Restaurants ”Getting Fresh” with Local Farmers

Laura Byrne (10 News — February 17, 2012)

Screen shot 2012-02-21 at 3.31.34 PM

The farm to plate movement may be nothing new, but we are seeing more restaurants across Tampa Bay moving away from produce and livestock farmed outside the area and getting back to the local farm.

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Trader Joe’s Signs Agreement in Labor Victory

Yael Chanoff (San Francisco Bay Guardian — February 10, 2012)

TJ-VICTORY

Feb. 9, it became the second grocery store chain – the first was Whole Foods – to sign an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group based in Immokalee, Florida famous for its successful Fair Food campaign.

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Pete’s Place: Here Comes Your Spring Garden!

Peter Burkard

The "Three Sisters": corn, beans, and squash.

In our last installment of Pete’s Place, we discussed making repeat plantings of commonly used veggies during the Winter. You’ll probably want to be winding down such seeding now, as upcoming Spring temperatures will favor other crops.

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A Great Garden Idea, but Someone Had to Ruin It

Eric Ernst (Herald-Tribune — December 20, 2011)

Vincent Dessberg, seen Dec. 14, has gotten in trouble with code enforcement for erecting a fence made of potted herbs and vegetables in front of his Sarasota County home. (Credit: Thomas Bender)

Last summer, Vincent Dessberg constructed a somewhat novel garden in his front yard along Phillippi Creek off Bee Ridge Road in Sarasota. ”In the few hours of time I spent putting everything together, I met more neighbors than I have in 30 years.” Dessberg also got to meet the nice folks from Sarasota County code enforcement, who, after an anonymous complaint, left him a notice identifying his garden as a public nuisance.

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More Local, Healthy Food Needed in Schools, State Panel Says

Marlene Sokol (St. Petersburg Times — December 15, 2011)

School-Cafeteria-Meals

Adam Putnam, the state’s agriculture commissioner, said the switch creates opportunities to serve healthier meals, which will lead to better eating habits for children and their families and, ultimately, lower health care costs all around.

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In the City of Bradenton, Microbreweries and Resource Centers Can Coexist

Merab-Michal Favorite (The Bradenton Times — December 15, 2011)

Little Giant Brewery will be opening Jan. 1, 2012. It is located at 800 17th Avenue West in Bradenton.

Little Giant Brewery, Bradenton’s first microbrewery, was approved unanimously Monday by the Bradenton City Council. “I make good beer for people who enjoy good beer,” said Wagner. The site was formerly Fogartyville Café, a popular local blues bar.

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Pete’s Place: Getting the Most Out of Your Winter Garden

Peter Burkard

Leafy greens are a good cold-season crop and make a healthy addition to your holiday feasting.

Organic grower Peter Burkard, in this latest installment of his seasonal column for Greater Sarasota’s Eat Local Resource Guide and Directory, offers tips for local gardeners about how to get the most out of your Winter garden.

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Commission Recognizes Students for “Food – Keep it Local” Calendar

(Sarasota County News — December 7, 2011)

NESTcover

The Sarasota County Commission Wednesday, Dec. 7, recognized 13 elementary students whose artwork appears on the “Food – Keep it Local” calendar for 2012. Nearly 1,500 students entered this year’s competition to illustrate ways to encourage purchasing and eating locally grown and produced food as a way to improve health, reduce our carbon footprint, support the local economy and protect and preserve natural resources.

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Florida Farmworkers Urge EPA to Tighten Control of Pesticides

John Lantigua (Palm Beach Post — December 6, 2011)

Farmworker advocates have long pegged Florida as one of the most dangerous places for field laborers. They cite extensive use of pesticides in Florida's tropical environment and lax enforcement of federal pesticide regulations. (Source: Palm Beach Post)

Economos and other farmworker advocates have long pegged Florida as one of the most dangerous places for field laborers. They cite extensive use of pesticides in Florida’s tropical environment and lax enforcement of federal pesticide regulations. The issue of pesticide poisoning has roiled South Florida in recent years. In late 2002 and early 2003, within six weeks of each other, three children were born with serious birth defects in the farm town of Immokalee.

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Chipotle Offers Free Burritos For Free Movie

Charles Schelle (Sarasota Patch — December 1, 2011)

fresh-the-movie

Chipotle Mexican Grill will hand out a free burrito gift card to first 100 in line to watch free screening of “FRESH.”

