Ricky Hass, one of the Slow Food Portland coordinators of the recent Farmworker Housing Development Corporation tour, recently wrote about his experience for Culinate.com. His account hits right at the difficult question that remains after witnessing present-day farmworker conditions: where do we go from here? He writes,
“Many of us know that the ways in which [...]

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Everyone has their own reasons for choosing a good, clean, and fair diet; worker’s rights, morality, ethics, health concerns, local economies, taste, and traditions are all among the commonly-invoked refrains. One motivation that doesn’t get much attention, however, is religion. And yet, it’s not a new phenomenon to find religious imperatives behind agriculture or eating. [...]

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When the USDA adopted an official “organic” label, the decision was a bittersweet mixture of successes and setbacks for the real food movement. On one hand, the glossy sticker on organic produce has provided a visual shorthand for harried eaters to make smarter food purchases. However, the trade-off for that easy recognition and broad reach [...]

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After only his first month in the Obama administration, newly-appointed Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack delivered some unexpected words before a group from the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC) and the Land Assistance Fund:
“Some folks refer to USDA as the last plantation, and it has a pretty poor history of taking care of people of [...]

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On an early Saturday morning, along with a group from Slow Food Portland, I drove down the familiar I-5 corridor to visit a large, local community that few Oregonians have ever considered. It is a community in which 7 languages are regularly spoken, and where residents hail from multiple countries. It is also a community [...]

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Chalk it up to the cultural zeitgeist, but hot-button issues always have a way of percolating up in different mediums and practices at the same time. Let’s say a particularly unique comet makes headlines; wait a month and there will surely be three movies on asteroid apocalypse. I suppose you could call it the “summer [...]

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Image courtesy of Flickr user GeoFX
After watching last night’s preview screening of Food, Inc, the pressing question from those in attendance was, “How can we affect policy change that will help small farmers?” In response, Steve Cohen, of Portland’s Food Policy Council, implored the audience to get involved in setting the city’s urban growth boundary. [...]

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