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Tennessee farmers are cashing in on the local food movement.
The federal government never measured just how much Tennessee farmers sold directly to customers at, say, a farmers market, but when it did (for the first time this year), it found a huge, farm-fresh, steaming pile of cash.
Tennessee consumers spent more than $58.7 million with farmers directly in 2015, according to the first survey on direct-to-consumer sales from the federal government. Across the country, Tennessee ranks 15th for the number of farms selling directly to consumers.
"We know that many people care about what they eat and want to know where their food comes from," said Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Jai Templeton. "This survey shows what that farmer-to-consumer relationship is worth in Tennessee."
The U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted the survey to get data on the growing and changing local-food sectors across the country. It found that 4,148 Tennessee farms sold food directly to consumers in 2015, and more are getting in the game in a hurry.
"The number of farms selling directly to consumers increased more than 500 in the three years since the [last agriculture census]," said Debra Kenerson, a Tennessee state statistician. "This shows tremendous growth in a short period of time."
The farm sales include fresh foods like meat and vegetables but also edible processed foods like bottled milk, cheese, meat, jam, cider, and wine. Farmers sold these goods to institutions like schools, universities, hospitals, wholesalers, and distributors.
But farmers also sold their goods directly to the person who would eat them at farmers markets, farm stores, roadside stands, through community supported agriculture (CSA) arrangements, online sales, pick-your-own operations, and mobile markets.
Sandy Watson, a board member with the Cooper-Young Community Farmers Market, said the more consumers are educated on the importance of eating locally sourced, healthy food, the more likely they are to hit farmers markets for their weekly grocery shopping.
This, Watson said, is fueling the local food movement. That movement is responsible for the year-over-year growth seen at the Cooper-Young market and responsible for the big numbers the government found when looking at direct-to-consumer farm sales.
Those big sales figures, too, provide a "real opportunity for more farmers to capitalize on the 'buy local' movement," Kenerson said.
The strength of that "buy local movement" is a big reason the Cooper-Young market is now open year-round.
"We don't stop eating when winter comes, and many of the local farmers are producing year-round," Watson said. "Our winter market is just as busy as the spring/summer market, and some of the best vegetables are those grown in the winter."
While much of the food consumed in Memphis was not likely grown here, a move is underway to change that. Last year, the East Arkansas Planning and Development District and the Memphis-Shelby County Office of Sustainability launched Delta Roots: The Mid-South Regional Food System Plan.
The plan lays out a 20-year path to a local, sustainable food network here in which consumers will eat more locally grown products and farmers can cash in on the $550 million annual demand for produce in the Memphis area.
A rocket attack by ISIS militants in northern Syria caused symptoms of “chemical gas” in 22 Syrian rebels, state media cited the Turkish armed forces as saying on Sunday.
The attack targeted Turkey-backed rebels who have been besieging the ISIS-controlled town of al-Bab for days. Al-Bab is a major target in the “Euphrates Shield” operation to push the extremists away from the Syrian side of the Turkish border.
The Turkish military said the rocket attack was in Syria’s Haliliye area, according to state-run Anadolu agency. It did not specify when the attack occurred.
Media reports said Turkish AFAD emergency relief teams had conducted various tests on the affected rebels for traces of chemical materials at a hospital in Turkey’s border province of Kilis.
Ozier Muhammad/The New York TimesReynaldo Rodriguez of the Care Coordination program counseled a patient with H.I.V. on how to adhere to a drug regimen.
Doctors are very good at telling us what to do — but we are very poor at doing it. In fact, the health problems of millions of Americans are directly related to our failure to follow doctors’ orders.
Doctors tell us to take our pills, exercise, go get that C.T. scan, stop smoking, change our diets, cut out salt, quit drinking, monitor our blood sugar. We know we should do it, but we very often don’t. About three-quarters of patients do not keep appointments for follow-up care. In one study of diabetes patients, only 7 percent were compliant enough with their treatment plans to control the disease. Even people at grave and immediate risk do not always take their medicines: a quarter of kidney transplant patients in one study did not take their medicines correctly, putting them at risk for organ rejection. Among elderly patients with congestive heart failure, 15 percent of repeat hospitalizations were linked to failure to take prescribed medicines. And compliance with exercise and diet programs is even worse. Poor compliance is a major reason that sick people don’t get better, and that our health care costs are so high.
