farming

Humaneitarians Ditch Factory Farms But Keep The Meat
FarmPlate May 18, 2013 Farming 0 comments
Once upon a time, there were carnivores and vegetarians, and they ruled the gastronomic globe. Either you ate meat or you didn’t; there were hardly any other choices. If you felt queasy about factory farms, you either opted out of meat altogether or you ate meat that didn’t match your morals.  But now, thanks to some creative thinking and a rise in small-scale farms, an eater can choose from a number of “third ways” of eating meat. They can be a flexitarian, a pesecetarian, or the latest “arian” to come on the scene:  a humaneitarian – a person who eats meat only if it’s been humanely raised. Humaneitarians are motivated by their concern for farm animals. They figure out what “...
FarmPlate Book Review | "The Town That Food Saved"
Lucy Caldwell Aug 06, 2012 Farming 0 comments
For a chance to win a copy of The Town that Food Saved, just log on to FarmPlate and review your favorite food businesses. We'll enter your name in our drawing once for every review you write. More reviews equals more chances to win! The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food... This is a mouthful of a title, one that puts forth quite a few interesting ideas. The Town the Food Saved conjures up images of a supercarrot defending a small rural town from a giant can of pesticide. The imagination can run wild with that phrase. “How one community found vitality in local food” is equally intriguing on a more intellectual level. How did they do it? What is...
Homesteaders as Models of Self-Reliance
Jeff Gangemi Jul 30, 2012 Farming 0 comments
It’s no surprise that there is a widespread desire to know where food comes from, to be connected to our sources of energy and know our neighbors. It’s led to increased sales of direct-to-consumer food sales among farmers, a profusion of backyard gardens, and even amateur backyard animal husbandry. Mother Earth News highlights a group of people who are living the national ethos. They are homesteaders, DIY in the truest sense of the word, and they all have a few things in common – commitments to food, energy, and community independence and strength. They take responsibility for improving their lives and communities, and their stories of building, growing, cooking, knitting, canning, saving...
Kickstarter for Local Food: Three Revolutions Helps Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is
Jeff Gangemi Jul 18, 2012 Farming 0 comments
On July 17, 2012, Three Revolutions launched the world's first crowdfunding platform dedicated to farm and food ventures! Here's how the platform works: Farmers, food processors, and food-associated businesses, artists and artisans, communities building gardens, brewers, abattoirs, activists, food hubs, and many others can share their story and funding needs on the 3R platform. Backers can fund these ventures with as little as $10 or as much as several thousand. The farmer or food entrepreneur responds with the tempting promise of a monthly shipment of cheese over the coming year, an open tab at the local brewpub, a half-priced CSA or perhaps an overnight stay at their farm. 3R takes a cut...
Local Food “Challenge” Becomes a Pleasure for Alaska Family
Jeff Gangemi Jul 16, 2012 Farming 0 comments
There has been a small but steady stream of criticism of local food recently, particularly as a result of the recent book by a Canadian professor that calls the movement into question, saying local food destroys jobs.   An interesting piece from a local Alaska TV station touts some of the great benefits of eating locally. For the family profiled in the piece, what started as a yearlong Eat Local Challenge became more of a pleasure, as it taught them about the pleasure of self-sufficiency, and the health benefits of eating wholesome food grown in Alaska. It’s also a lesson in urban agriculture, as they have transformed their 9,000-square-foot Anchorage lot into a highly productive food...
Organic Farm Could Lose Certification Because Neighbors Use Pesticides
Jeff Gangemi Jul 13, 2012 Farming 0 comments
Organic certification is by no means a perfect science. But what happens when the pesticides from one non-organic farm cross over to a neighboring organic farm? Should the organic farm lose its certification because of the actions of their non-organic neighbor? According to a recent ruling in Colorado, the answer is a resounding “NO.” The non-organic farm now has a legal obligation to prevent the pesticides from crossing over. Failure to do so may result in a charge akin to trespassing.  The judge’s ruling was careful to protect the rights of both landowners, but cautioned pesticide users to avoid spraying when winds could carry chemicals to a neighboring field. Though critical to...
Why Farmers Should Listen to First Lady Michelle Obama
Jeff Gangemi May 25, 2012 Farming 0 comments
A great new infographic from the Union of Concerned Scientists does an absolutely incredible job of showing the discrepancy between the typical American diet and the one recommended by the USDA. It also shows how subsidies to producers of the Big Five commodity crops (wheat, corn, soy, rice, and cotton) prevent U.S. farmers from planting the fruits and vegetables we need to be healthy.  The investment required to make this vital change is puny ($90 million) compared to the subsidies awarded to the producers mentioned above (over $5 billion), and the benefits to local economies could be significant. Here’s the infographic (read on below it for more from the Union of Concerned Scientists...
