In India, millets have formed the core of the everyday diet for millenia. However after the Green Revolution, subsidies for wheat and rice, and the food distribution system millets are slowly dying out.

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The Clif Bar Company has always integrated CSR into its business model. The company only consists of 250 people, but it operates on a much larger scale in terms of CSR. Many of their ingredients are organically grown and their products do not contain high fructose corn syrup, additives, or hydrogenated oils. To take their food philosophy one [...]

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For the most part, organic food is expensive. The main criticism of organic is that it’s an elitist movement and leaves poor people out of the mix. Here’s a thought I’d never even considered…could organic food be “sponsored?” After all, the brilliant content you rely on from TriplePundit every day for your daily dose of [...]

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Source4Style is using the Internet to facilitate commerce between two groups that are disconnected in the global marketplace – the leading sustainable suppliers and the independent designers and apparel brands that are trying to find them.

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I’m always happy to read about eco-news and especially around the holidays, good news just seems to sound better. You would hardly think to associate China with organic food but that is exactly what is happening, with organic food gaining popularity within the country. According to an article in China Daily, one of the top growers [...]

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Local, sustainable food has become a regular part of our everyday culture as demonstrated through the growing popularity of school gardens, Community Supported Agriculture, local farmers’ markets, underground dining clubs, and organics in general. This enduring trend in sustainable food reignites a question posed on Triple Pundit two years ago: “Is Sustainable Farming Going Mainstream?” Unfortunately not at all as the sustainable food hype trumps the numbers.

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Jeans from Levi Strauss & Co. just got greener. The company has had its eye on the CSR ball for several years and, having completed a carbon and water footprint of the jean manufacturing process, has now begun working with suppliers to reduce the impact of its product. The company determined that one pair of jeans [...]

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The Healthy Food, Healthy Planet summit, hosted by The National Journal and the Barilla Center for Food and Nutrition, brought together speakers and panelists to discuss healthy eating, lack of access to healthy food, obesity, biofuels, and the agricultural industry. Secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Tom Vilsack was the keynote speaker and [...]

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Early so-called 1st generation biofuels are made by fermenting food products (e.g. grains, seeds, sugars) into short-chain alcohols (e.g. ethanol, butanol) or transesterifying plant oils into biodiesel.  Production of these fuels competes with food crops for land, reduces biodiversity, and, in the case of natural plant oils, feedstock is increasingly scarce.

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With the clearly entrenched trend of green, organic, locally sourced food making inroads even in the largest of chain stores, the impact is clear. And yet, there’s a missing piece to this: Where the food is actually made. Food processing facilities are often quite energy intensive, and for food businesses entering the market, it can [...]

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The Bon Appétit Management Company is the nation’s leading sustainable dining services. They are an onsite restaurant company that provides café and catering services to corporations, colleges and universities and specialty venues. They are pioneers in environmentally sound sourcing policies. They have developed programs that encourage local sourcing, address the overuse of antibiotics, sustainable seafood, cage-free eggs, [...]

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Walmart has long been criticized for contributing to the decline of downtowns in small cities across the USA. But could its Express stores revive old Main Streets?

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By Derek Singleton Over the last couple of decades, the organic food industry has grown by leaps and bounds. According to a survey published by the Organic Trade Association, revenue in 2009 was 25 times greater than what it was in 1990. Although the industry has experienced explosive revenue growth, organic food is still only [...]

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I’m having a deja vu moment here: Back in 2000, Kozmo was one of the earnest dot-com hopefuls. The company would deliver all manner of things to your door, from DVDs to magazines. At no extra cost. I recall ordering, often, a single Odwalla juice, partly out of the novelty of being able to do [...]

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Many consumers these days are in search of a way to not only support, but become more personally connected to a sustainable supply chain which provides them with products that do good. The Hoop Fund, recent winner of Hub Bay Area’s Venture funding, was formed with this type of conscious consumer in mind.

