Food

Haiti, U.S. ag policy reform, and Bill Clinton

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What have Haiti’s recent calamities taught U.S. decision makers about foreign policy with regard to agriculture? Haiti imports nearly half of the food consumed there–and 80 percent of its rice, the national staple. In the past two years, the country has undergone two major shocks: the global spike in food commodity prices in 2008, and this year’s devastating earthquake. In both cases, the dearth of domestic food production, combined with the complete absence of rice reserves, translated to widespread hunger and misery.

The Twenty Seven Cent Melon Seed

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I think that I have tried to grow just about every variety of every garden vegetable commonly on the market. Yes, I try new ones now and then, but I have been doing that for fifty years and by now I know what I want and want what I know. This is particularly true of muskmelons.

African American Farmers Go Organic, Bring Healthy Food to Southeast

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At a recent Saturday market, Mary Curley sat at her table, displaying at least two dozen varieties of herbs, fruits, and vegetables. At 70, Mary is the oldest of these African American farmers, and has the smallest farm among them, a quarter-acre. A beatific smile lights up her face as she recites the names of her organic offerings, urging customers to sniff and taste each one: Japanese orange, Thai basil, lemon grass, Cuban oregano, pineapple sage, and serrano, habanera, and banana peppers.

Against breakfast cereal

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When you think about it, a breakfast cereal is a bizarre product — there is nothing natural or normal about eating manufactured flakes and puffs created by giant machines in factories, shipped around the world and sealed in plastic for months.

Solar greenhouses, Chinese-style

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In Europe and North America, eating fresh perishable produce out of season usually means hauling it in refrigerated containers from regions where it’s in season, or growing it locally in heated greenhouses…Although these greenhouses boast extremely high yields, the amount of fuel needed to heat them generally far exceeds the amount that would be needed to haul an equivalent amount of produce from a region where it’s in season.

A teacher openly crusades for better school food—and gets seared

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Mendy Heaps, a stellar English teacher for years, had never given much thought to the food her seventh-graders were eating. Then her husband, after years of eating junk food, was diagnosed with cancer, diabetes ,and high blood pressure and suddenly the french fries, pizza and ice cream being served in the cafeteria at rural Elizabeth Middle School outside Denver, Col., took on a whole new meaning.

Barriers to Eating Sustainably, Real and Imagined

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During the period of my life when I was a professional smart-ass (ie, my adolescence), I used to complain to my mother that even the day after she went grocery shopping, there was never any food in the house, only the component ingredients of food. As I teenager I wanted to eat like my peers who seemed to have an endless supply of chips and soda around. To have to come home from school and actually scramble eggs or make a sandwich seemed horribly unfair. My mother and step-mother expressed little sympathy.

“Possum Living” author steps out of the shadows

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In the late ‘70s, at the age of 18, and with a seventh-grade education, Dolly Freed wrote Possum Living about the five years she and her father lived off the land on a half-acre lot outside of Philadelphia. Known for its plucky narration and no-nonsense practical advice on how to live frugally while keeping up a middle class facade, at the time of its original publication, Possum Living became an instant classic. Following her success as an author, Dolly Freed grew up to become a NASA aerospace engineer. She aced the SATs with an education she received from the public library and put herself through college.