Web-only Features Archive

Urban Farmer Forgoes Lawn for Livestock and Veggies

by Anna Soref

Novella CarpenterEndless reports of pesticide-laced produce, hidden GMOs, and the miles our food travels to reach the store have many of us aching to get back to the land. We want the control that growing our own food offers—antibiotic-free meat from an animal given a decent life, vegetables picked within minutes of consumption, and tree-ripened fruit—not to mention how great it would be to trade in our cell phones for handfuls of dirt a few hours a week.

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Michele Simon: Cracking the Politics of Food

Food politicsMichele Simon has made it her life’s work to dive in and fully confront the sometimes complex political issues behind the food system—and to make it possible for those attempting to bring about sustainable changes to survive and create a difference in this arena. A public health attorney, she has taught Health Policy at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, and is a frequent lecturer on corporate tactics and policy solutions. She has written extensively on the politics of food, and in 2006 published her first book, Appetite for Profit: How the Food Industry Undermines Our Health and How to Fight Back.

Like many of us, Simon didn’t become fully aware of these issues until she researched them herself. “I’m a public health lawyer, which means I have both a master’s in public health and a law degree,” Simon told Organic Connections. “But I didn’t really get interested in food until after I graduated from law school. I made some personal changes in my diet and started reading all about the powerful impacts of our diets, not only on our health, but on the environment, on animals, and on almost every aspect of society.

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Sampling the Conscious Lifestyle

The Conscious Box teamWhile only 55 percent of Americans between 16 and 29 are employed, the plums in today’s job market for intelligent and motivated candidates are in software design, healthcare, engineering, management and accounting. But Jameson Morris, 23—along with his partners Jesse Richardson, 21, and Bjorn Borstelmann, 24—took a different route, driven by the passion to help others live conscious lifestyles.

Morris and one of his two partners had already founded a thriving online magazine called Organic Soul, and their newest enterprise— Conscious Box—is yet a further effort to make a difference, with little to no help from anyone else. “They both have basically been passion projects,” Morris explained. “We are young multitalented guys, and most everything we have done has been all between us. It was really just a lot of hard work and late nights and living in our office.”

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It All Began with the Chickens

Orren FoxOrren Fox is an expert beekeeper, chicken farmer, and often-quoted sustainable-food advocate. He has been interviewed by the Huffington Post and NPR, among many others, and he’s on the advisory board for ChopChop magazine. His blog, through which he is mainly sharing what he learns in his care of his chickens and bees, is read by thousands, and he is heavily followed on Twitter and Facebook as well. Oh, and we should probably mention this: he's only fourteen years old.

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The Shipping Container Oasis in Food Deserts

Stockbox outside viewThe term food desert describes a district in a city where fresh, healthy food cannot be found. It is estimated that 23 million people live in such areas. Since the nearest store is usually the corner bodega that carries packaged snacks, a variety of sodas and beer and a few highly processed food items, it is not surprising that diet-related illnesses soar in these food deserts. Two Seattle-area visionaries, fresh out of grad school, are implementing a food oasis—an “instant store” that is quickly set up and brings badly needed fresh food to these neighborhoods.

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Chef Peter Berley’s Local, Sustainable Cooking School

Peter Berley in the North Form Kitchen. Photo: Amy Leland, Summer Woman ProductionsWhen a renowned chef decides to embark upon a business venture, it is usually a restaurant and it is commonly in the center of a thriving metropolitan area. But Chef Peter Berley—former executive chef at New York City’s Angelica Kitchen, cooking instructor and award-winning cookbook author—decided, instead, upon a cooking school. And when he built and finally opened his North Fork Kitchen in a remote area of Long Island, his motivation extended well beyond self-promotion and financial gain.

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Documenting the Realities of Farming

Graham Meriwether and Paul WillisAgriculture is often painted in simple, black-and-white terms. On one side there’s the evil industrial-agriculture meat farmer, raising animals with inhumane practices, polluting the environment, eating up fossil fuel, and tainting products with hormones and antibiotics. On the other side, we find the sustainable practitioner, letting animals roam freely and graze, as nature intended, using no antibiotics (as they’re not needed in this setting), and creating a natural cycle in which pollution is not an issue.

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Mrs. Q’s Battle Cry for Lunch

Mrs. QSarah Wu was a speech pathologist with the Chicago Public Schools, in her third year of professional life. She loved her job, and felt she was making a difference with the low-income elementary school children with whom she was working. She had a husband and child, was a private person and a self-described even-tempered individual who rarely “got mad” about things. Almost three years later, however, under the pseudonym “Mrs. Q,” she is an Internet sensation because of her outspoken campaign for the improvement of school lunches; and she is now the author of a book, Fed Up With Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches—and How We Can Change Them!, detailing her experiences.

