An exciting development in agriculture and rural economies in recent years is the increasing desire and enthusiasm of consumers to buy food direct from farmers and producers, and with that, new businesses and new farmers entering agriculture. S.510 will effectively kill this positive trend.
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In southeastern South Dakota, March is the time for local foodies to test their mettle.
If we planned it right, we’ve still got decent stores of winter squashes, probably some wrinkled but edible potatoes, an onion or two, canned goods a-plenty, dried beans, freezer stocks of assorted meats for the omnivores, and a few packages of last season’s frozen vegetables. Read the full story »
Jamie Oliver, British celebrity chef, is on a mission to revolutionize America’s food industry by educating children and teaching families how to cook.
My main goal has been to gather a group of committed authors to write either intermittently or regularly on a wide range of topics. We have received two offers for regular columns, several interested guest posters, and a large number of bloggers willing to cross-post. There will be no shortage of interesting and relevant content once the articles start coming in, and we will be covering a lot of ground.
One thing I have learned about writing is that sometimes, your stories and projects don’t always end up being about what you wanted them to be about. Farm to Table, the blog, seems to have undergone that transformation. Zach began the blog in order to promote a potential TV show, but it became something more: a forum to discuss developments in the sustainable food world, a way to bring together those people with a passion for local agriculture and traditional culinary craftsmanship.
For me, real maturity means working through the reasons not to and finding out the ways to actually do it. Social media gives us these tools, and yet for all our savvy and talents, for all the amazing content that is produced in the local, sustainable food worlds, the community is disparate, segregated. I’ll be here, watching, talking and listening. When we want to do this, when we want to get even more serious about how badly we all want to fix America’s broken food system, I’ll be there waiting, willing to continue to do the next generation worth of work we have ahead of us.
Northern Spy Food Co. is a perfect model for cities like New York City that are clamoring for more restaurants with locally sourced options. In fact, I could very easily see Northern Spy Food Co., once they get the minor kinks in service worked out, opening several locations around the city. The proprietors clearly have enough restaurant and hospitality experience that, if they are supported by the community, will respond in kind.
Living back in the mainstream reminds me of the Goliath–size reality of our food system. The majority of Americans today has never been to a farm or have any idea where their food comes from. I am living inside one of Michael Pollan books, the bleak food landscape.
I’m not in Kansas anymore, No longer in the Bay Area where most farms are within 200 miles, where there are farmers’ markets everyday of the week, and where there is a general culture of “Buy Local” and “Eat Healthy”.
I didn’t like 24 in 24. If you can imagine trying to eat at that many places in that amount of time, you know you’d be hating food by the end of the 12th restaurant. To do 24 in 24 in NYC, you’d need a theme, like Brooklyn or Pizza because you couldn’t possibly take only 24 restaurants and claim it was the best of the city. I wanted to capture the full flavor of the boroughs in one project. The only way to do this would be to eat at all the restaurants in the city that people liked to call their favorites.
There has been a huge surge of interest in urban agriculture in the last couple years, and we believe the only way to make urban agriculture a lasting profession is if there is a model for financial sustainability. We never want to hear, ‘Remember in the 2000-2010’s when urban farming was the latest fad?’ Part of BK Farmyards mission is to eliminate barriers for jobs in urban agriculture. We plan to teach intensive, production farming techniques on site and use the production sales to expand the farm to its full acre and employ talented farmers in Brooklyn.
Farming full time is a lot of physical labor, and I enjoy social media for the short breaks I can take. I don’t watch television and I spend so much of my life either outside or in the kitchen. I rarely see people, speak mostly to animals, and social media gives me a little human contact.
Part 2 of my video interview with Steve Jenkins of Fairway Market is below. Produced and directed by Stacey Szewczyk, the second half of our interview finds Steve and I discussing the search for authenticity within the food movement, the viability of a Fairway in Williamsburg and the evolution of Brooklyn as an eating destination.
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