Asheville Grown Business Alliance — profile

“With Asheville’s unprecedented growth and tourist traffic, we face new challenges and opportunities,” says Franzi Charen, founder and director of Asheville Grown Business Alliance, a grassroots movement helping level the playing field for locally owned businesses. “We want to foster a more in-depth conversation about what we want this community to look like 20 to 50 […]

Asheville hosts forum on Growing the Appalachia­n Food Economy

With local-food sales predicted to reach $7 billion this year, it makes sense for cities, counties, states and regions to focus on the local food company. To that end, the Appalachian Regional Commission is hosting a forum on the issue today and tomorrow, April 4, at the Renaissance Asheville Hotel. As one participant noted via Twitter, “Sustainable farming only occurs when social responsibility, environmental stewardship and economic viability work together.”

Whole Foods: The bigger the worse?

Whole Foods Market of Austin,Texas, recently bought Greenlife Grocery’s two stores for about $15 million. When one reads the literature about Whole Foods, it is easy to lose count of the smaller, organic, green local food markets this $8 billion dollar, multinational corporation has bought out. I, for instance, didn't know that the $1 billion, […]

Green capitalism still sucks

On May 1, known to most of the world as International Workers’ Day or May Day, the Asheville Grown Business Alliance is putting on a "Big Love Fest" downtown to "promote our vibrant local economy." While local capitalists celebrating themselves is always revolting, the choice to do so on a 120-year-old anti-capitalist holiday is a […]