Fishermen sell their products at farmers' markets for the first time in Guanacaste

In Alabama’s largest city, a story of economic confidence in an unlikely place.

Whitsons Culinary Group’s food-making center, in a bucolic town of 3,000, produces about 80,000 meals a day. It addresses the question of how to feed students in a school district where many buildings have no kitchens.

California class-action lawsuits against corporations are pushing the envelope on accountability for human trafficking and slavery in supply chains. The keyword is transparency: If companies are forced to disclose on labels when labor abuses are involved in making a product, they may be more likely to vigorously police their suppliers.

After a major fire, labor standards in Bangladesh are improving, but workers must have a voice if these changes are to be sustainable.

The Clinton Giustra Enterprise Partnership develops enterprises that foster sustainable economic development, focusing especially on empowering farmers and women.

After the success of North Carolina pork in Japan, the NC department of agriculture aims to help other local producers try their products in this foreign market to stimulate the state's economy.

In an agricultural system designed for big-industrial growers, many farmers struggle to bridge the relationship between their produce and consumers, as well as strengthening local economies. The food hub is a collection of buildings that process and distribute the sale of local food. Eastern Market in Detroit is an example of a food hub that makes local produce accessible to low-income neighborhoods.

For years, one of Cleveland's poorest neighborhoods seemed unalterable no matter how many government programs and well-meaning philanthropies got involved; a place where abject poverty, joblessness and crime reinforce the racism in a city long divided, and where infants still die at a higher rate than almost anywhere else in the country. But a former CIA executive and a new breed of lettuce are transforming the poorest parts of the Rust Belt city.

As popular music has become digital and immaterial in the twenty-first century, record stores are hard to find and those in business struggle to be commercially viable. Used Kids record store in Columbus, OH has been in business for thirty years and is perhaps even more popular now that it was ten years ago. The current management treat the medium of vinyl not as a museum artifact, but rather as a commodity in demand by selling online, holding private events with collectors, and selling the materiality to young people.

Raton, a town once surrounded by eight coal mines, now has a main street of boarded-up buildings. There is reason for optimism as the town diversifies its local economy, betting on "a mix of small manufacturing businesses, health care and specialty services, and hospitality for travelers" to endure the sudden decline in mining revenue. Its calculated revitalization may hold lessons for other towns.