Grist | Topics | 111 Results

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Headline	Author	Published	Section
Dispatches from the Fields: The trouble with small-scale farming Can sustainable farming provide a sustainable living?	Stephanie Paige Ogburn	26 Aug 2008	Gristmill
In "Dispatches from the Fields," Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America's agro-industrial landscape. ----- Should small-scale farmers who grow organically and sell locally or regionally be able to make a middle-class living with farming as their sole source of income? SongHaven Farm and Sage Canyon Soapworks are on ...
Topics: agriculture, economy, food, local food, sustainable ag (all these topics)

Solving the apartment dweller's dilemma Urban gardening for the rest of us	Ashley Braun	13 Aug 2008	Gristmill
Photo: lucy and her dent About a quarter of the U.S. population lives in apartments or condos, according to the 2000 census [PDF], and most Americans will live in one or the other at some point in their lives. But apartment dwellers don't have to miss out on the joys of growing their own food. You don't need a yard to garden. All you need are some pots. 'Container gardening' makes it possible for just about anyone to grow their own tasty, fre ...
Topics: food, gardening, local food, organic food (all these topics)

Dispatches From the Fields: Whatever happened to organic? The limits of consumption-based food movements	Stephanie Paige Ogburn	11 Aug 2008	Gristmill
In 'Dispatches From the Fields,' Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America's agro-industrial landscape. This Olathe Sweet Corn is regionally renowned, entirely local, and grown entirely conventionally and industrially, meaning farmers use large amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides. Its locality has become a selli ...
Topics: agriculture, farmers markets, food, industrial ag, local food, organic food (all these topics)

Price is nice As energy costs rise, supply chains go local	Adam Stein	07 Aug 2008	Gristmill
Two articles you should read if you're interested in eating local, growing local, building local, buying local, or any of the other ways that geography, economy, and environment intersect: The first is an article from a few weeks ago, detailing the destruction of the domestic catfish industry due to rising prices for oil, corn, soybeans, and other commodities. All meat is getting more expensive, but catfish doesn't have the advantage of being a dietary staple. The ...
Topics: climate, energy, fossil fuels, gas prices, local food (all these topics)

Urban farming gets its day in the sun Amid climate crisis and rising costs, big media discovers city-grown food	Tom Philpott	05 Aug 2008	Gristmill
Back in 2006, a Los Angeles developer, Ralph Hurwitz, bull-dozed a highly productive 13-acre farm in the city's South Central neighborhood. In its place, he intends to plunk down a vast warehouse designed to facilitate trade in goods shipped in from Asia destined for our great nation's big-box stores. (I wrote about the South Central Community Farm saga at the time here; for an update, check this out.) At the time, I think, urban farming generally seemed like a 'low- ...
Topics: food, gardening, local food, urban planning (all these topics)

More on 'lazy locavorism' Edible landscapes can outgrow the elite	Maywa Montenegro	31 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Monday's New York Times had a great opinion piece about My Farm's Trevor Paque -- the same guy recently profiled in the Times' Style section. In fact, I had to look twice to make sure it was the same T. Paque because the two articles emphasized such different aspects of the urban CSA mission. Kim Severson, in the style piece, describes it thus: Call them the lazy locavores -- city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to g ...
Topics: CSAs, food, gardening, green living, local food (all these topics)

Dispatches From the Fields: From tepary beans to arugula -- and back Can locavores embrace a truly place-based agriculture?	Stephanie Paige Ogburn	28 Jul 2008	Gristmill
In 'Dispatches From the Fields,' Ariane Lotti and Stephanie Ogburn, who are working on small farms in Iowa and Colorado this season, share their thoughts on producing real food in the midst of America's agro-industrial landscape. The architectural remnants of an ancient agrarian civilization known as the Ancestral Puebloans cover the Southwest. Photo: Stephanie Ogburn.It's somewhat astonishing that there's a thriving local food scene where I live, i ...
Topics: agriculture, Colorado, farmers markets, food, local food (all these topics)

'Lazy locavores,' revisited The WSJ reports on lavish second-home gardens	Tom Philpott	25 Jul 2008	Gristmill
I got a bit of flack for my post on 'lazy locavores' earlier this week. Riffing off of a New York Times 'trend' piece, I questioned the practice of 'outsourcing one's veggie patch' -- paying someone to install, tend, and harvest a home veggie garden. I accused folks who use such services of having a 'hyper-consumerist' take on local food -- of wanting the trappings and status of a home garden without getting their hands dirty. Several people -- including energy blog ...
Topics: food, gardening, green living, local food, organic food (all these topics)

