‘Agriculture & Food’ In Depth

The Story of Stuff Team Takes on Bottled Water

Posted by RP Siegel March 12th, 2010 View Comments

For anyone trying to explain what sustainability is to a semi-curious relative or a completely out of touch co-worker, there could hardly be a better place to start than Annie Leonard’s twenty minute web video The Story of Stuff. The video features Annie standing in front of an animated white board on which simple but  clever line drawings appear while she explains in extremely clear and simple terms, the far-reaching connections between our everyday consumer choices and the manifold environmental and social justice problems that derive from them. The short video has received well over a million hits on YouTube.

Now Annie, with the support of five leading sustainability advocacy organizations, has produced a new video, The Story of Bottled Water, which is scheduled for release on March 22nd, which happens to be World Water Day.


As in The Story of Stuff, The Story of Bottled Water, gives us a short (7 minute) behind-the-scenes look at the bottled water business and raises the question of how people in this country have been duped into buying a half a billion bottles a week of what is really nothing more than tap water for a price that is roughly two thousand times more.

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Saul’s Deli Bridges the Gap Between Traditional and Sustainable

Posted by Audrey Khuner March 12th, 2010 View Comments

Et tu, Saul’s Deli?

I’ve somehow always managed to compartmentalize comfort food and sustainable/healthy food.

The latter is what I eat on a regular basis—quinoa from the organic grocery, locally grown kale from the farmers’ market—that’s my regular diet. But sometimes I want to break away from all that healthiness and enjoy a greasy, meaty Rueben.

And maybe, for those few heavenly corned beef moments, slathered in Swiss cheese and sauerkraut, I don’t want to think about where the cow came from or what he was fed or how much damage I’m doing to the planet.

But alas, I’m from Berkeley. And, like a growing population of responsible eaters, we care about stuff like that.

I grew up four blocks away from Saul’s Deli. Their matzoh ball soup was always a close second to Grandma’s, Dad’s and Aunt Kathy’s. Okay, I guess that makes it a close fourth. If I wanted latkes when it wasn’t Hannukah or gefilte fish when it wasn’t Passover, I always knew where to go.
Karen Adelman and Peter Levitt, co-owners of Saul’s Deli, are well aware of their loyal customer-base. They have always made it a priority to cater to those traditional Jewish tastes. But as the sustainable food movement becomes more and more prevalent, they also have a second priority. Or, as Adelman put it, “I wouldn’t want to sell meat that I wouldn’t eat.”

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LL Bean Meets PACT: Tom’s of Maine Founds New Company for Wool Skivvies

Posted by Daniel Winokur March 5th, 2010 View Comments

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Like LL Bean? Everyone knows how great its clothes are. Sure, they’re not known for being terribly stylish — but there’s something comforting about that Northeastern, down-homey functionality and durability. Just the right thing for a weekend working on the farm, taking a hike, or clearing brush.

Or what about PACT?  Recently profiled by MC O’Connor in another Startup Friday post, PACT’s gained many fans with its offbeat, half sexy, half cheeky approach to sustainably sourced underwear. It’s the kind of thing for sustainability geeks to wear when trying to be cool and sustainable at the same time.

But PACT doesn’t exactly communicate burly robustness, and you’ll be hard pressed to find many sustainable items at the LL Bean online store. Enter Ramblers Way Farm, a new apparel venture from the founders of Tom’s of Maine, Tom and Kate Chappell. Specializing in all types of base-layer clothing, Ramblers makes their products out of sustainably-produced wool, which is farmed and processed domestically, rather than relying on overseas facilities.

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Film Exposes Overfishing Practices, Fishes for Answers

Posted by Mary Catherine O'Connor March 4th, 2010 View Comments

I’ve a fear of oceans. Lakes—even the biggest ones—I don’t mind. I love them, in fact, having grown up in Chicago and attending college on the shores of Lake Superior. But oceans, and their rip tides and undertows, have always struck me as sinister.

Ironically, just after returning from a week on a beach in Baja, where I started coming to terms with these fears, I watched The End of the Line, a newly released documentary that makes the case for why the oceans should be afraid of us.

The film, which Ted Danson narrates and Robert Murray directed, delves into the depravity we’ve brought to the world’s oceans through centuries of wanton fishing (and, obviously, consuming) fish from oceans around the world.

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Quantifying Progress: Whole Foods vs. Milton Friedman

Posted by Carly Smolak February 25th, 2010 View Comments

five year anniversary

Spooner's Milton Friedman

Five years ago, 3p founder Nick Aster covered the exchange between Milton Friedman and John Mackey featured on Reason.com. On one side of the ring was Friedman, swinging away on behalf of profit at all social and environmental costs, echoing his infamous assertion that the only “social responsibility of business is to increase its profits.”  On the other side was Mackey counter-punching, explaining that by focusing on creating value for all of its stakeholders instead of just shareholders, Whole Foods built a lucrative empire of happy people and shareholders alike.

