Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 31

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• If your eyes aren't burning from the French Orangina ad to the right (a play on words, Poulpe=Octopus / Pulpe=Pulp....she is "pulpeuse" or...poulpeuse perhaps...), check this out. You may never look at sushi the same way again. Fugu & Tako, Short Film About A Man Who Turns Into A Pufferfish

• Producing our food is more dangerous than being a stunt man or police officer. The most dangerous occupation: fisherman. Farmers and ranchers came in at number four.

• An amendment to the 2012 Farm Bill would make commercial fishermen eligible to qualify for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Services Administration (FSA) Farm Operating Loan Program. The proposed amendment includes “commercial fishermen” within the definitions of “farmer” and “farming.”

• Small-Scale Slaughterhouses Aim To Put The 'Local' Back In Local Meat including new facilities owned by a co-op of farmers or ranchers. The whole idea is to have quality control and humane processing for local cattle, hogs, sheep and goats that provides consumers in the state with [the] locally produced products they are demanding. Having a producer-owned plan will help keep dollars, ranchers and farmers in our communities."

• Tom Philpott of Mother Jones joined Fresh Air (click through to listen) Assessing Consumer Concerns About The Meat Industry

• We're fans of the Michael Pollan approach that if a food has health claims tacked on it, it isn't real food, but big companies like Nestle are fighting that. "The unit is due to work closely with the Nestle Health Science company and research institute set up last year that is pushing a drive into medical foods at a time of growing overlap between "Big Pharma" and "Big Food" as many drug companies are investing in non-prescription products including nutrition."

• While not a strictly food news item, our minds are reeling with the possibilities of showing consumers where their food comes from with augmented reality systems that can make print look like Harry Potter's newspaper.

• A loving homage to rhubarb, Rhubarb’s Ruby Submission: Hard, acid rhubarb reliably softens with heat. If only people did the same. "Trust the English, who are in many ways the masters of both pudding and perversity, to take something so unpalatable and turn it into dessert."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 30

weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Above, a few of our favorite pins of the week on Pinterest. If you haven't been by to visit us there yet, you're missing out on the fun.

• In serious news: Land grabbing has more of an impact on the world's poor than climate change. "Wherever I went, people were being moved off with little or no regard for their historic or cultural rights. The grabbers want big spaces – 50,000 hectares – and you can only get that if you take commonly owned ancestral lands."

• An OpEd in the New York Times this week took on how sustainability in seafood is messaged to the public. "We should recognize that seafood-labeling systems hold seafood to much higher standards than other forms of agriculture. The same stores that won’t sell an overfished species are selling other foods whose production affects the environment far more."

• Historical chickens: To accompany their story on the history of the chicken as food, Smithsonian magazine dressed up a few birds (in their ready to roast state) as historical figures. via foodiggity

• If you're in the market for something even stranger, Brazilian juice maker Camp Nectar embarked on a two year stunt to highlight that their juice is all natural — growing fruit in the shape of a juice box. Check out the video. via psfk

• A quixotic sweet that endeavors to out-green the competition, the first of a new line of "carbon-neutral" chocolate arrives in Britain by sailing ship from Granada. (It's all so romantic looking that we'll be good sports and not get into the question of how carbon neural anything produced in the modern world is.)

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 29

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• A tradition that's seen better days, the NewYork City seltzer man. Walter Backerman, third generation in the trade, tells us how it is. Vintage seltzer bottles (right) are still in use and get filled at the Gomberg Seltzer Works in Canarsie, the last seltzer factory in the city. Take a video peak into a forgotten world. "I offer people an option. It's called stability. Sometimes old is better. There are things that were meant to last."

• The latest, and super-flashy, urban garden accessory — a roof-top geodesic dome with aquaponics system.

• Wasting food does more than just waste money. A new study from Edinburgh University says: Wasted Milk Pollutes As Much As 20,000 Cars.

• An old-time brew is making a comeback in Vermont — maple sap beer.

• What customers are wondering when they book hotels — how close is the nearest specialty grocery store? Opportunity alert for hotels — healthy take away options.