It is a reason that often gets ignored. Many doctors are uncomfortable wrestling with adherence. They may even believe that it is not their problem, that their job is done when they write the prescription or hand the patient a diet plan. But even concerned doctors would find themselves helpless in a 10-minute office visit. They are too removed from their patients, too much the authority figure to really get to the bottom of why a patient isn’t doing what he is supposed to.
Bad adherence doesn’t discriminate by social class. Tens of millions of Americans struggle with high cholesterol and blood pressure and yet can’t manage to stick to an exercise program. Far fewer — but far sicker and more expensive to the health care system — are the handful of emergency room frequent flyers: people with multiple serious conditions such as AIDS, diabetes, hypertension, depression, mental illness, social isolation, substance abuse or domestic violence. Such people have extraordinary problems sticking to their plans to get better, and need extraordinary help.
Joe McManus is a 56-year-old former heroin and crack addict who lives in a single-resident-occupancy apartment in Manhattan. He spent 15 years as an addict, about 10 of them homeless. In some ways, he’s far from the typical homeless person. He used to work on Wall Street and still retains some of his Wall Street friends. In 2005, one of those friends took him to the Super Bowl.
In other ways, he is absolutely typical of drug users who have hit bottom. McManus has AIDS, Hepatitis C and liver problems. “My doctors went three or four years with me not showing up,” he said in a recent interview in his apartment. “I had no relationship with her — except for her to put me in the hospital because I didn’t listen to what she had to say. I was still not addressing the fact that I was H.I.V.-positive. I was not taking my medicine and only going to the hospital when I had to be put in the hospital. I was still messing around with drugs.” McManus was hospitalized four times in the year before November, 2009. Then he got a visit from Reynaldo Rodriguez.
When Rodriguez first visited McManus, he had already quit drugs, on his own. But he was still living as if he were homeless. His apartment was covered with soot and grime, the bed had cigarette burns and the refrigerator held moldy food. McManus was treating his apartment like it was the street. “How the hell are you living like this?” Rodriguez blurted out.
It made a difference. McManus started taking his medicines. The medicines brought down his viral load — he was getting better, and that motivated him to take care of himself. McManus is thin and twitchy, but when I saw him was dressed in jeans and a nice zippered sweater, and the apartment was in reasonable condition. McManus is now 100 percent adherent to his medicines, and his hospital stays amounted to only a single night in the last 16 months. He said that part of it was a spiritual awakening, but it was clear that Rodriguez played a huge role. McManus now goes to all his doctor’s appointments on his own.
But that doesn’t mean he follows all of his doctor’s advice. He’s no longer doing crack, but he’s still drinking — several nights a week he goes to hang out in a friend’s bar. He loves the bar — it’s his entire social network.
But his Hepatitis C makes this dangerous behavior, and his doctor was stern: “You can not ever have a drink again. Not even on your birthday,” she told him. “I never have to tell you if I ever have one,” McManus thought to himself.
Rodriguez and McManus worked out a compromise: he could keep going to the bar, but he had to tell his friends about his health problems so they would put the brakes on. He had to try to drink less, and keep doing tests that monitored his liver.
“He’s been very honest with me,” Rodriguez said. Why more than with your doctor? I asked McManus.
“She’s a doctor,” he said.
The Care Coordination program, a city-wide initiative now in 28 sites in different hospitals around New York, was inspired and trained by a Boston-based program called PACT, for Prevention, Access to Care and Treatment. PACT is part of Partners in Health — a nongovernmental group famous for its work in Haiti, Rwanda and elsewhere. Part of Partners’ strategy is to use people from the community who are paid a stipend to visit patients, watch them take their pills and support them. Since 1995, PACT has been using these ideas in tough neighborhoods of Boston, first with H.I.V. patients and now with people with chronic diseases such as diabetes. The PACT project trains people from the community, some of whom have the same diseases and similar problems as their patients, to be community health workers.