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10% Local Food Shift

Print

Sarasota County residents spend $797 million on food each year. Sadly, $500 million is lost every year because it is spent on food from outside the county. However,  if we all would purchase just 10% of our food directly from local farmers, that would generate $80 million in additional farm income annually. In these tough economic times, this would create thousands of new jobs and greatly stimulate our local economy.

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GM Crops: Follow The Money

(Eur Activ — Feb 10, 2012)

GMO, 7, Money

The only way the GM industry and their supporters can make GM look good is if they cook the books. The only way they can sell their product is in unlabelled packages in the US and elsewhere so consumers don’t now where it is. This smacks of desperation, not success.”

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Lenders Learn How To Bank On Small Farms, Local Food

Patty Cantrell (National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition — Feb 2, 2012)

Farmer & Greenhouse

Nic Welty employs himself full time year-round raising lettuce, spinach, and other leafy greens in three low-cost passive solar greenhouses, which together cover less than one acre of land. His Nine Bean Rows farm near Traverse City, MI, is one of many smaller, diversified, often first-generation farms in the country that defy expectations, particularly among bankers and others with money needed to finance the new food enterprises.

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300,000 Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto In Federal Court: Decision On March 31 To Go To Trial

Jane Ayers (Nation Of Change — Feb 12, 2012)

Monsanto
Little did Willie Nelson know when he recorded “Crazy” years ago just how crazy it would become for our cherished family farmers in America.   Nelson, President of Farm Aid, has recently called for the national Occupy movement to declare an “Occupy  the Food System” action.
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Five Sustainably-Sourced Restaurants In The U.S.

Stephanie Bugliione (Nourishing Planet — Feb 14, 2012)

Restaurant

When most consumers think about making better food choices, they often reserve those changes for the home: smart choices at the grocery store, an occasional trip to the local farmers’ market, cutting back on meat, and substituting applesauce for butter in homemade recipes. But when diners walk through the doors of their favorite restaurants, these smart-eating policies tend to melt away into the indulgent abyss.

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Never Mind The Meat–Worry About Eating Enough Plants

Andy Bellatti (Grist — Feb 13, 2012)

Beautiful Veggies

By and large, the most environmentally friendly dietary decision one can make is to eat less animal protein (see deforestation, water pollution, and greenhouse-gas emissions, etc). But for many, the notion of eschewing — or significantly cutting back on — meat, eggs, and dairy brings up nutritional concerns. As I see it, not only are those concerns usually unfounded, they should pale in comparison to the question of getting enough plant-based foods.

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Occupy Vs. Monsanto: Activists, Farmers Fight The Corporation They Fear Will Take Over All Of America’s Crops

Anna Lekas Miller (Alternet — Feb 6, 2012)

Farmers, Workers, Eaters

Monsanto, if you will, is the 1 percent of Big Agriculture–the scourge of small farmers everywhere. But now those farmers are fighting back, backed by activists from Occupy Wall Street. First, some history. In 1982, Monsanto scientists were the first to genetically modify a plant cell. Three years later, the US Patent Office ruled that

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In Organic We Trust

Kip Pastor (Huffington Post — Feb 9. 2012)

An observant cynic once wrote, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” The organic food movement is certainly a great cause and it has definitely become big business. Now the only question is whether we will allow this well-intentioned movement, started by farmers who strived to be stewards of the land, to completely degenerate into a meaningless food trend.

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Community Supported Agriculture

(Fleeing Vesuvius — Feb 4, 2012)

CSA 2

Community supported agriculture is a community-led initiative connecting organic growers with local consumers, each group of consumers supporting a farm by purchasing directly from the grower, in order that the grower may have an assured market for the produce and the consumers know exactly where and under what conditions their food is grown. Each such initiative is known as a CSA.

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The Seed Emergency

Vandana Shiva (Al Jazeera — Feb 6, 2012)

Seeds 3
Patenting seeds has led to a farming and food crisis – and huge profits for US biotechnology corporations.
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Maine Voices: It’s Time To Rebuild A System That Supports Local Food And Farms

Chellie Pingree (Maine Sunday Telegram — Feb 5, 2012)

Food And Farming

It’s only a matter of time before there is another case of contaminated food that leads to more drug-resistant infections.  And while regulators should move more quickly to clamp down on the use of antibiotics in animal feed, these outbreaks are symptoms of a much bigger problem that can only be solved by rebuilding a food system that supports local food and farms.

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