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Local food's next step may be 'innovation center'
Ryan Denham, Bloomington Pantagraph
NORMAL -- A one-stop shop where farmers could more easily process, store and market their products would take the burgeoning local-food movement to the next level, a group of local food advocates said.

At a meeting this week, the group will seek feedback from stakeholders about the need for a local-food "innovation center," an incubator that could offer washing, slicing and bagging services, humidity and temperature-controlled storage, and inventory management, among other things.

Invited are farmers, local governments and universities, restaurant and grocery store owners -- anyone with an interest in local food and economic development, said Terra Brockman, a Congerville activist and founder of The Land Connection, a nonprofit that promotes local, organic and sustainable foods.

"We're in the very early stages of this project, but I have no doubt that it will actually come to fruition," she said.

The area's poor infrastructure for local food is evident, she said, in the story of a local farmer who was unable to sell his carrots to a local school because he didn't have the on-farm ability to wash, peel and cut them into small pieces. The nearest place to do that is in Michigan, she said.
(6 July 2010)

Rust in the bread basket
The Economist
A crop-killing fungus is spreading out of Africa towards the world’s great wheat-growing areas
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IT IS sometimes called the “polio of agriculture”: a terrifying but almost forgotten disease. Wheat rust is not just back after a 50-year absence, but spreading in new and scary forms. In some ways it is worse than child-crippling polio, still lingering in parts of Nigeria. Wheat rust has spread silently and speedily by 5,000 miles in a decade. It is now camped at the gates of one of the world’s breadbaskets, Punjab. In June scientists announced the discovery of two new strains in South Africa, the most important food producer yet infected.

Wheat rust is a fungal infection. Its most devastating form (Puccinia graminis) attacks the plant’s stem, forming lethal, scaly red pustules. It has plagued crops for centuries. The Romans deified it, and believed that sacrificing dogs warded it off. It was the worst wheat disease of the first half of the 20th century, killing about a fifth of America’s harvest in periodic epidemics.

Wheat rust once spurred the Green Revolution, the huge increase in crop yields that started in the 1940s. Now it could threaten those great gains.
(1 July 2010)

Urbivore’s Dilemma, Week 5: Getting by with a little help from my friends
Jennifer Prediger, Grist
It’s Week Five of CSA living, which I’m keeping a journal of here in this Urbivore’s Dilemma series.

This week's CSA share gave me a taste of the plenitude of summer with raspberries, currants, snap peas, lettuce, mint, and fennel.

I had a rough experience last time, with watery mushrooms and slightly charred mustard greens. But this week things were exponentially improved. Thanks to you readers for recipe suggestions and encouraging me to keep moving forward with the joy of cooking. I even got a wonderful offer to help kick my CSA food preparation up a notch from a talented vegan foodie. Things are looking up. As the Beatles say, "I get by with a little help from my friends."

Speaking of friends, I suppose I may have cheated a little this week: the lion’s share of the box was not cooked by me. I was out of town for part of the week, so my dearest friend stepped in to concoct delicious things with the mint and the fennel.
(9 July 2010)