The new health reform law encourages pilot programs to try different forms of medical homes, and the better care and cost savings that come from improving adherence with peers or lay people like Rodriguez are attractive. The New Yorker magazine writer Atul Gawande recently profiled two clinics that use this model, in Atlantic City and Camden, N.J.
There are successful programs that use nurses for outreach. The Nurse-Family Partnership sends nurses to visit low-income first-time mothers, beginning in pregnancy and continuing until the child is two. The program now operates in 32 states and has proven to greatly improve the life of both child and mother. The Camden program that Gawande wrote about also uses nurses and nurse practitioners to make home visits.
But nurses are expensive home visitors, and they may not even be the best people for the job. “Given the rising cost of health care, we have found having peer-based health promoters providing care management is an equally effective way to provide high-quality care at a low cost,” said Ayesha Cammaerts, the director of operations at PACT. “Especially with patients who suffer from substance abuse and mental health issues, they need someone they feel comfortable letting into their environment. Sometimes patients don’t feel they can connect to clinicians from outside their community,” she said.
PACT’s methods work. A study of AIDS patients found that the patients’ use of appropriate medicines rose — they were becoming adherent. At the same time, spending on hospitalization dropped by nearly two-thirds. Overall, patient costs dropped by 36 percent. Even taking into account the $6,000-per-patient cost of PACT, patient costs dropped 16 percent. And in a group of people who would likely have died if they had not been in the program, 70 showed clinical improvement.
The PACT method is likely to be an important part of the future of American medicine. Many of the deficiencies of American health care require not more technology, but the human touch. It’s certainly true for high-risk, high-cost patients, but it can help nearly everyone get better health for less money. In Saturday’s column, I’ll write about how.
And yet the Cardinals are in position to complete a three-game sweep of the Cubs on Sunday night after erasing deficits of 4-0 and 6-4 on Saturday before Kolten Wong's two-run walk-off homer in the 10th inning capped an 8-6 victory Saturday.
The win, however, cost the first-place Cardinals center fielder Tommy Pham, who left in the second inning with right groin tightness, catcher Yadier Molina, who left the game in the ninth inning after being hit by a foul tip, and closer Bud Norris in the 10th inning with a triceps injury.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, manager Mike Matheny told reporters that all three players were candidates for replacements.
Despite the injuries, though, the Cardinals improved to 3-1 this season against the two-time defending National League Central champions.
"I've never (played) in the World Series or those kinds of games," Cardinals outfielder Marcel Ozona told reporters after he tied the game in the ninth inning with a two-run double. "This feels like more of a regular game."
But after trailing twice Saturday, including by two runs late, St. Louis' latest win felt like so much more than a normal game in early May.
"I'm telling you, we never feel like we're out of it," Cardinals third baseman Matt Carpenter told reporters, according to the team's official website. "This was a really great win for us, and everybody had a piece of it."
Michael Wacha (4-1, 3.62 ERA) will try to deliver the series sweep for the Cardinals, who have won four straight games.
Wacha won four straight games in April before he registered a no-decision last week against the Chicago White Sox when he allowed two runs and scattered five hits in five innings. Wacha is 4-7 with a 6.41 ERA in 16 games (14 starts) against the Cubs.
The Cubs will enter Sunday's primetime showdown having lost four straight games after putting together five straight victories. The Cubs finally showed promise offensively Saturday, when they snapped a nine-game string of games in which they scored three or fewer runs.
But after blowing two different leads as their slide continued, the Cubs will attempt to get back on track in Sunday's series finale.
The back and forth Cubs performance has been difficult to predict after they finished a 5-2 homestand despite struggling to score runs.
Manager Joe Maddon found silver linings in the Cubs' recent roller coaster ride and continues to point to how early in the season his team's Jekyll and Hyde act has surfaced.
"Regardless of what your plan may be, teams are going to go through these moments," Maddon told reporters before Saturday's game, according to the Chicago Tribune. "It just happens to be ours right now. I want to continue to work like we've been working. I believe in our guys and believe in our methods. It's just the ebb and flow of the season. Right now, it's our turn. We'll come out of it and be fine."