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Can We Tap Our Way out of Bottle Addiction?

Faucet Face reusable bottlesWhen many of us were kids, there was no such term as tap water; it was simply known as water. We drank it when we were thirsty, we drank it with meals, we used it to make ice, we cooked our food with it, we made other drinks (such as iced tea) with it, and much more, without a second thought.

Then things began to change. “The first bottled water came out in the late seventies,” Mason Gentry, founder of Faucet Face, told Organic Connections. “It was kind of a laughing stock back then, like why would you pay for water when it comes out of your faucet? But the early nineties came around and extreme sports became popular. Somehow the bottled water industry marketed their wares around that and they were able to make it popular.”

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Taking the Harm out of the Farm

Eric HermYou can take Eric Herm out of Texas, but the farm he grew up on never left his heart. After some time away preparing for a career in broadcast journalism, the farmer’s son came back. When he did, he found that the practices that had been in place for some forty years were severely harmful to the land, the crops, and to human life. He is now making the remarkable journey from chemical to sustainable, and doing everything he can to bring others with him. His experiences are documented in his book Son of a Farmer, Child of the Earth, as well as on his blog of the same name.

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How to Save Money and the Environment

Carpooing LogoOwing to the high cost of fuel, a desire to reduce carbon emissions, and the hope of escaping gridlock, the popularity of transportation alternatives to single-driver automobiles has grown rapidly in the last few years. Three European entrepreneurs tapped into this desire—and have succeeded beyond their wildest imaginings.

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Documenting Young and Passionate New Farmers

Greenhorns: Young farmers on the jobsIndustrial agriculture has left our soil infertile, has destroyed biodiversity, and has produced foods lower in nutrients and abundant with pesticides. On top of that, according to the new documentary Greenhorns, the average age of the American farmer is 57. Where is the next generation of farmers, and how are they going to usher in a new age of sustainable agriculture? Greenhorns documents the answer. They’re here, they’re young, their farms are sustainable, and they’re passionate about what they’re doing.

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Local Living Economies: Building What’s Next

Local Living Economies: Building What’s NextIn the aftermath of the Wall Street-created economic meltdown, there is a growing movement to bring economic power back to Main Street. Advocates argue that localizing economies keeps the fruits of much of the production, goods and services for the benefit of those who live in the area.

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Bison: Sustainability on the Range

By Anna Soref, Contributing Editor

Bison rancher, Dave CarterWith his western hat, jeans, boots and belt buckle, Dave Carter exudes cowboy. This is a man who knows rodeo, ranching and campfires.

Indeed, when you talk to Carter, you quickly find out he’s all cowboy—well, actually bisonboy. Not only is he the executive director of the National Bison Association, but Carter also owns and ranches bison. His passion for the large furry ruminants runs high, and he’ll talk to anyone who’ll listen about bison’s ability to save an ecosystem and, possibly, the small agricultural farmer.

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Aquapods and Ocean-Grown Shrimp

Aquapod for gowing shrimp in the ocean.Upwards of 88 percent of the shrimp consumed in the US is imported from Asia, where entire mangrove forests are uprooted and replaced with large industrial shrimp ponds. Shrimp are raised in the same way as other industrial livestock—in cramped conditions and given antibiotics to combat the escalating diseases that threaten them from such conditions, along with hormones for growth. The majority of waste from such ponds—which includes high amounts of nitrates—is released into the ocean, where it fosters excess growth of algae and severely damages marine ecosystems. Once shrimp have been farmed and raised using these unsustainable methods, they are flown thousands or even tens of thousands of miles before being sold and consumed.

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The Good Non-GMO Seeds

Jim and Kristen MitchellThis is the story of Jim and Kristen Mitchell, a Phoenix, Arizona, couple who a few years back found themselves at a crossroads—and who ended up founding Humble Seed, a company through which home gardeners could find premium, non-GMO, non-hybrid seeds, along with the expertise to help them get started on, continue or expand their planting activities.

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Kid Food Is Ruining Our Children

By Anna Soref, Contributing Editor, Organic Connections

"Kid" foodYesterday my daughter told me that kids in the school cafeteria gathered around her while she ate quinoa and tempeh from her Thermos. “What is that?” they inquired. We recently moved to Cleveland from Boulder, Colorado, and super grains and fermented soy aren’t the norm here. I get it.

