Good Food is Everybody's Business
In mid-June, beginning farmer Dayna Burtness was delivering her farm’s vegetables to clients in Minneapolis when she got the call: the rain that had started at mid-day had not let up for hours. Things were looking bad back at Laughing Loon Farm.
Living in what he affectionately calls “the stinkin’ hot desert,” in Patagonia Arizona, along the Mexican border, Gary Paul Nabhan is exploring ways to grow food using traditional sustainable methods, careful water collection, and seed saving.
This comprehensive report extols the multiple societal benefits of organic farming in North America. To partner with stakeholders who share in these benefits, OFRF produced this document for policy makers, educators, researchers, healthcare professionals, business leaders and families, like yours and mine.
Are we being forced to eat? There are more than just marketing and advertising pressures at work. We are bombarded with hundreds of advertising messages every day and food “manufacturers” spend about $11 billion a year promoting their products. But there are other ways that we are “encouraged” to consume more.
Environmental justice is also about our state of mind; biophysical and mental wellness are interrelated!
Big agriculture is big business; too big, too distant, too reliant on the latest technology, and too focused on profit over good food. Expecting complex technology and genetic engineering to solve the problems of climate change, extreme weather patterns, water shortages, and dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, is not the answer. It is time to go back to the land, to restore our natural resource base and re-invest in our people.
Genet dreams of creating a cooperative with her Group Garden and diversifying the agriculture portfolio by adding animals and a possible dairy farm. “I don’t want my life to happen to my children. I want their life to be greater than mine,” she says.
Studies providing real information about food production and consumption, especially incorporating local and regional data from the private sector, are increasingly important yet difficult to obtain. Those people involved in food policy and urban planning are hard pressed for both the funding and access to accurate data to prepare adequate studies. Nonetheless, an accurate view of the amount of perishable food that is produced or comes into a region and is being consumed or disposed is critical to the improvement of the food system. The Western Washington Foodshed Study is one of those reports.
