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Small-town grocery stores feed a need bigger than stomachs
In the small Nebraska town I now call home, a small grocery store anchors one end of Main Street. Once a farm-implement dealership, it has nine aisles, a dairy cooler, and a fresh meat counter. It employs nine full-time workers plus various high school students, and its
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A roundup of pesticide drift coverage: Who should pay for unruly spray?
Chemical standoff: Farm country residents mostly "grin and bear it" when pesticides from neighboring farms drift onto their property, but some are speaking out. In Illinois, a vineyard owner tires of watching clouds of 2,4-D engulf (and kill) his grapes when a nearby farm sprays. A retired minister gives
Digest - Features and blogs: The great OJ caper, the anti-produce lobby, and urban-rural love
Take a bite outta that: Orange juice is marketed as a healthy, natural food, but it's actually the end product of a process that involves long-term storage, chemistry, and "flavor packs." As is generally the case, you're much better off just eating an orange. Q&A with author Alissa Hamilton, whose
Digest - Blogs: Sweet analysis, rural internet woes, good food in the city
Never let them see you sweet: Tom Philpott looks into a new Tufts study that finds corn subsidies may have been a boon to the HFCS industry, but they alone don't make bad food cheap. Australia has similar obesity patterns but eats sugar instead. What we need to do, Tom says, is figure out "how to disincentivize
Digest - Blogs: MLK on community gardens, Nestle on Salmonella, and the BPA 10-step plan
King of the garden: Martin Luther King may never have seen a community garden, but he no doubt would have approved of them. Tom Philpott reflects on how the community garden movement, and its symbolism as an explicit rejection of the industrial food system, is one realization of King's dream. (Grist) Pontificating
Digest: Turkey time, slow schizophrenia, and rural America tells Obama where it’s at
Get rural, Obama: Rural Americans mostly didn't vote for Obama, but back in October 2007 he pledged to hold a "rural summit" if elected and deliver a package of rural initiatives to Congress in his first 100 days as president. Here's what they might want to see in it — and surprise, it's not about
Digest - Rural: Small towns get smaller, the sultan of subsidies, Collin it like he sees it
Contributed by our friends at the Center for Rural Affairs. Ghost towns: Rural communities can lose people from net outmigration or from a death rate that outpaces the birth rate. Some counties are losing population because of both. (Daily
Digest - Farm and Rural: Dairy lobby saddles up, genetic monocultures, light pheasantries
Contributed by our friends at the Center for Rural Affairs. Milking the Farm Bill: One intriguing aspect of the 2007 Farm Bill is the lack of controversy over the dairy program, a source of much tension in previous farm bills. But some Vermont dairy farmers are pushing
