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The Organic Life Following a year in the life of Austin, a hopeful organic farmer, and his skeptical girlfriend Casey, this illuminating documentary chronicles farm living and shows not only who grows your food, but also how it is grown.  In the face of minute profit margins, passion alone fuels their commitment to shaping their […]

Jane Kleeb vs. the Keystone Pipelineby Saul Elbein, May 16, 2014 Terry Van Housen had a question. What he wanted to know from the 30 or so other Nebraska farmers and ranchers gathered in February at the York Community Center was this: What do you do with 10,000 dead cows? continue reading HERE

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The implausible truth: Over one billion people in the world are hungry and over one billion are overweight. Far from complete opposites, hunger and obesity are in fact different manifestations of the same problem: It’s increasingly difficult to find and eat nutritious food. By examining the global industrial food system using the deceptively simple template […]

URBAN GREEN: HOOP HOUSES REPLACE ROW HOUSES IN BALTIMORE'S SANDTOWN by Alia Malek BALTIMORE, Md. — In Sandtown, Douglas Wheeler looks out with satisfaction over the abandoned city-block-turned-farm where he works growing all sorts of greens and lettuce — “but never iceberg” — and remembers how it used to be. “This lot was a garden […]

Writers, apply now! More than ever, writers need time and space to think deeply, recharge their imagination and write without distraction.  The Mesa Refuge provides these in an absolutely sublime setting.    If you’ve been thinking about getting away to write, please consider applying for one of our fall sessions.  The available dates are listed […]

if you've got roots and/or connections in the Southeast, spread the word! Whistlepig Productions Presents: "I'm Goin' Home: Worksongs, Chanteys and Roots Music with Max and Maggie." Join Max and Maggie for a raucous, foot-stomping evening of singing.  With simple call-and-response structures, these work songs and sea chanteys can be learned quickly, require no prior experience, and […]

The International Theatre of the Oppressed Organisation will not be just one Center more, but an Organisation dedicated to help all Centers to develop themselves, so that they can help other TO groups to grow and develop. The Organisation is carried by the combined power of experienced Jokers across the globe. We dream of having a Virtual Libraries […]

  From Examiner.com, February 18, 2014 New evidence points to glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, as the culprit in the rise of gluten intolerance, celiac disease and irritable bowel syndrome. A study just published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary Toxicology (Vol. 6(4): 159–184 ) by Anthony Samsel and Stephanie Seneff explains how the nearly ubiquitous use of […]

http://www.carbonnationmovie.com/  

Realities of Shifting to a Sustainable Economy by John Fullerton “The true nature of the international system under which we were living was not realized until it failed.”  —Karl Polanyi A transition to a sustainable economy requires not only population stabilization, breakthroughs in resource productivity and checks on material consumption, but also constraints on aggregate […]

The Leap to Biosphere Consciousness and Collaboration: An Interview With Author Jeremy Rifkin Jeremy Rifkin, author of The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, The Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism, describes a world where privatized monopolies yield to collaborative Commons. Over the last two hundred and fifty years, various social thinkers […]

Lisa Hamilton has written an excellent article, The Quinoa Quarrel - as of a collaboration between FERN and Harper's Magazine. You must be a Harper's subscriber to read the article online, but FERN has published a beautiful photo essay by Hamilton: Native Lands: The Birthplace Of Quinoa by Lisa Hamilton Many people consider quinoa to be […]

By Jeannette Catsoulis of the New York Times May 8, 2014 “Bad behavior is pretty rare in our industry,” one of the six young farmers profiled in “Farmland” tells us. Though he doesn’t elaborate, his comment’s lack of detail and depth is typical of a film that plays more like a feature-length advertisement than like a documentary. You […]

By Carrington Morris of Edible Manhattan April 17, 2014 Earlier this month, luminaries of the food movement — who also happen to be longtime friends — took the stage at Cooper Union’s historic Great Hall. Attendees flocked from across the nation to watch farmer-poet Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, president of The Land Institute, join New York Times columnist Mark […]

This video is the first thing you see when you click on the EXPO page of the National Future Farmers of America (FFA) website.  This video has nothing to do with agriculture and everything to do with image. It's the women's version of the Marlboro Man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVQubTu17qA   Is this the right role model for these […]

Announcing The Kitchen Sisters spanking new podcast ~Fugitive Waves~ Fugitive Waves: Lost recordings, shards of sounds. Tales of remarkable people from around the world.  Stories from the flip side of history. All three episodes are on iTunes with many more to come! Episode 3:  Eel Pie Island
  Episode 2: Tennessee Williams and The Pennyland Recordings […]

We love this band. The Whiskey Farm

A perspective from 1943. Download the pdf: Kansas Union Farmer

Kate Tempest started out when she was 16, rapping at strangers on night busses and pestering mc's to let her on the mic at raves. Ten years later she is a published playwright, poet and respected recording artist. Here's a snippet from the video above: Look, if all these people were prophets, We’d profit. We […]

Do any of you annual farmers ever get tired of bending over all day and dream of growing food whilst standing? There is a solution- you can grow food (and drink) on trees! The US is currently witnessing a booming growth in hard cider production that shows no chance of slowing anytime soon. The demand for cider […]

According to the FFA website, Monsanto, Pfizer (Monsanto's pharmaceutical business), Cargill, Dupont and Syngenta donated millions of dollars to the FFA in 2013, and have been awarded "Platinum" and "Gold" sponsorship titles by the organization.  In 2012, a press release from the FFA stated that these companies (and some others) had donated 16.8 million dollars to help "create […]

Visit http://patperry.net to see more of Pat's art.

Corner Tour is a band of charmers. We like to defy your ears with our melancholy mountain carnival. But don't ask us what kind of music this is. Listen for yourself especially around bedtime for some dream inspiration. Click HERE to download some of their music!   

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 […]

Learning By Doing At The Farm: Craft, Science, and Counterculture in Modern California Beginning in 1968, the University of California, Irvine, was host to an experiment in intercultural exchange and artistic and social scientific learning through practice. Located on the edges of William Pereira’s California Brutalist campus, the Farm was a space for craftspeople from […]

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

Check out this important new film, which will be released in 17 days: Fed Up  [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCUbvOwwfWM&w=560&h=315]

This video demonstrates how a community is trying to save their water and wetlands and reduce the impact of an unnecessary freeway. Save Little Lake Valley http://www.savelittlelakevalley.org/ members are requesting that the California Water Quality Control Board order Caltrans, the Department of Transportation in CA., to cease and desist construction on the Willits Bypass. In […]

1940 vocational guidance film targeting teenagers. The film was made at a time when America was starting to rebuild its workforce after the depression years. Various careers and the skills required for them are discussed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I90Z2pC_0AY  

'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  

Trevor Newman of Roots to Fruits Ecological Design leads the way in this practical instructional video on how to take one currant bush and turn it into many (for FREE)! Check it out!

From OUR LAND presenter Eric Holt-Gimenez, of Food First

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, […]