By Willie Nelson
    AlterNet.org

    Thursday 27 April 2006

It's time to abandon the failed model of industrial agriculture and join the Good Food movement: embrace healthy, delicious food that makes the entire country stronger.

    As one of the founders of Farm Aid, I have watched with admiration and a good amount of satisfaction the growth of what many now call the "Good Food Movement" - the growing interest in and demand for organic, humanely-raised and family farm-identified food that is transforming the way America grows its food and how our food gets to our tables.

    While it might seem obvious to many, good food comes from farms with healthy soil and clean water. I've always believed that the most important people on the planet are the ones who plant the seeds and care for the soil where they grow. As the stewards of the land, family farmers are the foundation of this movement, as well as its guarantor.

    No one can say they planted the original seed that gave rise to this movement, but many can claim they have helped nurture and cultivate its growth. Farm Aid's vision for America is to have many family farmers on the land - a vision born out of our strong conviction that who grows our food and who cares for the land and water is of vital national importance; that farmers and their fields are the fabric that holds our country together.

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    By Michael Pollan
    Mother Jones

    May/June 2006 Issue

An evangelical Virginia farmer says a revolution against industrial agriculture is just down the road.

    I might never have found my way to Polyface Farm if Joel Salatin hadn't refused to FedEx me one of his chickens.

    I'd heard a lot about the quality of the meat raised on his "beyond organic" farm, and was eager to sample some. Salatin and his family raise a half-dozen different species (grass-fed beef, chickens, pigs, turkeys, and rabbits) in an intricate rotation that has made his 550 hilly acres of pasture and woods in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley one of the most productive and sustainable small farms in America. But when I telephoned Joel to ask him to send me a broiler, he said he couldn't do that. I figured he meant he wasn't set up for shipping, so I offered to have an overnight delivery service come pick it up.

    "No, I don't think you understand. I don't believe it's sustainable - 'organic,' if you will - to FedEx meat all around the country," Joel told me. "I'm afraid if you want to try one of our chickens, you're going to have to drive down here to pick it up."

    This man was serious. He went on to explain that Polyface does not ship long distance, does not sell to supermarkets, and does not wholesale its food. All of the meat and eggs that Polyface produces is eaten within a few dozen miles or, at the most, half a day's drive of the farm - within the farm's "foodshed." At first I assumed Joel's motive for keeping his food chain so short was strictly environmental - to save on the prodigious quantities of fossil fuel Americans burn moving their food around the country and, increasingly today, the world. (The typical fruit or vegetable on an American's plate travels some 1,500 miles to get there, and is frequently better traveled and more worldly than its eater.) But after taking Joel up on his offer to drive down to Swoope, Virginia, to pick up a chicken, I picked up a great deal more - about the renaissance of local food systems, and the values they support, values that go far beyond the ones a food buyer supports when he or she buys organic in the supermarket. It turns out that Joel Salatin, and the local food movement he's become an influential part of, is out to save a whole lot more than energy.

    In Joel's view, the reformation of our food economy begins with people going to the trouble and expense of buying directly from farmers they know - "relationship marketing," the approach he urges in his recent book, Holy Cows and Hog Heaven: The Food Buyer's Guide to Farm Friendly Food. Joel believes that the only meaningful guarantee of integrity is when buyers and sellers can look one another in the eye, something few of us ever take the trouble to do. "Don't you find it odd that people will put more work into choosing their mechanic or house contractor than they will into choosing the person who grows their food?"

    By Chad Heeter
    TomDispatch.com

    Friday 24 March 2006

    Please join me for breakfast. It's time to fuel up again.

    On the table in my small Berkeley apartment this particular morning is a healthy looking little meal - a bowl of imported McCann's Irish oatmeal topped with Cascadian Farms organic frozen raspberries, and a cup of Peet's Fair Trade Blend coffee. Like most of us, I prepare my breakfast at home and the ingredients for this one probably cost me about $1.25. (If I went to a café in downtown Berkeley, I'd likely have to add another $6.00, plus tip for the same.)

    My breakfast fuels me up with about 400 calories, and it satisfies me. So, for just over a buck and half an hour spent reading the morning paper in my own kitchen, I'm energized for the next few hours. But before I put spoon to cereal, what if I consider this bowl of oatmeal porridge (to which I've just added a little butter, milk, and a shake of salt) from a different perspective. Say, a Saudi Arabian one.

    Then, what you'd be likely to see - what's really there, just hidden from our view (not to say our taste buds) - is about four ounces of crude oil. Throw in those luscious red raspberries and that cup of java (another three ounces of crude), and don't forget those modest additions of butter, milk, and salt (another ounce), and you've got a tiny bit of the Middle East right here in my kitchen.

    Now, let's drill a little deeper into this breakfast. Just where does this tiny gusher of oil actually come from? (We'll let this oil represent all fossil fuels in my breakfast, including natural gas and coal.)

    Nearly 20% of this oil went into growing my raspberries on Chilean farms many thousands of miles away, those oats in the fields of County Kildare, Ireland, and that specially-raised coffee in Guatemala - think tractors as well as petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides.

    The next 40% of my breakfast fossil-fuel equation is burned up between the fields and the grocery store in processing, packaging, and shipping.

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