farmers markets

And other revelations from the latest big-media expose of local food

About a year ago, The Economist ran a big article purporting to show that eating locally is actually worse for the environment than typical supermarket fare. I debunked the article here. About six months later, the NYT op-ed page ran a piece making similar arguments. And I responded again. In both of these pieces, the […]

In the farm belt, a look at the extremes of agricultural production

When I arrived in Iowa on a reporting trip this summer, I expected to experience it with city eyes: frankly, as a rural backwater. I’ve lived on a farm in the Appalachians of North Carolina since 2004, but the ten years before that, I lived in Mexico City and New York City. I don’t know […]

For now, local politics is the way to effect ag-policy change

Over the past few years, grassroots support has swelled for new federal farm policies — ones that promote healthy, sustainably grown food, not the interests of a few agribusiness firms. Udder madness. Photo: iStockphoto The target of much of this organizing has been the 2007 farm bill. If past farm bill debates have been the […]

Ruminations on food, class, and Carlo Petrini

“America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between,” Oscar Wilde once quipped. Fresh, yes, but is it affordable? Photo: Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Such observations didn’t always endear him to Victorian-era Americans. Wilde’s 1881 lecture tour of the United States, while ultimately viewed as a triumph, occasionally drew […]

Bill McKibben questions thinking as usual when it comes to climate.

The old thinking, as author and thinker Bill McKibben explains in today's LA Times, goes like this: bigger is always better, growth is good no matter what, and a booming stock market is the ultimate measure of our success.

McKibben illustrates the kind of lopsided priorities that naturally flow when we're ruled by the bottom line, pointing to a scarcely-reported White House report that said the U.S. would be pumping out almost 20 percent more greenhouse gases in 2020 than we did in 2000, our contribution to climate change going steadily up -- against all warnings to the contrary.

That's a pretty stunning piece of information -- a hundred times more important than, say, the jittery Dow Jones industrial average that garnered a hundred times the attention. How is it even possible? How, faced with the largest crisis humans have yet created for themselves, have we simply continued with business as usual?

New thinking, by contrast, might go something like this: measure what matters.

Thoughts from a small farm during the midwinter lull

Before I became a farmer three growing seasons ago, I lived in Brooklyn, N.Y., and reveled in the array of top-flight local produce available from mid-spring to late fall. Long about January, though, a kind of local-food withdrawal would set in. Frosty, with a chance of failure. Photo: iStockphoto By this time of year, the […]

Why The Economist’s recent assault on “ethical food” missed the mark

Last month, the influential British newsweekly The Economist took the measure of the sustainable-food movement and found it wanting. “There are good reasons to doubt the claims made about three of the most popular varieties of ‘ethical food’: organic food, fair-trade food, and local food,” the journal declared, and proceeded to subject each to withering […]

Locally grown food shouldn’t be just for those with cash to spare

As a critic of the globalized industrial food system, I often face charges of elitism — in part, likely, because I neglect to acknowledge the system’s clear achievements. So here goes. In the mood for good food? Look no further than your backyard. Photo: iStockphoto In human history, few pampered Roman emperors or African kings […]

Umbra on farmers’ markets and food stamps

Dear Umbra, Do organic grocers take food stamps? Do farmers’ markets? If not, what do ecologically/health-minded people on fixed incomes do? David Burch South Bend, Ind. Dearest David, Did you know that in many states food stamps are no longer stamps? Plastic cards similar to ATM cards have replaced the paper coupons. Electronic Benefit Transfer, […]