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Why Did the Haitian Earthquake Become a Food Crisis?

Why did the Haitian earthquake become a food crisis? I spent the last nine days in Haiti working with refugees in Haiti and personally trying to better understand the answer to this question.

Top 5 Organic Industry Visualizations

I have compiled what I think are the best visualizations I’ve seen on the organic industry and its trends. This was prompted by reader comments from a Justin Manor, who was interested in learning the origins of the fire hose of packaged soy and gluten products from which he feeds.

The Last Real Rooibos Tea

All the world’s rooibos tea is produced in a small, red-earth area in western South Africa. The Khoi San Bushmen have been harvesting and drinking rooibos for tens of thousands of years. Two indigenous cooperatives continue that tradition. Yet their survival, and the survival of their uniquely superior product, is under threat.

GoodEater “Future of Food” Dinner

GoodEater.org recently decided to test the value of bringing people from organizations such as Slow Food, Unilever, and UBS together in an offline dinner entitled “The Future of Food”, cheffed by our own Kenji Alt.

Food Debates Rage this Week

Food battles are coming to a head this season. Last night I attended the panel talk “Can ‘Big Food’ Embrace Sustainable Agriculture”, featuring senior representation from Monsanto, General Mills, Dean Foods, Deutsche Bank, the Rainforest Alliance, and Slow Food. This was one of only several great debates held just this week on the food system, including clashes on ethical farms vs. vegetarianism, and on food stamps vs. nutrition standards for the poor.

Stuffed and Starved in America: Why are Food Waste and Food Stamps Simultaneously Peaking?

A recent study found that US per capita food waste has increased by about 50% since 1974. We now waste over 1400 calories per person per day in America, enough to feed 200 million people. Meanwhile, we have an obesity epidemic, the USDA reports that one-in-seven Americans went hungry last year, and the New York Times just released a major piece on the soaring use of food stamps. What the heck is going on?

Cheffing with Tony Maws: Not Just a Cheeseburger

Here’s the dilemma: I live in Boston, and despite the fact that high quality, grass-fed local beef is readily available, it’s simply too inconsistent and too lean to make a decent burger out of. Even local short ribs have barely any marbling.

Tony Maws has figured out how to do it.

Drip-Irrigation Social Enterprise in Rural Pakistan: An Interview with Joel Montgomery

What happens when the ideal of rural poverty alleviation meets the harsh sands of Pakistan, and the reality of earning an ROI? In this GoodEater interview, Joel Montgomery, an Alabamian, Yale-grad Acumen Fellow, tells the story of helping to build an drip-irrigation social enterprise in one of the driest agricultural countries in the world.

Birds in Hand: Slaughtering Chickens with Pete & Jen

Pete Lowy and Jenn Hashley met at UC Santa Cruz’s Center For Agroecology’s Sustainable Food System’s horticultural apprenticeship program, and soon after moved to Verrill Farms in Concord, where Pete is the assistant farm manager. Today, we help them slaughter their chickens.

Crunching the Numbers on a Vegan in a Hummer

“A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius,” says Michael Pollan in this recent story from Reuters, in which he calculates the carbon footprint of a Big Mac
Unfortunately, it’s not true. Follow the link above for the real numbers.