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Thoughts on Land Reform Summits in San Francisco By Raj Patel, 04/19/2014 In San Francisco, from April 25-28, 400 people from across the country and around the world gathered to discuss an awkward problem – land reform in America. Land reform is a loaded term, one that reeled conference participants’ imaginations toward the antics of Third […]

Novella Carpenter's latest book! Gone Feral: Tracking My Dad Through the Wild Gone Feral is Novella Carpenter’s search for her father. Back-to-the-land homesteader, gifted classical guitarist, Korean War vet, hermit, curmudgeon, George Carpenter has been absent for most of his daughter’s life. But when he officially goes missing— only to be found in a fleabag Arizona motel, escaping the brutal Idaho […]

Read National Geographic's piece, Feeding 9 Billion, HERE. (with some incredible photography) Eric Holt-Gimenez of Food First responds HERE. Feeding Nine Billion: Five Steps to the Wrong Solution Eric Holt-Giménez | 04.25.2014 National Geographic‘s recent online slideshow featuring an article by global ecologist Jonathan Foley lays out a Five Step Plan to Feed the World that proposes to […]

Food for Thought, For Becoming at Home in Our Place, For Thoughtfulness in Producing Food. By Gary Nabhan With future generations in mind, may my family and friends never leave the land we steward poorer, nor its water scarcer than conditions were before we acquired responsibility for their care. May we keep land meant to […]

Preliminary results from the 2012 Census of Agriculture show the increasing role of women in U.S. agriculture—especially on organic and small-scale farms. When Lindsey Morris Carpenter was a college student studying art in Philadelphia, she never expected that, just a decade later, she would spend most of her days fixing up tractors, turning piles of […]

HERE. Reading materials on topics of agrarian interest, including the following: agricultural history, rural social movements land tenure across history and cultures rise of capitalism, colonialism, and international markets agricultural policy labor and solidarity economics social justice and movements for change subsistence and peasant studies

'Another Way of Looking at the World' Arundhati Roy in conversation on writing, politics and her latest: 'Capitalism: A Ghost Story.' By Derrick O'Keefe and Jahanzeb Hussain, 1 Apr 2014  

Across the northern plains, native grassland is being turned into farmland at a rate not seen since the 1920s. The environmental consequences could be disastrous.  Article by Jocelyn C. Zuckerman On a rainy Monday in mid-October, six middle-aged men in denim and camouflage sat bent over coffee mugs at the Java River Café, in Montevideo, […]

An important article.  Is there Atrazine in your drinking water? By Allison Vuchnich and Gil Shochat For more than 50 years farmers across North America have been spraying atrazine, a pesticide, on crops, mainly corn, applying millions of pounds a year. That widespread use of the weed killer has also led to runoff. Atrazine can […]

A VALUABLE REPUTATION After Tyrone Hayes said that a chemical was harmful, its maker pursued him. By Rachel Aviv for The New Yorker; February 10, 2014 In 2001, seven years after joining the biology faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, Tyrone Hayes stopped talking about his research with people he didn’t trust. He instructed the students […]

The Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development is a great resource in general, but you might want to take a look at this back issue from 2010, which has a focus on "Growing New Farmers".

How tiny house communities can work for both the haves and the have nots By Eve Andrews Ryan Mitchell lives and breathes tiny houses. He has been running the popular website The Tiny Life for the past five years; is currently planning a tiny house conference for approximately 120 people in Charlotte, N.C., where he […]

Rainton Herdshare David Finlay - 11 March 2014 I’m afraid this isn’t an article about how our broken food system is driving climate change, biodiversity loss, diffuse pollution, resource depletion, anti-biotic resistance, animal and social welfare degradation, ill health and food insecurity. And it’s not about how someone (else)should do something about it. I assume […]

A recent NYTimes opinion article begs the public to support your local slaughterhouse. Why? Costs and regulations have caused a sharp decline in slaughterhouse facilities across the state. As a result, small producers in California are being included in a blanket recall for 8.7 million pounds of beef.   "Our beef comes from grass-fed cattle. […]

    Here's an excerpt from a recent post in the Ranching for profit blog. The whole post can be found HERE "According to one cattle industry leader quoted in a prominent publication, Those who are not willing to take advantage of the new technology may not be able to survive. He isn’t alone in believing […]

Farm Bill Reflects Shifting American Menu and a Senator’s Persistent Tilling By Jennifer Steinhauer, MARCH 8, 2014 WASHINGTON — The farm bill signed by President Obama last month was at first glance the usual boon for soybean growers, catfish farmers and their ilk. But closer examination reveals that the nation’s agriculture policy is increasingly more whole grain […]

...would be incentives for other regions  to begin and expand vegetable production. Indeed here they are, stepping high! Imagine the job creation potential...OH WAIT, you don't have to: Leopold Center did an Iowa jobs report. The Seeds of a New Generation by Michael Moss for the New York Times John D. Jackson lives in the […]

Maine farmer, seed curator forms new grass-roots group By Mary Pols for the Portland Press Herald, February 16 After a rift in the community of seed-savers, Will Bonsall takes matters into his own hands to continue protecting hundreds of varieties of potatoes and other plants.   Read the full article HERE and check out the […]

Following up from this GRIST article on how pesticide companies went after a frog-loving scientist, this recent article helps to shine some light on what "Good Laboratory Practices" are and how regulators favor fancy labs over small-scale research. Check out the article HERE

