agribusiness | The Rambling Epicure

Slow Food News: The Conundrum of Buying Healthy, Fair and Cheap

Published by Jonell Galloway + Friday, January 27, 2012 Permalink 0

Slow Food U.S.A. founder Josh Viertel ended up losing a large number of his core supporters after sponsoring what seemed like an idea in line with the hard economic times. How did he do this? By sponsoring the “ Challenge,” in which people were asked to “sign a pledge to cook a slow-food meal for not much more than the cost of a McDonald’s Extra Value Meal. To some, it was heresy.”

Many of its core members didn’t agree, since Slow Food’s message has been from the beginning that Americans were going to have to accept to pay more if farmers were to get fair pay.

Click here to read more.

What makes fresh fruit and vegetables go bad, and how to separate them so they’ll keep longer

Published by Jonell Galloway + Wednesday, October 26, 2011 Permalink 0

by Jonell Galloway

“Many fruits and vegetables produce ethylene gas, a colorless, odorless gas, as they begin to ripen. Some foods aren’t affected much by ethylene gas, while others are extremely sensitive to it.”

I never knew that it was a natural gas that fruit and vegetables produce that causes this to happen.

One thing I have noted is that when you buy fruit and vegetables that come from large agribusiness farms, they have a particularly high water content and they rot much faster than fresh garden and organic produce.

In any case, it is good to separate the ethylene-producing produce from the non-ethylene-producing. There is actually a method.

Click here for more details.

Life-changing Videos: David Korten: Capitalism’s Threat to Democracy and the Food System

Published by Jonell Galloway + Tuesday, October 25, 2011 Permalink 0

“David Korten explains that our existing industrial agriculture system receives essential public subsidies (and tax supports) that offset the real costs of energy, and food production. Without these supports, the global food system would no longer be economically viable. Who are the true beneficiaries of a food system that separates the eater from the source of their food? The large agribusiness corporations. Korten argues that both “peak oil” and climate change makes it imperative that we transition to a more localized food economy to insure continued access to adequate food supplies.”

It’s time we took our future into our own hands by supporting our local economies, learning to grow our own food, and generally rebuilding local food systems, by making the well-being of human beings more important and central in our lives than corporate earnings.

Click here to listen to The Capitalist Threat to Democracy, Part 1.

Click here to listen to Capitalism’s Threat to Democracy, Part 2.