Good Food is Everybody's Business
Agroecology is our best option for creating an agrifood system capable of nurturing people, societies, and the planet. But it is still not widespread. Fertile Ground, edited by Steve Brescia, offers nine case studies that demonstrate how the endogenous practice of agroecology can be “scaled” so that it is known by more farmers, practiced more deeply, and integrated in planning and policy.
Support your local winter market! Yes, winter market! So often we think of farmers markets as a summer thing. After all, summer is the growing season. Here in Montana we’re not ready to give up on markets when the snow starts to fly.
The Bozeman Winter Farmers Market runs from the end of September to the end of April, and you can get your “fresh local food fix” every two weeks through the season. While you’re not going to find tomatoes and cucumbers on offer, you will find a wonderful array of products from 30 plus vendors.
Then one day, in June of 2007, Kevin was checking Craig’s List for bargains and came across this ad: “Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill for sale…” Kevin didn’t know a thing about flour or milling, but he was willing to learn and to work hard.
The conquistadores virtually erased chia from Mayan cultural awareness as part of their campaign to subjugate the Mesoamerican peoples to Church and King. But today, even as ordinary Guatemalans are engaged in a massive ongoing popular campaign to throw off the rule of a corrupt and brutal elite, chia may be ripe for rediscovery.
Most of the Ethiopian farmers in the Lelistu Ogda farmer cooperative struggle with soil fertility. That’s why Ayelech Bekele and 19 other women now embrace beekeeping as an alternative method for increasing their incomes.
New businesses launched by transborder migrants are not limited to farms and ranches and many small shops are also finding their place in the inner cities where they are revitalizing Main Street. They include specialty (ethnic) grocers and small market operators; restauranteurs, bakers, and caterers; tailors and cobblers; dry cleaners and other service providers; pharmacists and botanists; notary publics and accountants; the list is very long.
A celebration of the history of small, independent retail and the story of how mom and pop stores across the country still thrive on attentive customer service and renewed community support for local businesses.
It can be tough to figure out why there’s so much fuss over genetically modified ingredients in food. This reprint from the upcoming March 2015 issue of Consumer Reports will help you sift through the facts.
