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A Butterfly Species Settles in San Francisco’s Market Street Two advocates track Western tiger swallowtails through the city and use art to encourage residents to think of the fluttering creatures as welcome neighbors By Aleta George for smithsonian.com August 28, 2013 “Nature is everywhere,” says lepidopterist Liam O’Brien about the tigers of San Francisco’s Market Street—Western […]

If not, you had better check her out. She's an artist, engineer and inventor for the environmental movement. Take a gander at the video below and if you want to watch more from this amazing woman, click HERE to visit her video page. [vimeo http://vimeo.com/68771598]

Nearly every state has a "Right to Farm" act, which basically protects farmers from nuisance lawsuits like when your cows moo and it's too loud for your vacation-home neighbors to tolerate. This act, however, is being pushed into other endeavors concerning deregulation and agribusiness. Listen to John Ikerd lay the smack down.

At the supermarket near his home in central Virginia, Tom Burford likes to loiter by the display of Red Delicious. He waits until he spots a store manager. Then he picks up one of the glossy apples and, with a flourish, scrapes his fingernail into the wax: T-O-M. “We can’t sell that now,” the manager […]

Cary Fowler is a man with a mission. A mission that is about securing the foundation of nothing less than earth's survival in the form of the world's smallest currency: seeds! The scientist and tireless idealist Fowler has set out to collect all existing grain types in an enormous 'cereal bank' on the Norwegian archipelago […]

Music from farm-based people! Give it a listen!  

Watch the Concert Live! If you're not joining us in Raleigh this year, you can still help celebrate from home. Watch live in HD on AXS TV starting at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific. Or you can watch our HD webcast, Farm Aid 2014 Presented by Amy's Kitchen starting at 5pm Eastern on FarmAid.org. Willie Nelson's SiriusXM channel, Willie's […]

www.uspspropertiesforsale.com It seems like a sinister art project, but it's not. The USPS is selling off properties, trying to make up for the estimated 8 billon dollar a year in losses. By some accounts, this represents a failure of state socialism, and a need for privatization. For others it represents a moment of portentous flux, where a […]

10 Reasons to Oppose ‘Right to Farm’ Amendments  I grew up on a dairy farm and currently live in a small town in a farming area. I have spent my 50-year professional career working in agriculture, mostly with farmers and people in rural communities. I think farmers have the same “right to farm” as other […]

[vimeo 102083561 w=500 h=281] more short films here

These old barns are good for more than reclaimed wood and weddingsBy Lori Rotenberk, 3 Sep 2014 for Grist Jeff Marshall rolls along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, counting barns on the horizon — 50 so far today, many of them disintegrating. Marshall heads the National Barn Alliance, a nonprofit that works with advocacy groups across the country. […]

    Joseph E. Stiglitz, Politico July/August   I hadn’t realized when I was growing up in Gary, Indiana, an industrial town on the southern shore of Lake Michigan plagued by discrimination, poverty and bouts of high unemployment, that I was living in the golden era of capitalism. It was a company town, named after […]

Click HERE to watch the videos! The Savory Institute's Annual International Conference, was held in London on August 1st and 2nd. This central location allows our partners and collaborators from around the globe to join us and contribute to this special event. We spotlighted grasslands for all their under-appreciated beauty and value. We also foster conversations around the […]

  Fair Trade, like coffee, is complex, rich and fascinating. We now have available a new educational resource: The History of Authentic Fair Trade.  In comic book format we present a version of Fair Trade that is shared by many Equal Exchange colleagues, allies, and partners.  We hope that by presenting the material in this way, […]

Yes!  SEEDS OF TRUTH – A RESPONSE TO THE NEW YORKERby Dr. Vandana Shiva(A response to the article ‘Seeds of Doubt’ by Michael Specter in The New Yorker) I am glad that the future of food is being discussed, and thought about, on farms, in homes, on TV, online and in magazines, especially of The […]

Are you part of the food community? Make your presence known! Nurseries, food banks, community kitchens and farmers markets are just some of the many points you could add. You can even put your backyard garden on the map. Click HERE to add your points to the map!

  There's a song for nearly everything tied to the grange and you can FIND IT HERE!  

Are women more willing to nurture their communities (and also their beet greens)? Are men preoccupied with techie farm toys like aquaponics? Is gender the reason the radio at the Queens Farm washing station is always stuck on Beyoncé and Alicia Keys? More significant, if urban ag work comes to be seen as women’s work, […]

speed dating while weeding = weed dating! check out this video about weed dating at Common Ground Country Fair in Maine. [vimeo 50341101 w=500 h=281] IN DEFENSE OF FEET is a journal of the work, thoughts and explorations of the folks behind Farmrun, an agrarian creative studio based in the Pacific Northwest.  

