Good Food is Everybody's Business
While the borders of Persian Empire advanced and receded over the centuries, today “Persia” is equated with Iran. With our world connections ever more fluid – and, at times, tense – now is a great time to explore traditional and contemporary dishes from Iran, Kurdistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, all parts of the Persian Empire at one time or another.
In October 2016, two Tolima coffee lots ended up in the top five at a country-wide coffee cupping festival, including first place, surprising judges and the public. The victory and recognition comes at critical point for coffee producers in the southern part of the department. Though geo-climatic conditions favor the production of specialty brews with unique flavors, coffee producers face obstacles in processing, accessing financial mechanisms, and finding new markets.
The last week of October, heading into fall and Halloween, more than 200 people spent two days of intensive conversation outlining policy initiatives to be considered by the Montana State Legislature over the next decade to support, improve, and market Montana’s food products within the state and around the globe.
In Columbia’s strategically located region Montes de Maria, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) roamed the countryside and destroyed entire irrigation systems, stole kilometers of pipelines, and stole or destroyed the pumps that fed the system from large water basins. Fear and destruction dissuaded many farmers from returning to their lands.
The Phoenicians are credited with many things, but delivering the gift of wine to the shores of southern Europe is something for which mankind will always be thankful. Like the modern-day Lebanese, the fearless seafaring Phoenicians had an urge to meet distant horizons with zeal and brought grape growing and wine making in their wake.
The story of Locally Laid, told with a lot of humor, a few tears, and much enthusiasm, celebrates the support they received from their community, their customers, and their friends and neighbors.
Liban Village was founded in 1992 as a farmer cooperative and grew to a small company that employs more than 50 people each year. Today, Liban Village works across the apple value chain, from production to sorting, packing and storage, as well as providing extension service training for smallholder apple farmers. Liban Village works with over 300 apple growers that employ thousands of laborers on Lebanon’s apple orchards.
Our “National Hymn,” America the Beautiful, opens with the image of endless skies over fields of ripe golden grain that reach to purple mountains on the horizon. Poet Katharine Lee Bates would probably be appalled to realize that she was eulogizing one of the worst examples of mono-cropping in existence – second only to the carpeting of Iowa with corn.