Jon Lester will take the mound for the Cubs. Lester (2-1, 2.73) has already beaten the Cardinals once this season when he threw six innings and allowed an unearned run and two hits April 19. Lester is 6-4 with a 3.16 ERA in 15 career starts against the Cardinals.
Talking to the press people here at the Heliport on Saturday, the National BJP leader, while stating the Naga issue as complicated, said all the stakeholders would taken on board while trying to find a permanent solution to it.
When asked about a series of protests in Manipur against what it called the Center’s reported plan to extend the Article 371A of the Constitution of India in the State in trying to resolve the Naga issue, Madhav said there were talks with many stakeholders, and the Government of India was sincerely trying to find a solution to the longstanding Naga political issue “that is acceptable to all.” Even there were many Naga groups and they had to take them along while trying to find a permanent solution to the issue.
On their party’s announcement that there should be “Election for Solution” while Naga civil societies and other political parties in the State were for “Solution before Election” and also whether there would be any possibility of settling the Naga issue before the next Parliamentary Election, Madhav refused to give any timeframe for the settlement but said there were about seven months to the next Parliamentary Election which is likely to be held in the month of April 2019. He further expressed the hope that since their party, BJP, was in power in Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, besides a major ally in the PDA Government in Nagaland, there would be a resolution to the Naga issue sooner than later.
He also informed that the Central Government was working out to extend all possible helps towards restoring unprecedented damages caused by the recent massive landslides and floods in Nagaland.
The BJP National Secretary was here to meet their party people to discuss about the upcoming Parliamentary Elections. He did not say they would be setting up their own BJP candidate for the upcoming Parliamentary Election in the State. He, however, stated that they would be discussing the matter with their party people in the State as to whether they would be setting up or not.
Earlier on his arrival here at the Heliport, he was received by BJP Ministers - Deputy Chief Minister Y Patton, Minister for Higher and Technical Education and Nagaland BJP Unit President Temjen Imna Along Longkumer, Medical Minister Pangnyu Phom - and other party people.
LUCERNE VALLEY — A motorist on Thursday morning found the body of a bicyclist who had been struck by a hit-and-run driver the night before.
Angelo “Andy” Douglas Azzato, 47, of Lucerne Valley had been riding east on Highway 247 when he was struck from behind, San Bernardino County coroner’s officials said.
Investigators say the crash occurred either late Wednesday or early Thursday.
A passing motorist found his body on the side of the road just before 8 a.m..
Anyone with information may call the California Highway Patrol’s Victorville office, 760-241-1186.
Relatives of Azzato, who are being sought by coroner’s officials, may call 909-387-2978.
Famously tight-lipped about her Scientology faith, The Handmaid’s Tale star Elisabeth Moss has opened up in a candid new interview.
Elisabeth Moss won’t delve into the specifics of her beliefs in Scientology, but she does think they perfectly align with her work on The Handmaid’s Tale, despite what critics may think.
“Listen, it’s a complicated thing because the things that I believe in, I can only speak to my personal experience and my personal beliefs. One of the things I believe in is freedom of speech,” she told The Daily Beast.
“I believe we as humans should be able to critique things. I believe in freedom of the press. I believe in people being able to speak their own opinions.
“I don’t ever want to take that away from anybody, because that actually is very important to me,” she continued. “At the same time, I should hope that people educate themselves for themselves and form their own opinion, as I have.
“The things that I believe in personally, for me, The Handmaid’s Tale, and the ability to do something that is artistically fulfilling but is also personally fulfilling, I’ve never had that.
Moss, 36, said taking away the right to talk about certain topics or believing in certain religions would cause society to turn into a place that mirrors Gilead, the fictional dystopia that serves as the setting for The Handmaid’s Tale.
“I don’t choose to talk about not just religion, but my personal life — who I’m dating and that kind of thing,” she said.
“ … I think people should be allowed to talk about what they want to talk about and believe what they want to believe and you can’t take that away — and when you start to take that away, when you start to say ‘you can’t think that,’ ‘you can’t believe that,’ ‘you can’t say that,’ then you get into trouble. Then you get into Gilead.
