local food
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Online food co-ops like Nebraska's create innovative virtual farmers markets
Right now, I'm facing a problem shared by scores of farmers. I have four lambs that have been raised entirely on grass, and I know there are customers eager to buy them. I just don't know who they are. Luckily, the Nebraska Food Co-op is here to help play matchmaker.
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Will Frito-Lay's new traveling greenhouse really sell more potato chips?
Frito-Lay, the $13 billion business unit of PepsiCo, is spending millions to try and persuade people it's a simple, farmer-friendly company, and I haven't the faintest clue why.
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UPDATED: McDonald’s new ad campaign: Is it localwashing or not?
[See UPDATE below.] McDonald’s has a new localwashing campaign playing out on billboards in Seattle. This one targets the Ballard neighborhood … Photos: Gilman Park … and comes with an amusing disclaimer: “Participation and duration may vary.” This one targets Seattle as a whole: Have you seen any ads of this ilk? Cheddar from Wausau, […]
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Part 1 of interview with local-food economist Ken Meter [PODCAST]
Local food economist Ken Meter(Jerry Carlson/Agri-Energy)Ken Meter, director of Minneapolis-based Crossroads Resource Center, is probably the country’s foremost thinker on the role of food in creating robust local and regional economies. I first encountered him at a Community Food Security Coalition conference in Atlanta in 2005, where he gave a presentation that forever changed the […]
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Heritage Foods’ Patrick Martins wants to put slaughterhouses back in the city [Q&A]
Rare breed: Patrick Martins moves old-school meat.(Les Meyers photo)After founding Slow Food USA in 2000, Patrick Martins went on to cofound Heritage Foods USA, a nationwide purveyor of meat from sustainably raised, heritage-breed animals, which he continues to head. And every Sunday, he records a radio show & podcast, The Main Course, from New York […]
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Thoughts on Pollan’s food-movement essay
I want to add a few thoughts on the significance of Michael Pollan’s recent essay in The New York Review of Books to Bonnie Powell’s summary. Pollan posits the existence of a social movement geared to transforming the food system. He emphasizes that it’s loose, internally conflicted, and nascent — but all the same, “one […]
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Latest podcast: A close look at the “town that food saved”
Ben Hewitt on his farm outside of Hardwick.Hardwick, a hardscrabble town in rural Vermont (pop. 3,200), once based its economy on a non-renewable resource locked up in its surrounding hillsides: granite. But then the granite ran out — taking the town economy down with it. More recently, the town has embarked on a wild experiment. […]
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A new café owner forages and finds a fresh take on sustainability
From activists to politicians, everybody loves to talk about the promise of green jobs. But in reality, who the heck actually has a green job, and how do you get one? In our new column, “I Have a Green Job,” Grist will be regularly profiling one of the lucky employed who has landed a job […]
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Tell us your favorite local, sustainable sandwich shops
A couple of weeks ago, I penned a long tribute to the sandwich–specifically, locally owned sandwich shops that combine a high degree of cooking skill with a zeal for great ingredients from local farmers and producers. To me, these shops represent a nexus that joins skilled cooks, the surrounding farm community, and a broad swath […]