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your choice. but do something... Occupy Wall Street rediscovers the radical imagination The young people protesting in Wall Street and beyond reject this vain economic order. They have come to reclaim the future By David Graeber in The Guardian  

High Costs Make It Harder To Grow Young Farmers Published: September 23, 2011 by Clay Masters In farm country, business is still booming. Commodity prices remain high, and investors are funneling millions of dollars into buying farmland, making it quite enticing for the would-be farmer who wants to leave the rat race. But surprisingly, these […]

View the press release HERE First New Yorker To Serve On Senate Agriculture Committee In Nearly 40 Years – Held Listening Sessions With Local Farmers Across NYS September 20, 2011 Washington, D.C. – As Congress prepares to write and debate the next Farm Bill, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s first member of the Senate Agriculture […]

a powerful article by Raj Patel in The Nation. Amid the joy of local, seasonal ingredients and tides of young people with dirt freshly lodged under their fingernails, it feels unkind to point to the bigger problems within the food system. But it’s worth tempering an optimism of the will with a pessimism of the […]

Vegetable Gardens Are Booming in a Fallow Economy WEST LIBERTY, Ky. — As the economy continues to stagnate in towns and cities across the country, here in eastern Kentucky it is causing things to sprout. Garden plots are dug into the green hills, laid out in fuller force than people have seen in years. People […]

A Commitment to Environmental Justice August 8th, 2011 Posted by Tracy Russo All Americans deserve to be protected from environmental health hazards. That is why last week, the Justice Department, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the White House Council on Environmental Quality announced an agreement and signed a “Memorandum of Understanding on Environmental Justice […]

Governor Markell signs Delaware Young Farmers bill at State Fair Harrington —Gov. Jack Markell signed into law a bill creating the Delaware Young Farmers Program. Markell signed the law at the Delaware State Fair, which has been a showcase for Delaware agriculture for more than 90 years. "Delaware is taking an important step to make […]

Financial Times: US farming groups hit back at activists August 16, 2011 By Alan Rappeport in New York The Financial Times Big US farming groups are joining forces in a multimillion dollar marketing campaign to respond to attacks by activists and small farmers that accuse them of promoting unhealthy food and abusing animals. The outreach […]

what are your thoughts? http://themillbrookindependent.com/content/life-farm-wife

On 94.9 KUOW in Seattle this morning, featuring our friends Farmstead Meatsmith. If you missed it, check out the link for a download. Meat: Raising, Slaughtering And Butchering Your Own Animals Marcie Sillman 08/26/2011 at 9:00 a.m. As you walk around your neighborhood in the city these days, you're likely to see backyard gardens with […]

More colleges offer organic, sustainable ag courses By Shannon Dininny, Associated Press PULLMAN, Wash. — Misha Manuchehri slowly picks her way through plots of barley, wheat and peas. Every so often, the graduate student in crop science at Washington State University stoops to pluck an errant weed at the farm just off campus. With a […]

http://turnstylenews.com/2011/08/01/why-are-young-educated-americans-going-back-to-the-farm/ just noticed a lot of smart kids heading the other way

rockstar farmer and co-founder of the national young farmer coalition, Benjamin Shute, weighs in on farm labor issues in the NY times: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms-survive-without-illegal-labor/we-need-a-new-generation-of-american-farmers

...and yeah, it probably won't create any new ones either. "And above all, the government needs to stop regulating genetic modifications for which there is no scientifically credible evidence of harm." Never mind infiltrating the gene pools of seed crops all over the world, or creating super weeds, or destroying butterfly habitat....but those are not […]

A tale of two droughts By JIM FRENCH in the Kansas City Star Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/08/08/3063548/a-tale-of-two-droughts.html#ixzz1VO4z2nMN The telephone rang at 6:30 a.m. It was my wife. Her first sentence: "We had 24-hundredths of an inch of rain last night." I relished every word as if they were drops slowly soaking into parched earth. For the […]

Organic Poultry Farms Have Fewer Drug-Resistant Bacteria, Study Finds Proponents of organic meat often make the case that it's inherently better for people's health and the environment than meat raised by conventional farming methods. But the actual impacts of organic production can be tough for scientists to prove. A study out today in Environmental Health […]

Prince Charles: 'If I didn't do this, who would?' Britain's best known organic farmer on soil, sustainability and the unity of all things by  Tim Adams for The Observer, Sunday 14 August 2011 There is a sign as you turn into the drive at Highgrove that reads: "Beware. You are entering an old-fashioned establishment". After […]

Seeds of Change A new generation is bringing back small-scale, sustainable farming. by Jordy Byrd in the Pacific Northwest Inlander She's running. Her sandals kick up a cloud of dirt, which floats over the field of chickpeas and swirls in the wind. The view is part pastoral, part urban wasteland. Rusted freezer boxes and a […]

BBC News article about falling in love + young farmer clubs in Northern Ireland - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-14327513

..in the NY Times. Meet up with us Sunday at the Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, 6pm. read the article HERE!

