by Joel Salatin Is local food just a fuzzy fad, or can it actually feed the world? At a recent Augusta County Chamber of Commerce-sponsored agri-tourism panel discussion, Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Secretary Matt Lohr reiterated the current agri-business axiom that farms like my family’s Polyface Farm cannot feed the world. [...]
Start-up businesses are capitalizing on the local food trend. But when those businesses fail, farmers don’t get paid. By Joel Salatin Big food companies employ lawyers and other means to make sure wholesalers and retailers pay for what they buy. Because they can spread the cost of that legal leverage over millions of unit [...]
• BONUS ONLINE-ONLY CONTENT FOR OCTOBER 2010 • If you weren’t already convinced that the industrial food system is unsafe, the recent egg recall should have scared you straight. By Joel Salatin “I don’t think we should buy any eggs,” a customer whispered to her husband in our farm sales building a day after [...]
Our neighbors to the south have launched a culinary arts program designed to train chefs to collaborate with farmers. By Joel Salatin I recently traveled to Chatham County, North Carolina, the epicenter of a local food revolution. Central Carolina Community College, which has offered a sustainable agriculture associate degree for nearly a decade, [...]
How should we respond when we’re called elitists because we buy more expensive, local food? By Joel Salatin • Photographs by Molly McDonald Peterson Because high-quality local food often carries a higher price tag than food generated by the industrial system, the charge of elitism coming from industrial foodists is often vitriolic, and embarrassed foodies [...]
This paralyzing winter should have taught us to take advantage of our local bounty and lay up for the day our food systems grind to a halt. By Joel Salatin The winter of 2009–2010 will go down in our mid-Atlantic record books as one to remember. Fender benders, shoveling, and bone-chilling cold. Here in the [...]
I am an advocate for farmers markets and CSAs.But if we really want the masses to “buy local,” do we need to consider another model? By Joel Salatin Anyone who knows me knows I’m an ardent supporter of farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSA). Direct-marketing models linking farmers to buyers are as varied as [...]
Decipher the language Big Ag uses to disguise what’s really happening to your food.
The industrial food system employs some of the sharpest cleverspeak wordsmiths in our culture [...]
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