The club hopes to battle diabetes and other obesity-related diseases that plague the neighborhood by growing and selling fruits and vegetables in a garden next to its playground. The Consumer Empowerment Forum for Change -- a group of local residents, elected officials, businesses and community leaders -- has unveiled plans for the garden in hopes of improving the health of residents in low-income Fresno neighborhoods by giving them easier access to fruits and vegetables. The Consumer...

If you are poor, gardening is good so you can grow fruits and vegetables. Along with colorful artwork bursting with spring images, the students also wrote about what they learned by taking part in the contest. What I learned about the value of a garden is that life needs a helping hand now and then. Also, gardening is good for the environment. A garden is a gift to be remembered by. That result is healthy food and the beauty of the garden. Note: when we post a new story on the same topic,...

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Markets sprout as buyers seek local growers Demand for fresh, safe products and friendly experiences nurtures a new crop of farmers markets across the Ozarks. Gehring, who provides advice on how to participate in the state farm market program, said there seems to be a healthy crop of new farmers markets like the one at Ozark. Food scares over contaminated spinach from California and even the recent pet-food scare have prompted many people to look toward farmers markets for their produce....

Foreign investment capital will also be sought for fruit and vegetable farming and processing in an effort to not only increase yield and quality but also reduce price. HCM CITY The government has set an annual target of US$1 billion in fruit and vegetable export turnover for 2015. The industry has for years been plagued with sanitary standards lower than the international norms required by the US, EU and other countries. The programme calls for more contracts between companies and co-ops,...

Other vegetable markets also look good: Carrots are double the price of last year and greens, growing in popularity with the consumer, always bring a good price. Compare this to $8 last year, and you know why farmers are happy. California s bad weather, where temperatures stayed in the teens long enough to devastate crops, contributed to the shortage and is a major factor in Texas high prices. And last year s prices discouraged farmers from committing too many acres to a low price crop....

Once the freeway was built, farmers with land on both sides needed an overpass to move their equipment between the parcels. He has brought up the idea of establishing agricultural enterprise zones, to give farmers the opportunity to try more entrepreneurial ventures. Both properties have conservation easements, which bar them from being developed with industry and homes. People visiting Bridgeway Farms would be able to shop inside a new building, possibly a turn-of-the-century-style barn...

Blueberry farmers in Georgia and peach growers in Alabama are concerned for their crops, early bloomers left vulnerable to the cold due to warm spell last week. A very wet late winter/early spring made it difficult for farmers to get into their fields. So is this cold snap affecting your crops? How about your smaller-scale fruit, vegetable or flower gardening? By the time they got things planted, a record late freeze in May took a lot of what had been planted. A second planting was needed,...

For those of you -- like me -- who wouldn't know how to go about roasting pumpkin seeds, here's what you do: After carving your pumpkin, sort the seeds from the rest of the goo. In any case, when my husband and I carved our own pumpkins last year, he insisted we roast the seeds. As a kid, I don't remember roasting pumpkin seeds after our jack-o-lantern carving. You may want to rinse them, but as one viewer says, that stringy stuff contains lots of additional flavor -- so perhaps you want...