• Pork Fairy Quiz: Test your sausage knowledge. And you can expand your charcuterie knowledge with a photo gallery of sausage of the world and a loving tribute to the one of the world's favorite comfort food.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 28

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Thank you Maurice Sendak for childhood treasures and inspirations like In The Night Kitchen (above).

• "Imagine you are in a bar or at a friend's place, and you want to sabre a bottle of champagne but, tragically, there is no sabre at hand. Fear not..." So reads The Art of Champagne, Artfully Illustrated, in a style that put us in the mind of What do You Say Dear?, the volume of manners (illustrated by Maurice Sendak) which tackles such social conundrums as "You are downtown and there is a gentleman giving baby elephants to people. You want to take one home because you have always wanted a baby elephant, but firs the gentleman introduces you to each other. What do you say, dear?"

• And now for something completely different, Crazy Orange Camo Lobster Caught Off the Coast of Maine. His crazy looked earned him a place at the New England Aquarium instead of in a Pepperidge Farm roll with a touch of mayo.

• In a New York Times OpED Pitting Child Safety Against the Family Farm, Marjorie Elizabeth Wood takes on the red herring that legislation intended to protect farmworkers will really destroy the family farm."The same commercial forces that thwarted the Child Labor Amendment in the 1920s continue to stymie reform today. In an age when Big Agriculture still benefits from the laxity of our child labor laws, the reformers’ legacy is one we would do well to reclaim."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 27

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Belgian supermarket Delhaize launched a wine collection featuring cork figures for the different regions (right).

• The heirloom and live food trends meet in Eternal Yogurt: The Starter That Lives Forever If you're set on store-bought, get some tips from this yogurt smackdown: A Frenchman, a Greek, and a Turk walk into a conference room to rank New York–made Greek yogurts. Spoons, predictably, fly.

• An amazing project of food, history and identity, The Southern Discomfort Tour, by the Cooking Gene. Michael Twitty explains the project in an essay entitled The cook who picks cotton: reclaiming my roots. "Slavery is not just a practice or moment in American history; it is a metaphor for our relationships to lifestyles and food systems that many of us view as beyond our control. Most of us are enslaved to food systems that aren’t sustainable, but eat we must. And because we must eat, food is a natural vehicle for telling the kinds of stories about historical slavery and the impact of “race” on how we eat, even as we critique and question our contemporary food politics. Food is our vehicle to move beyond race and into relationships and use those relationships to promote the kind of racial reconciliation and healing, our nation desperately needs."

• It's Derby Weekend. Bartender Chris McMillian rhapsodizes on the poetry of the perfect Mint Julep. "I don’t typically stir my Julep up...Each sip progressively takes you there and each sip is different from the one preceding it. Few drinks have that multidimensionality, building to the crescendo—which I think is the payoff of the Julep—of the bourbon and the mint together."

• Using vintage inspiration in packaging to answer a desire for authenticity makes news in the wine and spirits world. "We needed to bring the heritage back to the packaging.”

• Since we've got a bit of a drinks theme going on this week, Virgin Atlantic is now serving drinks with Richard Branson vanity ice cubes to passengers in Upper Class. Stephen Colbert has already mocked it (video).

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 26

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Rock your dinner with Bitchin'Kitchen and Nadia G. (above), and her new comedy cooking show, books and more.

• The latest entry in the "pornification" of stuff that everybody likes: grilled cheese porn. It's a whole gallery you can view at work.

• NPR confirms this week that trying to buy sustainable seafood as a home cook is still totally messed up and confusing.

• Pop-ups go super-glam as Chef René Redzepi sets up in the Claridges hotel in London during the Olympics.

• For a look into shifting climate, food and survival, watch the trailer for a new documentary film, People of a Feather: Life on thin ice, about the eider ducks of Nunavut. The Inuit rely on them for meat and their incredibly warm down, but like everything in the Arctic, it all depends on ice.

