#food-co-ops

#food-co-ops

"Many times I find myself having to set aside other basic needs my children have in order to prioritize buying food," Garcia said in Spanish.

The spices are merely a vessel for culture, community, storytelling, and politics. The recipes were so fresh, simple, and seasonal. That's not the version of South Asian food that most people know.

More than a third of the nation's local newspapers have folded in the last 20 years, with the Western U.S. being especially hard-hit, including significant losses in Utah and New Mexico.

Chef Violet Witchel, creator of the now-viral "dense bean salad," didn't build a 3 million strong social media following by chasing virality. She built it by solving a problem. At a time when protein goals were trending and food prices were rising, she noticed something simple: beans were affordable, high-protein, and meal-prep friendly.

After 15 years, volunteers at a Bed Stuy farm found themselves locked out of the green space that has fed thousands over the years, and lately became a temporary home for asylum seekers.

Since the duo got together as fellow students at Goldsmiths Centre for Research Architecture in 2013, they have been using the production and consumption of food as the focus for numerous long-term, site-specific projects that address how we should live-and eat in particular-in the face of climate change. As they put it: "Food is both deeply connected to the environment and to ecology but at the same time is also intersectional: every living organism on this planet is invested and preoccupied with processes of metabolism, ingestion and the acquisition of nutrients."

Long before they became destination stops, farm shops were practical lifelines in Cornwall; places where farming families sold what they reared, grew or made, and where local communities stocked their pantries. In a county shaped by smallholdings, dairy herds and mixed farms, the connection between land and table has always been close - and still, today, hyper-local food is something Cornwall does exceptionally well.

For someone aiming to end the global livestock industry, Bruce Friedrich begins his new book called Meat in disarming fashion: I'm not here to tell anyone what to eat. You won't find vegetarian or vegan recipes in this book, and you won't find a single sentence attempting to convince you to eat differently. This book isn't about policing your plate.

The pandemic changed Defector's course. New York shut down, the economy ground to a halt, and the offers of capital dried up. So the group decided to launch a new website on their own dime, this time structured as a worker-owned cooperative in which the journalists, rather than media executives, made all the decisions. The site became the kind of success that's rare in digital media nowadays, bringing in $3.2 million in revenue from over 40,000 paying subscribers in its first year alone.

"Ironically, many if not most of these 'sustainability' projects remain disassociated from companies' core procurement strategies, meaning the coffee produced from these projects is not necessarily bought by the companies involved, or only in minimal quantities," the paper states. "And for the coffee that is purchased, prices do not factor into the project design, despite the fact that price is the single variable impacting farmer income that is in the direct control of companies."

My older brother has worked with pigs his entire adult life, managing about 70,000 of them across five counties, Faaborg says. But we got to a point where he went from laughing at me to saying: well, I guess maybe I'll quit my job and help you out. Now he's the most dedicated, says Katherine Jernigan, director of the Transfarmation Project at Mercy for Animals, a non-profit that helped the Faaborgs make the switch and set up their new business, 1100 Farm.

When you think of farming, what ingredients do you generally associate with a successful harvest? The basics certainly come to mind: fertile soil, plenty of sunlight and lots of water. But there are other variables that can also mean the difference between a crop of healthy fruits and vegetables and a large heap of organic waste. And it turns out that one of those variables is a very small hawk.

Come join a volunteer work party at The School Farm every second Saturday from noon to 4 pm to lend a hand and learn about farm work. All skill levels and abilities are welcome, even for moral support and comic relief. They will provide some water and maybe a snack, and plenty of well worn gloves, but If you'd like, bring some more refreshments to share or your favorite personal protective equipment. For more info, contact sam@eco-sf.org.