Archive for October, 2009
Small-town grocery stores feed a need bigger than stomachs
In the small Nebraska town I now call home, a small grocery store anchors one end of Main Street. Once a farm-implement dealership, it has nine aisles, a dairy cooler, and a fresh meat counter. It employs nine full-time workers plus various high school students, and its
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Special Digest: Have a raw milk shake, “he said/she said” style
These are frothy days for the debate over access to unpasteurized milk. Business-reporter-turned-raw-milk-blogger David Gumpert has a new book out, "The
The “hourglass” problem of getting small-farm Vermont meat to Vermont consumers
"Freedom and Unity" for sustainable meat!: Kudos to reporter Kathryn Flagg and the Addison Independent for their two-part series on slaughterhouses in Vermont. Part II looks at the growing market for local meats, the challenges facing small meat producers, and the ways farmers are trying to make meat
Bill and Nicolette Hahn Niman on why they mourn a dead cow
All about Eve: Moving piece by sustainable meat's power couple on why they cried when they found the daughter of one of their favorite cows unexpectedly dead. "After all, this cow was being raised for meat. How could we feel a genuine attachment for her?" they ask. "We can only say that we did. And that
Why slaughterhouses should be open to the public
Why slaughterhouses should be open to the public: USDA and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture have suspended operations at the Bushway Packing plant in Grand Isle, VT, a facility that processes veal calves, pending a continuing investigation based on abuses uncovered by the Humane Society. Videotape from
USDA funding university research on organic
Drop in the bucket: Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan yesterday announced that more than $19 million in grants have been awarded to universities across the country to solve critical organic agriculture issues. The Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative, administered by USDA's
Doctors take a stand on Coca-Cola funding for physicians’ website
Kicking the Coke habit: Nearly 20 doctors have resigned from the American Academy of Family Physicians after it accepted a grant from Coca-Cola to fund nutritional education content on its website. The lead protester pointed out that consumption of soda and other sugar-sweetened drinks has been
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Citrus pest threatens California growing center
Not the kind of greening you want: The Asian citrus psyllid, which has wreaked havoc in Florida as well as overseas, has been found in rural San Diego County. Northern San Diego County has about 2,500 acres of commercial citrus orchards and is home to the largest concentration of organic citrus farmers
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Dispatch from Germany No. 2: Visiting three small but innovative farm-to-table enterprises
By Renee Ciulla As I wrote in my first post for Ethicurean, I’m a graduate student learning about Sustainable Agriculture in Europe who recently spent a semester
New research on aquaculture industry reveals murky waters surrounding fish-feed issue
The products of aquaculture, the farming of sea creatures and plants, are often divided into "bad fish" — piscavores, like salmon, that eat more pounds of protein in the form of other fish than they yield — and "good fish," omnivores like tilapia and carp that can survive on plant matter. A new
Apple days are here again
As the weather turns colder here in northeast Ohio, harvests are tapering off and farmers markets are dwindling, both on the farmer side and the shopper side. We're approaching that time of year when the only local produce you can expect to find for months consists of potatoes, onions, cabbage, and squash. For
Sam Fromartz takes on anti-locavore contrarian James McWilliams
Swatting flies: We've mostly tried to ignore James McWilliams, hoping he'll just go away, but now that the New York Times has given his locavore-baiting views a regular platform, we may not be able to much longer. Fortunately Sam Fromartz, blogger and author of Organic,
In “Fat of the Land,” forager Lang Cook tells how rooted food is to place
High school date nights found my boyfriend and I parked at the edge of Puget Sound, where daytime low tides enticed dozens of clam diggers to the tide flats. We called our sessions by the unintentionally indecent name "clam digging." High school was the last time I'd made out clamming until a recent
Behavioral economics and the food system
The human mind is fascinating. Understanding how we make decisions, how we form preferences, how we think about the future is not only intellectually interesting, but can also help us understand the dynamics of national conversations and find solutions to some of today's most pressing problems. The national
Big Meat has tantrum over Oct 15 Michael Pollan talk at CalPoly
Harris Ranch feedlot photo from Mark Bittman's 2008 NY Times article, "Rethinking the Meat Guzzler" RIP, academic freedom: Writer Michael Pollan—aka "elitist," and apparently Agribiz Public Enemy No. 1—will now be part of a panel discussion at Cal Poly on Oct. 15 instead of giving a
