Back on their feet after weeks of having their reputation besmirched by tales of pink slime, cattle are drawing attention to the complexities and uncertainties of our food system. Chinese dairies, mad cows, and powdered milk illustrate how the milk and meat industry adapts, pivots, and innovates in a dynamic and rapidly changing global market.
While remotely connected, the occurrence of one mad cow in Tulare, California, powdered milk producers in the US and 25 shiploads of cattle moving from Read more [...] Cattle Calls
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Back on their feet after weeks of having their reputation besmirched by tales of pink slime, cattle are drawing attention to the complexities and uncertainties of our food system. Chinese dairies, mad cows, and powdered milk illustrate how the milk and meat industry adapts, pivots, and innovates in a dynamic and rapidly changing global market.
While remotely connected, the occurrence of one mad cow in Tulare, California, powdered milk producers in the US and 25 shiploads of cattle moving from Read more [...] 
You don’t have to listen to Jim and Mike Richardson talk about their farm for very long before you know they are improvers. Their farm is a laboratory for experimentation with forage varieties, poultry houses, pig feeders, and grass-fed beef. Building upon the experience of Jim’s long career as a veterinarian and Mike’s enthusiasm and curiosity about farming, the two of them are well equipped to improve food production in Central Texas.
The Richardson’s innovations join a long tradition 
Lew Weil, a molecular biologist, grows seaweed for his company, Austin Sea Veggies. In his garage, Lew grows ogo, edible seaweed that looks a little like material for a gelatinous bird’s nest. Where else but Austin, Texas, hundreds of miles away from any coastline, would you find a scientist hunched over an aquarium full of seaweed. Yes, Austin is weird.
But beware of weird. More often than not, an Austinian’s weirdness leads to innovation and an audacious capacity for leapfrogging the rest 
“No cakey-ass brownies here,” declares Miles Compton about his baked chocolate dessert. In a food culture that insists on knowing the farmer who grows its corn and the exact percentage of butterfat in a cookie, how is it that Miles is so successful with his somehow unknowable chocolate dessert?
Long-time Austin food columnist, the late Katie Crider said that Mile’s dessert is “anything you want it to be.” And she was right. Virginia Wood, another Austin food writer said the dessert was 
While pondering the nature of our food system, I find parts of it in places that seem unrelated, at first. A bakery in Austin may seem connected to the system through the production of bread, the loaves and croissants traveling from the baker’s commercial kitchen into the hands and mouths of hungry Austinians every morning. But the system engages other less apparent components of the system, like dairy companies, flour manufacturers, and truck drivers. A recent visit to the bakery shed light on