With the rise of farmer’s markets and more and more chefs sourcing their ingredients from local farms, consumers are now able to meet and talk to the people who are growing their food.
LOCAL discusses the rise of the local food movement, the challenges of sourcing locally, and how it’s become a growing part of the Austin, Texas food scene.
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Occupy the Dinner Table: Gather friends & family–turn off your devices & reconnect to the best network around.
Whatever consumers’ mood may have been over the past decades, brands and marketers have always had something just right for it. Down in the dumps? Forget your woes and boost your endorphins with a little retail therapy. Feeling unloved and unappreciated? Treat yourself to a little TLC with some of these good things you deserve. Bored? Just look at all the exciting things we have to set your pulse racing! In love? Find something wonderful to show that special person how much you care. On top of the world? Celebrate with a shopping spree!
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Work harder, feel emptier, buy more, grow poorer…work harder. Sound familiar? That’s the conventional wisdom of the omnipresent church of more, bigger, faster, cheaper, nastier, now. The problem is that the conventional wisdom isn’t just wrong. If we want real human prosperity, the ability to live a live that not merely glitters, but that matters — well, then it was never right.
That’s the nightmare whirling noiselessly within the dilapidated American dream. And while the dream’s being furiously exported around the globe — and while the world might be seduced, despite lingering suspicion, by it — you and I know, by now, better: the paradigm that was supposed to lead us to the promised land has instead led us to this land of broken promises.
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A great post by Beth Buczynski on Shareable.net:
Most of us are familiar with how a store works: goods are offered at a pre-determined price. When a need arises, you cough up the money and take the item home. When it breaks or becomes obsolete you either toss it in the trash or donate it to your local thrift store.
Thrift stores resell these goods for a much lower price, but they still operate within the constructs of a financial system that alienates those who “have not.”
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One of the most striking findings that came out of our New Consumer study is how many people were seeing an upside to the economic downturn. A majority of consumers surveyed around the world (and nearly two-thirds of leading-edge Prosumers) said the economic recession served to remind people of what is really important in life and that that’s a good thing. Around a third of Prosumers felt that the economic downturn would actually end up being a good thing for themselves and their families.
Now we see the emergence of a new group of people who are taking the lessons of mindful consumption and the move away from hyperaccumulation to heart–living in a way that emphasizes simplicity and values over trips to the mall. Writing in USA Today, Bob Smietana describes these “new monastics” thusly:
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Half of respondents to Euro RSCG’s New Consumer global study said they worry that digital communication is weakening human bonds, and more than four in ten sometimes worry they don’t have enough friends. A year ago, we wrote about one socialization experiment in Brooklyn, New York, and now we see one has cropped up downtown, in Times Square.
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From rooftops and back yards to community plots and small farms, individuals are taking food production into their own hands. Euro RSCG’s New Consumer study found, for instance, that more than four in ten Prosumers had started or were thinking about starting their own vegetable or fruit garden. As part of its Thrive video series, Whole Foods looks into some of these individuals’ lives and living spaces as they nourish themselves and others, along with their gardens. In this episode, a Mexican-American reconnects with her personal heritage in her Oakland, California backyard garden.
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The following is an excerpt from Euro RSCG Worldwide’s The Creative Business Idea Book.
French fashion designer Coco Chanel described luxury as the “absence of vulgarity,” while American author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau decried it as a “hindrance to the elevation of mankind.” Laud it or loathe it, the luxury market has been around almost as long as goods have been traded.
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New data out from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show that more than 1,000 farmers markets have opened in the past year, up 17 percent from 2010.
The newly released 2011 National Farmers Market Directory shows a total of 7,175 farmers markets in the U.S. this summer, up from last year’s 6,132.
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