Miss the last #AgBookClub chat? No worries, we’ve compiled a summary of the chat to prepare you for next week!
This week, we continued discussing our January selection, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, by Michael Ruhlman. Week 4 covered pages 177 through 260, where we learned about the items around the perimeter of the store. Besides the expected produce department and dairy and meat cases, you can also find the prepared foods section here. It’s like a restaurant, but at grocery store prices – surprisingly, we learned that most grocery stores actually lose money on the prepared foods. We also learned why prepared foods came to be at the store where, historically, people have purchased ingredients for food to be made at home, and where the author thinks we may be headed as a society.
Below are several responses that we thought summed up the Week 4 chat well, covered themes, or contained thought-provoking questions or comments.
Feel free to chime in with your thoughts in the comments section of this post or on Twitter (clicking the date at the bottom of each tweet will take you directly to that tweet on Twitter’s website). You can see the full conversation by searching “#AgBookClub” on Twitter.
Q1: What’s one thing that’s jumped out at you in this section? Any key takeaways you’d like to share?
Q2: What stage of “done” to you prefer your groceries to be in when you get your hands on them?
Q3: What makes people suspicious of corn in animal diets – or their own? What could the industry do to address it? Or what is being done that works?
Q4: What’s one company you think does a great job of opening up to consumers?
Q5: How would you define “sustainable and humane” livestock farming? How easy is it to buy meat from a producer that fits your standard?
Q6: Hydroponics mean that produce can pretty much be grown anywhere, in any season. Are hydroponics the future of produce?
Join us for Week 5 on Wednesday, January 31st. We’ll be discussing pages 261 – the end. See the reading schedule here. If you’re never participated in AgBookClub and aren’t sure if you should jump in halfway through, please do! We’d love to have you join us!
The #AgBookClub Twitter chat takes place Wednesdays at 8pm CST.
Check out what’s coming up on #AgBookClub in 2018. Have a book-lover friend? Invite them to join!
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