A decade after ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ Michael Pollan sees signs of hope

This new generation of young farmers is helping to build what amounts to an alternative food economy. That new economy is comprised of farms supplying local markets; farms employing organic and other sustainable methods; and farms raising animals outdoors, as well as producers of artisanal foodstuffs of all kinds and new distribution models such as the farm subscriptions known as CSAs, or community-supported agriculture. No one knows quite how large this new food economy is, but we do know it is growing much faster than the old one, which has stalled. Its rise is the direct result of consumers and producers working together to shorten the food chain in order to radically simplify the answer to the “Where does my food come from” question.

Source: A decade after ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma,’ Michael Pollan sees signs of hope – The Washington Post

 

The New Food Economy also reconsiders TOD, 10 years after.

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Kansas Teaches Refugees The Business Of Farming To Help Them Rebuild Lives

On another note, Ellingsworth said the program had assisted many participants in finding land while others have bought their homes with the aid of their farming businesses. She added that one of the participants had recently sold nearly $900 worth of produce to a single restaurant which was a lot of money for the family especially during the winter months.

Apart from gaining valuable farming and business insight with the program, the participants also find companionship and form strong bonds with other members despite their differences in languages and ethnicity. Ellingsworth says that sometimes a farmer from Myanmar may become best friends with a farmer from Somalia, and they find a way to communicate with each other

 

Source: Kansas Teaches Refugees The Business Of Farming To Help Them Rebuild Lives – 60abc

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Hungry, Homeless and in College – The New York Times

How many markets are doing outreach to their community colleges?

According to a survey on economic insecurity among community college students released last year by the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, one in five students went hungry in the last 30 days due to lack of money and 13 percent were homeless in the last year, despite most of these students having financial aid and jobs.

More than 10.5 million students attend community colleges.

Source: Hungry, Homeless and in College

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Embrace Difference to Achieve Health Equity

Health equity is gaining prominence in public conversations about community well-being…

…Every community has its own culture and assets on which to build. These can direct efforts to achieve health equity by addressing the avoidable and unjust social, economic and environmental conditions that lead to health inequities. Active Living By Desig (ALBD) considers Community Context to include the residents, location, history, policies, systems and resources and the interplay of these factors. Those various factors have a unique influence on health in each community and must be understood and accounted for at every stage of the healthy community change process. This includes the selection of strategies and the order in which those strategies are implemented. To support this process, ALBD helps communities tailor their approaches using the Community Action Model as a guide through community change.

Source: Embrace Difference to Achieve Health Equity | Joanne Lee | LinkedIn

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Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund Announces $320,000 in New Awards

The Farmer Veteran Fellowship Fund announced a record $320,000 in new awards this week. The awards, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000 went to 140 veterans who have already launched, but are still developing, their farm businesses. The grants are paid to third-party vendors on behalf of the veterans for things such as livestock, bee supplies.

Source: FARMER VETERAN COALITION

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“Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze”

So the story of the flameout of Dinner Lab is something to ponder. As a New Orleanian who watched it up close, I was mystified by what they were trying to sell; turns out, they were too. Even with 10 million bucks in venture capital available.
This type of badly managed tech “solution” often seems the food system equivalent of living in Tornado Alley: A high probability of sudden and uncoordinated disruptions with widespread destruction left behind. Of course, there are many excellent tech innovations that have also helped organizers too; just make sure that you investigate the goals, backers and the operation before encouraging farmers or markets to join up.

At each meal, Dinner Lab had guests provide detailed feedback on that night’s menu. The company thought it could make money off that data, but they learned there was no market for the information.

Since closing, Dinner Lab has ignored numerous messages from NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune about whether paid members would receive a refund.

Likely they will wait as long as the GoodEggs vendors waited for recompense for the orders they had prepared for delivery when that business closed without warning in mid week last August: forever.

Source: Dinner Lab autopsy: ‘Juice wasn’t worth the squeeze,’ CEO tells Forbes | NOLA.com

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Chip cards can lead to higher debit fees for merchants

For example, when customers insert a chip-based debit card into a new terminal, they may be offered only Visa’s network as the choice. Or they may see two options: “Visa debit” or “U.S. debit.” Since most consumers don’t know what “U.S. debit” is — it’s actually is a link to smaller networks like NYCE — they usually pick Visa.