But what about the kids who can’t identify a cucumber or zucchini? Or my 10-year-old’s friends who can only eat cheese, flour, sugar and salt when they come over? Planning for a play date requires a special trip to the grocery store. “Mom, we have to get juice; Tanya won’t drink water.” Or, “Mom, we have to get pregrated cheddar cheese and white pasta; it’s all that Rachel will eat.”

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The Fast-Food Marketing Backlash

Fast food marketing to kidsMounting concern over child obesity and diabetes has caused a backlash against fast-food marketing practices. Such marketing employs the use of kid-friendly “spokescharacters” and the offering of toys along with meals laced with fat and sugar to appeal to children. Additionally, companies employing these practices count on something called the “nag factor”—meaning kids nagging their parents to take them for one of these meals. Parents who have to work and cannot spend enough time with their children tend to give in out of a sense of guilt.

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Big Corn Wants to Rename HFCS “corn sugar”

By Anna Soref

Corn sugar adA growing number of food shoppers are becoming ingredient-label readers: a quick check for no-nos such as artificial colors, trans fats and high-fructose corn syrup decides what will land in the cart.

This health trend seems like a big win for a country on the verge of a health crisis—unless you are Big Corn and HFCS is suffering the lowest sales in its history as a result. To end this growing distrust of HFCS, the Corn Refiners Association is now calling its ubiquitous sweetener “corn sugar” and has filed with the Food and Drug Administration for an official name change.

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Sustainable Shrimp Farming—in the Desert

A Blue Oasis ShrimpShrimp is one of the most sought-after commodities in seafood, and in food, period. To meet this unceasing worldwide demand, shrimp has been both farmed and wild-caught using methods that are toxic and severely damaging to the environment. But with advances in sustainable technologies, along with increasing consumer demand for sustainable food, this scenario is now changing.

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Why Does America Waste Nearly Half Its Food?

Wasted foodIn day-to-day living, average citizens regularly dispose of food they don’t eat at meals, as well as food that has passed its expiration date in the refrigerator or in the cupboard. In a similar fashion, over at the grocery store, items that have gone past their expiration dates are thrown out, and at restaurants food that hasn’t been served goes out with the evening’s waste.

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Green News: Personal and Sustainable Rapid Transit

ULTra PRTPublic transport has taken many forms—and if we are to reduce or curtail our reliance on fossil fuel, it will have to come a long way still. Public transport has brought us buses, streetcars, trains and subways. In between the streetcar (or tram) and conventional trains are what is called light-rail transit (LRT), which were originally designed to be higher-speed and faster versions of streetcar systems. LRT systems are more flexible and adaptable than previous rail networks, but the next step up may very well be a clever form of transportation known as ULTra PRT (Personal Rapid Transit).

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New Bill Seeks to Curtail Dangerous Chemicals

Unregulated chemicals in our environmentOver the years there have been many reports of dangerous chemicals in the environment, while governmental agencies seemingly turned a blind eye or allowed corporations developing and using such chemicals to remain “innocent until proven guilty.” Plentiful examples can be found in the book Poisoned for Profit by Philip and Alice Shabecoff, in Slow Death by Rubber Duck by Rick Smith and Bruce Lourie, and elsewhere.

New legislation, however, has been proposed that will provide a much more proactive governmental approach to dangerous environmental chemicals than has existed in the past. Called the Endocrine-Disrupting Chemicals Exposure Elimination Act of 2011, the bill seeks to expand research and review on the most suspect of the endocrine-disrupting chemicals that appear in household products.

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GMOs—the Movie

GMO cornMany users of natural products know something about GMOs—genetically modified organisms. But because mainstream media has refused to cover the subject, GMOs continue to be in mainstream food products and Americans, unaware of the dangers they present, go on consuming them as part of their diets.

Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert, currently in progress on an as-yet-unnamed documentary on GMOs, wasn’t particularly aware of them either—and it was a coincidental visit to Haiti, of all places, that ended up tipping him off.

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Recharging Mom Energy

Ashley Koff and Mom Energy“In the 21st century the energy crisis is getting personal. It’s not only about the environment. Just ask any mom! The most precious and scarcest resource of all is ‘mom energy.’ We’re committed to helping women turn this energy crisis around—one mom at a time.”

So begins Mom Energy: A Simple Plan to Live Fully Charged, a new book by renowned author and nutritionist Ashley Koff, RD, and celebrity fitness trainer Kathy Kaehler. The book zeros in on the many symptoms and facets of what all moms need: energy. It assists each mom as well in understanding what her body is telling her, and in modifying her diet and tailoring her exercise based on her particular needs and lifestyle.

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