Could native foods be the next big thing in eating? Some people, Gary Nabhan in particular, are working to push things in that direction.

There was plenty of positive energy and discussion of the food and agriculture connection yesterday at the opening of the three-day Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) program’s 20th anniversary conference, held this year in Kansas City, Missouri. More than 800 people were expected to attend, and even more that had been interested but planners […]

Around the world there’s growing talk about food crisis as grain prices soar and supplies plummet. They’re talking food riots. And the American Bakers Association marched on Washington.
Meanwhile, in the breadbasket of the nation (a.k.a. Kansas), the price of bread rose yesterday in its best-known bakery, WheatFields. Nobody rioted.

“Today’s the day,” Thom Leonard announced when […]

A recurring theme of last fall’s Kaw Valley Farm Tour was the terrible, killing freeze of the preceding spring. Now, scientists are suggesting that climate change may mean more of the same, and that’s bad news for local food in places with four seasons, a.k.a. most of the country.
The March issue of BioScience magazine includes […]

Members of the Kansas Legislature have joined the esteemed lawmakers or regulators in Pennsylvania, Indiana and Ohio who want to spare their citizens the challenge of too much information. Specifically, they want to keep consumers ignorant of whether the milk they’re drinking comes from cows not dosed with recombinant bovine growth hormone, rBGH, which is […]

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about food — particularly local food — and weather, as the last week or so has given us Kansans temperatures in the teens and in the 60s, sunshine, rain, ice and snow.
Local is the big word in food trends these days, and for good reason. Our food system has […]

In her two years in business, Hilary Brown has gotten more publicity for her Local Burger restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas, than your average restaurateur can hope to get in twenty. But, then, Brown isn’t your average restaurateur, and Local Burger isn’t your average restaurant.
Brown is the 38-year-old dynamo behind the restaurant that serves healthy fast […]

I thought a lot about local food last night as I made the 28-mile (roundtrip) journey to get the turkey I’ll roast for my family’s Christmas dinner. Does it make a lot of sense, I wondered, for one person (me) to use over a gallon of gas to pick up one turkey?
I have to conclude […]

Not exactly a food topic, but if you’re still deliberating about a Christmas tree (real tree? artificial tree? no tree? see what Grist’s Umbra had to say), here are two ideas that are easier than buying a live one that you have to try to plant somewhere:
My choice, an idea borrowed from a friend: a […]

A frustrated Dan Nagengast, executive director of the Kansas Rural Center, said after a recent forum on pharmaceutical crops that opponents needed to take the fight somewhere else.
Some 35 to 40 people attended the forum in Topeka on Nov. 14, which provided a pile of handouts, but it got little press and essentially no public […]

Kei, a commenter on my blog, recently asked about what kind of produce is available these days in Kansas. A San Franciscan, she was surprised by the dearth of produce she found recently in New York compared with her home.
Although I gave her a brief answer, I thought I’d check it out in a trip […]

John and Yvonne Bauman and their six children raise pastured chickens for eggs and meat plus other livestock on a small farm in Garnet, Kansas.

A funny thing happened when I called my senators this week to ask their support of the Dorgan-Grassley Amendment, which would “put a hard cap of $250,000 on commodity payments, close loopholes, and shift the savings to rural development, beginning and minority farmer, conservation, nutrition, and anti-hunger programs,” according to the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

This multigenerational family farm, in business since 1866 (here’s the old part of the home[]http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1506163547/in/set-72157602305466561/], raises pastured chickens [http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1507022506/in/set-72157602305466561/]and turkeys (heritage [http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1506162945/in/set-72157602305466561/] and white[http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1506164151/in/set-72157602305466561/]…. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1506163279/in/set-72157602305466561/] Pendleton’s Country Market…. Not only do they operate a decent-sized diversified farm, growing everything from commodity crops (corn, wheat) to asparagus to bedding plants to cut flower, but they also are ceaseless promoters of local agriculture, including their own farm, of course, and active in 4-H…. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1506166281/in/set-72157602305466561/] Karen was in the “villa,” butterfly net in hand, to catch monarchs passing through weeks beyond their usual migration and pointing out the freshly deposited butterfly eggs and swallowtails’ defense mechanism.[ http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1507025320/in/set-72157602305466561/] Visitors also could buy bedding plants, pumpkins [http://www.flickr.com/photos/foodperson/1506166013/in/set-72157602305466561/ ] and assorted other items…. To top off the day, I went to a neighbor’s birthday party, which was catered by Local Burger (owned by another neighbor; I live a cool neighborhood), and had an elk burger (among the selection of local burgers offered) with meat supplied by a farm tour rancher, Rocky Hills Elk Ranch (no website; email credmonds /at/ yahoo), and some of those Wakarusa Valley Farms salad greens.

Bob Scowcroft, director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif., says that Growing for Market “has become one of our favorite publications here at the office, and was identified as such by many of the respondents of our National Organic Farmers’ Survey.”… Nowadays, their Wild Onion Farm produces herbs and vegetables only for themselves, while the flowers are sold commercially to florists and the Community Mercantile, Lawrence’s natural foods grocery…. Certification grows Lynn notes that the USDA regulations have meant that getting certified is now more expensive and paperwork-intensive, a drawback to small growers…. And, despite a bit of an exodus from certification, particularly among CSA growers (including Wild Onion Farm) whose customers know and trust them, the number of certified farms keeps increasing…. An added benefit of the local-food movement is that small-scale market gardening (also known as truck farming), whether organic or not, offers an entrée into the industry for people who harbor dreams of farming.