Author: bob.benenson@gmail.com

Good Food Businesses Prosper As Investor Interest Grows

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by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed Investors’ interest in early-stage Good Food businesses began to grow quickly about a decade ago, as venture capital began to recognize the profitable opportunities presented by the fast-rising consumer demand for locally and sustainably produced fresh and processed food. FamilyFarmed’s recognition of this trend spawned the creation of its Good Food Read more about Good Food Businesses Prosper As Investor Interest Grows[…]

blockchain

Blockchain Tackling Product Transparency For Good Food Industry

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The technology behind blockchain is complicated, but its potentially enormous benefits to food businesses are simpler to explain. Blockchain enables producers to prove their product claims and, via an app, provide that information in an easily accessible form to consumers who care deeply about where their food comes from. It also provides near-instant traceability that can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to pinpoint the source of a food safety problem.

FamilyFarmed

New Good Food Accelerator Grads Ready To Put Pedal To The Metal

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by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed FamilyFarmed always approaches the graduation of its latest Good Food Accelerator cohort with gratitude and anticipation. We are grateful that we get to work with and assist promising entrepreneurs who are seeking to grow their companies (and also happen to be super-nice people too). The anticipation is looking forward to the Read more about New Good Food Accelerator Grads Ready To Put Pedal To The Metal[…]

2018 Good Food EXPO Success In Words and Pictures

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by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed Another great Good Food EXPO — the 14th annual rendition of FamilyFarmed’s biggest annual event — is in the books. Thanks to all the participants — speakers, panelists, industry experts, farmers, food product makers, buyers, sellers, investors, and more than 5,000 members of the public — who presented, exhibited, did demos Read more about 2018 Good Food EXPO Success In Words and Pictures[…]

Nature's Path

Nature’s Path, Organic Trailblazer, Is Our Good Food Business Of The Year

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Nature’s Path co-founder Arran Stephens and his wife/co-CEO Ratana Stephens are longtime advocate for organic farming, and leveraged that passion to build the largest independent organic breakfast and snack food company in North America. So it was natural for FamilyFarmed to present Nature’s Path and Arran Stephens with its 2018 Good Food Business of the Year Award at its Good Food EXPO on March 23 in Chicago.

Green City Market

Buy Me Some… Rhubarb and Strawberries?: A Farmers Market Comes To Wrigley

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by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed Until now, the only “rhubarb” at Chicago’s Wrigley Field would have been a heated argument between a baseball manager and umpire. But a new evening farmers market, being launched this Thursday (June 14), will bring real rhubarb to the brand-new Park at Wrigley, located just outside the home field of the Read more about Buy Me Some… Rhubarb and Strawberries?: A Farmers Market Comes To Wrigley[…]

Good Food EXPO

Beginning Farmer Awardee Sugar Grove and Its Sustainable Cattle Calling

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by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed Chase Sanert operates Sugar Grove Family Farms out of Greenview, about 25 miles north of Springfield, Illinois’ capital. The 150-acre farm has been in his family for 73 years, but only for the past four years has it shifted its focus to raising livestock on pasture. Sanert’s fervent commitment to producing Read more about Beginning Farmer Awardee Sugar Grove and Its Sustainable Cattle Calling[…]

How SAAGE’S Shared Kitchen Boosts Startup Food Businesses: A Good Food Festival Story

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SAAGE Culinary Studio in the Chicago suburb of Naperville, Illinois, is a shared-use commercial kitchen providing startup food businesses with access to all the commercial grade equipment that they need to make their products. Owner Gayatri Borthakur discusses the philosophy behind the business, which will be a participant in FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival & Conference.

Sustainable Food News: Michigan Good Food Fund to Put $30 Million into Expanding Access

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by Sustainable Food News, guest contributor Sustainable Food News reported on June 17 about the Michigan Good Food Fund, which is expected to raise $30 million to provide capital to and assistance to businesses working to expand access to Good Food in underserved communities. This program, created with initial funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Read more about Sustainable Food News: Michigan Good Food Fund to Put $30 Million into Expanding Access[…]

Academy for Global Citizenship Artist's Depiction

First Person: No, Really, #ThanksMichelleObama

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Teens around the country have caused a buzz by tweeting photographs of unappetizing school lunches along with a sarcastic message: #ThanksMichelleObama. That hashtag attempts to put a negative spin on the very positive work Mrs. Obama has made her personal cause as first lady of the United States: to improve child nutrition, health, and fitness.

How to Stretch Your Farmers Market Dollars

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There is one factor that stands out as an inhibition for some people — the perception that shopping at farmers markets is too expensive. But I ventured out this weekend to collect evidence that it ain’t necessarily so.

Article: Holland Sharply Reducing Antibiotics in Meat

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An article published on the Next City website reports that the Netherlands is acting assertively to reduce the routine use of antibiotics on livestock “without any negative effects on production rates or profits.” Read a summary (with a link to the full story), and share your thoughts on the issue in the Comments. Good Food on Every Table is your Good Food site… join the conversation.

First Person: Everything Old is New Again at Weston’s Antique Apples

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Interest in reviving heritage varieties of fruits and vegetables is on the rise. But for almost 80 years and for four generations, Weston’s Antique Apple Orchard has been keeping heritage apples growing in New Berlin, Wisconsin, located just 20 miles southwest of downtown Milwaukee. Genevieve Weston, whose great-grandfather established the orchard, gives her first-person account.

Apples await pressing at Virtue Cider's ciderhouse in Fennville, Michigan.

Raising the Bar on the Cider Trend

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Hard cider can be described fairly as America’s native local drink, the most popular fermented beverage among the nation’s early drinkers. And while cider declined and today is a tiny sliver of the U.S. adult beverage market, sales and interest are surging all of a sudden.

Chicago Market logo

Chicago Market Seeks Co-operation With Ownership Drive

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Chicago Market is a food cooperative project that just launched its first major public ownership/fundraiser campaign on Sunday. And no one can say that the co-op supermarket, proposed for the city’s North Side, is trying to elbow its way into an overcrowded commercial sector.

Dane County Farmers Market: Photo Gallery of a Capitol Idea

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The Dane County market, also known at the Market on the Square, rings the state Capitol building in the heart of Madison from spring through fall (before moving to indoor quarters for the winter). It is described as the nation’s largest producer-only farmers market, and there is no reason to doubt this boast. Even on the foggy, muggy morning of Oct. 5, with a threat of thunderstorms in the forecast, the square was packed with throngs of shoppers. Enjoy this photo gallery of the market.

Good Food Cultivators: Fred Kirschenmann (Part II)

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As a pioneering organic farmer, an academic at Iowa State University’s Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, and president of New York’s Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, Fred Kirschenmann is both a practical and intellectual leader in the Good Food movement. In the second of our two-part q-and-a, Kirschenmann discusses obstacles to change in our industrial food system as entrenched interests try to hold their grounds, and why he is hopeful that the rise of “food citizens” will bring change nonetheless.

Good Food Cultivators: Fred Kirschenmann, Organic Farmer and Intellectual Force

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On a day when mainstream media outlets are focused on the dysfunctionality plaguing our political system, it is timely to provide a reminder that there are millions of Americans working tirelessly to affect positive change at the grass-roots level. Fred Kirschenmann — pioneering organic farmer, academic, and a leading intellectual force in the Good Food movement — is a shining example of that.

Cast iron cookware

The Continuing Kitchen Adventures of Cast Iron Man

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I pack iron. Say hello to my little friends. Some men were born to battle. Some were born to run. I, apparently, was born to be a home cook. And these days, I do almost all of my cooking with a mighty arsenal of cast-iron cookware.