From the soap box:

- I have long resented the way in which so much of the produce in Australia is sent from farm to depot (generally in a capital city) and then back to the very region it was grown, often a turn around of days, sometimes even weeks. This crazy scheme is the reason we ended up breeding tomatoes to sit on trucks and supermarket shelves, at the absolute detriment of their flavour. Sprout, a not-for-profit in Tasmania, has come up with an idea to circumvent this system: "from the pitch fork to the table fork, faster and fresher". Check out their Fork2Fork Pozible campaign here and, if you can, donate (they're only $6k off their $27k goal with less than a week to go). I think this is the system we would all like to see more of.

- Laura Dalrymple of Feather and Bone, penned an article for the Oz about the issues with labelling and modern food production. Aside from the slightly odd picture of her holding her eggs close to her belly and Grant glaring down the camera with his big cleaver, the article tells an important story: "Using an arsenal of chemicals, genetic engineering and an elastic approach to ethics, this production model has been outrageously successful and most of the food we eat in the Western world, from corn to pork, is now grown on large-scale single-species factory farms. But there is mounting evidence that this success comes at a great cost."