It’s bugged me for a long time that there are so many cool events happening all over the country having to do with sustainable food, but there’s no single website where you can go to find out what’s happening, even in each city. We launched an Ethicurean calendar a while ago using Google Calender (GCal), […]

Editorials and op-eds about sustainable agriculture (or its opposite) from newspapers and websites big and small.

A big thanks to all who came by and visited with the chickens and bought eggs yesterday — I think it went very well. In hindsight, I’m just really glad the rain waited til today, as that would have been a big drag.

Tomorrow is Park(ing) Day in San Francisco, and Phil Ferrato and I are taking over a space in South of Market usually reserved for a car and turning it in to an urban-chicken habitat, complete with two lovely Gold-Laced Wyandotte hens and an Eglu.

A few weeks ago, Whigsboy left a comment on one of my Food and Farm Bill posts that expressed some frustration: "I have tried to follow this bill, but I am thoroughly confused, and it’s extremely frustrating because I’d like to contact my legislator and tell him what I’d like to see him support, […]

It’s Labor Day, the day we pay homage to the folks who brought us the weekend (among many other things). It’s a fitting moment to show some love for the labor movement, which has seen union membership decline from a high of nearly 33% of the U.S. workforce in the 1950s to a mere 12.5% […]

(The Dying Fields: India’s Forgotten Farmers - TV - Review - New York Times )ht on PBS about farmers in India caught in a debt nightmare, you may find yourself thinking at first of America’s mortgage mess.But by the end, don’t be surprised if your neurons, always eager to categorize the new and the incomprehensible, give an entirely different spin to the strange goings-on the program documents: These impoverished cotton farmers have traits in common with suicide bombers.No, they are not blowing up bystanders in the name of a god or a political cause…. And the government support system in this country is close to non-existent - the central cause of the enormous distress that so many of them have had here in central India in the cotton farming belt.It is interesting to compare the transformation of the Indian economy and where the rural economy fits in, with what happened in the United States during the 1980s where we saw massive transformation of its rural farm economy.

It’s time for action on almonds.
The above photo shows almonds lying on the ground shortly after being shaken from a tree. The nuts are covered by a hull, which has started to peel back in the above specimens, and a shell. I took the photo during a CUESA-organized tour of Lagier Ranches in […]

The surroundings of Alemany Farm in San Francisco do not bring forth feelings of pastoral tranquillity. On one side is 12 lanes of high-speed traffic (Interstate 280 and Alemany Blvd), which showers the area with waves of noise. On another side, a large housing complex — a vast space of buildings, cars and […]

Thanks to Marc R. for calling my attention to the Government Accountability Office’s recent report on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). NAIS, which first saw the light of corner offices at the USDA in 2002, flaunts a meaty goal: to identify and track the movement of all livestock animals and poultry in the United […]

Peter talks about his CSA box.

The "F-word"

Starting on Tuesday and going for three days, the House Agriculture Committee will be finalizing the Food and Farm Bill for submission to the full House for debate, amendment, and votes. The legislative material they are starting with is on the committee’s Farm Bill page. For true Farm Bill junkies, the hearing will be […]

As citizens, we have a voice in how our tax dollars are spent. (Hypothetically, anyway.) The Environmental Working Group has created a Grow Organics petition that exhorts Congress to “level the playing field for organic farmers and expand access to organic food.”

Digest - Blogsnacks: Feminism and slow food, Hillary likes USDA name change, FoodMed reporting

June 5 is Hunger Awareness Day, an education and action project of America’s Second Harvest and many other organizations. America’s Second Harvest is a network of more than 200 food banks and food-rescue organizations. Already, there’s a lot of information available, such as a press release from America’s Second Harvest with basic details, and […]