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This week’s Ind.ie roundup focuses on de-mystifying two areas relevant to our privacy and freedoms: encryption and trade deals. They can both sound like dull and difficult topics, so I’m going to do my best to make them clearer, with the help of many, much-smarter, people… Encryption Encryption is a way to make data more […]

This honest essay comes from our friend Drew French of Living the Dream Farm (http://ltdfarm.com/).

New York, NY (June 23) — The GRACE Communications Foundation today launched its new Eat Well Guide, the largest online directory of sustainable food vendors in the country with 25,000 listings of restaurants, farms, farmers’ markets, food co-ops and more across the United States. View the Guide: EatWellGuide.org “People want locally grown, sustainably produced food, so we’re […]

The Youth Farm in Crown Heights, Brooklyn is a 1-acre educational farm that produces thousands of pounds of fresh produce and flowers, and create hands on farm education and job training opportunities for hundreds of youth and adults annually. We are pleased to invite you to an exciting fundraising event,"Summer Supper with Rob Newton: A […]

NESAWG 2015 Conference: Putting MOVE in the Movement Civil rights, labor, women’s rights—the movements that transformed our world can give us insight on ways to accelerate food systems change.  What can we learn from leaders past and present?  How can we better organize our work, our networks, our message, our media? At this year’s NESAWG […]

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Join the Folk-Americana sounds of Jonathan Edwards to fundraise for the Stone Soup Institute. The school is internationally based, offering courses of study integrating traditional and contemporary practices and knowledge in the agrarian arts and sciences, crafts, and fine arts. The educational experience of Stone Soup Institute is designed around the practical skills and seasonal rhythms associated […]

Rogue Pope strikes again! Pope Francis has been surprising since he spoke out against capitalism, and he continues to impress by speaking out to give progressive opinions about the critical issues of our times. This year for Pentacost, he released this letter imploring his dioceses to, in short, enter the environmentalist movement. We believe his […]

While we're on the subject of Orchards, this is a great time to remind you that the next workshop in Eliza Greenman's Home Orchard Series is coming up! See details below. August 8th: Fruit Exploring and Summer Grafting Learning from the landscape is one of our best tools in combating climate change and forming a more sustainable […]

[vimeo 21443142 w=500 h=375] Check out the rad folks at the Urban Orchard Project, based out of the UK. They are an organization devoted to creating, restoring, and celebrating fruıt orchards in London and beyond. The video above provides a quick lesson on pruning old fruıit trees, and they provide more invaluable advice on their webpage. Remnant […]

Designed for continuous screening ın a tent for kids. Featuring: Draft power extravaganza! Fabulous old-timey war propoganda! Seas of golden grain! And oh holy mountains! It is well worth watching all the way to the end just to catch everyone tearing up the barn floor at the hoedown.

July 5th - Milwaukee, MI - Marcus Amphitheater Summerfest July 8th - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheater July 9th - Morrison, CO - Red Rocks Amphitheater July 11th - Lincoln, NE - Pinnacle Bank Arena July 13th - Cincinnati, OH - Riverbed Music Center July 14th - Clarkston, MI - DTE Energy Music Hall […]

The Food Revolution and the War for Our Minds BY JONATHAN R. LATHAM, Rural America In These Times By conventional wisdom it was excellent news. Researchers at Iowa State University demonstrated in 2012 that organic farming methods can produce yields almost as high as pesticide-intensive methods. Other researchers, at the University of California—Berkeley, reached a similar conclusion. Indeed, […]

  menu from Morning Dew Farm Small farmers need to be creative and innovative marketers to be successful. The best are those that cultivate community involvement in their farms and nurture face-to-face relationships with their customers. Learn from the folks at Morning Dew Farm and The Pickup Café & CSA how they've approached innovative and collaborative […]

West Coast Grange Wars: A Reborn Farmers’ Movement Takes on Corporate Agriculture By John Collins, Rural America In These Times As more and more grocery shoppers refuse to write-off the origins of their food as some unsolvable whodunit, a network of sustainability minded, locally oriented farmers are working to connect those people to calories from known sources. […]

On one hand you have an established order that, while quick to conjure its Populist origins, appears threatened by the kind of grassroots change it once championed. On the other, a contingent of rogue Grangers—progressives decidedly less interested in nostalgia than their national counterpart—attempting to breathe new life into an aging system that doesn’t seem […]

 Join multi-media artist, film stripper, singer, instrument-builder,   Brian Dewan  In songs of land and sea June 28th 6.30 pm at the Blue Hill, Halcyon Grange the kick off public event for MAINE SAIL FREIGHT! the new economy will take imagination, a knowledge of history and confidence in a future or our own making.  Join us […]

  Are you getting as excited as we are for Maine Sail Freight? Get your boat on with some of these other cool boats in history:  The Making of the Plastiki: Sailing a boat made entirely of recyclable plastics across the Pacific Here's one of the last sail shipping lines: The Last Cape Horners First wave […]

photo credit: Donagh Heffernan/ Irish Farmer Calendar How Do Real Farmer's Feel About Their Industry Being Sexed Up? By Lori Rotenberk, Grist, 4 Jun 2015 Donagh Heffernan was living his life, running a dairy farm in Ireland’s scenic Philipstown Cappawhite County Tipperary, when he got a call informing him that he was sexy. Ciara Ryan, the voice […]

