Conscious Consumption

Many urbanites think of leaving the city and starting a farm, and a growing number do. Photographer Whitney Light spend a year following a couple who left their jobs for the dirty life of the farm and a dream of sustainable agriculture.

Forget Stephen King and lobster rolls. The really impressive thing about Maine? Farms are being started at a rate nearly four times faster than the national average and it boasts one of the highest organic-to-conventional-farm ratios in the United States.

Stanley Culpepper has spent most of the last decade fighting a monster.

It was only a matter of time before brides and barns got together. It seems like every wedding season seems to include at lease one farm-based fete invite, doesn’t it?

Two years ago, a British ex-pat started a modest farmer’s market in Dubai, under the shadow of the world’s tallest building. With just three vendors, it was virtually the only place to buy local produce in the entire city.

Seed libraries lend seeds similarly to the way public libraries lend books: members take out seeds for free and plant and tend to their crops. But what members return isn’t a basket of tomatoes, but some seeds from the yield.

Dear Modern Farmer,

When it comes to beef and poultry, pathogens like salmonella and E. coli O157:H7 can be killed by proper handling and cooking in the kitchen. But with lettuce and spinach, which are consumed raw, the foodborne fate is sealed in, literally, on the farm during harvest and processing.

Garden dirt no good? Just don’t have dirt, period? Here’s how to build a straw bale garden