Forget The Golf Course, Build A Subdivision Around A Farm

Luke Runyon (High Plains Public Radio — Dec 10, 2013)

Sub

For decades, housing developments in the suburbs have come complete with golf courses, tennis courts, strip malls and swimming pools. But make way for the new subdivision amenity: the specialty farm. A new model for suburban development is springing up across the country that taps into the local food movement. Farms, complete with livestock, vegetables and fruit trees, are serving as a way to entice potential buyers to settle in a new subdivision.

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Northern Colorado Farmers Grow Winter Farmers Market

Josie Sexton (The Coloradan — Nov 29, 2013)

Pig

Winter isn’t always associated with farmers markets, but local grassroots organizations are uniting to change that perception. Now in its eighth operating season, the Be Local Winter Farmers Market has just finished its first month of business at the Opera Galleria in Old Town Fort Collins.

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Colorado Voters May Be Next To Decide On GMO Food Labeling

Matt Ferner (Huffington Post — Nov 27, 2013)

GMO 7

In 2014, voters in Colorado may be the next to decide on mandatory labeling for foods that contain genetically modified ingredients. Larry Cooper, co-chair of the pro-GMO food labeling Right To Know Colorado campaign, told Politico that the group submitted a proposed ballot initiative to the state last week. If approved, Cooper and other supporters of food labeling will start collecting the 85,000 signatures need to get the measure on the November 2014 ballot.

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Local Food Bank Takes Over A Federal Program

Gina Esposito (KJCT8.Com)

Food Bank

As of November 1st, the Western Slope Food Bank of the Rockies started handling all Emergency Food Assistance Program or TEFAP distributions. In the past, counties distributed the food quarterly. Locally, it was done by the Mesa County Health Department. However, now that the food bank is in charge, the food will come monthly.

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Door To Door Organics Press Release

(Door To Door Organics — Nov 22, 2013)

Door To Door

Door to Door Organics today announced the introduction of its local sourced prepared meal program. The prepared meal program launches with Boulder, Colo.-based restaurant and caterer Dish Gourmet to offer chef-created heat and serve meals making it easier to get fresh, healthy, restaurant-quality dishes on the table in minutes. Dish Gourmet is a gourmet deli that has been serving health-conscious customers flavorful and high-quality meals since 2006.

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Federal Funds Will Help Bring More Local Foods To Schools

Chase Olivarius-Mcallister (Durango Herald — Nov 19, 2013)

Kid With Carrot

For some Durangoans – whose insatiable appetite for organic, locally grown foods can surpass the available funds in their checking accounts – the quest to eat healthy can feel doomed, a case of enlightened champagne tastes betrayed by a beer budget. But federal intervention means that, going forward, there will be fewer financial obstacles to healthful eating for Southwest Colorado’s children.

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Boulder Valley Schools Working To Incorporate Local Food In Lunch Menus

Amy Bounds (Boulder Daily Camera — Nov 7, 2013)

Farm to Table

Organic honey-roasted pumpkin from Lafayette’s Isabelle Farm is on today’s menu for Boulder Valley School District students, and they’ll see balsamic beets and spaghetti squash from the farm later this month. The first “Farm to School Census” by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that almost half of Colorado school districts are participating in farm-to-school programs, with apples, peaches and beef listed as the top three local products being purchased.

 

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Joel Salatin: Local Food Movement Still Faces Big Hurdles

Luke Runyon (KUNC — Nov 4, 2013)

Joel

The move to source locally has taken hold across the country, but still faces many hurdles. Small-scale farmers and ranchers face limited or unfeasible distribution, scarce capital, sometimes burdensome regulation, the prospect of high costs and low margins and a perception problem that local food is elite.

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Taking A Wide-Angle View Of The World

Zak Weinberg (Boulder Weekly — Oct 31, 2013)

Gary

The environmental world is ripe with buzzwords, and it’s normal to doubt their significance. But if the pioneer of the local food movement, Gary Nabhan, says Bioneers put on the most innovative conference in the world, then the word “bioneer” and ideas behind it become much more powerful. The Front Range Bioneers Conference returns to the University of Colorado Boulder Nov. 8-10 for a satellite forum of the larger national conference in California that brings together professionals to speak about the environment, health and social justice.

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Colterra Hosts Tables To Farm Dinner To Benefit Farmers

Loren Lorenzo (Westword — Oct 29, 2013)

Colterra

Arriving at Colterra Food and Wine feels like you’ve just pulled up to grandma’s house for Sunday dinner. As you enter, you almost expect to be greeted by family members. And in a way, you are: The staff is warm and inviting, and quickly make you feel at home, like part of the community. And in a way, that’s what Colterra is all about. The restaurant is located in the quaint, tiny town of Niwot, and since community is so important here, chef/owner Bradford Heap felt the need to lend a helping hand to those farmers who have created the ingredients for these simple, beautiful dishes.