Instead of being prompted to enter their PINs, shoppers are asked for a signature, and the merchant is charged from 1 percent to 2 percent per transaction when a card is issued by a smaller bank. About a third of all debit cards come from financial institutions with less than $10 billion in assets, whose fees aren’t capped under an amendment to the U.S. Dodd-Frank Act.

By contrast, most PIN-based debit-card transactions, such as those over the NYCE network, have average fees of about 25 cents — and slightly more for cards issued by smaller banks. Visa and MasterCard have PIN-based debit networks too, but many of the new terminals are set up to favor their more expensive signature systems.

 

The main issue is that under the amendment sponsored by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, an ally of the retail industry, merchants must be given at least two options for routing transactions. However, many processing companies and vendors haven’t upgraded their clients’ terminals with software designed to steer transactions to the least-expensive debit network. In many cases, the choice is preset, or it’s shoppers who are making the decision when they are prompted to choose a network.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-11/chip-cards-slap-u-s-merchants-with-unexpected-higher-debit-fees

 

Recent post on mobile wallet technology

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Social media data (from T•Mobile)

 

It might be helpful to increase the size of your screen to read this. For my Mac, I can hold down the control key and hit the + key to easily increase the  text size. Cuz I’m old.

T-Mobile_infographics_Social-Media-Static_design v2.jpg

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Why Apple Pay and Other Mobile Wallets Beat Chip Cards – NYT

I’ve wondered if some market networks might begin to accept mobile wallet payments.

Also, the title may be slightly misleading. The article goes on to say:

Stephanie Ericksen, a Visa executive who works on security solutions for new payment technologies, says the sluggishness of the chip is largely a perception issue. The actual transaction time behind a mobile payment and a chip card is the same.

But with the chip, most merchant terminals require you to leave the card inside the reader until the transaction is complete and wait for a screen to tell you that you can remove the card. With the mobile payments, you can just tap the phone, and there is no extra screen telling you to remove the phone, which partly explains why the transaction appears to move along more quickly.

Visa is addressing the perception of sluggish transactions with Quick Chip. It is basically a coming software upgrade that will allow the terminals to instruct the customer to dip the card and remove it right away.

Link to NYT story

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Will This New Labor Classification Save Gig Workers’ Careers? 

A new proposal by MBO Partners, which provides back office services to independent workers out of Herndon, Va., aims to alleviate those concerns. Under the proposal, released this morning, independent workers would be able to seek a special certification signifying that they have formally declared their status as independent workers and have opted out of the protections given to traditional employees. Companies who hired the certified workers would be safe from having the workers reclassified as employees.

“We’re not trying change any laws that exist today,” said Gene Zaino, founder and CEO of MBO Partners. “We want to create a safe harbor for people who acknowledge they don’t need the rights of an employee. For those people who don’t want to go through the process, the current laws still exist.”

There are some potential challenges with the proposal, he acknowledges. One is the potential for employers to pressure freelancers to get the certification–or lose out on potential work. To prevent the most vulnerable workers from being exploited, MBO Partners has proposed that only workers who earn $50 an hour or more could be certified.

Source: Will This New Labor Classification Save Gig Workers’ Careers? – Forbes

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Couple Spends Morning At Farmers Market Verbalizing Everything That Comes Into Field Of Vision

For those deep in grant writing purgatory, this short pice from the Onion should give you a good-natured and needed laugh. Thanks to Stacy Miller, owner of good phyte foods at the Charlottesville Farmers Market for alerting us to it.

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA—Strolling past vendors selling local produce, meats, baked goods, and more, married couple Reese and Beth Shaw spent their morning at the farmers market stating the names of all the things that entered their field of vision, witnesses confirmed Sunday. “Strawberry jam, spinach, some nice-looking asparagus,” said the pair, whose successful enunciation of the names of objects reportedly went on to include cilantro, Vidalia onions, eggs, three types of danishes, twine-wrapped lavender soaps, various dairy products, flowers, a large wooden bushel basket, fresh roasted coffee, and several artisanal varieties of balsamic vinegar. “Oooh, clover honey. More honey. Look—mushrooms!” The couple was later seen walking away from the farmers market, recalling aloud to one another all the various things that had passed through their field of vision just moments earlier.

http://www.theonion.com/

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