By Eden Canon

Slaughter Your Own Thanksgiving Turkey

Slaughtering Your Own Thanksgiving Turkey

With the holidays approaching, some are preparing to don aprons while others are preparing themselves to take the life of the animal that will grace their table. Small, local farmers are increasingly giving customers the opportunity to not only choose their own heritage breed bird, but to learn to kill and dress it as well.
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Waste-Free Kitchen Holiday Tips

With the appropriate planning, you can save money this holiday season without throwing your food ethics out the window.  Forget canned green beans, factory farmed turkey and pre-packaged stuffing.  This year, serve your family a healthy, delicious holiday feast and avoid food waste. The winter holidays are all about abundance—being surrounded by friends and family,…
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Is eggnog a seasonal food?

What’s In That Eggnog?

Despite the tradition of having a hot cup of eggnog at a Christmas party, or perhaps at the hearth of a roaring fire, this rich and creamy wintertime beverage is in fact seasonally out of place.
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Child Poverty & Hunger During The Holidays

Child Poverty & Hunger During The Holidays

Many children who live in low income families depend on free or subsidized school meals, without which they would literally go hungry. But what happens when the winter holidays arrive? For some children, poverty doesn’t just mean a lack of presents or going without a Christmas feast. It means two or more weeks of hunger.
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Red Thai Curry Recipe

Red Thai Curry Recipe

Why order takeout when it’s so easy to cook at home? Try this easy Thai curry recipe at home for a simple, healthy and knockout delicious weeknight dinner.
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How to forage wild foods

Foraged & Wild Foods

You don’t need to live in the deep woods to find foraged foods. From herbs to berries to mushrooms, you can find an abundance of food if you know how to look. Why forage? To take part in an industrial agricultural system means to be dependent on a system of food cultivation over which one…
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Organic Diwali Healthy and Sustainable

Modern Organic Diwali Foods: Healthy & Sustainable 2020

This year on October 27, firecrackers will sound throughout the streets of India, as well as many other countries around the world, in celebration of Diwali—the festival of lights.  But as modern lifestyles focus on health and sustainability, the traditional festival foods are changing as well.
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Eco Friendly Restaurants That Grow Their Own Food

Restaurants with roots Restaurants across the country are now boasting farm to table fare on their menus, sourced from local farms or, increasingly, a farm of their own. But not all can present their patrons with the farm just outside the restaurant doors. Restaurants with integrated onsite farms invite diners beyond the table to the…
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Reusable Lunch Box Kits
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Waste-Free Lifestyle: Reusable Lunchbox Kit

Who knew that bringing that brown bagged lunch to school or work every day added up, not just in cost but in environmental degradation? Investing in one of these reusable lunchbox sets will save you money over time, and lighten the load on our landfills.
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Meet Greg Nielsen Of Numi Tea

Greg talks about where Fair Trade ends and Fair Labor begins, the role of B corporations and the importance of choosing organic tea. Greg Nielsen is the Director of Marketing for Numi Tea—an organic tea company founded in Oakland, California by siblings Reem and Ahmed Rahim.  Numi Tea is a Fair Trade, Fair Labor B…
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The Incredible Edible Todmorden

What would it take to create food security for an entire community?  This was the question that Pam Warhurst and Mary Clear sought to answer when conceiving ways in which they could make their hometown of Todmorden in Yorkshire, a self sustaining township.  Their goals were big—to transform a wasteful and disconnected food culture into…
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Ecodynamic dates at Flying Disc Ranch

Flying Disc Ranch Eco-dynamic Desert Oasis

Robert Lower has created a thriving farm in the desert using sustainable design and cultivation methods such as permaculture and eco-dynamics.  His soaring date trees and fragrant citrus grove is evocative of an ancient Mesopotamian garden oasis. Situated in Coachella, California, is a lush desert plantation of date and citrus trees at Robert Lower’s Flying…
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Breaking The Link Between Dairy And Veal

Many exclude veal from their diet on principle.  And vegetarians avoid meat altogether. Yet anyone consuming dairy products may still inadvertently be supporting the production of veal. Aside from a very few farmers who eschew it, veal production is, after all, a by-product of the dairy industry.  Dairy cows must give birth once a year…
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Child holding swiss chard.

Sustainable, Organic Food on a Budget: 7 Ways to Save Money

How to save money in the kitchen that you can use towards buying clean, sustainably produced foods. On our Ethical Foods on a Budget page we list numerous ways in which you can lower your grocery bill.  Often, however, it isn’t very easy to get around the expense of buying sustainably produced foods.  For instance I am an…
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How to Compost at Home: The Basics

Although there are a plethora of books written on how to compost, before you start at home it is important to understand how composting works and the different methods that you can employ. As a form of waste recycling, composting at home is a great way to decrease the amount of refuse entering our already…
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DIY Non-toxic Natural Kitchen Cleaners

The household cleaning isle at your local grocery store will try to convince you that every thing in your house requires a specialized cleaning solution of its very own. There are specific cleaners for ovens, drains, tarnished silverware, and even a special wash to remove pesticides and wax from your fruits and vegetables. But why…
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Ethical Food On A Budget: Make Your Own Sprouts

Sprouting is a great way to add nutrient and protein rich foods to your diet if you are cutting back on meat and animal products. Learn how sprouting can help you enjoy organically grown foods on a budget. Even urbanites with no outdoor space can grow their own crops for next to nothing.
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Grim Seasonal Dairy

Grim Seasonal Dairy

Some farmers are turning away from conventional methods to embrace a more humane and natural way to make milk. Milk is a seasonal product and some dairy farmers are choosing to let their cows produce according to nature. Seasonal dairies are pasture based farms in which cows forage and produce milk until the natural end of the grass season
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Humanely Raised Eggs & Enriched Colony Housing

