting at Jittery Joe's in Watkinsville, Georgia (27 Greensboro Hwy, Watkinsville, GA  30677).  We have picked a range of books that explore our food system from various perspectives that examine the possibilities and limitations of the local food movement.  Join us for one. Join us for them all.  Join us if you've read the whole book or just one chapter.  We look forward to discussions about how we shape, and are shaped, by the choices we make and the food we eat. 

• March 16th: “Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives” by Carolyn Steel.  This new book is an investigation about the historical role food has played in shaping our lives and our cities while also capturing a British perspective on local food. 
• April 20th: “Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty” by Mark Winne.  Winne is a co-founder of a number of food and agriculture policy groups including the City of Hartford Food Policy Commission, the Connecticut Food Policy Council, End Hunger Connecticut!, and the national Community Food Security Coalition.  This book specifically tackles issues of hunger, food security, and food access. 
• May 18th: “The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved: Inside America’s Under Ground Food Movements” by Sandor Ellix Katz.  Katz is a culinary author, food activist, and avid fermentationist.  Katx provides a overview of all the problems our industrial food system is causing and grass-root efforts to address these problems.
• June 15th: “Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasure and Politics of Local Food” by Gary Paul Nabhan.  Nabhan eats locally for a year, in a desert, by exploring Native American food traditions and explaining the importance of saving seeds, genetic diversity, and cultural memory. 
• July 20th: “Bringing It to the Table: On Food and Farming” by Wendell Berry.  Berry is a prolific writer, eloquent poet and thoughtful farmer of more than 40 decades.  This book compiles and captures his insight and wisdom throughout this life. 
• August 17th: "Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly" by James E. McWilliams.  An environmental historian, McWilliam provides a clear-eyed investigation in the idealist visions of the local food movement and his own well-researched alternatives to responsible eating.  Should provide a thoughtful discussion. 
• September 21st: “Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer” by Novella Carpenter.  Carpenter has been an urban farmer for over a decade in Oakland, California and shares her insights and experiences in this book. 
• October 19th: “Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness” by Lisa Hamilton.  Hamilton shares the stories of farmers who have been left behind (and stayed behind) while other farmers rushed to industrialize their farms and compete in the global marketplace. 

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Dancing to the Beet, February 6th, 11:00pm-2:00am at Farm 255
Join PLACE for our first Saturday night fundraiser, "Dancing to the Beet," at Farm 255 with DJ Mahogany.  DJ Mahogany is a fanatical vinyl collector and usually has disco, old soul and funk on his turntable.  Five dollar suggested donation to benefit PLACE, which fosters a strong accessible local food culture in Athens.  

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PLACE is an Athens-based non-profit organization whose mission is to promote a strong, accessible local food culture in Athens.  

We do that by:

• creating opportunities to celebrate local food;
  
• creating opportunities to grow and eat locally;
  
• developing and facilitating educational opportunities around food; and
  
• networking community members, organizations, and institutions to create, maintain, and strengthen mutually beneficial relationships that build a strong local food culture.

But you, as a citizen and consumer, are the one who can really make a difference by:

• buying and eating local foods; 
• sharing meals with friends and family;
• meeting the fine folks growing your food;
• trying your hand at growing your own;
• starting or joining a community garden;
• volunteering at a school garden;
• learning more about why going local matters;
• becoming an advocate for local food; or
• making a charitable donation to PLACE