What the Winter Tomato Gets Wrong

Local food needs a new systems design.

Nov 18 • 

Adam Cohen

4

October 2025

Hype Kills Roots

Why Innovation Won’t Outrun Design Constraints

Oct 2 • 

Adam Cohen

6

2

2

July 2025

Fewer Farmers and More Barriers

It should be hard to believe.

Jul 25 • 

Adam Cohen

1

What We Talk About When We Talk About Local: When Trust Scales, So Can We

Local food doesn’t survive on sentiment.

Jul 11 • 

Adam Cohen

What We Talk About When We Talk About Local: What We Lose When We Keep It Small

When we celebrate local food, we often picture community, connection, and the pleasure of a familiar face behind the basket.

Jul 9 • 

Adam Cohen

4

2

What We Talk About When We Talk About Local: The False Choice

We talk about local food like it only exists at the farmers market.

Jul 7 • 

Adam Cohen

5

1

The Harvest Loop: Moving from Seed to Stuck in Scaling Local Foods

Four easy steps to build customer connection and engagement.

Jul 3 • 

Adam Cohen

4

3

2

The Challenge: Engage the community

In other words: How to Grow a Movement

Jul 1 • 

Adam Cohen

5

2

3

June 2025

The Challenge: Policy meets Advocacy

Big Ag gets subsidies. Local farms get booth fees.

Jun 29 • 

Adam Cohen

7

2

The Challenge: Everyone wants more local farms.

But almost no one has figured out how to sell the crops.

Jun 28 • 

Adam Cohen

16

2

5

The Challenge: No Cooler, No Car, No Chance

Why Infrastructure Kills New Farms

Jun 23 • 

Adam Cohen

3

3

1

The Challenge: We Can't Fund the Farms We Need

Expanding on the Roadmap to Scale Small Farms - Essay #3

Jun 20 • 

Adam Cohen

8

2

4