People pay a premium for eggs with a Humane certification, yet different certifiers have differing definitions of what constitutes a humanely raised hen. Until there is some clarity on this issue, we will be treated to more opaque, nuanced labels that may or may not represent what you think is humane.
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Corn Insect Ear Injury

The Toxic Edge Of Drought

Drought conditions have caused a number of problems for farmers in the US. Among them has been a rise in plant and soil based toxins which have led to the death of dozens of cattle in the Midwest and threatened the general public with the possibility of tainting milk and drinking water.
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Pray For Rain (To Stop)

United Kingdom: From Drought To Flood

Last year, the United Kingdom saw two opposite ends of the weather spectrum—drought and flooding—causing millions of pounds in property and crop damage. Learn how climate change is affecting crops, livestock, farmers, prices and lives in the UK.
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chef jonathon sawyer greenhouse tavern

Your Chef and Climate Change: Jonathon Sawyer of Greenhouse Tavern

As Ohio’s first certified green restaurant, The Greenhouse Tavern maintains two core principles- to use local, organic and sustainably produced ingredients and to operate under environmentally conscious guidelines. In an interview with EthicalFoods.com, Chef Sawyer talks about how interconnected his businesses are to local farms.
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Federal Crop Insurance

Federal Crop Insurance: what is it and why does it matter? Unlike other forms of insurance, the Federal Crop Insurance scheme not only protects farmers from revenue losses due to lower than average yields but it also covers farmers who do not receive their expected revenue due to fluctuations in the marketplace.
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Local Sustainable Food

The Effects of Climate Change on Agriculture

A must-read interview with Dr William L. Preston about the effects of climate change on agriculture, and what you can do, what we all must do, to ensure we have safe and available food in the midst of extreme weather transition.
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Book Review: Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal

Helen Cameron, co-owner of the 2013 awarded “Greenest” Restaurant in America, Uncommon Ground, recommends Everything I Want To do Is Illegal: War Stories From The Local Food Front by Joel Salatin. In his book, Joel Salatin writes about the
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Chef Tory Miller

Your Chef and Climate Change: Tory Miller of Graze

As Executive Chef for both Graze and L’Etoile in Madison, Wisconsin, Tory Miller chooses only the finest farm-fresh ingredients from his local producers.  At his restaurant, Chef Miller produces a grand selection of artisan cured meats, breads, butters, fruit preserves, pastas, pickled vegetables—all from scratch. Why source sustainable food from local suppliers? The short answer?…
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Who Pays For Climate Change?

The Financial Cost Of Climate Change

Climate change: what it costs and who is footing the bill. Maximilian Auffhammer, Associate Professor and Agricultural and Resource Economics Director at UC Berkeley, looks at the effects of climate change through a different lens than most.  As an environmental economist, Professor Auffhammer breaks down actions that cause damage to the environment and puts a…
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Climate Change And Shellfish

Ocean Acidification & Seafood

The ocean’s ecosystems are being crippled by increasing acidification levels caused by greenhouse gasses. Declining fish and shellfish populations have already begun to impact the seafood industry.
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Crop Pests and Climate Change

As we move into a time in which floods, frosts, windstorms and droughts happen more frequently with the accelerated change of our climate, the pests and plant diseases which blight our crops will also transform. Shifting climates and re-occuring extreme weather events will cause pests to emerge in new areas, alter predator-prey relationships, and increase the threat to public health and food security as humans respond by using heavier doses of pesticides.
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Drought And Our Staple Crops
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Drought And Our Staple Crops

As you’ve probably noticed, the drought that hit the US starting last summer has not caused society to collapse, nor are we experiencing a drought-induced famine like the one that took place three years ago in the Horn of Africa in which almost 1 billion people went hungry. So why should you care if the nation’s staple crops of wheat, corn and soybean suffered sizeable declines? To answer this question, let’s first take a look at how dependent we are on these crops—they are, after all, called staples for a reason.
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Corn Makes The World Go Round

Corn is in more of your every day products and foods than you may think.  But what happens when an extreme weather event such as the drought that hit the US last summer cuts our supply of this staple ingredient? There is the corn we eat and then there is the corn that we don’t…
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Food Security

How To Survive Climate Change

Regardless of the debate whether climate change is man made or not—the fact remains that climate change is happening now, just as predicted decades ago. Now is the time to start thinking about how we can adapt to living in a rapidly changing environment.
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Cost of the US Drought

The Cost of the US Drought

Americans are still bearing the financial burden of the drought which devastated crops in 2012. Unfortunately, we have only begun to see the real effects of the drought on food prices—the worst of which is still to come. The total financial impacts of the drought are still being calculated over the months to come. Inflation of food prices is expected to occur at different times for different foods throughout 2013, but overall the rise is supposed to reach 3-4 percent, particularly in eggs, meat and dairy products.
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Beef, Dairy And Drought

As meat and dairy prices rise, questions on the viability of the industry’s dependence on just a few key grains are being asked a little louder—and this time by more than just sustainable food enthusiasts. In order to understand the full impact of drought on the meat and dairy industry, it is important to understand…
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Drought: Greatest Hits Of The 2000’s

To get some insight into just how frequently extreme weather events take place, and how they affect food production, let’s look at droughts and severe heat waves that have taken place around the world in this new millennium. Tune in and feel the heat of Drought: Greatest Hits Of The 2000’s.
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The Solar Powered Kitchen

Will the kitchen of the future run on alternative energy? What does the kitchen of tomorrow look like now that we are well on our way into the 21st century? Although many of the solar powered kitchen devices
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