Breaking the Disconnect Between Production and Plate
Bryn Mooth Feb 23, 2012 Farming 0 comments
Recalling a way-off-Broadway play called “The Rescue” that he’d seen years ago, Andrew Kimbrell (executive director of The Center for Food Safety) talked about the dilemma faced by the play’s main character: A bomber pilot, he had no difficulty dropping ammunition from many thousands of feet above, and yet he couldn’t pull the trigger when forced to shoot someone in front of him. During his presentation at the Ohio Ecological Food and Farming Association’s annual conference, Kimbrell likened the pilot’s dilemma to the physical and psychological disconnect that’s inherent in the industrial food system. Because we’re so far removed from CAFOs and from the monoculture farms that produce the...
Transparency and Technology: Secrets of Small Farm Success
Jeff Gangemi Dec 15, 2011 Farming 0 comments
Originally posted on the Slow Food USA Blog. In farming, it seems that size is often rewarded. Government subsidies, economies of scale, and the use of chemical pesticides all conspire to make life easier for large-scale industrial farming operations. But there are a number of advantages to being small. Chief among them may be the ability to connect with individual customers and achieve a level of transparency impossible (or at least undesirable) for larger, factory type farming operations. “I think a lot of people are finding out – not just farmers, but also fish providers and other producers – that transparency in and of itself is a great marketing tool,” says Barry Estabrook, James...
Liza De Guia Uses Video to Document Local, Artisanal Food
Jeff Gangemi Dec 12, 2011 Farming 0 comments
On December 7, Liza De Guia, the woman behind the Food. Curated. video series was awarded The Village Voice Web Award for Best Use of Video in Food Blogging. De Guia’s video Hurricane Irene Aftermath: The Story of Maple Downs Farm was a featured video in the series.  Even though De Guia has achieved praise and garnered awards for her work, she is still a one-woman operation. She does all of her own writing, shooting and editing, booking, producing, marketing and social media.  De Guia sees herself as a storyteller, and her work as helping both consumers and the food artisans she’s profiling. “I love telling stories, helping people eat better, make better choices and better connect...
Farm to Table at Occupy Wall Street? Organic Farmers Donate Healthy Food For Protestors (Video)
Jeff Gangemi Nov 14, 2011 Farming 0 comments
Here's an interesting look at how some organic farmers and chefs are helping keep Occupy Wall Street protesters healthy and well-fed. At 2,000 meals a day, they'd qualify as the largest — and no doubt the healthiest — soup kitchen in all of New York City. Amazing! To watch the Aol/Huffington Post video, click here > Check out Six Circles Farm (featured in the video) on FarmPlate!
Cleanup Mob: Organic Farming on the Seacoast
Sarah Hebbel-Stone Nov 08, 2011 Farming 0 comments
The large snowfall over much of the northeast at the end of October did more than just knock out power and disrupt trick-or-treating—it left many farmers scrambling to finish up their usual fall clean-up and get ready for winter. Jeff and Renee Cantara of New Roots Farm in Newmarket, New Hampshire, put out a call for help from their local community by organizing a crop mob last weekend. With the promise of a beautiful fall day and some farm-raised BBQ for lunch, about ten volunteers gathered at the farm on Sunday morning. "Organic farming on the seacoast isn't all just gorgeous people standing around munching brocolli rabe and meditating on the relative merits of green manure. There's a...
United We Farm, Locally We Eat
Lucy Senesac Apr 25, 2011 Farming 0 comments
On Friday, April 15th, a diverse group of more than 500 individuals from Queens to Montauk gathered for Long Island's first Small Farm Summit held at SUNY Old Westbury. The summit, which was hosted by NOFA-NY, the North Shore Land Alliance and a handful of other businesses and organizations, was intended as a day of education, discussion and networking to boost community awareness and help mobilize those interested in being a part of the local food movement. The day began with a lecture by Joel Salatin, a Virginia farmer who rose to stardom in the sustainable food world when Michael Pollan featured him in his 2007 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Salatin was later captured on film in the...
A Younger Generation of Farmers Emerges
Chrissy Pearson Apr 19, 2011 Farming 0 comments
A trip to the local grocery store is not getting any cheaper. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics announced recently that the price index for fresh vegetables rose by 4.7 percent in March. Following a similar upward trend are meats, poultry and eggs, which rose 7.9 percent over the past 12 months. Bloomberg Instead of heading to the produce aisle to grab vegetables grown and transported from thousands of miles away, or to the dairy case to pick up a dozen eggs from a farm on the other side of the country, some consumers are taking alternative routes to saving money and eating more nutritiously—replacing trips to the grocery store with trips to their backyard gardens or to local...
Crazy 'Bout Maine Mussels
FarmPlate May 19, 2010 Farming 0 comments
Why do we love Maine rope-grown blue mussels? To start, they're cheap, they're meaty and they're ever so sweet. Plus there's no question about seafood sustainability issues with rope-grown mussels. Mussel farming on suspended ropes is considered an environmentally benign form of aquaculture compared to finfish farming, which can pollute and cause other environmental problems. Seafood WATCH gives the blue-black bivalves its Best Choice rating. Getting mussels ready for the pot used to be tedious. You needed a stiff brush to scrub each and every one to remove the crusty bits. Next you soaked them in fresh water with a dusting of flour floating on the surface, which was supposed to purge any...