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Sarah as the Queen of Hearts, with her children, on their way to a local Alice in Wonderland Festival A few months ago, we hired a wonderful new Senior Manager of Marketing, named Sarah Loewen. Sarah has excellent credentials from a marketing perspective, including a Master’s in Marketing from Kingston University in London, followed by work . . . → Read More: A letter from Mother Earth for Earth Day For those who know me well, hearing me talk about kale is not a new thing. Every Friday, spud! staff get a sampling of extra produce from the week, and I can often be seen bartering with my co-workers to get one more bunch of kale (I think my record is 5). I’ll trade any of . . . → Read More: On Kale – Thoughts about obsession After 12 years as an organic grocer, I have probably collected 100 different reasons to buy organically. Well now I can add yet another reason with my recent discovery of the ”Blob.” The Blob is actually a thick, dense layer of oxygen-starved water that sits – like a blob – on the bottom of the ocean, . . . → Read More: Beware of the "Blob". It's coming to an ocean near you. As you can imagine, Vancouver has completely caught the Olympic fever as host of the Vancouver 2010 games. At spud! we have caught the Olympic spirit as well but instead of going for gold, silver or bronze, we are going for Green. We want to show the world that there is no greener way to buy . . . → Read More: Going for Green in the spud! Olympics A few weeks ago, Caitlin Flanagan published an article in The Atlantic about how programs like Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard are damaging the most vulnerable students in the US school systems. I’m not going to write my own rebuttal of the piece here, but I do like a lot of what was written at the Serious Eater’s website. I bristle a bit at articles that try to explain the negative impacts of local food education (especially curriculums that integrate exploration in a school garden with the set subjects for a grade) because I credit Alice Waters with my wanderings into the local and sustainable food movement. When I was a freshman at Yale University, a close friend and suitemate of mine was part of the team that first acquired the grant money and land in New Haven to start Yale’s very own on-campus farm. Our dining halls started serving local and organic greens and meat. We had lectures and seminars on campus with agriculture rock stars like Joel Salatin and Kelly Brownell. I’d never heard of organic agriculture or most of the issues involved in food production before making my way to university. I even remember a discussion in a supermarket near my dorm room that started like this:
Firstly, the book contained a great deal of information that I had never come across before and, secondly, the book’s author, Jeff Rubin, is actually the chief economist at an investment bank called CIBC World Markets. You’d think that a guy who is focused on world markets would hardly be a candidate to write a book about how the world will soon become small and local. However, as I read the book, I began to understand why Jeff wrote it. You see, one of his jobs as an economist was to predict future oil prices. He had compiled data for over a decade to back up his predictions and they increasingly led him to the conclusion that oil prices were going to rise dramatically in the near future due to dwindling supplies and increasing demand. In fact, he was almost laughed off the stage at a national petroleum club meeting in 2000 when he predicted that oil would reach $50 per barrel within five years. However, five years later when he returned to give a new forecast, no one was snickering any more because the price of West Texas crude had just crossed the $50 mark. Jeff then proceeded to once again expose himself to ridicule and derision by making an even more audacious prediction: that oil prices would rise to $100 within 2 years. Once again history proved him correct and, in fact, in 2008, they actually surpassed $140 per barrel. This past week was particularly challenging at spud!. Even at the best of times, our business model is not for the faint of heart. We pack our groceries at no extra cost to the customer, deliver them at no extra cost above a very low order threshold, and set our prices at no extra cost compared . . . → Read More: Looking for inspiration? Meet William Kamkwamba
The primary goal of the talks is to come up with new carbon dioxide reduction targets to replace those that were developed at a similar conference in Kyoto in December, 1997. The Kyoto protocol that was signed at that event called for high-income countries to reduce their emissions by 5% from 1990 levels. However, few countries made any progress and carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise such that a 20% reduction in carbon dioxide concentrations would be needed now to achieve the original targets. It is hoped that the growing concensus about the threat of climate change, will cause countries like Canada and the United States, which both have demonstrated very poor leadership on this issue, to agree on new targets and to abide by them. Continue reading spud! staff show support for climate change talks It’s Halloween and I’m feeling spooked by the thought of our rising production of “Franken Foods”. Promoters of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) have long touted them as a key solution to meet the food demands of our rapidly growing world population. However, a new study by the Union of Concerned Scientists, called Failure to Yield reveals . . . → Read More: GMOs are not the solution to world hunger I am very excited to tell you that this past Thursday spud! received a Green Torch Award from the Better Business Bureau. This is the first time that the Bureau has given out such an award, and it is a timely addition to its three main awards for Marketplace Excellence, Advancing Marketplace Trust, and Consumer Leadership. The . . . → Read More: spud! wins Better Business Bureau Green Torch Award |
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