• Farmer/thought leader Joel Salatin wrote a response to The Myth of Sustainable Meat OpEd run by the New York Times April 12 which had many of us scratching our heads wondering how in the world the author came up with fantastic "facts" like pastured chickens have a bigger impact on global warming. Aside form debunking some of the nonsense, Salatin continued: "If you want to demonize something, always pick the lowest performers. But if you compare the best the industry has to offer with the best the pasture-based systems have to offer, the factory farms don’t have a prayer."

• Another topic that got a lot of chatter — dietary tribalism. "The back-and-forth mud-slinging between members of different "dietary tribes" troubles me most. I often imagine all the power that could be harnessed if we stopped and joined forces on some key issues: getting food dyes and trans fat out of our food supply, demanding that the presence of genetically modified organisms and artificial hormones be at the very least labeled on food items, reducing the presence of nutritionally empty foods in schools, facilitating access to healthy foods in "food deserts," constructing a healthier food system (from farmworker to field to table)."

• One Thing Missing from the Urban Farm Movement: Farmers. It turns out that growing food is really a lot of work. That's why it's a job worth paying for.

• Wander through the story of a lost food of New York City, Hungarian chestnut puree gesztenyepüré, and the immigrants who brought it.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 25

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Hey there, Comrade Farmer, the Pork Fairy, courtesy of Soviet propaganda.

• SloPig takes the drama of heritage pork to the screen with a silent movie — heroes, villains, pigs and a damsel in distress.

• It's Farm Bill time, and time to get active. The Senate is proposing a 50% cut to the most important young farmer training program in the nation. Put in your two cents.

• Why we should love natural wines, and what all the fuss against them is about: "The real problem is the new popularity of natural wines. As long as they were fringe, they posed no threat. Now they are driving a growing market sector..."

• What artists have known for centuries, now even business magazines are getting in on: "New psychological research shows that mild intoxication can actually boost creative problem solving." Cheers!

• One for our giant step forward into the past — in 1915 there was a four acre school garden in the Bronx.

• Taco USA, NPR's On Point took a look at the evolution of Mexican food in America.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 24

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Snack as an art form (above) with the Mona Lisa in plum.

• Food styling bolsters its design cred as the trend for pantone cooking continues to a lovely cabbage soup, Pantone 268 C.

• Camel milk chocolates and lattes — a traditional food finds new opportunities in modern tastes in Dubai with video of dairy camels (you saw it here first).

• Is it possible for bacon to jump the shark? A new bacon reality show just might do it. And Burger King has debuted a bacon sundae.

• It's time to talk about the Farm Bill again. "The second half of April could determine whether or not we’ll have government support for sustainable farm and food programs for the next five years."

• Chinese consumers are spreading their love of wine to regions around the world and could help boost new tastes. "Crucially, they are adventurous consumers open to wines from various countries and regions with new styles and flavours"

• From the land of gadgets comes a new Japanese creation, SushiBots — that's robots that make sushi.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 23

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Chocolate magic (right) is an Alice in Wonderland take on sweets.

• With Easter coming up, we have eggs on the brain. The continuing popularity of the urban chicken trend and other city farm pursuits has prompted a new agrarian product line from Williams-Sonoma that includes stylish chicken coops, as well as DIY cheese kits and shitake mushroom-growing logs.

• Backyard chickens have resulted in an egg surplus for some: "When the whole coop starts laying, she said, the supply of eggs quickly turns into an “I Love Lucy”-style conveyor belt scene, bringing absurd, unmanageable excess." Quiche, custards and meringue — oh my!

• Not only can you eat eggs, but you can turn their shells into works of art.

• And not only can you eat marshmallow Peeps, you can turn them into art. Curious about where these crazy Easter icons come from? Take a peak behind the marshmallow curtain.

• A Pork Fairy approved app for iPad that walks cooks through making bacon, pancetta and more: The Better Bacon Book.

• Good coverage on the "Eat it to Save it" argument for conservation: "Are we willing to make complex and multi-layered choices to respectfully protect something so it continues to survive and even thrive?"