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/85190361] Interview, photos and video by Erik Hoffner, World Ark contributor Think for a moment about the pressing challenges the world faces: poverty, hunger, political instability, war and climate change. Loss of topsoil is seldom included in that list, even though it plays a lead role in all of them. Some experts estimate that […]

Heavy use of the world's most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers, according to a new study. The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of "glyphosate," the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, […]

a short piece about one greenhorn in North Carolina.  The article also mentions an important  N.C.  incubator farm - the Farmer Incubator and Grower Project, which greenhorns in the area might want to check out! Growing the Grower at Octopus Garden by Kellyn Montgomery for Catawba County Extension A few weeks ago, I talked about […]

by NOFA-NY's Farmer of the Year There was a lot of pride and excitement in the North Country agricultural community when "one of our own" was named Farmer of the Year by the Northeast Organic Farmers Association – New York chapter. Brian Bennett and his wife, Ann, have been farming on Bittersweet Farms in Heuvelton […]

An older article (July 2013), but worth a read. Scientists discover what’s killing the bees and it’s worse than you thought By Todd Woody,  July 24, 2013 As we’ve written before, the mysterious mass die-off of honey bees that pollinate $30 billion worth of crops in the US has so decimated America’s apis mellifera population […]

An NPR piece from a few weeks ago. The Fruits Of Free Trade: How NAFTA Revamped The American Diet by TED ROBBINS, January 09, 2014 Walk through the produce section of your supermarket and you'll see things you'd never have seen years ago — like fresh raspberries or green beans in the dead of winter. Much […]

The Goodman Affair: Monsanto Targets the Heart of Science by Claire Robinson and Jonathan Latham, PhD Richard Smith, former editor of the British Medical Journal, has jested that instead of scientific peer review, its rival The Lancet had a system of throwing a pile of papers down the stairs and publishing those that reached the bottom. On another occasion,Smith was […]

  19.12.2013 | World food system Author: Prof. Jaboury Ghazoul, ETH Zürich The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that food production needs to increase by 70 percent within 40 years to meet the needs of an ever growing population. Scientists are working feverishly to develop improved crops and production systems […]

by a current favorite author.   Making It by Evgeny Morozov Anderson defines “making” so expansively that all of us seem to qualify, at least once a day. “If you love to plant, you’re a garden Maker. Knitting and sewing, scrap-booking, beading, and cross-stitching—all Making.” There’s nothing in this book about mythmaking, but that surely […]

A wealth of information here about the Gullah/Geechee & their Foodways, including a wonderful post on the "Rural Woman"

which is also keyword searchable.  The MANAS Journal Each eight-page weekly issue of the MANAS Journal contained several short essays, crafted from a wide variety of sources, that reflected on the human condition. Written, edited, and published for 41 years by Henry Geiger, the MANAS Journal was the work of a lifetime that continues to […]

A lift for nation's oldest stone barn Great Stone Barn in Columbia County tells story of Shaker farms By Bob Gardinier The Shakers believed work, especially that done by human hands, was a form of high prayer. The 1859 Great Stone Barn in this Columbia County town is a good example. A rough, 50-foot-wide, one-story edifice […]

Pouring Cheese on Icy Roads in (Where Else?) Wisconsin By STEVEN YACCINO Published: December 23, 2013 MILWAUKEE — In a state whose license plates advertise it as America’s Dairyland, where lawmakers once honored the bacterium in Monterey Jack as the state’s official microbe and where otherwise sober citizens wear foam cheesehead hats, road crews are […]

Rebuilding America's Economy with Family Farm Centered Food Systems Seeds of hope lie in America’s family farmers and ranchers despite the grim economic conditions facing the nation. Our new report seeks to underscore what we at Farm Aid know as a simple truth: supporting family farmers and family farm centered food systems is a powerful […]

and what would that mean? Secret trade agenda threatens shift toward sustainable food system October 24, 2013 by Karen Hansen-Kuhn After being delayed by the U.S. government shutdown, talks for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) are quietly gearing up again. Tariff barriers between the U.S. and EU are already low, so these negotiations […]

worthwhile winter reading!  Subscribe here.   The Baffler, est. 1988, is a printed and digital magazine of art and criticism appearing three times annually—spring, summer, and fall. We’re headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts; edited by John Summers,Thomas Frank, and Chris Lehmann; designed by Patrick Flynn; distributed byMIT Press; and delivered to subscribers and bookstores in all fifty U.S. states. The Baffler is now […]

this one in berlin http://contemporaryfoodlab.com/

Young farmers planting futures in San Mateo County By Max A. Cherney Tony Cozzolino and his wife, Stephanie, are not your typical millennials. While the majority of their peers live in the increasingly connected and tech-savvy Bay Area, the Cozzolinos have chosen another way of life: Farming. Almost entirely by himself, Tony, 28, plants 12 […]

Thank you, Bob St. Peter! The list is just a start. Wendell Berry wrote in Conserving Communities of the need for farmers to stop looking for help where we continually fail to find it. Sadly, in my decade of food work in Maine I have found little direct financial support for farmers, and about zero […]

  Ring of Power ‘The Circle,’ by Dave Eggers By ELLEN ULLMAN Mae Holland, a woman in her 20s, arrives for her first day of work at a company called the Circle. She marvels at the beautiful campus, the fountain, the tennis and volleyball courts, the squeals of children from the day care center “weaving […]