When big corporations make pledges to improve their sourcing practices, it’s important to hold them accountable. After all, it’s easy to hold a press conference pledging a new green policy; it’s not so easy to fulfill the pledge. This was one of the action points in an article in the journal Oryx that I reviewed for the Ethicurean a few months ago. As an example, the authors noted that in a 2006 press release “Wal-Mart... 

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 see blight and a waste of space, San Francisco Bay Area entrepreneur Gene Fredericks sees opportunity: to grow food. Lots of food. Neither a farmer nor a foodie, Fredericks is a technology veteran who’s designed several large, complex... 

Denis Guyer, a state representative from Western Massachusetts (2nd Berkshire District) plans a community development corporation (CDC) that will foster “agrepreneurs.” The proposed mixed-use space would include a combination of affordable housing, a cooperative food processing facility, retail space for that food, CSA restaurant and a winter farmers’ market. iBerkshires.com .  Read More →

On Friday, New York Times op-ed contributor Steven Budiansky challenged local food advocates to rethink their math , mainly about food miles. As it happens, I was already doing some food calculations that day — but not of the sort Budiansky discussed. My numbers included the following: As of Friday, 450 million eggs originating from two Iowa egg operations — both of which buy feed and chicks from the same company…  Read More →

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 to the Dept. of Agriculture and Dept. of Justice. That message: More competition in the cattle industry.” The government needs to enforce... 

Po’ po-boys : Monday marked the opening of shrimp season in Louisiana. Federal officials say Gulf seafood safe to eat, but shrimpers themselves are dubious, reports the Washington Post. Some worry that the government’s testing — which has yet to turn up a tainted sample from the BP oil spill — is inadequate, and that if any seafood diners get sick from oil-tainted scampi, that’s the death knell for their industry.... 

My four-year old ate a vegetable frittata the other day. Mind you, this hardly ranks among the most staggering of childhood achievements. It’s not exactly up there with the 2-year-old who gained admission to Mensa , or the kid who paints like Rembrandt , or the 13-year old best-selling author . But in our house, it’s a reason to celebrate. She is what they call “neophobic.” Which is just a fancy way of saying that …  Read More →

At last week’s farmers market, one of my outside the zone choices (made in honor of National Farmers Market Week ) was agretti ( Salsola soda ) from La Tercera Farm . Agretti is a deep-green, spindly vegetable that goes by many names, including barba di frate (“friar’s beard” in Italian), roscana, marsh samphire, barilla, “chicken claws,” salicorne , and glasswort. To further confuse things, the iconic Silver... 

Summer of urban-ag love : The Bay Area is known as a bastion of urban farming and the local food movement, but “laws governing land use are still stuck in another era, one that frowned on farming in the city, especially in residential areas,” reports Zusha Elinson. When Little City Gardens ran into trouble with neighbors, it decided to fight instead of pay the $3,000 for a conditional-use permit. Now, San Francisco is set to roll out... 

Forage gleans a new strategy : When Forage restaurant opened in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake neighborhood, they used produce from customers’ backyards to supplement their normal produce purchases, paying for the backyard produce with food or drink from the restaurant and often noting the donor’s name on the menu (“Judy’s lemonade”, “Jim’s tangerine sorbet”). It worked great for a while —... 

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 in the world of food blogging: a blogger is much more likely to spend time writing a post about a recipe that turned out well than one that didn’t. I know that I’ve …  Read More →

Last week, I vowed to escape my farmers market rut and cook outside my comfort zone in honor of National Farmers Market Week Aug 1-7. Farmers markets are spreading like (edible) weeds around the country. There were 5,279 as of 2009 by the USDA’s count, up 13 percent from the previous year. The new figures will be released tomorrow. I’m betting it’s gone up at least another 10 percent, to more than 5,800. What about you? Do... 

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 on Interior Design )  Read More →

In honor of Farmers Market Week next week, I vowed here to get out of my market rut and cook outside my comfort zone . That’s how I came to be picking up these beautiful squash blossoms on impulse at the Berkeley, Calif. Farmers market on Saturday. Squash blossoms, or fiori di zucca as they are called in Italy, are my madeleines. I first ate them when I was an 8-year-old military kid — OK, yes, a brat — living in the steep... 

The July 16 episode of Living on Earth had two interesting food-related pieces, each accompanied by a transcript and MP3 download: The wide sargasso seizure: The first covered sargassum seaweed, the primary vegetation that collects in the Sargasso Sea, an area of calm waters in the Atlantic Ocean. Most of this seaweed comes from the Gulf of Mexico, where it is currently …  Read More →