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Yesterday, restaurant start-up PizzaSalad celebrated it’s third anniversary.  PizzaSalad isn’t your average pizza joint.  It incorporates sustainability across its entire business. A few weeks ago, I was looking for a place to eat while on a mini road trip.  After googling around my location, to my pleasant surprise, I found PizzaSalad, nestled in Thousand Oaks, [...]

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Two years ago, Dean Foods, owner of Silk Soymilk, was heavily criticized  for switching from organic to conventional soy beans without clearly labeling the change with different packaging.  For many years, Silk soymilk was certified organic. In 2009, they introduced a “natural” line where the soymilk was made from conventionally grown soybeans (where pesticides are used along with GMOs), but the packaging [...]

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The restaurant had a goal of using approximately 5 million pounds of local produce like bell peppers, oregano and romaine lettuce, and eventually plans to source more than 10 million pounds of local produce for its 1,100 locations.

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By Becky Eisen, MBA Student at the University of Maryland, Smith School of Business; President, Smith Net Impact Chapter As Leslie Lammers put the finishing touches on Organic Eggs Not Created Equal, Says New Scorecard, I spent the day at the Just Means Certification, Consumption and Change Conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC, listening [...]

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Next time you’re at the grocery store aisle picking out eggs, you might need to think twice before assuming one organic brand is interchangeable with another. According to the Cornucopia Institute (CI), a non-profit which promotes economic justice for family scale farming, all organic eggs are not alike. They recently released the report Scrambled Eggs: [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By: Chad Reese San Diego County has a temperate climate, a population of over three million people and, according to the last US Census, is home to 6,687 farms. The county leads [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by economics students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. By Inna Volynskaya Being a responsible beer geek, you opt for a Berkeley-brewed Bison or one of those super green Oregon breweries to quench your thirst. Or maybe you unknowingly bought something [...]

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This week, May 2-8, is Hemp History Week. A more accurate title would be “Legalize Industrial Hemp” Week, as that is the purpose of these next several days, during which 550 events related to the promotion of hemp will occur across all 50 U.S. states.

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. by Karen Schlesinger Businesses of all stripes are starting to use Facebook and other social media outlets to promote themselves and connect with consumers. According to an article by Mariann Hardey in [...]

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One decade ago Clif Bar & Company made a commitment to be sustainable and today has proven to continuously raise the bar for fellow entrepreneurs on what it means to be a sustainable business. From the outside, it appears as though Gary Erickson and Kit Crawford, Clif Bar’s co-CEOs, and their innovative staff have thought [...]

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This post is part of a blogging series by marketing students at the Presidio Graduate School’s MBA program. You can follow along here. by Delise Weir I think Monsanto is doing itself a disservice by helping the organic food industry. Retail sales of organic foods rose to $21.1 billion in 2008 from $3.6 billion in [...]

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How are sustainability practitioners transforming companies?  In this interview, Brie Johnson, the sustainability manager of Straus Family Creamery, shares her best practices.  The Straus family has long been known for their commitment to sustainable production of excellent milk products, but every company can make improvements.  The first step is to measure.  Johnson uses Food Trade [...]

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At the Natural Products Expo West in Anaheim the exotic is now mainstream. Guatemalan hats, hippie skirts, and copper bracelets of yesteryear were replaced by business suits, briefcases, and blue tooth ear pieces. The Expo’s main hall were full of men and women yakking into smart phones while pulling sleek rollaway bags, and who would look more comfortable on Wall Street instead of Nature’s Path.

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According to the EPA’s Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment children receive 50% of their lifetime cancer risks in the first two years of life. In past testing conducted by the Food and Drug Administration eight industry-leading baby foods were found to have measurable amounts of 16 pesticides, including three of which were consider to be [...]

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While statistics on street children are difficult to verify, according to this UNICEF report, there are an estimated 230,000 in Indonesia alone.  This is mostly the result of lack of free public education for children, so families living below the poverty line cannot afford to send their kids to school and have little choice but [...]

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