When Scott Ostrander heard that Sacramento had declared itself America’s Farm-to-Fork Capital, he was working at Alinea, a 3-Michelin-star restaurant in Chicago. As a Sacramento native and an advocate of food-literacy education, he took the news as a sort of pied-piper call to return to his roots. 

Sacramento dining is about to get a little more convenient.

California just passed a bill to sharply limit the use of antibiotics in farm animals, making it the first state to ban the routine use of the drugs in animal agriculture.

Where in your local supermarket do you find the curry leaves? How about dumplings filled with red bean paste, or maybe smoked duck. Does your local grocer have fresh menudo, warm tortillas right out of the oven, or miso broth prepared that morning on-site? Independent grocery stores focused on specific ethnic cuisines are thriving in Sacramento, enjoying a boom in customers from beyond their base cultural markets.

After years of bickering, U.S. sugar companies and their rivals, the makers of high-fructose corn syrup, are going to trial over what exactly constitutes a “natural” sweetener.

Let’s eschew the wonders of hops and malts for a minute to explore the fizzy but kid-friendly offerings of Sacramento beverage artisans.

Some families love being together, some enjoy short visits and others have a hard time just getting through Thanksgiving dinner. So how do families who have decided to go into business together make it work? Recently I had sat down with three families-turned-business-partners to find out.  

Every week, 330 American farmers leave their land for good. And as an aging population of baby-boomer farmers retire, their jobs aren’t being filled quickly enough. Only six percent of all farmers are under the age of 35. But as the national food movement strengthens, will we see a return to farming? What about the children of these aging farmers — will they love their farm land or leave it?

Kevin Herman sees his fig trees as his future. They require very little water and, even amid long-term forecasts of limited rain and increasing temperatures, the trees are likely to produce a comfortable living for the Madera County farmer.

We sat down recently with CEO Lisa Rowland Basher, the fifth generation of her family to run the company, to learn a little bit about the Jelly Belly philosophy of sustaining a family business.