Aster asked, “[Profit] is certainly a lot easier to quantify than something like ‘happiness’, but the intangible benefits of good, honest business clearly go way beyond pure finance….Must the word ‘profit’ always refer to money in the strictest sense?”

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Ben & Jerry’s Plans to go 100% Fair Trade

Posted by Audrey Khuner February 24th, 2010 View Comments

Fair labor conditions never tasted so good.

Ben & Jerry’s announced last week that they will be 100% fair trade by 2013.  That means that all of their “global flavor portfolio” will be composed of Fair Trade Certified™ ingredients, such as cocoa, vanilla, fruits, nuts, etc.

The successful ice cream company was the first to introduce fair trade ingredients to the market back in 2005, but co-founder Jerry Greenfield decided that only some wasn’t enough.

“Fair Trade is about making sure people get their fair share of the pie,” said company co-founder Jerry Greenfield. Always with the dessert metaphors, Jerry?

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USDA Tightens Organic Grazing Regulations

Posted by Tori Okner February 22nd, 2010 View Comments

The recent announcement about USDA’s final regulation on access to pasture for organic livestock is a clear victory for the organic movement. The present language of the National Organic Program (NOP)  merely stipulates that grazing livestock must have access to pasture. As the organic market share has grown, the differing interpretations of this language have created fissures in the community. With the expansion of industrial organic products, critics have questioned what organic signifies when some providers rely primarily on feedlots. As explained by the USDA, “the final rule provides certainty to consumers that organic livestock production is a pasture-based system in which animals are actively grazing pasture during the grazing season.“

The process to amend the current NOP language began nearly five years ago with a recommendation from the National Organic Standards Board that suggested, “ruminants obtain a minimum 30 percent dry matter intake for at least 120 days.” Published first in 2008, the proposal elicited an astonishing 26,000 comments. The voices of family farmers and animals rights, environmental, and nutrition activists mixed with local government officials, consumer groups, trade organizations, and industry representatives. “USDA closes organic loophole,” cheered nutrition expert Marion Nestle.

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Government Aid to Flow into Great Lakes, Helping Fight Asian Carp

Posted by Mary Catherine O'Connor February 22nd, 2010 View Comments

The Environmental Protection Agency announced on Sunday a five-year, $2.2 billion initiative to start healing the Great Lakes. The effort has three main goals: improve the lakes’ wildlife habitat, improve water quality and fight the invasion of non-native species such as Asian carp, which threaten not only the lakes’ ecosystem but also their fishery industry.

“We are not simply trying to maintain the status quo, that is not acceptable. Our goal is to have these bodies of water improved and protected,” said Ohio Governor Ted Strickland at a press event announcing the plan. Strickland and other members of the Council of Great Lakes Governors are welcoming the financial aid and the support of the Obama administration in restoring the Great Lakes. During his campaign, Obama said he would form a task force to address the environmental needs of the Great Lakes region, and pledged to spend $5 billion over a decade in the effort.

The plan includes a “zero tolerance” policy on invasive species such as Asian carp and sets a goal of reducing the introduction of invasive species into the lakes by 40 percent by the year 2014. Of course, the most immediate and biggest fight against invasive species is blocking Asian carp, which have been moving north up the Mississippi, toward the lakes, for a number of years.

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Seriously. Where Does Our Food Come From?

Posted by 3p Guest Author February 22nd, 2010 View Comments

This is a series on the business of sustainable agriculture by the folks at Bon Appétit Management Company, a company that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges and universities. We invited Bon Appetit to lead this conversation because they want to focus on difficult questions to which they don’t have answers. We think it’s a bold step when a company puts itself on a line to seek answers to tough questions. We may not solve them all, but we hope we’ll make a start. To read the earlier posts, click here.

By Bon Appétit East Coast Fellow Carolina Fojo

Thanks to leaders like Michelle Obama and Michael Pollan, the U.S. public is beginning to realize that a large number of today’s social, environmental and health problems exist because of the modern system we like to call the food industry. And what people are learning to ask is: Where exactly does my food come from?

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What Could Be Better than Renewable Energy from Chocolate?

Posted by RP Siegel February 15th, 2010 View Comments

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, for those of you who already believed that chocolate was the most perfect substance on Earth, here is another reason to think so. Who knew that the same delicious brown bean that hopefully melts your true love’s heart can also generate clean green power? Well, almost. It’s the shells, actually, the cocoa bean shells that are left over after the chocolate has been made. They are now being used as biofuel. You might wonder where this is happening. West Africa? Brazil?

