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Shedding light on a permaculture farm: Review of “Bioshelter Market Garden”
As small farmers look for ways to cut costs and increase their profit margins, they focus more attention on the energy used on the farm. Whether they implement energy efficiency measures or find ways to produce home-grown energy
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Slow what?: Review of “Slow Gardening”
By now, I’m sure that all good Ethicurean readers are familiar with Slow Food and the tenets of this movement: the pleasure of good, clean, fair food and
Minding common ground: “Poly-farming” in northeast Ohio
Just about any road I take that leads me out of Wooster, Ohio, very quickly guides me past vast fields of corn or soybeans. Agriculture plays a vital role in Wayne County’s economy, and for several
For Labor Day: Farmworkers’ Rights Still in the Toilet
Cross-posted from the TEDxFruitvale blog. (Why? Read this.) Today
The Ethicurean lives! An update, in which I come out of my corporate closet
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
Helping out the Milk Board’s new PMS campaign
The California Milk Processor's Board, which brought us the Got Milk? campaign, urges men this week to tell their cranky, about-to-menstruate women: "You really need to drink more milk." Men can get their PMS education on
Goats: An overlooked pasture-raised animal
Goats grazing in Ethiopia (iStockphoto) Goat meat is already very popular around the world – the Washington Post claims that goat makes up almost 70 percent of the red meat eaten
Bounty hunters: A review of two new local-foods cookbooks
As the local food movement expands and the numbers of small farms, CSA programs, and farmers markets increase, so grows the crop of cookbooks aimed at helping people make the best use of that
Endangered, eh? Canada Scientists Confirm Bluefin Tuna Are in Deep Trouble
By Catherine Kilduff, Center for Biological Diversity * Updated on June 2, 2011 by Marc R.* It’s official: We really are fishing to extinction a fish that has sustained us for millennia, the bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus). Last week Canada’s scientists declared the Atlantic bluefin tuna endangered,
Highlights and questions from the Natural Products Expo West trade show
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
“A beautiful bowl of glory”: Rancho Gordo’s Steve Sando on beans, trade, and the tortilla project
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:
On the trademarking of ‘urban homesteading’: The Original Best Most Complete Post on the Subject™
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
Getting plowed: Kristin Kimball’s captivating “Dirty Life”
Kristin Kimball on her farm in Essex, N.Y. Photo by Deborah Feingold The first time I heard of Essex Farm, I was working a kitchen/garden internship at the Yestermorrow Design/Build School in Vermont. The school sent me to the Northeast Organic Farming Association’s 2009 conference, where I carefully
Looking for Mr. Goodfish: Chefs aim to expand our seafood horizons
In the chapter on New York in Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood, Taras Grescoe comes down hard on the Big
Jimmy Stewart, cults, and a lot of broken glass: Remembering Straus Family Creamery’s opening day
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