Read the Emails in the Hilarious Monsanto/Mo Rocca/Condé Nast Meltdownby Tom Philpott for Mother Jones Last week, Gawker uncovered a hapless tie-up between genetically modified seed/pesticide giant Monsanto and Condé Nast Media—publisher of The New Yorker, Bon Appetit, GQ, Self, Details, and other magazines—to produce "an exciting video series" on the "topics of food, food […]

Tres Hombres is an initiative that thrives on combined passions; sailing, traditional ships, shipbuilding, crew training, a healthy environment, good harmony and of course rum! Tres Hombres stands for enjoying life. Like a message in a bottle, the ship contains a dream about reviving traditional sailed cargo shipping, a dream that has already partly been fulfilled. […]

an artist making good work about bodies, and the terrain of production. Jackie Nickerson - Terrain "TERRAIN is Jackie Nickerson’s new work in progress. It is about us in the landscape, how we change the world we inhabit at every moment of our being human, and how, for better and for worse, the habitus that […]

a worthy kickstarter project by Steve Bivens.  In Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth: the Guide to Sustainable Shire Living I look at the problems facing mankind and our planet today, through the lens of Tolkien’s Middle Earth and the War of the Ring. Both Middle Earth, and our Earth face destruction at the hands of dark […]

The Ocean Going Farmerby Nick Halmos In the fall of 2011, my fellow 11th Hour Racing teammate, Hugh Piggin and I departed from France aboard a Class 40 as competitors in the Transat Jaques Vabre. Over the course of 26 days at sea, we laid a 6000 mile track across the  Atlantic that exited the English […]

Greenhorns Radio is radio for young farmers, by young farmers. Hosted by acclaimed activist, farmer and film-maker Severine v T Fleming, Greenhorn Radio is a weekly phone interview with next generation farmers and ranchers, surveying the issues critical to their success. We hold no punches. Greenhorns is a six year old grassroots cultural organization with […]

The Rural Academy Theater is a collaboration of individuals, two-legged & four creating theater for primarily rural audiences in response to the growing urbanization of our culture, economy, food, education, media, & art. Their annual horse-pulled tour brings performers, musicians, sculptors, & dancers to town greens, college campuses, theaters, riverbanks, & farms via horse pulled […]

A less-read book by Wendell Berry. This one is about racism, agriculture, land reform, Malcom X, Leo Tolstoy, and his intimate relationships with the Afro-American people of his childhood.Since usually we think about Wendell Berry in the white-agrarian context, this is a useful read. "With the expected grace of Wendell Berry comes The Hidden Wound, […]

This is a report from James Most, who runs  the Greenhorns AgroForestry project made possible by Nutiva. Progress of the Chestnut Project as of Summer 2014 What is Happening? Hundreds of baby chestnut seedlings have germinated and are putting on lush growth in nursery beds and pots on Orcas Island, Washington. These young trees are […]

An older article, but so relevant. The Surf and Turf Connection By Julie Flaherty What do farmers and fishermen dream about? A bumper crop of zucchini and calm seas? Perhaps. But both lose sleep over some of the same things: finding markets for their products, transporting their goods cheaply, tapping into the local foods movement […]

Scrimpy Summer Farm Tour Sometime between August 20th and the 25th, a tribe of New Yorkers (art world acolytes, anthropocene practitioners, gritty urban gardeners, and experimental musicians who were brought together during experiences of Occupy and continue to elaborate new forms of life) want to take our cultural goods (pw: blackoutjdb) and ways on the road to your farmland for a day. Taking seriously […]

Meet the powerful - and usually very private - people who own much of Scotland. Reporter David Miller goes in search of Scotland's landowners and asks whether it's fair that less than one per cent of Scots own over half of all Scotland's private land. As the government considers radical change, he asks whether big […]

This manual provides real-world examples of how small, diversified farms can cost-effectively manage food safety risk, and meet the standards set in the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) certification program. The goal was to see whether it was possible for these types of farms to actually pass a GAP audit, without breaking the […]

Check out this kickstarter campaign - a great concept! How do we bring together young organic farmers and wise energetic elders to form multigenerational retirement communities that farm? "Roadmap to Generosity Farm" is a book about how to provide (1) aspiring young farmers with land and (2) energetic elders with a healthy and intellectually stimulating […]

food chain radio explores this common issue.   Food Chain Radio Show #977: RURAL ROMANCE! Guest: Kristina Johnson, Author, The Love Lives of Farmers She moved out into the country to become a farmer, but had to name her farm “BYOB,” for “Bring your own Boyfriend.”  “The pickings out here are slim,” she said. Tiring of […]

Empire Farm Days is celebrating authors who write about agriculture. Five New York State-based authors will be talking with visitors and signing and selling books in the Cornell Marketplace Building at the 2014 Empire Farm Days on Wednesday August 6 from 10am to 4pm. The 300-acre event takes place at Rodman Lott and Son Farms, […]

This study reveals a startling and challenging truth about our tactics thus far. A great opportunity to radicalize our methodologies. Read the full paper here: http://www.yale.edu/agrarianstudies/foodsovereignty/pprs/32_Brent_2013.pdf  

What do milk and jails have to do with each other? Check out this short video to find out!

in our constant quest for rural-based, rural-themed, and rural-economy enabled artistic practices and programs, we bring you this experimental art dance troop -- who perform in the adirondacks [vimeo http://vimeo.com/62351006] THE SPACE WE MAKE is a performance collective that creates site-specific works outside of traditional theater settings. These multi-media performances incorporate input from audiences, communities, […]

http://occupylove.org/

Beautiful! Watch it here.