No, it’s actually in New Hampshire, the Live Free or Die state, which is also the home of chocolatier Lindt USA. Lindt recently announced a partnership with Public Service of New Hampshire (PSNH)  for the burning of cocoa bean shells to produce electricity from one of the three 50MW boilers at PSNH’s Schiller Station power plant in Portsmouth. The shells are a byproduct of Lindt’s manufacturing process at its nearby facility in Stratham. The company recently expanded the facility to incorporate the chocolate production process, which had previously taken place in Europe.

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Sweet Water Organics: Entrepreneurs Find Silver Lining in Great Lakes’ Peril

Posted by Nick Aster February 5th, 2010 View Comments

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With Asian Carp knocking on the door and following decades of ecosystemic collapse, the Great Lakes’ once thriving fishery business is a shadow of its former glory. The Friday Night Fish Fry, a Wisconsin tradition, is now more often imported cod rather than the lake perch or other local varieties that made it famous.

Though it may take a hundred years before some kind of stability returns to the lakes (who knows, maybe the carp will become a new local delicacy), local entrepreneurs can still see an opportunity to satisfy demand and tradition while practicing restorative techniques on both economy and ecology. Sweet Water Organics operates out of a massive dis-used industrial facility on the south side of Milwaukee and produces both fish and vegetables in a “three-tiered, aquaponic, bio-intensive fish-vegetable garden.” The company is the first commercial extension of Growing Power founder Will Allen’s urban farming concepts.

Here’s a quick video that will tell you more than I can write….

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Mission Street Food – The First Full Time Co-op Charitable Restaurant?

Posted by Paul S February 5th, 2010 View Comments

ban-startup-friday

Opening a restaurant is a dicey proposition. Even more so in this shaky economy. You have to be part masochist, part trend rider/creator. A keen intuition for what’s missing in the market, and how to serve it well, at a price people are willing to pay, repeatedly, is a must.

Various models have been tried over the years, including pay what you will and even turning the tables, so to speak, choosing who gets the privilege of eating at the restaurant.

Mission Street Food has taken another route, arguably a smarter one for these times: They borrow another restaurant’s space two nights a week, feature guest chefs and donate the profits to charitable organizations. This minimizes overhead while giving patrons an incentive to eat out that is more than just for their own pleasure, further justifying them spending their money there.

But it’s Mission Street Food’s recent announcement of seeking to create a co-op style full time restaurant that highlights a key advantage to the model:

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The Skinny On Whole Foods’ Anti-Fat Policy

Posted by Carly Smolak February 2nd, 2010 View Comments

Some people just don’t like carrots, but nobody likes a stick.  This is what John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and notorious health care blow hard, doesn’t seem to get.  In an attempt to reduce the cost of health care for its employees, Whole Foods created a new policy to offer deeper discounts on food to employees that can squeeze into the company’s [narrow] definition of health. The “Team Member Healthy Discount Incentive” is a voluntary program that evaluates the health of employees based on Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure, cholesterol, and nicotine-use.  Based on these specific criteria, employees can qualify for an additional 2-10% discount on top of the 20% discount all employees already receive.

But instead of acting as an incentive, the program may have the exact opposite effect and act more like a punishment for larger-bodied employees who already have to deal with living in a society whose last acceptable “–ism” is hating on fat people.  The issue here is not about companies encouraging the well-being of their employees.  The issue here is that a large company is adopting a prescriptive definition of what health means for all people and bodies, and  imposing that criteria upon its employees.

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Farming Internships: Vital or Illegal? The Answer is Both.

Posted by 3p Guest Author February 2nd, 2010 View Comments


This is the this is the 9th post in a series on the business of sustainable agriculture by the folks at Bon Appétit Management Company, a company that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges and universities. To read the earlier posts, click here.

By Dayna Burtness

I never knew that I had such a deep desire to break the law.

In fact, it’s my dream. Sometime in the next couple of years, I want to start the Twin Cities’ first rooftop farm.  Between rows of raised beds full of heirloom tomatoes and herbs, I want to watch my farm interns learn the joys of getting their hands dirty and planting seeds.  I want school kids to listen to the buzz of my rooftop beehives and help out by picking their own cucumbers.  I want retired engineers to collaborate with me to design a hydroponics system that makes use of all the vertical space and sunshine of a warm, south-facing wall.

Rather, I wanted to do all these things right up until I attended workshop at the EcoFarm Conference last week in California entitled “Are Internships Illegal?”  I was shocked to learn that the answer is yes, most of the time, as are volunteers on for-profit farms.  

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