• Daredevil eating in Tokyo will get even more exciting as regulations on who can serve fugu ease. "I don't want people to forget that you can actually die from eating blowfish...I feel the government's awareness of this has diminished."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 22

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Too pretty to eat, pantone tarts by Emilie Guelpa.

• Mountain-city-saliva-chicken anyone? There's a new campaign in China to make menu translations less literal (and less gross).

• Pesticides and the fate of the honey bee: Three new studies link bee decline to Bayer Pesticide. Their products are used on corn, soy and more.

• Those crazy cephalopods, one minute you see them, the next minute they've turned into something else... rare footage of the mimic octopus.

• An Atlantic vintage? A Pacific vintage? "You can think of the world’s oceans as a kind of rich broth. They’re full of salt, of course, but they also contain other ingredients, many of them vital to marine life and to the processes that control the Earth’s climate." Not strictly a food story, but we appreciated the metaphor.

• One more story from the deep: Unlocking Seaweed’s Next-Gen Crude — Sugar (although intended more for cars and fertilizer than doughnuts).

• Feeling nostalgic for one of our favorite culinary innovators, we happened on this Swedish Chef collection. Bork! Bork! Bork!

• Usually, we go looking for the bizarre. Occasionally, it shows up in our mailbox, like this promotion for a bacon coffin. "We think that your final resting place deserves the eternal glory that is bacon." And Penelope the Pork Fairy says, "Amen."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 21

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Have cheesey dreams in a tent inspired by food (above).

• There may not be an app to satisfy your nutella cravings, but Dutch designer Julian Burford has translated popular food packaging into the style of iPhone apps.

• Why not give cookbook ghostwriters credit? Let's not pretend that everyone can do everything.

• Officials in Linköping, Sweden broke ground on an 18 story greenhouse located in town to be built by Plantagon. It will be "A new type of greenhouse for vertical farming; an international Centre of Excellence for Urban Agriculture; a demo-plant for Swedish clean-tech and a climate-smart way to use excess heating and CO2 from industries."

• Chipotle discusses its use of social media: "Likes and retweets are great, but what matters most to Chipotle is genuine conversations with customers. Through these conversations, the social media team can share knowledge and gain insights that will ultimately make Chipotle restaurants even better."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 20

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Behold, the geekiest baking project ever (right) — Apple Pi

• National Marine Fisheries Service's seafood inspection program intends to ramp up enforcement on fish fraud, busting the open secrets of the industry, like soaked scallops and over glazed fillet. "This sounds like something that is so simple, and so sort of pedestrian in the world of fraud, you would think ... people wouldn't get away with it....But it is absolutely a challenge."

• The huge, unsexy and hard to address issue of food waste got coverage from Reuters. "Cleaning your plate may not help feed starving children today, but the time-worn advice of mothers everywhere may help reduce food waste from the farm to the fork, help the environment and make it easier to feed the world's growing population."

• On government and farms: the marketplace is still unfair and USDA needs to do more to help. The unified message: "Agricultural markets are not fair. A small number of companies hold most of the power, and farmers and consumers pay the price. Government regulation is needed to restore fairness and competiveness."

• Pinterest is full of gorgeous food pictures. The online bulletin board for photo sharing is the latest social networking darling. Read some tips on promoting films, with plenty for food producers to apply.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 19

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Food and art cross-pollinate on the site Feasting on Art (image from site above). Read more in this Saveur profile.

• The moving target that is sustainable seafood, and how chefs should make sourcing decisions got more attention in the Boston Globe. "The public perception of chefs is that we operate in some sort of sphere that only has to do with idea and ideologies.  We have a lot of practical considerations."

• Could southern Appalachia become a new world truffle capital? "The next few years are the moment of truth for the burgeoning industry,"says Tom Michaels, owner of Tennessee Truffle.

• Chefs differ in their enthusiasm for Yelp and making everyone a critic. Sometimes it's not half bad: "It used to be that if you got a bad review in the New York Times, you had to close. It was like the theater. There was only one guy who decided everything. There are so many more people reviewing everything today. Nowadays, if you get a bad review in the Times, you can still make it.”