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Dramatic Decline In Industrial Agriculture Would Herald ‘Peak Food’

Nafeez Ahmed (The Guardian — Dec 19, 2013)

A farmer spreads rice to dry in the sun in Afife. Gadco’s smallholder scheme could help secure Ghana

Industrial agriculture could be hitting fundamental limits in its capacity to produce sufficient crops to feed an expanding global population according to new researchpublished in Nature Communications. The study by scientists at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln argues that there have been abrupt declines or plateaus in the rate of production of major crops which undermine optimistic projections of constantly increasing crop yields. As much as “31% of total global rice, wheat and maize production” has experienced “yield plateaus or abrupt decreases in yield gain, including rice in eastern Asia and wheat in northwest Europe.”

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Growing Farm To Hospital

Anna Clausen (Institute For Agriculture And Trade Policy — Dec 12, 2013)

Nurses

A growing number of hospitals are shifting the way they think about protecting and improving health, and taking a closer look at how and where the food they serve is grown. This is great news for the people who receive treatment, work at and visit the hospitals, but it’s also great news for local, sustainable farmers, and could become an important infrastructure pillar in building stronger local food systems.

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How Big Food Creates The Illusion Of Choice At The Supermarket

Kaye Spector (EcoWatch — Dec 6, 2013)

Goliath

A new analysis shows that the top four or fewer food companies control a substantial majority of the sales of each item, and they often offer multiple brands in each type of grocery, giving consumers the false impression they are choosing among competing products. The in-depth analysis, released by Food & Water Watch on Thursday, illustrates the consolidation of the grocery industry and the range of impacts it has on the food chain.

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Food As A Bridge To Jobs And Hope: Green Bridge Growers

Janice Pilarski (Foodtank — Dec 12, 2013)

Foodtank

Food is so much a part of the fabric of our lives, reflecting our health, lifestyle, time, and values. Like so many of us, my childhood memories of specific events revolve around food and meals shared. Sunday dinners with my Polish grandmother preparing pierogis and czarnina. Luscious cream puffs eaten greedily at the Wisconsin State Fair. Ruby red tomatoes and thorny kohlrabi plucked from our backyard garden, fried fresh for that evening’s dinner. Food was a bond of love, care, and connection to our families and the wider community.

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Who Invented The Idea Of Organic Farming And Organic Food?

John Platt (Mother Nature Network — Dec 14, 2013)

Organic Food Life Certified
For more and more people today, shopping for food involves a stop at the farmers market or the organic produce section of the local grocery store. As a result, sales of organic food rose a healthy 10.2 percent in 2012 and captured 4.3 percent of total food sales, according to the Organic Trade Association. Organic food sales generated a healthy $29 billion last year. That’s not bad for an industry that is fairly new: the USDA didn’t approve national standards for organic food until 2002. So where did this engine of healthy food and economic growth come from? Although many people think the idea for organic farming harkens back to a simpler time before industrial agriculture, the truth is that we owe many of the ideas about organics to a few people in the 20th century.
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Using The Shared Power Of Consumers To Revolutionize Our Food System

Haile Johnston (Fastcoexist.Com — Dec 11, 2013)

Shopping

Everyone deserves affordable access to healthy, local food. For far too long, that hasn’t been the reality for low-income communities, leading to disastrous health impacts and related health care costs. Purveyors of fresh, sustainably-produced foods tend to concentrate in high-income neighborhoods, while stores and restaurants in both urban and rural “food deserts” offer mostly “cheap calories”: high-fat, high-sugar, nutrient-poor, low-cost processed foods.

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Why Farm To School Will Save Our Food System

Chelsey Simpson (Huffington Post — Dec 10, 2013)

Farm to School 2

For those of us interested in food system reform, there are now (thankfully!) hundreds of worthy organizations and causes competing for our time and resources. Should you volunteer to help launch a new CSA in your community? What about donating to a campaign to legalize backyard chickens? Worthwhile pursuits for sure, but if you are a big-picture thinker, I’ve got just the cause for you: farm to school. Farm to school is the practice of sourcing local food for schools or preschools and providing students agriculture, health, and nutrition education opportunities, such as school gardens, field trips to farms, and cooking lessons. Here’s why farm to school is positioned to be the biggest game-changer since canned food

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Foodsheds As The New Democracy

Philip Ackerman-Leist (Fair Observer — Oct 24, 2013)

Wheat

As the local food movement, or, more properly stated, local food movements have taken root in the U.S. during recent years, advocates have discovered the need to express this evolving “locus focus” in new ways.  Despite its multiple uses and fuzzy boundaries, “foodshed” is a valuable part of our lexicon in moving forward. It can provide vision and cohesion; in fact, it may be less a geographical entity than a form of civic action.

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A Loud, Slow Call To Rethink Everything About How We Feed Ourselves

Carlo Petrini (World Crunch — Dec 3, 2013)

Potatoes

We are going through what many call the sixth great mass extinction, and just as the Earth lost its dominant population 65 million years ago — the dinosaurs — this time, we’re in danger of losing the wealth of resources that compose the earth and, consequently, the human species. Indeed, there is a substantial difference between this extinction and those of the past: for the first time in history the trigger is the human being.

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True Cost Accounting In Food And Farming

Patrick Holden (The Ecologist — Nov 29, 2013)

Holden

We live in a time when the need for sustainable food and farming systems has never been more urgent. Earlier this year, over 200 leading scientists signed a consensus statement onMaintaining Humanity’s Life Support Systems in the 21st Century.

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