Newsletter May 8, 2008

There’s a yearning in the land for food connections. This hunger for real sustenance goes beyond getting good nutrition while avoiding bad stuff in our edibles. Issues perking for the past 20 years (earth-degrading processes, fair-trade questions, farmworker justice, embedded energy and humane treatment of livestock) have started to converge to create to the explosion of “food literacy” that has invigorated the country.

Information bombshells of good news for local, sustainable and organic food progress and bad news for industrial food-type production systems are rocking the farm economy as price trends continue dizzying uncertainty.

Who knew that an upstart young seedsman could capitalize on grow-your-own heirloom frenzy to bring 6,000 people last week to rural Missouri for the Baker Creek Spring Planting Festival. Read more...

Who would have thought cheap-meat would take the hit that came with the Pew Commission report saying, basically, that we can’t afford to continue to depend on factory livestock operations for our protein. Read more...

There’s a new realization of connection between our lawscapes and health when a provincial government bans 80 chemicals and 300 lawn and garden pesticide products. Read more...

And when a poultry company making big money from reduced-input chicken has to can the program because it wasn’t all it claimed. Read more...

The food crisis—which is hitting every nation at some level—is going deep enough in the United States to spur calls for regional food systems to improve food security by people who aren’t known for thinking about agricultural sustainability: Jesse Jackson and George Bush.

Seeds, transplants and baby chicks are selling briskly across the country as individuals connect directly with food for their families and themselves. Most farmers and most eaters won’t meet each other, however, and it’s food that will connect them. Work with us in innovating and taking risks to support farmer heroes extending themselves this season to produce food, fiber and new relationships that weave resilience into the human landscape of food.

Greg Bowman and the Rodale Institute editorial team