local food

Seed Bank Saves Traditional Food Plants

While many seed banks preserve the building blocks of commodity plants like corn, wheat, and soy, we recently visited a different kind of seed bank—one that holds onto the elements of native ginseng and black cohosh. Joanne McCoy, director of the North Carolina Arboretum's Germplasm Repository, walks us through her lab in Asheville, North Carolina.

Grass-Fed Beef Grab

Eating local is environmentally friendly, but it's hard to find local meat in the supermarket. So a group of foodies in Pittsburgh have taken 'farm to table' into their own hands. The Allegheny Front's Reid Frazier went to find out how, and got in on some of it himself.

Two Farms, Two Very Different Ideas of Sustainability

The term sustainability is now commonplace. Everything from furniture, to travel, to shopping at Walmart is described as "sustainable." We visited two North Country New York dairy farms, each with a very different philosophy, but both claiming to be sustainable.

Farm-to-Freezer: Locally Made Popsicles Popping Up Around Pittsburgh

You’ve probably heard of farm-to-table by now, but what about farm-to-freezer? There is a Pittsburgh farmer who’s helping pioneer that movement by taking a familiar summer treat in an unexpected direction.

Startup Gardening Service Makes Getting Fresh Vegetables Easy

Woody Wilson, a graduate of Penn State University, took an idea he entered in an agriculture competition and made it his business. Wilson’s Home Farms gives State College area residents another way to bring local vegetables to their kitchen tables.

The Buzz in Honeybee Breeding: Local Queen Bees

Without a queen bee a colony can't produce. For the past several years Colony Collapse Disorder has killed off roughly a third of bees every year. That means a lot of beekeepers who need new queens for their hives. Many of those queen bees are bought by mail-order from breeders in the south. A group of researchers at Penn State wants to see if local bees might be a better idea.