Wild ramps are a delicate-looking plant that add some serious flavor to salads, pasta, lamb and more. They have a strong garlic flavor, and can be consumed from tip to tip.

With their small white bulb, ramps resemble green onions but the leaves are something else altogether -- long, oval,...

I write a blog called Friend of the Farmer, but I have never met better friends of farmers than Cornell Agricultural Cooperative Extension staffers. Their work has been going on for over a century, since the founding of land grant universities with a charge of "broad-based education and...

In talking to people about why they buy or would consider buying locally-grown product, I consistently hear four main reasons:

1. I cook. Locally grown food simply tastes better.
2. I support my community, including farmers.
3. I want to eat healthier and locally grown food has more nutrients.
4. I'm scared about the...

You want to do the right thing. Eat locally and sustainably 12 months of the year. Easy enough in California, but you live in Vermont or Minnesota or even New York -- where winter settles in early and leaves late.

As currently deployed, New York State's 36,000 farms can supply...

Katie Couric's recent report calculated that if we eliminated the use of antibiotics used in pigs for non-therapeutic uses -- in this case simply to promote growth -- the price of pork would go up just $.05 per pound.

What price would you put on your health?

Farming is hard work, yet the farmers I meet are some of the most satisfied people I know. Odd, because in my experience, running a small business can be full of stress and often not a whole lot of fun.

What is different for farmers? Perhaps it's just that being...

Do you remember the days of dial-up? Web pages would scroll down the screen in fits and starts. Eventually you could start reading unless the web page designer decided to stick a 200K image on the page. Then . . . forget it. Thing of the past? Wrong.

In rural...

According to a new survey of American chefs, sustainability and local sourcing and nutrition are the hot culinary trends. They’re much later to the party than trailblazers like Alice Waters and local co-ops, but they are very welcome indeed.

More than 1,800 professional chefs ranked nearly...

Farmers are business people, alchemists, scientists, economists, and stewards of the land. But sometimes they need help with that most basic and necessary of skills: marketing. Earlier this month I sat in on a Cornell agriculture extension seminar on the power of storytelling.

Herewith a modest partial list of ways...

Washington DC November 16, 2009: A USDA report released today found the highest rate of food insecurity since the report was initiated 13 years ago. Almost one in six American households, or 17 million households, are food insecure. You and I would call that hungry.

That's a 30 percent increase...

More bad news for red and processed meat. Linked to cancer again! Call in the Department of Homeland security and the nation’s top scientists.

“President Obama has pledged to end childhood hunger by 2015.” Talk about an ambitious goal! With two-thirds of its budget dedicated to food assistance, the USDA is the department with primary responsibility for orchestrating this change. At a press conference this morning USDA Secretary Vilsack asked for a $1 billion...

Cows become part of the family when you name them. Then they return that kindness and attention with more milk.

An award-winning research team  from Newcastle, England, Drs. Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson, have shown that farmers who give a cow a name and treat her as an individual can...

Consumer trust in business has shifted dramatically in the last two years, dropping from 58% of Americans to just 44%, according to a survey by PR firm Edelman. A transitory, even cynical, marketing campaign and TV media buy is not going to win back consumers.

What can work is a...