Internet brings farmers together - "Young farmers' network moves pile of manure" By Steve Brown, Capital Press read the article HERE.

Seeds of Change A new generation is bringing back small-scale, sustainable farming. Jordy Byrd She's running. Her sandals kick up a cloud of dirt, which floats over the field of chickpeas and swirls in the wind. The view is part pastoral, part urban wasteland. Rusted freezer boxes and a multicolored school bus lie abandoned, slowly […]

a great little piece by a current farm intern. Why Are Young, Educated Americans Going Back To The Farm? by Nelson Harvey on August 1, 2011 I am a 25-year-old college graduate with a degree from a fairly prestigious eastern university, and I pull weeds for a living. At first blush, you might think I’m […]

A hit list of corporate bull. courtesy of Jenny Huston via comfood. ·      It’s not all white: The cocktail of up to 20 chemicals in a glass of milk http://bit.ly/nSebg3 ·      UN World Economic and Social Survey 2011 http://bit.ly/iqAHsR ·      ‘Gas-Flushed Sandwiches’ Stay ‘Fresh’ For Two Weeks http://huff.to/reMLuG Note: CO2 & N ‘back flushing’ has […]

A nice article on using the whole vegetable, even what you'd normally compost: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/27/dining/thats-not-trash-thats-dinner.html?_r=1&hp

so says Edible East End in a recent piece featuring the Greenhorns.   Farmers Are the New Artists, and They Also Make Great Kimchi By Jessie Cacciola Farmers are really just agricultural artists, working for a balance between animal, land and humans—at least this is the feeling I was left with after one in a […]

Check out this NYT article on conflicts at universities, by good greenhorn friend Jen Washburn  

Rural Electrification In the 1930's the rural electrification strategy was brought by Roosevelt -- looks like Obama is starting to source some of his ideas from FDR times. Let's keep up the pressure.  

learn about them HERE: http://www.bestofneworleans.com/gambit/young-farmers/Content?oid=1752043    

WCSJ: Plant Diseases, Farmer Suicides And The Peril of A Hungry Future By Maryn McKenna Here’s my second report from the World Conference of Science Journalists — and if you thought the first one on diabetes in China was depressing, just wait for this one. Since I wrote SUPERBUG the book and started this blog, […]

a book about farm workers, Floria and the fast food fruit. Read the Washington Post's review here, the NY Times' here.  

An article on the all--but-vanished herbs and vegetables of our colonial predecessors: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/garden/ye-olde-kitchen-garden.html?ref=style

Remember. Big things start small. Large, young farmers at risk if land prices tumble A rise in borrowings for buying tractors has raised the threat of agriculture insolvencies if the farmland market collapses, with large operations, and younger farmers, at greatest risk, America's central bank has warned. The debt-to-asset ratio on farms run by bosses […]

  Afghanistan’s Last Locavores By PATRICIA McARDLE MANY urban Americans idealize “green living” and “slow food.” But few realize that one of the most promising models for sustainable living is not to be found on organic farms in the United States, but in Afghanistan. A majority of its 30 million citizens still grow and process […]

young farmer doesn't like the climate of agriculture... Levees Save a Farmhouse, but Farming Is Still a Risk By Campbell Robertson; June 20, 2011 in the New York Times

Advice for Young Farmers from Swanton Berry Owners by Vera Chang In a recent talk for Seattle Arts & Lectures, Wendell Berry told aspiring young farmers to “listen to the old-timers.” I’m taking the revered American poet, philosopher, and farmer up on his recommendation, and I’m especially interested in veteran farmers’ views on farm labor […]

From NCPR: Beginning and veteran farmers will gather in the Champlain Valley on Saturday for a chance to network, learn and socialize. The event, at the historic Whallonsburg Grange in Essex, will feature food, music and the screening of a documentary that focuses on a new generation of young farmers. Todd Moe talks with Hudson […]

this article in the NYtimes sheds some light: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/23/us/23crop.html?_r=2&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

They’re composting and they’re earnest. Amanda Austin and Dan Moon met here in the hudson valley on apprenticeships-and even stopped in for dinner with the greenhorns one night. Now, Amanda’s returned to her hometown, recruited Dan to come join her, and they’ve launched a community farm right in the heart of Texas.  

beer-brewing is the hip/hop thing to do, it seems check out this article in the Riverhead News-Review, a 23 year-old growing hops on his family farm