Maine Fare is a unique food festival that brings everyone to the table — farmers, fishermen, foodies, nonprofits, food businesses, and eaters!– to celebrate a vibrant and delicious future for food, farming, and fishing in Maine.  The two day festival has an exciting schedule filled with talks, tastings, and classes. The Greenhorns Maine Sail Freight will have […]

He has eight books in his cell — six gardening manuals and two Bibles. photo credit Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post A Growing Experience: Prison Gardens Transform Inmates who Tend to Them By Michael S. Rosenwald, June 7 WESTOVER, Md. — Don Vass, an admitted drug dealer, pulls a cabbage from the ground, then hands it to […]

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June 3, 2015 Dear Senator/Assemblyperson: New York’s $47 billion farm and food sector is a vital component of the state’s economy and provides jobs for thousands of residents. Growing this important part of New York’s economy requires cultivating a next generation of farmers. One of the biggest challenges facing the next generation of farmers in New York is […]

[vimeo 99886748 w=640 h=480] Learn how to become a farmer in Austin, Texas! Farmshare Austin’s FarmerStarter program is designed to provide aspiring farmers with the essential skills and training needed to manage a sustainable farming business. Visit their website for more information and apply now!

Big news from the National Young Farmers Coalition! The Young Farmer Success Act of 2015 (H.R. 2590) has been introduced in the House by Representative Chris Gibson (R-NY) and Representative Joe Courtney (D-CT) with the goal of adding farmers to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program. Under the program, farmers who make 10 years of […]

[vimeo 128686754 w=500 h=281] Another inspiring sailboat project! This one is dedicated to spreading and studying resilient human culture in islands of the Coast Salish Sea. See more inspiring videos and actions by Over Grow the System.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC2DpGaykaI&w=853&h=480] Neil Young is slowly leaking performances of tracks off of his upcoming album “The Monsanto Years”.  It is a protest album against Monsanto and GMO’s.  This particular song is against Starbucks, a member of the Grocery Manufacture Association, that is suing Vermont for passing a GMO labeling bill.

Join us for SEED WEEK — a 5 day long convergence, teach-in and training for seed advocates. As land and seed stewards, we have a special responsibility to the seeds we’re growing. We recognize seed as both global, and highly localized commons — a common ecosystem of genetics, cultural relations, and the result of centuries of adaptation, and survival. We cherish […]

[kickstarter url=https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1480255348/the-creature-show width=480] The Creature Show is a new webseries about rare, threatened and endangered species, based in New Jersey. Each episode will be available to watch on Creatureshow.com, free for everyone, including students in classrooms. There is a kickstarter to help the producers raise enough money to make their full series a reality. Visit […]

BeefJam is a 3-day event that takes young producers and consumers on a crash course of the Australian beef supply chain and gives them 48hrs to reshape the way we grow, buy and eat our red meat. Check out more about BeefJam and Youth Food Movement Australia here!

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You can vote 10 times a day! Please help the Gardiner Food Cooperative to provide affordable local food to their community. <----Click this whole link to vote! No registration is needed. The City of Gardiner, once a thriving industrial center, has struggled in recent decades. Unemployment in Gardiner exceeds that of the local area and […]

The next YFN Young Farmers Night is this Wednesday in Charlestown, RI! Walrus and Carpenter Oysters farm, however, is an underwater farm, which means that anyone planning on attending needs to RSPV ASAP. Please bring a potluck offering to share for dinner. Parking is limited, and if you're later than 5:00 p.m. you'll literally miss the […]

A commons cannot survive within conventional structures, which are highly permeable and designed for ease of buying, selling, and profit-maximization […] How do we structure commons governance to prevent corruptions, to serve all stakeholders, and to function efficiently? Read On lawyers and sea urchins, a sidebar for the latest edition of STIR magazine! You can pre-order […]

The West Marin Review is a Point Reyes Station, California-based literary journal produced collaboratively by a team of volunteers. You can read their submission guidelines here.

A recent post on the Smithsonian blog tells the story of how a 17-year-old Russian scientist in 1901 discovered the plant hormone ethylene, which causes plants to ripen. It's a must-read for horticultural geeks called The Peas that Smelled the Leaky Pipes.

What happens when one gigantic grotesque agricultural monster is eaten by an even bigger and more hideous agricultural monster? It's a spine-tingling story that involves tax aversion, gly-phosphates, surveillance technology, and a new era of "robo-farming." "When a single corporation sells the seed, knows the prevalence of pests and sells the pesticide, knows the local soil conditions, […]

Message from the Our Family Farms Coalition: May 29, 2015 - CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OUR SUPPORTERS! We have DEFEATED the first major stage of the Monsanto-backed legal challenge that attempted to overturn our Jackson County ban on genetically engineered crops!!!!  This is a huge win for family farmers threatened by GMO contamination and a win […]