Story Archives of 'Agriculture'

U.S. food consumers are becoming more interested in how their food is grown and where it comes from, and that interest is extending to wine, as well.

Last year we talked about higher-end boxed wine coming back into fashion. Its packaging has a lower carbon footprint, and stays fresh longer. There’s now organic, local and sustainablly-grown wine.

The latest buzzword? Biodynamic. It’s a method of farming that fosters a diverse ecosystem, and foregoes chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Corby Kummer writes about biodynamic wine in the new issue of Technology Review. He’s a senior editor at The Atlantic and the author of The Joy of Coffee and The Pleasures of Slow Food.

Technology Review: In Vino Veritas (subscription required)

(Photo by pteittinen via Flickr/Creative Commons)

Contrary to our bucolic visions of farms in New Hampshire surrounded by natural beauty…farms and nurseries use thousands of pounds of plastic every year.
And every year, most of those plastics end up buried in landfills or burned; not recycled.
As New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports, recycling agriculture plastics is a growing problem.

A group of young Italians spent much of the summer here in the Granite State as exchange students with UNH's new eco-gastronomy dual major, the first of its kind in the country. It’s a relatively new field, combining aspects of sustainable agriculture, hospitality, and nutrition.

The fourteen students are in their final year at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy. It's founder, Carlo Petrini, is also the father of the slow food movement. It started twenty years ago to resist McDonald's opening a restaurant near the Spanish steps in Rome. It's since expanded to 800 chapters, or "convivia," in 132 countries.

The school aims to reconnect food consumers with producers. This month the group has toured farms that raise goats, grow blueberries and melons, and produce maple syrup.

The students are aware that slow food has developed a bit of an elitist reputation, especially now as people are looking for ways to spend less money on food, not more. But the students say the slow food movement stems directly from Italy’s agrarian roots.

Our producer Avishay Artsy took on the sacrifice of sampling food and wine with the group at Flag Hill Winery in Lee, NH. He filed this report as part of our "next green thing" series.

(Frank Reinhold, owner of Flag Hill Winery, addresses the students, as Annalisa Sivieri and Paolo Camozzi look on. Photo by Avishay Artsy)

US Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is promising new help to struggling farmers and dairy workers.

Vilsack spoke at a Concord apple orchard on Monday.

NHPR’s Phil Sletten has more.