Cindy Conner – A Plan for Food Self-Sufficiency

Providing high-quality food for your family year-round takes foresight and planning, plus healthy doses of commitment and follow-through. Whether you grow as much of your food as you can or you source it from local producers, the guidelines here will help you decide how much to produce or purchase. The charts linked to in “Plan How Much to Grow” later …

Kate Fried – Are You Sure You Want to Eat That?

Whether we shop for sustenance at a chain grocery store, the corner bodega or even at a farmers market, we all share a basic desire—to not get sick from the food that is supposed to nourish us. In fact, much of the time, most of us don’t think twice about the safety of our food. But not all nations have …

Jonathan Emmen – 7 Myths That Large Corporations Want us to Believe

The influence of major corporations is everywhere. If you go to a sporting event, the sponsors are major corporations. If you go to the grocery, the vast majority of items available to you comes from plants owned by major corporations. Even our media is corporate owned. The result is that these large corporations can pass along whatever myths and half-truths they …

Leah Penniman – After a Century In Decline, Black Farmers Are Back And On the Rise

A few years ago, while clearing dried broccoli stalks from the tired soil of our land at Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, I received a cold call from Boston. On the other end was a Black woman, unknown to me, who wanted to share her story of trying to make it as a farmer. Through tears, she explained …

Interview with Peter Henry from Consider Bardwell Farm – 11.19.15

Peter Henry is the sales and Marketing Manager for Consider Bardwell Farm, a three hundred acre dairy farm in West Pawlet, Vermont. Peter is responsible for running and staffing nine weekly farmers market stands, as well as the distribution of their artisanal cheeses throughout the country.

Consider Bardwell Farm is committed to sustainability and delicious raw milk, handcrafted cow and goat cheeses. Consider Bardwell was also a man, who founded Vermont’s first dairy coop along with a cheesemaking operation on the same spot in 1864. The farm chose to keep the name and continue the tradition!

Peter is also a veteran of Blue Hill in New York City, along with more restaurants than he cares to remember.

Interview with Lucy Marston, Field Vegetable and CSA Manager at Hawthorne Valley Farm – 10.22.15

Lucy Marston is the Field Vegetable and CSA Manager at Hawthorne Valley Farm – a 400-acre certified biodynamic farm in the Hudson Valley. She grows for a 300 member CSA, on site farm store and 5 weekly farmers markets in NYC. Lucy came to Hawthorne Valley Farm as an apprentice looking to learn how to farm and then moved up to manage their production vegetable operation, which she has been doing for the past 3 seasons. Before coming to production farming she worked in farm-based education in Connecticut and California.

Food is community

More Americans than ever before are supporting their local food markets, and it’s not just because they believe the food is fresher and tastes better. According to a new University of Iowa study, people are shopping farmers markets and joining food coops at record numbers because they enjoy knowing who grows their food. These so-called “locavores” are also driven to …

Cuba’s warming relations with the US may undermine its agroecological city farms – Julia Wright & Emily Morris

Cuba is a global exemplar of organic, agroecological farming, taking place on broad swathes of land in and around its cities, write Julia Wright & Emily Morris. These farms cover 14% of the country’s agricultural land, employ 350,000 people, and produce half the country’s fruit and vegetables. But can they survive exposure to US agribusiness? For more than 20 years, …

Food Stamps Are Worth Double at These Michigan Farmers Markets—Helping Families and Local Businesses – Araz Hachadourian

Vicki Zilke is a farmer in Ypsilanti, Mich., population 20,000, where more than a quarter of residents live below the poverty line. Every week, she sells her vegetables at Downtown Ypsilanti Farmers Market, one of two in the city. Nearly 40 percent of the shoppers at both hubs are on some form of food assistance funding from the government. The …

Food, Farming and Climate Change: It’s Bigger than Everything Else – Ryan Zinn

Record-breaking heat waves, long-term drought, “100-year floods” in consecutive years, and increasingly extreme superstorms are becoming the new normal. The planet is now facing an unprecedented era of accelerating and intensifying global climate change, with negative impacts already being widely felt. While global climate change will impact nearly everyone and everything, the greatest impact is already being felt by farmers …