Good Food is Everybody's Business
College campuses have always been a testing ground – and launching point – for new and creative ideas. The Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (CoFed) is a program that teaches and helps students to build and operate ethically sourced, community-run cafés, beverage service, and grocery stores on college campuses.
Milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables – those are all the basics of life; and yet the ups and downs of the economy over the last several years have been especially hard on the small to mid-sized farmer. Local, organic dairies are especially hard-pressed to make a go of it; milk has a shelf-life measured in days and to get it on the shelves and sold quickly is tough, even in the best of times.
For those unable to join the Worldwatch Institute’s 15th Annual State of the World Symposium, hosted at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC on January 19th, 2011, we have the full live stream coverage.
Most people who care about good food are at least somewhat aware that the (mostly small) farms which grow good food scrape by financially while farm bill subsidies go to large commodity farms. In this second of three pieces on food prices, our local food systems economist, Viki Sonntag, explores how these subsidies shape market prices and in turn our product choices.
Are McDonald’s CEO Mike Roberts and Chief of Operations Mike Donahue seeing the light? After contributing to the 25 pound-weight gain the average American has packed on in the last 50 years, Roberts and Donahue are starting a healthy fast food restaurant chain.
Hombres de maíz. Men of corn. More than just a description, it’s the basis of the Mayan belief system. Popol Vuh, the Mayan’s eight hundred year-old narrative of creation, teaches just that: humankind is created from corn.
Chocolate chip cookies! Hands down, Americans prefer chocolate chip cookies over any other kind of cookie. Traditionally made with butter, brown sugar, white sugar, all-purpose flour, and semi-sweet chocolate chips, these bits of warm comfort are off the table if you suffer from gluten intolerance or have chosen a diet free of animal products. Not so! Skydottir Epic Cookies to the rescue!
Bringing the Food Economy Home reveals how a shift towards the local would protect and rebuild agricultural diversity by giving farmers a larger share of the money spent on food, and providing consumers with healthier, fresher food at more affordable prices.
