USDA’s new food centers designed to boost smaller farms and food businesses
In a bid to strengthen local and regional food systems and help small and midsized farms and food businesses reach new markets and resources, the USDA is creating a dozen new regional food centers, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Wednesday. (No paywall)
Cargill, a meatpacker, invests in California ‘clean meat’ company
Memphis Meats, a San Francisco Bay–area company that is developing technology to grow meat from self-reproducing cells, raised $17 million in funding from investors that included Cargill, one of the largest U.S. meatpackers. “Cargill’s investment is the first by a traditional meat company in to the ‘clean meat’ sector,” said Drovers CattleNetwork.
Learning the ABCs of modern farmsteading
A hub of sustainability education since its founding in 1958, Sterling College in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, will launch a program this summer "to help students not only deepen their focus on artisan food and organic agriculture but also turn them into viable businesses," says Civil Eats.