• "Federal investigators found piles of manure up to eight feet tall, live mice, pigeons and other birds inside the hen houses at two egg farms suspected of causing a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness," according to the Washington Post.
• Chef Wylie Dufresne takes some swipes at 'farm-to-table' restaurants: "It should be understood that when you go to a restaurant of a certain caliber, it should be expected that chef X is using good ingredients...'Hey, come here, we use good ingredients.' Well, that's crazy."
• We aren't the only visitors to Arizona struggling to find fresh organic food. TreeHugger's Jaymi Heimbuch took a trip to Phoenix and wasn't too impressed with what she found.
• Climatologists are predicting that the Southwest will continue to get drier.
• "A new study of 13 pairs of conventional and organic California strawberry farms over two seven-month growing seasons in 2004 and 2005 revealed that organic farms produced more flavorful and nutritious berries while leaving the soil more healthful and genetically diverse," according to the Washington Post. 
• Grist offers some advice to urban gardeners on finding clean soil. 
• A University of Chicago professor is recording energy inputs and outputs along and productivity levels per acre for eight local urban and rural farms to study the actual environmental footprint of local food. Read about it at the Chicago Tribune. 
• Change.org has a list of 12 fish to avoid.

Here at OrganicNation.tv, we're always testing new organic products to review for our Organic Pick of the Week series. So it's become easy to choose organic food, beauty and clothing brands that have fancy labeling and a marketing budget to send out samples.

But I'd like to take this opportunity to feature what I consider to be the best organic product on the market: the one grown by your local farmer. In every region of the United States farmers are working hard to cultivate healthy and delicious crops with the simple goal of feeding you. Organic farmers have taken an extra step towards sustainability and invested a large chunk of money and time to grow food without harmful pesticides. That kind of dedication deserves our support.

So this week I urge you to visit your local farmer's market, join a CSA or ask for local and organic produce at your neighborhood grocery store. If you're not sure where to get organic food in your region, check out localharvest.org to search by your state or zipcode.

In the growing sustainable food movement, consumers have the power, so let's use it!

-Dorothée

Getting healthy, high-quality produce in the hands of low-income people is one of the most important issues facing sustainable food advocates. Since the federal government replaced paper food stamps with debit cards more than five years ago, farmers market organizers have struggled to find ways to make market produce available to food stamp recipients.

Today, about 40 million American receive food stamps, but introducing electronic benefit transfer machines to markets is expensive. Dozens of cities around the country have added EBT terminals over the past two years, and our hometown of Chicago finally joined in this summer, with all five city-run markets now accepting food stamps. (Check out the handsome video at the top of this post from Groundswell Films.)

Making market produce available to food stamp recipients not only gives low-income shoppers access to good food, it also helps to support farmers by bringing more consumers (and federal funds) to markets. The next step for Chicago will be figuring out a way to make food stamp dollars go further, like in Boston, where shoppers receive double the value for food stamps spent at farmers markets.

-Mark

Many people are passionate about getting healthier food in school cafeterias, but it's a difficult issue to produce a compelling documentary about -- unless you find the right people and the right story.

Filmmaker Richard Chisolm appears to have done just that in A Recipe for Change, a film about Tony Geraci, a chef from New Orleans, who leads a campaign to overhaul school lunch in the Baltimore school district. "The film takes the audience inside the process of reframing the relationship students have with food: where it comes from, how to prepare it, what to eat, and how it effects their bodies and their health," according to the synopsis.

A Recipe for Change is scheduled for release later this year.

-Mark

• Grist's Tom Philpott uses this week's egg recall as a case study in why increased specialization and efficiency within the food system is less appealing than it might sound. 
• Mobile Farm Trucks or Mobile Farmers’ Markets are cropping up in cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Portland, and San Francisco, according to Planet Green.
• Think you know a lot about Trader Joe's? Fortune magazine takes an in-depth look at some of the grocer's more secretive practices. 
• Reuters has a nice little video segment about rooftop farms in NYC.
• The egg industry took out full-page ads in the New York Times and USA Today yesterday. Nutritionist Marion Nestle annotated it at her Food Politics blog.
• Endless Simmer offers 100 ways to use tomatoes (with photos).
• An article in the Chicago Reader looks at the difficulty urban farmers are having connecting with consumers in some African-American communities.

Mission Pie is an organic bakery and neighborhood café in the Mission District of San Francisco. They make savory and sweet pies all year round using fresh, seasonal ingredients. By forming strategic partnerships with local farms like Pie Ranch, they can source large quantities of produce and even organic wheat!

