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Common Table: AgFest 2009

Presented by Slow Food Sacramento

July 11, 2009

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Slow Food Sacramento is pleased to present Common Table, a day of tours and workshops culminating in a sit-down gourmet dinner at the Fremont Community Garden. The goal is to raise awareness about local urban gardening and food programs, as well as to advocate for improved city, county and state food policies that enable more locally grown foods in urban locations.

The event benefits the Sacramento Hunger Coalition, an organization that helps bring food to the poor, and the Sacramento Area Community Garden Coalition, an organization dedicated to expanding urban locations for growing fruits and vegetables.

The evening activity includes a three-course dinner of fresh, seasonal faire catered by Magpie Caters. The outside family style feast will be held at the Fremont Community Garden, a beautiful setting amidst thriving fruit and vegetable plants. Dinner speaker Braham Ahmadi of Peoples Grocery in Oakland will share his insights on Innovative Solutions for Food Justice. Ahmadi is a nationally recognized leader in the movement to spearhead growing fresh food in urban locations for low-income residents.

In addition, the Avid Reader will be on hand selling a variety of books on gardening and the urban food movement, and a live auction will feature an array of culinary opportunities, including local gourmet restaurants that will offer private dinners, private gardening consultations and an opportunity to dine out with a prominent food critic Blair Anthony Robertson. 

There will be activities during the day that include a variety of workshops relating to community gardening, backyard organic gardening, composting, food gleaning and local food swap programs. The Sacramento Hunger Coalition will host "What's 'Growing' On," a tour of local community gardens and places with access to locally grown foods. The organization will also host Hunger 101, an interactive session to learn how the poor cope with lack of availability of fresh foods.

A special showing of the movie "FRESH" at the Guild Theater, 2828 35th Street, Sacramento, will air at 2:30 and 4 p.m. "FRESH" celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity. Forging healthier, sustainable alternatives, they offer a practical vision for a future of our food and our planet. Among several main characters, "FRESH" features urban farmer and activist, Will Allen, the recipient of MacArthurs 2008 Genius Award; sustainable farmer and entrepreneur, Joel Salatin, made famous by Michael Pollans book, The Omnivores Dilemma; and supermarket owner, David Ball, who challenges a Wal-Mart dominated economy. Hosted by, with an introduction to the film, Environment and Agriculture Taskforce (EAT) Sacramento