Golden Touch Alpaca Farm

Everyone seems to love when we post Ted Talks so I put together a short list of other Talks I think you all will be interested in.

If you happen to stumble across any that you think should be added to this list by all means let me know and I will include it!

Dennis vanEngelsdorp: Where have the bees gone? 

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/416

Dan Barber: A surprising parable of foie gras 

 http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/406

Michael Pollan: The omnivore's next dilemma 

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/214

Mark Bittman: What's wrong with what we eat

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/263

Ann Cooper: Reinventing School Lunch

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/348 

I was stumbling around on Twitter this morning and found this great List written by Robin Shreeves

 via http://southjerseylocavore.blogspot.com/

10 reasons why you want to buy local foods

Buying local food benefits both you and your community. When you buy local food you

1. Reduce your food miles. The fewer miles your food has to travel, the less environmental damage occurs.
2. Eat fresher food. When you buy at farmers markets and farm stands, the food is usually picked that day or the day before. When you buy local food at the grocery store, it's still fresher than the food that's been shipped hundreds of miles.
3. Eat better tasting food. Ever wonder why the strawberries you get from the local farm taste so much sweeter than the ones you buy in the middle of winter at the grocery store? To get strawberries to your store in the middle of winter (unless you live in a climate where they grow all year long), they are picked before they are ripe and force ripened along the trip to your store. It makes a big difference in the taste.
4. Eat more nutritious food. Food loses its nutrients as it sits around waiting to be shipped and then on the long trip to your store. Fresher food not only tastes better, it is better.
   
5. Financially support local farmers. According tosustainabletable.org, when you buy food in a grocery store, about 3.5 cents of each dollar you spend makes it to the farmer. When you buy directly from the farmer, 80-90 cents of each dollar you spend makes it in the farmers pocket.
6. Preserve open spaces. In the South Jersey region, when a farm closes and the land is sold, it invariably becomes a cookie cutter development or worse, the parking lot for a big box store. I can imagine that's the same all over the place. By putting money into the farmers' pockets, you're helping to keep the farm running.
7. Help the environment. When farmland is turned into a suburban development or a parking lot, lots pollution occurs, lots of critters lose their homes and lots of traffic starts pouring in. Open farmland is good for the environment.
8. Preserve genetic diversity. There are hundreds of tomato varieties out there, but you're grocery store only carries a handful of them. Go to the local farmers market, and you'll find dozens of varieties. Why? Some tomatoes "travel" better than others. Some varieties of tomatoes just can't survive the difficult trip over hundreds of miles. Because of this, large scale farms only grow a few varieties. Local farms can grow the less hardy varieties because they don't have to travel far to get to you. If the local farms go away, we could lose genetic diversity in crops.
9. Give animals a better life. Local food isn't limited to fruits and vegetables. Most small farms that raise animals for meat treat their animals more humanely. They feed them the food that is natural for them to eat and give them room to roam around. When you buy locally raised meat, you help to support this type of meat production instead of the cruel factory farms.
10. Get inspired. Once you get a taste for local foods, chances are you'll want to grow a little of your own in a container garden or a full fledged garden. Or, you'll look at that butternut squash on the table at the farmers market and say, "hmmmm. I've never made butternut squash before, but I think I'll give it a try." You'll try things you've never tried before.

From the Nourished Kitchen:

 HR 875, also known as the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Rosa Delauro - a democratic party member of the United States House of Representatives from Connecticut - in February of 2009.  The title of HR 875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, sounds innocuous enough - even comforting, but its implications yield a much, much different story.

Agents could also implement draconian restrictions regarding how farm animals can be fed, how fields can be managed and the end result of these restrictions could mean the end of organic, biodynamic and sustinable agriculture practices as these practices are deemed “unsafe.”  Farmers refusing to comply would be subject to penalties.

Read the Rest here - http://nourishedkitchen.com/fight-hr-875-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009/

Contact your Representative Today regarding this bill - http://www.house.gov/writerep/