By Alex Felsinger •
January 11, 2009
The United States has lifted an eight-year ban on the importation of Hass avocados from Peru, a move which Californian farmers dread as it is expected to decrease the value of their crop anywhere from 1 to 6 percent — a big loss for the already-ailing $250 million industry.
But how does such a move impact the environment? Peru’s avocados will travel 3,000 miles before reaching the United States border; that’s a long trip that will use a lot of fuel.
By Lucille Chi •
November 25, 2008
While we are on the topic of enjoying a local turkey day, I’m reminded of the trusty local foods wheel that was created by three brilliant women to help Bay Area folks decide what’s in season at the grocery store.
Hopefully a local foods wheel will be created for each and every spot in the US, but for now they are focused on the San Francisco Bay Area and New York Metro Area. The concept is simple, just choose the month we’re in, and rotate the wheel to reveal the local foods available. They explain:
I’ve written before about communities in the U.S. that have changed their laws to allow homeowners to keep chickens in their backyards. Now I’ve found some great resources for those in the pro-poultry movement,which a new report from the Worldwatch Institute describes as an underground “urban chicken” movement sweeping across the U.S:
“It’s no longer something kinky or interesting,” Jac Smit, president of the Urban Agriculture Network, tells Worldwatch writer Ben Block. “The ‘chicken underground’ has really spread so widely and has so much support.”
Congratulations to Will Allen, whose work with the urban farming organization Growing Power has just won him a no-strings-attached $500,000 award from the MacArthur Foundation.
One of 25 MacArthur Fellows for 2008, Allen will receive the $500,000 over the next five years. The financial award is designed to give Fellows a level of financial independence so they can “accelerate their current activities or take their work in new directions,” according to the MacArthur Foundation.
If you’re looking for a challenge, try growing a productive vegetable garden in Florida’s superheated summers. I’ve worked toward that goal every day for the past three months and have only a few successes to show for it: six sturdy sunflowers, one infant pumpkin and a spreading mass of strawberries in which the slugs beat me to the fruits nine times out of ten. On the other hand, daily explorations of my wooded backyard have revealed wild foods galore that grow without an ounce of effort on my part: huckleberries, wild blackberries, even Southern crabapples.
So I was happy to discover that other Floridians have reached the same conclusion I have: that it makes sense, in as difficult a climate as ours, to emphasize foods from native plants, especially tree crops.
By Paul Smith •
August 7, 2008
This is a story that will likely make you hungry, inspired, and hopefully thinking a little broader than you started. This is a story of passion and mystery, with a twist at the end. This is about an ice cream that uses no dairy, yet tastes as good as, if not better than its milk based counterparts. And you won’t want to choose it because you can’t have dairy, you’ll just like it because it’s good. Or so that’s what the folks behind Coconut Bliss are aiming for. Now I know, you’re saying, coconut based, that sounds (insert gushing or repulsed adjectives here)
Hang on.
Coconut Bliss makes all the standard flavors you’d expect and far beyond, from Vanilla Island to Chocolate Hazelnut Fudge, with some Strawberry Lemon Love thrown in for good measure. The flavor, when it hits your tongue, is distinctly focused on the flavor at hand. Coconut sits very much in the background, nearly undetected. It’s more the messenger rather than the flag bearer. They use very clean ingredients, all organic, and skip insulin spiking sugar for its more even keeled cousin, agave nectar.