A gastronomic renaissance Farmers markets and local agriculture: age-old systems for the future	Jim Goodman	25 Jul 2008	Gristmill
We often think that farmers markets are products of our times as they spring up in cities and small towns across the country. Truth is, a farmers market is the traditional way of selling agricultural produce around the world. The really nice aspect of this transaction is that the farmer receives just compensation for his product and the eater can be assured the product is fresh, local, and grown in a manner that is acceptable to all. If these criteria are not met, the c ...
Topics: agriculture, Department of Agriculture, farmers markets, food, local food (all these topics)

The NYT's 'lazy locavores' The paper of record identifies -- sort of -- a new trend	Tom Philpott	24 Jul 2008	Gristmill
New York Times food reporter Kim Severson has declared a new trend: 'lazy locavores,' people who want to 'eat close to home' but are too time-strapped (or lazy) to put much effort into it. According to Severson, 'a new breed of business owner' has arisen to cater to their whims. She opens her piece with a San Francisco entrepreneur who 'will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on ...
Topics: food, gardening, local food, San Francisco, slow food (all these topics)

Checkout Line: Farmers market etiquette How to ask hard questions of the people who grow your food	Lou Bendrick	23 Jul 2008	Gristmill
In Checkout Line, Lou Bendrick cooks up answers to reader questions about how to green their food choices and other diet-related quandaries. Lettuce know what food worries keep you up at night. What to do when it's not so spelled out for you? Photo: Jennifer Dickert Dear Checkout Line, Any suggestions on how to ask local farmers (or the person selling the goods at the farmers' market who might not be the actual grower) if the produce was treated with Sev ...
Topics: advice, Checkout Line, farmers markets, food, local food, organic food (all these topics)

A whole new kind of local Urban homesteading in Washington, D.C.	Meredith Niles	16 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Today's slow yet steady movement towards sustainable foods has a decidedly urban feel to it. This morning, sitting at my backyard patio table and drinking my morning coffee, I looked appreciatively out into my backyard and took a satisfying breath. The highway behind my house roared with the morning rush hour traffic, the high rise apartments across the street were bustling with people hurrying off to school and work, and I was sitting in my own piece of urban heave ...
Topics: food, gardening, local food, placemaking, Washington DC (all these topics)

Free from the tree Urban fruit: An untapped resource	Erik Hoffner	16 Jul 2008	Gristmill
Photo: Fallen Fruit. Here's a great local food/art initiative, Fallen Fruit, a map project of neighborhoods where one can collect unwanted fruit in Los Angeles. Humans should be making use of these urban apples, avocados, pomegranates, etc. as much as possible, not raking them up into a garbage bag or compost pile. The folks at LocalEcology have started one for Berkeley, and folks with the Portland Fruit Tree Project collect fruit that grows on neighborhoo ...
Topics: food, local food, Los Angeles (all these topics)

Just Beyond the Parking Lot Wal-Mart gobbles up local produce		02 Jul 2008	News
Posted at 11:55 AM on 02 Jul 2008 You thought you took home a haul at the farmers market last week, but you've got nothin' on Wal-Mart. The big-box retailer has become the nation's largest buyer of local produce, planning to purchase and sell $400 million worth of locally grown fruits and veggies this year. Wal-Mart says it works with "hundreds" of individual farmers, and has 50 percent more partnerships with local growers t ...
Topics: business, food, greening biz operations, greenish companies, local food, news, Wal-Mart (all these topics)

Climate change ideas for On Day One Day three of the UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration	Ideas for On Day One	25 Jun 2008	Gristmill
The UN Dispatch-Grist collaboration continues today with a discussion of the top user-rated idea on On Day One: 'Eat the View,' by Roger Doiron. This idea was so popular, it even found its way into The New York Times. Here's what he suggests: Announce plans for a food garden on the White House lawn, making one of the White House's eight gardeners responsible for it, with part of produce going to the White House kitchen ...
Topics: climate, food, gardening, local food, politics, White House (all these topics)

Get thee to the farmers market Now's the time for scapes and green garlic	Tom Philpott	20 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Food headlines hardly bring comfort these days: tales of lost harvests, hunger riots, agrichemical runoff, tainted pork and tomatoes.�A society's foodways surely reveal something about its quality of life. From studying the industrial-food system, as I do, it's easy to conclude that we live in a brutal culture: content to destroy the ecosystem, exploit labor, and torture animals to produce unhealthy but profitable food. When such dark musings grip me, I try to remember ...
Topics: farmers markets, food, gardening, local food, recipes (all these topics)

Brooklyn's hopeful gardeners Low-income nabes lead the way in urban farming	Emily Gertz	13 Jun 2008	Gristmill
The Garden of Hope -- the new community green space I covered this week on Grist -- is just one facet of Brooklyn's community gardening scene. While writing this story I spoke with Susan Fields of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's GreenBridge program, which reaches out to neighborhoods all over Brooklyn to encourage and to support many levels of gardening -- from the 'Greenest Block in Brooklyn' contest all the way to the Urban Composting Project. 'There's a growing focus ...
Topics: farmers markets, food, gardening, local food, New York City (all these topics)

