The Green Fork is the official blog of the Eat Well Guide. Click here to Find Good Food.

The beginning of autumn marks the point when many of our favorite fruits and vegetables are ripe for the picking. This year, harvest has become a national affair. Michelle Obama’s famed White House garden is in bloom and ready to offer its bounty to a country hungry for nutritional guidance. Food columnist and author Mark Bittman recently journeyed to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue to discover what the Obamas can teach us about healthful eating.

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USDA is Loco for Local: Everyone’s excited about the new Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative (henceforth to be known as KYFx2) the USDA rolled out this week, which includes a focus on rural development and direct marketing, the opening of the new farmers’ market near the White House and funds for farm-to-school programs and community food projects. Tom Philpott brings us back down to earth.

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Noting the problems associated with large scale consumption of bottled water, the Take Back the Tap campaign asks people to choose tap water over bottled water, but a recent New York Times article by Charles Duhigg, Toxic Waters: Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering, might give some people the impression that tap water is not always safe. Before consumers rush to fill their pantries with bottle water, however, there are a few important points to consider.

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With great excitement about the USDA’s Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food initiative, which rolled out this week, and particular joy over the White House farmers’ market, which opens today, here is an inspirational video from our friends at Cooking Up a Story. This one is about a farmer who’s helping build his local economy while feeding local schoolchildren more nutritious food. Farm to School networks, like farmers’ markets, are excellent methods by which we can rebuild our local economies and our local food distribution systems.

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“The Fertile Well,” “A Flooded Future,” and “Half Full/Half Empty,” tell stories, respectively, about the falaj, an ancient Arabic freshwater delivery system in Oman; the proposed damming and subsequent flooding of a Turkish town on the Tigris called Hasankeyf and the life-altering ramifications for its residents; and finally, the story of a Palestinian farmer and an Israeli agronomist who both think that freshwater distribution for agriculture needs to be administered better at top levels of government.

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