Entries tagged with 'farming'
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You know farming has reached faddish proportions when there's a Facebook game devoted to it. Farmville was launched in June but now has nearly 60 million users. It's somewhere between the Sims and Charlotte's Web where players harvest raspberries, pumpkins, and other foods, then sell their bounty for online coins. As this recent New York Times piece points out, more and more people are becoming obsessed with putting on their virtual overalls. "The game seems to have mesmerized people from all walks of life. Every night for the last two weeks, Jil Wrinkle, a 40-year-old medical transcriber in the Philippines, has set his alarm for 1:30 a.m., when he will wake up, roll over and harvest his blueberries." See...
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Note: This week in Meet Your Farmers, we get to know Greg Massa, a fourth-generation California rice farmer. Each week he brings delicious brown rice to nine Bay Area farmers' markets and is working toward building a sustainable farm model. [Photographs: Massa Organics] Name: Greg Massa Farm: Massa Organics What do you grow? Organic brown rice, wheat, almonds and now ducks. Ducks? We are selling our first 100 ducks at farmers' markets this weekend. The ducks live in the rice field and can help us with weed management. Ideally, the ducks should be able to feed themselves on the weeds and the bugs in the field. Weed management is no small feat when it comes to rice—it's our biggest production...
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Note: Meet Your Farmers is a Monday morning series where we profile the farmers that mean so much to serious eaters everywhere. This week, Penny Cherubino of BostonZest introduces us to John Lee. [Penny Cherubino] Name: John Lee Farm: Allandale Farm, "Boston's last working farm" in Brookline, Massachusetts How many acres? 30 Your crew: I manage two crews, one for production and one for market. Both crews are local. However, my field crew (many of whom have worked for me for many years) are almost all of Latino descent and have done farm work most of their lives. It is what they love to do, and we try to make it as easy and as much fun as possible. Hours:...
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Here at Serious Eats we love being able to fulfill a commitment just by eating a delicious meal. Kitchen Gardeners International (the same people who successfully led the charge for a White House Kitchen Garden) are now running a campaign to encourage local and sustainable eating on the Fourth of July. So far, more than 5,000 individuals have pledged to eat a meal made with local food on July 4. The "Food Independence Day" petition also asks the nation's 50 governors to participate and share what they will be eating. The petition reads: "As residents of your states and by our signatures below, we pledge to join you in this celebration of edible independence by eating healthy and delicious foods...
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"If you're reducing the wind speed, then you're reducing the ventilation of the crop. Corn is like people—it likes the same temperature range. When it gets above 90 degrees, it really would like to have some ventilation." —Eugene Takle, Iowa State University professor of atmospheric science...
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"Though heavy-handed in places, Food, Inc. is both a chilling expose and a practical manifesto." "You can change the world with every bite," ends the film Food, Inc., in theaters on June 12. Directed by noted documentarian Robert Kenner, with Fast Food Nation author Eric Schlosser on the production team, Food, Inc. takes a sharply critical look at Big Agra--the corporations that manage an enormous percentage of America's food supply by controlling the nation's beef, poultry, corn, and soy industries. Pointing fingers squarely at corporations driven by profit motive rather than product quality or consumer health, along with the government agencies that allow them to do so, Food, Inc. finds plenty of villains to tackle, blaming them for obesity, illness...
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Just because a conscientious, responsible pig farmer decides to make bacon doesn't mean the bacon is going to be good.
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"Forget about food miles. What about poop miles?" —Mother Jones' Paul Roberts Mother Jones' food issue is out, and the lead story is an insanely long, detailed, and infinitely reasonable (for a change) look at what the future of real sustainable agriculture might look like all over the world. The author, Paul Roberts, concludes (after about ten bazillion words) that the answer to producing sustainable food will demand a multi-faceted, non-doctrinaire approach that will require: The fresher-than-thou, no-chemical food zealots to chill out (he suggests that instead of getting rid of all pesticides we have a more realistic and more productive goal of reducing their use by 80 percent) Government support for food sustainability research and development. That support might...
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Last weekend, a couple in Platteville, Colorado, opened up their farm to anyone who wanted free vegetable remnants from the harvest. 40,000 people showed up....
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A year and a half ago, Mike Sula of the Chicago Reader embarked on a project. The Whole Hog Project would follow three mulefoot pigs (Edna, Erma, and Endive) from birth (on a Wisconsin farm) to death (at a slaughterhouse) to an afterlife (at Chicago's Blackbird restaurant). The hairy oinkers, known for having uncloven hooves like mules, would be spotlighted in a fancy six-course dinner. "I've never seen my food walking around before," his friend and and videographer throughout the project, Mike Gebert of Sky Full of Bacon, admitted. Why were they putting themselves through this? Mulefoot pigs are an endangered American breed that, two years ago, only had 200 to their name. While eating an endangered animal seems...
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