of the Mississippi into most of the city.

Time in New Orleans is now reckoned in relation to Katrina, and the organization that is helping Joe with his garden — New Orleans Food & Farm Network (NOFFN) — had projects in his neighborhood before Katrina as well as after Katrina.

The word “sustainability” came up a lot at the Sustainable Food Institute portion of the Cooking for Solutions 2008 shindig held last week at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. And when I say a lot, I mean practically each minute. But thanks to six incredibly substantive panel discussions, several solo speakers, and all the informal conversations, I have a new respect for — and new ways of thinking about — what had previously seemed like a hollowed-out, meaningless abstraction.

Between them Tom Cary and Gail Philbin have built several viable small-scale good-food enterprises in West Michigan. But as the sustainable food movement heads mainstream, will such endeavors have to get big or get out?

Here in the United States alone, more than 170,000 children aged 12-17 — and that’s the legally hired number, estimates of the real number put it closer to 430,000 — are exempt from federal protective child-labor laws. That means they can work in 100-degree fields for six to seven days a week, 10 hours a day, for far less than minimum wage. They do so to help their families survive.

Dolcezza takes up a cute little corner spot at the intersection of Q Street and Wisconsin Avenue in Georgetown, an area perhaps better known for its shopping than for the university just a little father west. The gelato here is made in the Argentine style, meaning it contains no eggs but more cream (more cream!) than Italian gelato. It is, quite simply, some of the finest I’ve ever tasted — among the ranks of Capogiro in Philadelphia or the Bent Spoon in Princeton.

I’m involved in starting a brand-new CSA that I am really excited about: helping Liz and Dan from Clark Summit in Tomales, CA, get theirs off the ground. Clark Summit should be the poster farm of the sustainable-agriculture movement. They do things right — 100% grassfed beef, including Scottish highland, piglets and chickens running free all over the farm.

A beef butchering workshop at Lionette’s Market in Boston is a recipe for sustainability and responsible sourcing, with a healthy helping of community.

Going on a stroll with a friend leads to a two-hour-long skillshare that reverses the usual generational roles: Fuddy-duddy me tries to explain RSS feeds, the point of Facebook (not sure there is one), and things like Digg to the 26-year-old. In turn, she shares knowledge gleaned from botany classes and, she confessed, years of reading seed catalogs at bedtime, about the edible things I’ve been walking past every day.

We’re very pleased to announce that guest contributor Ali Benjamin has accepted our invitation to don an Ethicurean apron. Ali’s a busy bee on the Internets, writing her own blog, The Cleaner Plate Club, as well as contributing to Eat. Drink. Better. She’s a freelance writer and mom in Vermont; for more, check out her […]

Have you ever encountered an idealistic young person with such presence that you thought, Whoa — this one might actually succeed in changing the world!? That’s the way I felt, anyway, on meeting Severine von Tscharner Fleming, who’s making the documentary “The Greenhorns,” about young farmers.

The flaws of industrial agriculture and the current backlash against it came into sharp focus a couple of weeks ago, following the death of former Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz, well-known for his exhortations to farmers to "Get big or get out" and to plant from "fence row to fence row." Between the success […]

Grants, surveys, contest, etc.

Since emerging as an independent program, the Eat Well team has been working feverishly to develop some new tools to make it easier for North Americans to find good food. Among the new developments, all of which should be on the internets in time for summer:

There are some parts of the country where, between late November and sometime around February, you just can’t get anything to grow. Call it a lumen lack. During those bleak months, the sun’s weak, pasty arms don’t reach far enough up into the northern latitudes to get the plants the juice they need. I hail […]

Happy New Year to you all.