• Kids can now play a host of new farm-centric games on the computer, but they're more Big Ag than CSA.

• For grown-up students who want to get series about farming, college extension programs are offering more for small plot and urban farmers.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 18

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Where product creativity goes bad, from bacon mints (above) to pickle juice pops and "perky jerky."

• Fashion, food and entertainment continue to cross-pollinate as legendary Parisian patisserie Ladurée starts a cosmetics line and the legendary and the until now fictional Duff beer of The Simpsons becomes a reality. 

• If you thought bacon and mint sounded weird, how about champagne and graffiti for a real high-low mash up. Moët & Chandon has teamed up with graffiti artist André for a limited edition "Tag your love" packaging for its Rosé Impérial champagne. (video at bottom of the page is priceless)

• Kids playing with their food is getting more sophisticated with an animated introduction to Michael Pollan's Food Rules.

• The latest farmer-chef collaboration getting some buzz — bespoke syrups.

• Food trucks are for retailers too. The San Francisco craft butcher shop Avendano's has started Avendano's Meat Wagon: "The truck project was really so we could reach a larger audience and meet people who are new to the concept of getting whole animals and breaking them down."

• Offal poetry: Who knew that Robert Frost put his interactions with sweetbreads into verse:

"You drive me to confess in ink:
Once I was fool enough to think
That brains and sweetbreads were the same,
Till I was caught and put to shame,
First by a butcher, then a cook,
Then by a scientific book.
But 'twas by making sweetbreads do
I passed with such a high I.Q."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 17

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Tiny foodies will be taking over a cafe near you: Let's begin by saying "Babyccinos" are happening, and there's nothing you can do about it.

• Catching invasive species is making town and country strides at being hip. Fishing for snakehead is featured in the current issue of Food & Wine and Trout Unlimited is singing the praises of fly fishing for carp.

• The family fishing boat — even more endangered than the family farm. New England cod fisherman face bleak prospects.

• Giving some relief for certification madness, European Union and United States Agree to Historic New Partnership on Organic Trade and will recognize each other's certifications.

• France has set goals to reduce pesticide use by half. "Being an American citizen in the early 21st century, I find it stunning that a government would intervene explicitly against the interests of the agrochemical industry," Tom Philpott writes.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 16

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• It's not just the sugar that will kill you... Cereal killers (left, and more) has some fun with the pop culture form.

• Is seafood charcuterie taking menus by storm in 2012? Reports from Boston and LA think so.

• The USDA is giving more grants to farmers for developing value-added products. “The local food movement really took off with most folks selling direct through farmers markets and CSAs, and that’s great, and yet 97 percent of the food consumed in America goes through the wholesale markets. So if we’re really going to create new markets for family farmers and cut food miles, we have to figure out how to get into these markets.”

• The trend of high-end vinegars we've been hoping for seems to be on the move, with honey wine, verjus and Mexican banana.

• Invasive species burgers could be the solution to a wild iguana population. Puerto Rico will begin hunting and exporting the meat. "This is a very big problem. We have to attack it...It has impacted structures, the economy, crops and the ecosystem." Unfortunately, the Burmese pythons destroying South Florida mammal populations aren't so easy to catch.

• Maine looks for new ways to keeping fishing and fishing culture alive. "I've got all kinds of fisheries policy people, I've got all kinds of fisheries scientists. But we don't have anybody that creates that link back to shore-side business side of commercial fishing, and you can't have one without the other. We need the healthy fisheries, but we have to make sure we have a link back to the shore-side business that supports the sale and development of fish or lobsters or clams or anything else it might be."

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 15

 a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• "Survival in the epicurean jungle was a matter of brawn and culinary skill, in which mastery of the Switchblade Spork was king. Gangs of sous-chefs and line cooks ruled the streets and no food was safe from the steely glint of their sporks."

• In tsunami-hit Japan, microfinancing is helping food business get up and running even when banks don't want to lend. "So I wondered if maybe what we do really is important. Many people are waiting for the very original products that we select and sell. They are small goods, but they fill voids in our hearts.”

