Tag: food culture

Plumbing the Agroecology Zeitgeist

The highlight of the Tilth Producers of Washington Conference was the keynote delivered by professor Miguel Altieri of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, at the University of California. His specialty – agroecology — combines agriculture, the science of cultivating the land and raising livestock; with the principles of ecology, the study of the relationship between living organisms and their environments. Altieri began with a series of startling statistics proving that when measured in total output small scale indigenous agriculture is actually more productive than industrialized agribusiness.

Occupy Food? Wall Street Is Driving Up the Price of Food

The “Occupy” marches and protests have spread across North America and around the world to thousands of cities. Yet there is little understanding that speculation by Wall Street has contributed to the skyrocketing of food costs. Where is the connection?

Melissa Lines: Farmer, Shepherdess, Educator, Marketer

Running a farm and raising fifty or more sheep, a handful of beef cattle, and two horses is not a job for the faint of heart. And Melissa Lines is NOT Little Bo Peep. It was a farm visit when she was 4 years old that convinced Melissa that she wanted to work with animals, but it took decades – and a corporate career – to bring her to the point where she could actually make it happen.

Hey, Whole Foods – PR Event or Serious Conversation?

We attended one of Whole Foods Market™ Speaker Series events; this one titled “Consumer’s Conflict: The Cost of Fresh Picked Produce in the 21st Century.” The guest speaker was Barry Estabrook, author of Tomatoland – How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. In the end, there was too much Whole Foods and too little discussion of the real cost of fresh produce and what to do about it. And we paid $40 to hear it…

Cavemen, Monks, and Slow Food: A History of Eating Well by Devra Gartenstein

This is a transitional time and we need transitional food. The Slow Food movement, the locavore movement, and other “food movements” can be “all or nothing” approaches. That way of thinking is standing in the way of getting people to eat better. I would love to see everybody eat fresh, local, and organic food, but until we get there, I would just like to see more people eat more lentils and fewer people eat industrial meat. The lentils don’t have to be organic, just not part of the industrial food system.

Meat the Old Fashioned Way

“Taste our meats?” was an invitation I gladly accepted. I was at the Milwaukie Farmers Market, being offered locally made sausages. Sous chef Colin Stafford of Olympic Provisions was staffing the booth and as I tasted the sausages I was hooked.

Jerry Pipitone, Pipitone Farm

Jerry Pipitone, Pipitone Farm, Rock Island WA, talks about his part in the local food economy. He dries tons of fruit, for his own farm and for other farmers. And with the odd weather we’ve been having the last couple of years, farming is a little tougher than usual.