There's an interesting article in the NY Times today about sharing and foraging fruit in residential neighborhoods.  It reminded me of reading about permaculture, which recommends that urban people plant food plants instead of native plants, the better to preserve true native ecosystems outside the city.  

"...we combine DNA with TLC."

I'm a big fan of the political blog DailyKos, the most popular blog of its type on the Net.  It's not only because their writers share a lot of my political perspectives, but because they have a lot of respect for facts and doing good research.

Through my work, I've had the good fortune of speaking with the new generation of food activists on college campuses.  Student groups focused on food issues and fighting to change food purchasing policies on their campuses are exploding around the country.  Recently, I spoke at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, where their Food Truth group is growing fast. It was so fun to feel their dedication and enthusiasm.  In fact, Carleton had recently switched food services to Bon Appetit, partially on the basis of student pressure on local and sustainable food issues, and Bon Appetit sent a staffer to our event to further explore how they could find more local suppliers.  I hear they are doing a similar good job across town at my alma mater, St. Olaf College.

Hello from Organic Valley HQ in La Farge, Wis. in the snowy hills of the Driftless Region.  I'm at the second official annual meeting of the Domestic Fair Trade Association, the coalition of about 35 businesses and groups working to create fair trade in the domestic context of the US and Canada.  We've got folks here from farmer organizations like the Northeast Organic Farming Assocation, processors like Equal Exchange, indigenous rights group like the White Earth Land Recovery Project, farmworker groups like Centro Campesino, consumer groups like the Organic Consumers Association and NGO's like the Local Fair Trade Network.