From the category archives:

Farming

Olive harvest underway in Sonoma

November 20, 2009

Olive har­vest under­way in Sonoma
Author: Jean­nette E. Warn­ert
Thurs­day Novem­ber 19 2009
The Sonoma Press-Democrat ran a brief story today about the begin­ning of the olive har­vest in the North­ern Cal­i­for­nia County bet­ter known for vine­yards. Although olive pro­duc­tion in the area is no match in size for the long-established grape indus­try, the crop’s nov­elty and qual­ity attract […]

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Will Obama Walk His Talk on Organics?

November 13, 2009

Will Obama Walk His Talk on Organ­ics?
“I was just read­ing an arti­cle in the New York Times by Michael Pol­lan about food and the fact that our entire agri­cul­tural sys­tem is built on cheap oil. As a con­se­quence, our agri­cul­ture sec­tor actu­ally is con­tribut­ing more green­house gases than our trans­porta­tion sec­tor. And in the mean […]

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Better Meat or No Meat?

November 10, 2009

In her recent New York Times op-ed, The Carnivore’s Dilemma, Nico­lette Hahn Niman makes a com­pelling case for pur­chas­ing more respon­si­bly raised meat. The argu­ment is basi­cally that most peo­ple will never stop eat­ing meat entirely, so bet­ter that they at least become aware of how their meat (and other food) is processed. Michael Pollan […]

Tagged as: cows, Farming, meat, memes

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Robotic Mule Future Organic Farm Helper?

October 30, 2009

In the spirit of Hal­loween, here’s a kinda creepy video of a robotic mule– very life­like move­ments, flash legs. I want one for my future farm. The part in the mid­dle where some guy kicks it and it strug­gles, but keeps going almost made me feel bad for the robot.
I also won­der how the carbon […]

Tagged as: robot

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Food Safety Modernization Act Gaining Momentum

October 22, 2009

Here’s a list the groups that are on record in sup­port of this bill. There are none listed in oppo­si­tion accord­ing to Govtrack.us — I wonder…

Amer­i­can Frozen Food Insti­tute
Gro­cery Man­u­fac­tur­ers Asso­ci­a­tion
National Fish­eries Insti­tute
Uninted Fresh Pro­duce Asso­ci­a­tion
National Restau­rant Asso­ci­a­tion
Pro­duce Mar­ket­ing Asso­ci­a­tion
Gen­eral Mills
Kraft Foods

Tagged as: activism, food

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Sitopia: A New Way of Seeing Food and Culture

October 16, 2009

A look at the his­tory of food and the city– this provoca­tive TED.COM video by Car­olyn Steel shows how food shapes our lives, and that “we can use food as a really pow­er­ful tool to shape the world bet­ter.” I got goose-bumps at the end.

Tagged as: activism, agriculture, food, slowfood

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Farming Project: Flash Farm 4x4

October 14, 2009

I’m hash­ing out the details of a new sub­ur­ban farm­ing project: Flash Farm 4x4. It’s born from the idea that the sub­urbs, like Carls­bad, CA where I live, are the per­fect loca­tion to grow food, and are the very tragic spots where farm­land is taken over by hous­ing devel­op­ment. So if there’s urban farm­ing on […]

Tagged as: compost, Farming, soil, suburban

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Food is Life Itself

September 22, 2009

When you kill your own food, it gives you a new per­spec­tive. Philo­soph­i­cally, it taught me that food is life itself. A few months ago, I went to New Zealand to learn about local food sys­tems and farm­ing, and ended up in a lovely place called Karibu Creek in the North­land, where I met some […]

Tagged as: agriculture, Farming, food, slowfood

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The White House Heirloom Garden

September 19, 2009

I didn’t know that the cur­rent White House veg­etable gar­den is the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s vic­tory gar­den in WWII. They’re using seeds from Mon­ti­cello which Jef­fer­son col­lected from around the world. I really enjoyed this mini-documentary about the White House gar­den with chef Sam Kass:

Tagged as: whitehousegarden gardening michelleobama

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Know your Farmer; Know your Food. A new era of US ag policy?

September 17, 2009

Ag sec­re­tary Vil­sack has announced a new USDA ini­tia­tive called “Know your Farmer; Know your Food” (#KYF2 on twit­ter.) The project aims to sup­port small and local farms while boost­ing con­sumer aware­ness of what they’re putting in their bod­ies. And this appears to be more than mere lip ser­vice. At least $65 mil­lion dol­lars of […]

Tagged as: agpolicy, kyf2, michelleobama, usda, vilsack, whitehouse

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