While the former West Wing star is passionate about her religion, there are also tenets of it in which she doesn’t believe, such as its history of having anti-LGBTQ views.
“Which is not where I stand. It’s like, it’s a lot to get into and unpack that I can’t do. But that is not my bag,” she said.
TOPEKA, Kan. (WIBW) -- With a snowstorm (and possible blizzard) moving, many of us will spend Sunday indoors. And, while our four-legged friends may come with their own fur coats, they are still vulnerable to frostbite and exposure.
According to the ASPCA, the winter winds’ cold, dry air and chilly rain and snow can chap our pets’ paws and dry out their skin. But, that’s not the only problems they face. The chemicals used to melt ice can be “downright dangerous” when they lick their paws to clean them.
Don’t leave your pets alone in the car. While we often hear about how quickly cars heat up during summer months, they can turn into refrigerators in the winter.
Finally, the ASPCA reminds pet owners if it’s too cold for them, it’s probably too cold for their pets. So, they recommend keeping them inside. If they are left outside, the pets could freeze, become disoriented, lost, stolen, injured, or killed.
Madore received the package along with three crosses she had ordered in memory of her son Christopher Medina who died July 15, 2009, in a traffic accident along the Carson River.
She purchased the crosses from Harriet Carter, a Pennsylvania mail order company.
“I gave one to Christopher’s father, to his grandmother, to my best friend, and kept one for myself,” Madore said.
The crosses arrived individually boxed with Christopher’s name on the outside.
Madore didn’t open the fourth box until she went to the site of the accident near the old power dam to place it with other items honoring her son’s memory.
“At first, I was very, very, very upset, so devastated. Then I got this really weird feeling. It was like angels – or maybe Chris – had to let me know this little girl needed to be remembered,” Madore said.
She contacted the company the next day, but was unable to find out who ordered the cross for Holly or what happened to the fourth memorial she ordered for her son.
“When I called the company, they said I should just throw Holly’s away, but I’m not going to do that,” she said.
Over the next several weeks, Madore said she made nearly 20 telephone calls across the country and used the Internet, Facebook, MySpace and every social network she could think of to try to track down the girl’s family.
She left several telephone messages, but no one called her back.
If she can’t find whoever ordered the memorial, Madore said she would place it next to her son’s cross which the company replaced.
“Chris was always very compassionate, and he would be OK with having her cross next to his,” Madore said.
Madore said the experience has taught her another lesson.
“It was an awakening to me and a reminder that I am not the only parent who lost a child. My heart goes out to her family. She’s just a little lost soul,” Madore said.
Rockland — Maine-based nonprofit WindowDressers coordinates community volunteers to build affordable, re-usable, interior insulating window inserts that tighten up existing windows. The cost of the insert depends on the size of the window, but averages $25 for a medium-sized insert in natural pine. Twenty-two percent of the inserts built are reserved for low-income customers for a small donation. Go to windowdressers.org or call 596-3073 to sign up.
Volunteers are needed now through December at the Lincoln Street Center, 24 Lincoln St., where lumber for the inserts is cut, drilled, and assembled before being sent out to the 27 Community Builds across the state. At the Community Builds, customers and volunteers come together in an organized, barn-raising model to construct the custom-built inserts for themselves and their neighbors.
The production center at Lincoln St is open from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, and volunteers can sign up online for morning or afternooon volunteer shifts at windowdressers.org, or call 226-3555 to speak with a volunteer coordinator. Volunteers of all skill levels are welcome and will be trained on site.
France is in a difficult position. It has not had a sufficient spur to reform, despite the platitudes by both Sarkozy and Hollande. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a great spur to Germany, though it took it a few years to realize it. A capital strike against the periphery by both creditors in the Eurozone and international investors forced the periphery to adopt policies they would not have otherwise.
Large pools of capital, including central banks and sovereign wealth funds continue to buy French bonds, keeping yields near German levels. The logic is not so much about fair value based on economic fundamentals. Instead, it is a political judgment. Despite the divergence between German and French economic prowess, the two remain the twin pillars of Europe. As long as one is confident that EMU remains intact, then France's credit is as good as German credit.