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For Labor Day: Farmworkers’ Rights Still in the Toilet

By • on September 5, 2011

Cross-posted from the TEDxFruitvale blog. (Why? Read this.) Today is Labor Day, a time when most Americans think of

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The Ethicurean lives! An update, in which I come out of my corporate closet

By • on September 2, 2011

Tap, tap. Is this thing on? Does it still work? Wait, let me clear away the cobwebs from the microphone. Is that better? Can you hear me now? All five of you? (Hi mom! Hi Jack!) What readers remain may have wondered when someone was going to put this blog out of

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Highlights and questions from the Natural Products Expo West trade show

By • on May 6, 2011

In March I attended the Natural Products Expo West, one of the largest trade shows for the natural products industry. Produced by New Hope Natural Media, the show had hundreds of exhibitors promoting their products

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“A beautiful bowl of glory”: Rancho Gordo’s Steve Sando on beans, trade, and the tortilla project

By • on April 9, 2011

Steve Sando (right) with Félix Martinez Gomez and his family, near Cuicatlan, Oaxaca. They grow chilhuacle chiles, essential to so many Oaxacan dishes but rare now thanks to several years of disturbed weather patterns. International trade can wreak havoc on small farmers and the global food culture:

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On the trademarking of ‘urban homesteading’: The Original Best Most Complete Post on the Subject™

By • on February 23, 2011

By Mat Rogers, Director of Agrariana Language and terminology are an integral part of the food movement. Making distinctions between agricultural practices deemed vile and reprehensible, in favor of methods moral and healthful, is a critical organizing

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Jimmy Stewart, cults, and a lot of broken glass: Remembering Straus Family Creamery’s opening day

By • on February 15, 2011

By Michael Straus Pictures from opening night at Straus Family Creamery, February 4, 1994. (That's me with the goatee.) Straus Family Creamery recently turned 17, and I started thinking back to those crazy times. In 1989, my older brother Albert, who’d been managing the farm and doing some pretty

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Farming groups resort to Machiavellian defense of indefensible practices

By • on February 1, 2011

Spin-dustrial ag: Two dozen of the nation's largest and best-funded farm groups have formed a coalition to counter poor publicity, reports the AP (LAtimes.com). What are they mad

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Massive gingerbread house recall a reminder that food safety starts in the gut

By • on December 28, 2010

Grist (where I am the food editor) just got a late entry to our Scariest Food of 2010 contest: Gingerbread houses.

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Thanks, Jevons paradox! On why I won’t be replacing my spare fridge

By • on December 22, 2010

A few weeks ago, my spare side-by-side fridge/freezer up and died. I was (and remain) pissed about this. It's a fancy-pants Samsung, about four years old, and the Sears repair guy said the compressor would cost $800 to fix -- 75% of what the fridge was new. "Samsung's great for TVs, crap for fridges,"

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Meet Roll International, the biggest dastardly agribiz mega-corps you’ve never heard of

By • on December 1, 2010

Pom not-so-wonderful at all: John Gibler's epic, top-notch feature on Roll International – "or, as their website proclaims: 'the largest privately held company you’ve never heard of,' owner of Paramount Farming, the largest grower and processor of almonds and pistachios in the world; Paramount Citrus;

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Grow vacancies: Gene Fredericks is thinking inside the city’s big box

By • on September 1, 2010

They're the bane of urban and suburban areas alike: the vacant, boarded-up K-Marts and Home Depot Expos, squatting like concrete cowpies amidst a landscape of weedy parking lots. But where most people

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Hey USDA & DoJ: Ranchers want more competition in the cattle industry

By • on August 18, 2010

Big hats carrying small sticks: The CEO of R-Calf, which represents cattle raisers, has been criss-crossing the country, exhorting people to get to Fort Collins, Colorado, on Aug. 27th for a federal-level workshop about competition in the cattle industry. He wants 25,000 to show up and "send a message

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Cooking outside the comfort zone: green tomatoes

By • on August 4, 2010

In the world of science, there's something called "publication bias," which recognizes that studies with positive results are more likely to be published than studies with negative ones. I suspect there is a similar bias

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Cooking outside my comfort zone, Part 2: Fresh chickpeas

By • on August 3, 2010

Last week, I vowed to escape my farmers market rut and cook outside my comfort zone in honor of National

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Richmond has a farmers market on wheels

By • on July 28, 2010

The meals on the bus go round and round: In Richmond, Virginia, Mark Lilly has transformed a 1987 diesel school bus into a mobile produce market called Farm to Family, which also has a CSA program. The interior is really cool looking -- what a great idea for recycling an old vehicle. (Blog

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