Faces Of Local Food

Charlotte Caldwell's newest release, The Faces of Local Food: Celebrating the People Who Feed Us, is a collection of personal vignettes giving readers an intimate perspective into the lives of those people who contribute to a vibrant local food system. We step out of the grocery store to join fishermen, farmers, and ranchers on their boats and in their fields; into the kitchens of innovative chefs; into the warehouse of a local food hub; and we meet with other meaningful contributors and visionaries to hear their stories - their histories, motivations, experiences, challenges, and insights.

The understanding gained from The Faces of Local Food will foster a paradigm shift in the way we consumers understand and value our local food producers, and will inspire us to buy local - supporting our health and our community simultaneously.

• Features foreword from author/educator/environmentalist Bill McKibben
• Features 50 profiles on the Lowcountry's biggest culinary influencers
• Location serves as model and case study to illustrate methods that can be applied nationwide
• Features 153 beautiful full-color images from author/photographer Charlotte Caldwell
• Printed in the United States

Combining stunning visuals with insights and a lexicon of more than 200 agricultural terms explained by today’s thought leaders, Local showcases and explores one of the most popular environmental trends: rebuilding local food movements. When Douglas Gayeton took his young daughter to see the salmon run—a favorite pastime growing up in Northern California—he was devastated to find that a combination of urban sprawl, land mismanagement, and pollution had decimated the fish population. The discovery set Gayeton on a journey in search of sustainable solutions. He traveled the country, photographing and learning the new language of sustainability from today’s foremost practitioners in food and farming, including Alice Waters, Wes Jackson, Carl Safina, Temple Grandin, Paul Stamets, Patrick Holden, Barton Seaver, Vandana Shiva, Dr. Elaine Ingham, and Joel Salatin, as well as everyday farmers, fishermen, and dairy producers. Local: The New Face of Food and Farming blends their insights with stunning collage-like information artworks and Gayeton’s Lexicon of Sustainability, which defines and de-mystifies hundreds of terms like “food miles,” “locavore,” “organic,” “grassfed” and “antibiotic free.” In doing so, Gayeton helps people understand what they mean for their lives. He also includes “eco tips” and other information on how the sustainable movement affects us all every day. Local: The New Face of Food and Farming in America educates, engages, and inspires people to pay closer attention to how they eat, what they buy, and where their responsibility begins for creating a healthier, safer food system in America.

Bringing together a range of case studies from Ireland, Scotland, Sweden, Germany, Norway, Poland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Greece, this book compares and contrasts different models of food re-localization. The richness and complexity of the international case studies provide a broad understanding of the characteristics of the re-localization movement, while the analysis of knowledge forms and dynamics provides an innovative new theoretical approach. Each of the national teams work on the basis of an agreed common framework, resulting in a strongly coherent and comprehensive continental overview. This shows how the actors involved are pursuing their objectives in different regional and national contexts, re-embedding, socially and ecologically, the relation between food production, consumption and places.

Our current food system has decimated rural communities and confined the choices of urban consumers. Even while America continues to ramp up farm production to astounding levels, net farm income is now lower than at the onset of the Great Depression, and one out of every eight Americans faces hunger. But a healthier and more equitable food system is possible. In Building Community Food Webs, Ken Meter shows how grassroots food and farming leaders across the U.S. are tackling these challenges by constructing civic networks. Overturning extractive economic structures, these inspired leaders are engaging low-income residents, farmers, and local organizations in their quest to build stronger communities. Community food webs strive to build health, wealth, capacity, and connection. Their essential element is building greater respect and mutual trust, so community members can more effectively empower themselves and address local challenges. Farmers and researchers may convene to improve farming practices collaboratively. Health clinics help clients grow food for themselves and attain better health. Food banks engage their customers to challenge the root causes of poverty. Municipalities invest large sums to protect farmland from development. Developers forge links among local businesses to strengthen economic trade. Leaders in communities marginalized by our current food system are charting a new path forward. Building Community Food Webs captures the essence of these efforts, underway in diverse places including Montana, Hawai‘i, Vermont, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, and Minnesota. Addressing challenges as well as opportunities, Meter offers pragmatic insights for community food leaders and other grassroots activists alike.

One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year Winner of the James Beard Award Author of How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestsellers In Defense of Food and Food Rules What should we have for dinner? Ten years ago, Michael Pollan confronted us with this seemingly simple question and, with The Omnivore’s Dilemma, his brilliant and eye-opening exploration of our food choices, demonstrated that how we answer it today may determine not only our health but our survival as a species. In the years since, Pollan’s revolutionary examination has changed the way Americans think about food. Bringing wide attention to the little-known but vitally important dimensions of food and agriculture in America, Pollan launched a national conversation about what we eat and the profound consequences that even the simplest everyday food choices have on both ourselves and the natural world. Ten years later, The Omnivore’s Dilemma continues to transform the way Americans think about the politics, perils, and pleasures of eating.

“It’s a challenge to create transformative moments with books, but [Masson] does it.”—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times In this revelatory work, Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson shows how food affects our moral selves, our health, and our planet. Masson investigates how denial keeps us from recognizing the animal at the end of our fork and urges readers to consciously make decisions about food.

This comprehensive overview of local food systems explores alternative definitions of local food, estimates market size and reach, describes the characteristics of local consumers and producers, and examines early indications of the economic and health impacts of local food systems. Defining ¿local¿ based on marketing arrangements, such as farmers selling directly to consumers at regional farmers¿ markets or to schools, is well recognized. Statistics suggest that local food markets account for a small, but growing, share of U.S. agricultural production. For smaller farms, direct marketing to consumers accounts for a higher percentage of their sales than for larger farms. Charts and tables.

This book examines the shareholder activism of institutional investors, and the effect of this activism on portfolio performance. By focusing on 118 institutional investors headquartered in the United States, the book is unique in addressing the shareholder activism of a large sample. Institutional shareholder activism is defined to include both traditional mechanisms of influence (i.e. filing shareholder proposals) and relationship investing. Institutional owners included private and public pension funds, mutual funds, bank trusts, insurance companies, endowments, and foundations. These institutional owners differ substantially, and these differences lead institutions to use their ownership power to pursue different philosophies and actions. Some institutions follow a passive governance policy, While others adopt an activist role. This book seeks to answer four questions: (1) Are institutional owners actively involved in the strategic affairs of companies in their portfolios? (2)Which forms of activism do institutional owners employ (either confrontational mechanisms, such as filing shareholder proposals, or relationship building mechanisms)? (3)Which forms of activism employed are most effective? and (4) Does the institutional type affect its pursuit of shareholder activism? In answering these questions the author suggests new important results that in many cases are contrary to what prior reports of the activities by a small number of institutional owners may intimate.