5 Inspiring Stories of Sustainable Food in Ohio

Armed with a shovel, clad in overalls, Dave Brandt is leading an underground movement. Behind his farm's machine shed, a crowd peers into a knee-deep trench, the soil mounded beside it. Among the onlookers is David White, chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service, the $4 billion federal agency with 12,000 employees that grew in response to Dust Bowl-era land depletion.

At his Lake Erie cottage, he's not Don or Mr. Ralph. He's simply the farmer. "I'll go up and down the street and the kids will holler at me 'Hey farmer,'" Ralph said with a smile as he pulled into the gravel driveway between his barns and his Marion County home.

Creeping along the branch, across the leaf and onto the delicate skin of an apple, a bug is destined to commit an unforgivable sin. Its testament: a brown scar chewed into the perfect fruit.

Tom Price is the type of guy who can see the silver lining. Take his hog barn at Pork-Q-Pine Farm in Delaware County. Where many people would see pigs living like typical pigs, Price sees flowerbeds.

Imagine a crazy concoction of inedible ice cream and other food waste, grease, fats, oils and sewer sludge powering homes and cars throughout Ohio.