UPDATE: House proposes Farm Bill that would cut funding for nutrition programs and hurt conservation efforts Current negotiations in Farm Bill conference would reduce funding to nutrition and conservation programs The House and the Senate each passed a farm bill…
Read more »poisoning children, poisoning the poor
Today, I just can’t not write about pesticides! Sometimes the world screams at you about something specific. Right now, it is our tendency as a species to poison the very stuff that keeps us alive, the thin layer of nutrients…
Read more »Faith-Community Supported Agriculture (FSCA) Program
For a couple of decades, Community Supported Agriculture programs (CSAs) have been a way for families to partner with farmers and gardeners to get a weekly supply of fresh produce during the growing season. Families or individuals purchase a membership…
Read more »Choices
The little time keeper in the upper right corner of my computer screen tells me that I have about 3 more minutes before my voting station, just down the street at the local grade school, opens up. I’m on West…
Read more »Youth gardening!
African Food Basket Founder Anan Lololi. Photo by R. Jeanette Martin This is a great story from Now Toronto with audio clips of youth participants at the bottom of the column. “For 300 years we were on plantations, so there…
Read more »Meat-Guzzler
Does your mouth water when you look at the scene on the left? “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler” (below) provides much food for thought (gristle for the noggin?). Seems we clearly need to take another look at meat. Click on the charts…
Read more »Monsanto can’t keep a good farmer down
For me and people around the world, the Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser became a hero when he stood up to Monsanto. After the company’s genetically engineered (GE) seeds blew onto Schmeiser’s canola farm and contaminated his fields, the multinational sued…
Read more »Making Bacon
This is my first effort at making my own bacon. It is fresh from about two hours in the oven after spending seven days in a salt/sugar/pink salt dry brine in my refrigerator. It already tastes very good. (It’s not…
Read more »White House to Congress: No taxes in the farm bill. Period.
Today Acting Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner hosted a conference call with bloggers. The Presbyterian Hunger Program (USA)/foodandfaithblog.org was invited and I ended up being one of a handful of people talking with Sec. Conner. The Agriculture Secretary reiterated the administration’s…
Read more »Are You a Gardener?
While I was squatted down near the floor, reading the organic (but of course) seed packets at the bottom of the rack (mmm, Black Plum Past Tomato – Russian variety that produces elongated, deep-mahogany to bronze fruit with a rich complex flavor that is concentrated when cooked down and also delicious for fresh eating, pretty much everything I want in a tomato…) when a woman suddenly walked up to me and asked with excitement in her voice, “You’re a gardener, right?” as if I were a rock star or an author or something cool like that.
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