Good Food is Everybody's Business
Quick! What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear the words “dairy cows?” Probably black and white cows in a grassy field in front of a red barn, right? That’s the image that every confinement dairy operation would like you to imagine, but very few cows are raised that way. Rick Adamski, Full Circle Farm, Seymour Wisconsin, is a grazer. No, he doesn’t eat grass; he milks about 90 cows that do.
It was in India that Sir Albert Howard conceived and developed the scientific footing of “organic” agriculture. Today, a group school children in India have rediscovered what Sir Howard proved in his field trials there more than 75 years ago.
Looks like we’re doomed! And we just thought it was a lack of willpower… According to a study done at Cornell University, powerful environmental forces are bending us to their will!
Titled “The Four Letter F-word,” this original poem by Lisa and Liam that concludes: “It takes just a seed for a revolution to start.”
When most people are asked about the “Local Food Economy,” they talk about local farmers, food hubs and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture). It’s not often that they think of a small manufacturer. Jack Jenkins, manufacturer and marketer of Country Living Grain Mills, is a unique member of one of Washington’s local food economies.
Visit a modern supermarket and what do you see? Pictures of farmers, the picket fence, the silo, the ’30s farmhouse and the green grass. Nice photos, folks, but very little of the food – and “edible food-like products” – sold there actually comes from a small family farm. In fact some of it doesn’t actually come from a farm at all, but a factory.
When you rub elbows for days with farmers of all ages, there is no doubt where your food comes from!
If you didn’t notice, there are more and more products labeled “Gluten-Free” on grocery shelves today. So many that some people think this is the latest food fad. It’s not! For people with Celiac disease, eating foods containing gluten can be fatal, and for those with gluten allergies, life can be pretty uncomfortable.
The highlight of the Tilth Producers of Washington Conference was the keynote delivered by professor Miguel Altieri of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management, at the University of California. His specialty – agroecology — combines agriculture, the science of cultivating the land and raising livestock; with the principles of ecology, the study of the relationship between living organisms and their environments. Altieri began with a series of startling statistics proving that when measured in total output small scale indigenous agriculture is actually more productive than industrialized agribusiness.
