4 Ways the Growing Vote-with-Your-Dollar Culture is Affecting Sustainable Ag Businesses

April 24, 2012 | Ro Kumar

The following is a guest post from Ro Kumar, the founder of LocalBlu—a  blog covering urban farming and sustainability. Based in the Bay Area at UC Berkeley and Stanford, Ro is a passionate advocate for a cleaner planet with healthier people. Subscribe to Ro’s updates.

“We have to vote with our votes as well as our food dollars,” says leading food author, Michael Pollan. His words echo the sentiment of a growing number of consumers who are ‘dollar voting’— meaning they are using the power of their purchases to influence which companies continue to thrive in the marketplace. For example, a purchase of organic produce could be considered a vote in favor of organic farming (or a vote against chemical farming). Read More

‘Peak Industrial Agriculture’ Will Mean Big Growth in the Sustainable Ag Industry

April 2, 2012 | Ro Kumar

The following is a guest post from Ro Kumar, the founder of LocalBlu, a blog covering urban farming and sustainability. Based in the Bay Area at UC Berkeley and Stanford, he is a passionate advocate for a cleaner planet with healthier people. Subscribe to Ro’s updates.

Stock brokers make big bucks by making smart bets on big opportunities. There is no smarter or bigger bet than sustainable agriculture. This is because there are very few industries which are assured to always be around—mobile phone apps, solar, and even banking are not among them. Agriculture, however, is and always has been the biggest and most important industry of human civilization. For this reason, shifts in agriculture represent tremendous opportunities for entrepreneurs.

We are currently undergoing such a shift as the dominant farming practices used since the Green Revolution demonstrate themselves to be inherently unsustainable. Industrial agriculture’s inevitable demise will also mean the inevitable growth of alternatives. Read More