Civil Eats

Seed banks are a well-known way to preserve genetic diversity through preservation and propagation of rare food crops or varieties that have fallen out of favor.

Farmed salmon "may contain as little as half the amount of omega-3s than it did a decade ago," says a Civil Eats story that also appears at Time.

To help people choose healthier meals, some cafeterias are using "traffic light" labels on their food, writes Tove Danovich at Civil Eats. At Massachusetts General Hospital, which adopted the approach in 2009, sales of sodas and other beverages marked "red" fell significantly in two years.

There are a lot of small farms in the United States and 200,000-300,000 large-scale operations that dominate production of the major row crops.

The proposed 24-acre West Louisville Food Hub, with an expected cost of $45 million, would combine urban renewal in a distressed neighborhood of Louisville, KY, with local food marketing, says Civil Eats.

Niche marketing to nearby customers is a practical outlet for thousands of smaller-scale farmers. In northwestern Colorado, yarn is being woven into the fabric of local entrepreneurship, says Harvest Public Media.

Photographer Glenn Charles made 40 stops on a 16-day bicycle trip from Bridgeport, Conn, to Portland, Me, to follow fresh food from the field to the table.

If there are artisanal butchers, there ought to be tasty, locally made meat alternatives, writes Kristina Johnson at Civil Eats, pointing to surveys that show sizable interest in the products.

In Brentwood, a "para-urban" community in Contra Costa County on the eastern outskirts of San Francisco, an amalgam of groups combines to keep 20,000 acres of farmland in production and out of subdivisions, office parks and strip malls, says Kristina Johnson at Civil Eats.

For the last two summers, the sailboat Ceres has traveled the Hudson River, "carrying all manner of small-scale, artisanal farm products to eager consumers in New York City and at river towns along the way," writes Antonio Roman-Alcala at Civil Eats.

USDA, in a resubmission to the Federal Register, proposed to expand the scope of its Organic Production Survey and to make responses to its questions mandatory.

China barred pork imports from six U.S. processing plants and six cold storage facilities as part of its ban on the feed additive ractopamine, which helps hogs gain weight more rapidly, said Reuters.

Vermont state senators passed, 28-2, a bill to require labels on foods made with genetically modified organisms and sold at retail - one of the final steps toward the first such state law.

Health Canada announced a three-year phase-out of subtherapeutic use of antibiotics in food animals, a step that parallels U.S. action.

Scheduled for Tuesday morning at the White House is an announcement by the First Lady and AgSec Vilsack "on school wellness and to highlight the incredible progress being made in school health environments across the country."