Posts Tagged ‘farms’

Article from Reuters on October 5, 2009

Meatless Monday, the idea that one day a week you enjoy a vegetarian diet as a way of cutting the carbon footprint of your food supply, has only slowly made its way into the public consciousness. Until recently, the list of signers-on to the Meatless Monday idea was sort of slim: some expected figures like Colin Beavan (aka “No Impact Man”), Michael Pollan (of “the Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food” fame), and the city of Ghent, Belgium.

I’m certainly not intending any knock to the city of Ghent, but Europe is often well ahead of the U.S. in this as well as with so many other environmental activities. So it was a bit of a boost, domestically at least, for the Meatless Monday movement when the Baltimore Public School District last week announced it would adopt a Meatless Monday menu for all 80,000 the students it serves.

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Article and photo from the Mother Nature Network, September 24, 2009

After we [Mother Nature Network] published the original roundup of “40 farmers under 40,” it became abundantly clear that, from coast to coast, America loves its young farmers (and the food they produce). So we invited you to tell us about your favorite farmers under 40 — idealistic, eco-friendly, under-the-hill agrarians who are helping you bring home healthier bacon, as well as beets, lettuce, organic milk and more. And you responded.

We dug through a bounty of votes and e-mails from across the country, then we dug up some dirt on 40 of your nominations to create this inaugural “readers’ choice” edition in our “40 farmers under 40″ series. We’ve numbered the entries to help you navigate through the list, but they’re in no particular order — this is an egalitarian compilation, not a ranking. These farmers all bring their own skills, backgrounds and crop varieties to different communities, and the real winners are the locavores who get to eat all the natural grub they grow.

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Article from Fair Food Fight, September 24, 2009

It’s a testament to Pollan’s wild success that the pushback against his books, opinions, and celebrity is sharpening and deepening. The In Defense of Farmers group in Madison, which is planning to counter Michael Pollan’s speach there, is probably the grassroots farmer-based group that it claims to be — and that’s going to make Pollan’s task more challenging in the months to come.

Because it’s one thing to write books for likeminded readers, or to persuade readers to become likeminded readers, and it’s another thing entirely to turn and face the industry that one has so matter-of-factly dismantled and discredited — not only in books (Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food, etc), film appearances (Food Inc, King Corn, etc), and many NYT articles, but in the mass rejuvenation of the food and farming movement itself.

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Article from Civil Eats, September 23, 2009

Many gardeners are currently pulling up plants and preparing beds for fall. They are laying parts of their garden to rest while their squash lay about, curing in the sun. Some gardeners are already turning their backs on their plots and projecting their green minds through winter and into next spring. But fall is not the time for complacency in the garden. It’s a great time to sneak in some late plantings of lettuce and greens—and it’s the ripest time of year to save some seeds.

Saving seeds sustains us. It is a cultural activity, one that connects us to 12,000 years of the most essential human tradition. Saving seeds also connects us to our familiar food plants in new ways, teaching us to appreciate each plant’s full life cycle from seed to seed. Now, more than ever, saving seeds is also a political act—a good garden practice that doubles as agricultural activism.

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Article and image from Serious Eats, August 25, 2009:

There was a time when I cultivated tomatoes over acres, not in small pots on windowsills. I now make my home in Brooklyn and have no backyard, front yard, or rooftop to speak of. But in college I spent my summers riding in the back of pickup trucks; weeding fields; and selling tomatoes and peppers, blueberries and yellow squash at farmers markets’ throughout the D.C. area. Back at school, friends and I yearned for food that didn’t originate in the dining hall so we founded a highly successful biweekly farmers’ market. I don’t claim to have the wisdom of full-time farmers, but as a former farm worker and market manager, and as an active market go-er and home cook, I feel that I know a thing or two about what makes a good farmers’ market.

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Article from Truth Dig, September 6, 2009:

Our most potent political weapon is food. If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat, as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food, along with energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age. And if we do not build alternative food networks soon, the social and political ramifications of shortages and hunger will be devastating.

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