Co-owners Karen Heisler and Krystin Rubin believe that "businesses should operate from a values position" and have made it their mission to bring sustainable food to a broader population. As Krystin mentions in the video,

"There is something humble about pie and very accessible. A lot of what we're talking about when we're talking about engaging in local agriculture and the food system and all of that are some rarefied concepts to a lot of people, but pie isn't. It's a very gentle way to open up those conversations."

Mission Pie also collaborates with local youth advocacy organizations to provide a positive work environment to disadvantaged teenagers in the San Francisco area. As a thriving, progressive, for-profit business, they are a great example of a company that reinvests productively and creatively not just in the quality of their ingredients and equipment, but in the lives of the people and communities around them.

During a severe drought in the 1970s, many homeowners were forced to drain their swimming pools, creating a venue for the Z-Boys, a group of underground skateboarders, to invent aerial skateboarding. This summer, a family in Mesa, AZ drained their swimming pool and is looking to start a similar groundswell in the realm of organic food production.

The Garden Pool family (who aren't identified on the website), bought their home in October 2009 with hopes of producing their own food. "We had planned to be food self-sufficient by 2012 but we made it by mid-2010," they write in the YouTube video description. 

The swimming pool area is used for aquaponics tilapia production, and the family grows a wide variety of fruits and vegetables in rain gutters and five-gallon buckets. They also keep laying hens, catfish, and they even have dwarf lemons and mandarin orange trees.

For more on Garden Pool, check out their website.

Did you know that every day, 25,000 people die from hunger related causes? That is one person every 3.5 seconds. And yet, ironically, there is enough food in the world for everyone. Fairfood International believes that part of the solution to hunger and poverty lays in establishing increasingly sustainable trade agreements.

Fairfood is an Amsterdam-based nonprofit that works on a number of social, environmental and economic issues and is committed to the improvement of working conditions across the globe, putting an end to environmentally damaging practices and making trade sustainable. I'm happy to report that the organization has recently opened an office in San Francisco and will be expanding their reach towards improving the sustainability of the American food industry. So watch out Big Ag!

How can you help? Fairfood provides a variety of ways to participate whether signing up for their newsletter, joining their online geek team or taking the Fairfood pledge. You can also follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

-Dorothée

On a recent trip to Nantucket, I got a chance to try out John Masters Organics SPF 30 Mineral Sunscreen during a week of sailing, swimming and biking around the island. Not only did I return with a nice tan (look, no sunburns Mom!), I really enjoyed the light-weight and fragrance free formula.

Environmental Working Group recently did a safety study about sunscreen and they determined that "mineral sunscreens have the best safety profile of today’s choices. They are stable in sunlight and do not appear to penetrate the skin." John Masters Organics sunscreen combines titanium dioxide and zinc oxide for skin protection and includes shea butter, green tea extract and jojoba for their moisturizing and anti-oxidant properties. The cream does not contain nano-particles and is fully bio-degradable.

At 32 bucks a pop, this sunscreen is on the higher end of choices on the market but I think it's a worthwhile purchase, even if you decide to use it only on your face.

-Dorothée

Join The Peterson Garden Project on August 15th for an adventure in community gardening – retro style!

WHO: The Peterson Garden Project is an organic, community vegetable garden on the southwest corner of Peterson and Campbell in Chicago’s 40th Ward. The garden contains 157 raised-bed gardens, and is Chicago’s largest community garden devoted to growing edibles. The site was part of an original WW2 Victory Garden from 1942-1945, and was re-launched for Chicago residents who, like those gardeners almost 70 years ago, want to work with their neighbors to grow their own food. The project was founded by LaManda Joy, an award-winning gardener who blogs about urban gardening at The Yarden.

WHAT: A wine tasting fundraiser from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. on Thursday, August 5 to raise money for the garden and a documentary about the project entitled “Victory! The Home-grown Documentary". Tickets range from $40 to $85, and can be purchased here.

WHY: Local chefs Kathy Skutecki, Chris Stoye, The Scrumptious Pantry’s Lee Greene, Celeste Dolan and Tracy Kellner of Provenance Food & Wine will offer appetizers accompanied by an assortment of fine wines from Vinejoy. Folk musician Alison O’Konis will provide the evening’s music. Local jewelry studio gray workshop will show new jewelry designs, and proceeds from sales will benefit The Peterson Garden Project. 

Be sure to check out The Peterson Garden Project on Twitter and Facebook as well!