Sustainable seafood lowers costs, adds flavor at restaurants

By Fern Glazer for Nation's Restaurant News

August 9, 2012

As the sustainable food movement continues to grow, it’s spreading from the farm to the sea. And though it takes some effort to become educated about what to serve and what to avoid, many chefs and operators are finding that serving sustainable seafood can actually be less expensive, more flavorful and allow for more creativity in the kitchen.

According to the National Restaurant Association’s What’s Hot in 2012 chef survey, sustainable seafood is a top trend among chefs. And sustainability initiatives, such as the well-known Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch program, report an increase in the number of chefs and operators following their guidelines.

“Chefs themselves are starting to see the writing on the wall,” said Sheila Bowman, Seafood Watch manager of culinary and strategic initiatives. “It’s not just a nicety; chefs are seeing they won’t be able to get this fish 10 years from now.”

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Can Urban Farming Go Corporate?

By Nicholas Kusnetz for Reuters

July 19, 2012

Farms have sprouted in cities across the country over the past several years as activists and idealists pour their sweat into gritty soil. Now Paul Lightfoot wants to take urban agriculture beyond the dirt-under-your-nails labor of love. He wants to take it corporate.

In June, Lightfoot's company, BrightFarms, announced a deal with The Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., or A&P, to provide New York City-grown vegetables to the local chain's supermarkets year-round. The goods will grow in what the company says will be the country's largest rooftop greenhouse farm, a high-tech hydroponic operation that will boost yields, allowing the company to face-off with organic vegetables trucked from California, cutting thousands of miles from the supply chain while aiming to provide a fresher product at a competitive price.

With similar deals announced for St. Paul, Minn. and Oklahoma, BrightFarms is looking to tap into the local-food zeitgeist nationwide and create a more efficient produce mass-market. With some notable exceptions, urban farms have largely been non-profit, community-based endeavors, aiming to provide healthier food as a public good. The few for-profit operations have been mostly small and local. Lightfoot has grander ambitions.

"We're not trying to change the fringes of the supply chain," he said. "We want to change the supply chain itself."

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 Sustainability -- Finally Mainstream?

By Anca Novacovici for The Huffington Post

July 9, 2012

Sustainability is ubiquitous -- it is on the news, touted on corporate websites, and marketed on the products we find on the shelf. The Harvard Business Review defined it as a business mega-trend in 2010, putting it in the same category as electrification, mass production, information technology and globalization. Even with all of this attention, however, can it be considered mainstream in the business world?

Sustainability, like many new concepts, has followed a typical bell curve. While some might argue that we are now in the early or even late majority part of that curve, I would argue that businesses are just barely transitioning to the early majority phase -- at least in the United States.

A 2011 KPMG study on corporate responsibility reviewed reports from over 3400 companies worldwide, and categorized American companies as 'scratching the surface' as opposed to companies mainly in Europe which were seen as 'leading the pack.' According to the study, while "ninety-five percent of the 250 largest companies in the world now report on their corporate responsibility activities, two-thirds of non-reporters are based in the US." These are companies that have focused more on communicating their actions than on actually operationalizing sustainable business practices. This is something that I have also seen when working with organizations on their sustainability initiatives. 

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DC Sustainable Energy Utility Announces New Incentive Initiative for Businesses

• Harriet Tregoning, Director, DC Office of Planning
• Ted Trabue, Jr., Director, DC Sustainable Energy Utility
• William O. Howland, Jr., Director, Department of Public Works
• John Snellgrove, Director of Operations, Café Saint-Ex and Bar Pilar
• Hollis Silverman, Chief of Operations, ThinkFoodGroup
• Anca Novacovici - Eco-Coach
• Moderator: Scott Pomeroy, Sustainability Manager, DowntownDC BID