Garden variety Why mow the grass when you can harvest salad greens?	Tom Philpott	06 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Lawn grass is the largest irrigated U.S. crop. 'Even conservatively,' notes NASA researcher Cristina Milesi, 'I estimate there are three times more acres of lawns in the U.S. than irrigated corn.' Wow, that's a lot of ornamental grass -- about 128,000 square kilometers worth, roughly equal in size to the state of Wisconsin. According Milesi, keeping all of that grass green requires about 200 gallons of fresh, typically drinking-quality water per person per day. (Inter ...
Topics: Chicago, food, gardening, local food (all these topics)

Feeding climate change Still more reasons to eat local and lay off the beef	Clark Williams-Derry	05 Jun 2008	Gristmill
Photo: Elizabeth Thomsen via Flickr. Increasingly, consumers are trying to reduce the environmental impacts of the foods they eat. But it's not so easy to know what to do, in part because of the bewildering array of food choices the market offers, but also because it's hard to know what food choices carry the biggest impact. This nifty study tries to clear away some of the murk by tackling a fairly straightforward question: If you care about the climat ...
Topics: climate, climate change mitigation, food, local food, vegetarianism and veganism (all these topics)

Vertical farms and future cities Sustainability a big theme at the World Science Festival	Maywa Montenegro	02 Jun 2008	Gristmill
What do vertical farms, green roofs, soft cars, breathing walls, and Dongtan, China, have in common? They were all subjects of discussion at Friday's Future Cities event in New York City, part of the four-day 2008 World Science Festival. To a packed house, Columbia University microbiologist Dickson Despommier described his vision for feeding the planet's burgeoning, and increasingly urban, population. The vertical farm takes agriculture and stacks it into the tie ...
Topics: food, innovation, local food, placemaking, tech, urban planning (all these topics)

Better homes and gardens The NYT on urban farming	Tom Philpott	08 May 2008	Gristmill
Viewed through a wide lens, the world's troubles seem overwhelming: climate change, pointless war, spreading hunger, surging food and energy prices, etc. There's a tendency to seek big-brush answers to these vast problems, to ask: what's The Solution? Failing inevitably to find it -- much less implement it -- we plunge deeper into despair and political impotence. Of course, taking a broad view of the world is critically important. But that perspective may be better at ...
Topics: agriculture, food, local food, placemaking, sustainable ag, urban planning (all these topics)

Bush goes dark green, endorses local food Nonsensical nuggets from the prez's press conference	Joseph Romm	29 Apr 2008	Gristmill
George W. Bush -- dark green? I kid you not. Here's what he said in his press conference today: One thing I think that would be -- I know would be very creative policy is if we -- is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It's a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn't responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do ...
Topics: food, George Bush, local food, politics (all these topics)

Altar-native Energy How to green your wedding		29 Apr 2008	From A to Green
No one wants to scrimp on matters of the heart. And not a lot of lovebirds want to pass up the chance to throw a meaning-laden bash with friends, family, and bubbly that ends in a sex-crazed vacation. Who could say no to that? But when it comes to weddings, there are greener ways to get hitched. Today, earth-friendlier versions of conventional weddings are blooming everywhere -- from "Days of Our Lives" to the pages of Modern ...
Topics: advice, ecological footprint, From A to Green, green living, local food (all these topics)

Celebrating Earth Day with Tom Friedman An interview with The 'Stache pre-pie-in-the-face	Nathan Wyeth	28 Apr 2008	Gristmill
Yes, Tom Friedman came to Brown University on Earth Day to unveil his new book and got hit by a pie. But he cleaned himself up, came back with a joke about surviving Beirut and Jerusalem but running into trouble in Providence, and went on to deliver a stem-winder of an address for an op-ed columnist essentially outlining his latest book. I found The World Is Flat to be a good window into business models in the 21st century. His new offering, Hot, Flat, and Crowded ...
Topics: books, education, energy, environmental movement, local food, messaging, oil (all these topics)

Why survivalists make me want to die More than peak oil or financial crash, I fear angry men armed to the teeth	Tom Philpott	23 Apr 2008	Gristmill
'I urge readers to use less than lethal means when safe and practicable, but at times there is not a satisfactory substitute for well-aimed lead going down range at high velocity.' -- James Rawles, SurvivalBlog With oil and food prices reaching all-time highs and food riots breaking out in the global south, a bit of good old-fashioned end-is-nighism is creeping into our popular culture. It hit me when I read a report in The New York Sun -- the one I blogged abo ...
Topics: education, food, gardening, local food, websites (all these topics)

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