• UN asserts that famine is predictable: "drought and famine are not extreme events but “merely the sharp end of a global food system that is built on inequality, imbalances and – ultimately – fragility.”'

• Want kids to eat more veggies? Research written up in The Journal of the American Medicine Association (JAMA) says that putting pictures on cafeteria trays helps. Score one for the power of suggestion.

• States, like Massachusetts, are increasingly looking to create brands of provenence to market fisheries. “If we took a look at fish being landed in Massachusetts and put a mark on them ... it allows a story and to tie in what’s happening in New Bedford or Gloucester. It means something to [diners]."

• A new photo and text project assembles a Lexicon of Sustainability, from Backyard Pollinator to Kitchen Incubator.

• Pesticides are bad to eat, but they're even worse to live around. Grist looks at the environmental and social costs of conventional agriculture, from chemicals that dust fruit like snow to contaminated drinking water.

• Ancient ice, hopefully not headed for a cocktail near you. In Chile, police are holding a man found trying to smuggle five tons of a Patagonian glacier for upscale bar drinks.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 14

 a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Old ideas get new packaging with Slow Fast Food (above).

• Using any available space, the pothole gardener strikes London.

• And what can go in those potholes is changing, as global climate change opens up crazy prospects like figs in Boston. The government plant hardiness map is catching up with the new reality.

• Old-school kitchen frugality is elevated to a trend as chefs turn scraps into stunning second acts. “It helps in the cost of running a business and it’s respect for the product. That speaks louder than just the food.”

• Dropping cod quotas in Gloucester, MA predict a loss of $70 million for the community. It show the heartbreak of a town that's tied to a wild fishery. Aquaculture could play a role in keeping people on the water and food on the table like it is in Europe.

• On the new solutions front, tech start-ups are cropping up to help with farm to table connections.

• Going right to the source, chefs and farmers join forces, briding the kitchen-field divide and resulting in better ingredients. "There are so many parallels, business-wise, between a farm and restaurant operations that often people on both sides don't see."

• UK farms are using permaculture design to survive and prosper.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 13

 a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

• Waffle of sugar cone is a now a choice for light fixtures (above)

• The much anticipated TEDxManhattan "Changing the Way We Eat" is happening this Saturday, January 21st, starting at 10:30 AM EST at the Times Center in New York City. If you can't be there in person, join a local viewing party or watch online.

• A food idea that we hope turns into a bona fide trend: high end vinegar used behind the bar. This week we warmed up with Gingras, an aged apple cider vinegar from an orchard in Quebec, in a rum-based cocktail.  Innovators wanted.

Friday Faves — notes from the new gastroconomy, No. 12

a weekly round-up of our favorite finds from the front lines of food

 

• Is it possible to scientifically plot out why some flavors go with others? Researchers have tried in Flavor network and the principles of food pairing (illustration above). "A hypothesis, which over the past decade has received attention among some chefs and food scientists, states that ingredients sharing flavor compounds are more likely to taste well together than ingredients that do not."

• A look at visions of post-industrial Milwaukee explores how urban agriculture and aquaculture are becoming key to reclamation efforts. "What we really like about Sweet Water, and what they’re very adamant about, is that they want to make these spaces productive again. They see themselves as part of a narrative of production in the city of Milwaukee. They see themselves as being in touch with the [industrial past], but working in a way that speaks to the needs of the 21st century."

• In an attempt to get a better handle on overfishing, the U.S. tightens fishing policy, setting 2012 catch limits for all managed species. Let's hope the science will be fast enough to keep both the fish and the fishermen in good shape.

• Turning to agriculture as a way to cope with joblessness isn't just for Americans. With Work Scarce in Athens, Greeks Go Back to the Land “In big cities, there’s no future for them. For young people, the only choice is for them to go to the countryside or to go abroad.”

• In Benin, the sun is doing double duty on farms, getting water where it needs to be with solar-powered drip irrigation.

• Ever wonder how a good oyster knife is made? Chris Williams of Williams Knife Co. in Greenville, South Carolina explains it all for you in a video.