Ingester. Digester. Suggester.
Attorney. Writer. Thinker.
Lover of Food, Dogs, and Ideas.
A new feature film, The Ivy League Farmer, tells the story of a father and son in conflict over the future of the family dairy farm. It’s also a love story that explores a small town’s concern about local kids not getting enough to eat. The movie’s U.S. premiere, June 5-7 in Cedar Rapids, raises funds for an all-volunteer…
Funding is now available for private landowners to conserve and protect their land as part of six new regional conservation projects in California. The six projects are funded by the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) under the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP), newly created in the 2014 Farm Bill. Each project has its own set…
Consumer demand for fresher, natural, organic, and locally sourced foods and beverages is reaching a crescendo and big box retailers are taking notice. Earlier this month, Target informed top suppliers Campbell Soup, General Mills, and Kellogg that the retailer intends to deemphasize these popular—but comparatively less healthy— processed brands in favor of products more in harmony…
Yesterday, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut announced that they are ditching artificial colors and flavors. The “black pepper flavor” ingredient in many of Taco Bells menu items, for example, will be replaced with real black pepper. Taco Bell dubbed the move its “mots comprehensive commitment to offering food for all by providing more choices with…
In January 2015, Packaged Facts released a study entitled Shopping for Local Foods in the U.S., which provides insight into American consumer’s growing demand for locally produced products. Locally grown and produced foods are experiencing a surge in popularity and are becoming increasingly more available as a result. Some industry experts have predicted that locally grown will…
Urban farming takes on many faces. For one Canadian company, cubic farming is the future of both organic and local fare. Head over to AgFunder News to learn more about how Urban Barns is changing the future of urban farming one head of lettuce at a time.
Frank Mendonsa, a dairy farmer in Tipton, California, and the President of Western United Dairymen was recognized earlier this week for his significant contributions to protecting two colonies of the California emergency-listed Tricolored Blackbird. Since April, Mendonsa’s silage fields became a temporary nesting habitat for the colonies of nearly 15,000 birds, and Mendonsa is delaying harvest to help the…
THE Urban School Food Alliance announced earlier this week that it will start using compostable round plates in school lunchrooms instead of traditional polystyrene trays. The Alliance includes six of the largest school districts in the nation, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami-Dade, Dallas, and Orlando. Why the round shape? The Alliance’s food…
Starting Fall 2015, Cheerios are going gluten-free. The General Mills brand will remove “stray wheat, rye and barley grains from the Cheerios’ oat supply” in order to render a gluten-free version of the iconic crunchy circles. A number of Cheerios varieties will also go gluten-free, including Apple Cinnamon, Honey Nut, MultiGrain, and Frosted. Although the recipes for…
There are many companies on the market that provide precision agriculture technology services to farmers. These technologies offer a variety of hardware and software applications, including drone technology. At the most basic level, precision agriculture consists of placing sensors throughout a farmer’s fields. The sensors collect a wide variety of data, including ambient temperature, soil…
