Free Talk Live

Cuba has no shortage of fertile farmland, but the country spends $1.5 billion a year importing about 70 percent of its food. The communist government's chronic struggle to get farmers to produce more is forcing authorities to grudgingly accept a greater role for market principles and the profit motive. Now authorities seem willing to go another step further, tolerating the rise of what might be described as Cuba's "free-est" market.

The underground market seeks to encourage food entrepreneurship by helping young vendors avoid roughly $1,000 a year in fees -- including those for health permits and liability insurance -- required by legitimate farmers markets. Here, where the food rave -- call it a crave -- was born, the market organizers sidestep city health inspections by operating as a private club, requiring that participants become "members" (free) and sign a disclaimer noting that food might not be prepared in a space that has been inspected.

Alabama's war on migrant labor ineffective as producers hire people to fill jobs despite .govs attempt to break area farmers continue.

"Organizations like the United Nations & the World Bank say the practice...could help feed the growing global population by introducing large-scale commercial farming to places without it. But others condemn the deals as neocolonial land grabs that destroy villages, uproot tens of thousands of farmers and create a volatile mass of landless poor. Making matters worse...much of the food is bound for wealthier nations."

Kitchen Pro, your online kitchen cabinet store, has a huge selection of quality kitchen cabinets to choose from. Find the perfect kitchen design and cabinetry for your home.

You'd think the world's self-proclaimed richest country, with an agricultural sector heavily regulated to secure Norwegian self-sufficiency of food, would never experience shortages. Wrong. Right now, we are experiencing a butter shortage in Norway. Dwindling milk production due to over-regulated farmers throwing in the towel and increased demand of fatty foods due to the low-carb dieting fad has lead to a butter shortage. The farmers, whose income consists of 70% subsidies from the government, and whose production is regulated by quotas, cannot produce enough milk to satisfy demands.

Juan Garcia's neighbor says he's a hero for going into her burning house in Farmers Branch to save her husband. But instead of a hero's award, Garcia said, what he got from the Farmers Branch police was an arrest on charges of public intoxication and assault, for touching a police officer.

A group of civilly-disobedient hemp farmers and business leaders were arrested Tuesday morning while digging up the lawn to plant industrial hemp seeds at the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration.

At this quasi-clandestine monthly event, a tribal gathering of young chefs, vendors and their iron-stomached followers are remaking the traditional farmers market as an indie food rave. In a sense it is civil disobedience on a paper plate.