The California farming community is facing a demographic crisis. The average age of a California farmer is 58, and nearly 20 percent of them are 70 or older. As these farmers approach retirement, California needs to train new ones if we are to continue to feed our country and keep a healthy rural economy in the decades ahead. And with farm internships in California subject to strict labor laws, opportunities to get a hands-on farming education have become even fewer.

To help meet this need, the Center for Land-Based Learning in Winters, CA recently launched the California Farm Academy (CFA) to train beginning farmers in specialty crop production. The six-month incubator program is designed to help aspiring agriculturists transition quickly into starting their own farms. Unlike many programs and apprenticeships that require students to participate full-time or live on a farm, the CFA meets on evenings and Saturdays to accommodate the busy schedules of people who currently work at non-farming jobs. Academy students spend time in the classroom as well as in the field, greenhouse, and packing shed.

To provide perspectives from the frontlines, the CFA has teamed up with local farms such as Ferry Plaza seller Capay Organic, which also markets produce through its Farm Fresh to You CSA and Ferry Building store. Second-generation farmer Thaddeus Barsotti (pictured below), co-owner of Capay Organic with his brother Freeman, volunteers as a teacher for the Academy, and the farm serves as a site for classes and demonstrations.

When Barsotti learned about the new incubator program, he welcomed the opportunity to contribute to the education of new growers in California. Although he trains and hires workers as part of his farm business, he realizes that his farm cannot grow forever. In his work with the Academy, Barsotti can help “grow new farmers” who will start their own businesses with economic viability and sustainability in mind.

Other experienced farmers from several farms in the area, professors from the University of California at Davis, and National Resource Conservation Service employees teach Academy students the fundamentals of sustainable farming: field preparation, crop planning, soil management, pest control, irrigation, and equipment use. In the classroom, experts from organizations such as the California Alliance for Family Farmers and California Certified Organic Farmers teach students how to handle legal and financial issues, identify and develop markets for their crops, and hire, train, and manage farmworkers.

Barsotti recognizes that it is difficult for beginning farmers to understand how a farm works if they haven’t lived on one before. “If I hadn’t grown up on a farm, I wouldn’t be in the business,” he says. He believes the program gives students “an appreciation for the amount of expertise that goes into modern farms,” and serving as a mentor has also renewed his own appreciation for his line of work. “Teaching others has reminded me of how complicated the whole thing is,” he reflects. “There are a lot of details that go into farming. Farmers are always making decisions based on a set of circumstances that are never the same.”

For their final project, students will use their new knowledge to develop business plans that they will present to a panel of farmers and lenders prior to graduation. Similar to the farm training and incubator program at Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association(ALBA), the Academy will provide support to graduates after their initial six-month program by offering them the opportunity to lease land at the Center for Land-Based Learning and at Russell Ranch, located at the University of California at Davis. They can lease 1/4- to 1/2-acre plots at half the market rate for up to three years.

CFA director Jennifer Taylor explains that the first five years is a critical time for new farmers. “The Farm Academy can take some of the luck and uncertainty out of it and provide a scaffold for beginning farmers,” she says.

Graduates of the program who are renting land will be able to ask for guidance and advice from experienced farmers at the two locations. By farming plots near each other, they can also connect with other program alumni and create a support network. Taylor notes that students have already started talking about working together and sharing equipment.

Traveling from as far as San Francisco each week, the 20 students in the Academy’s first class range from young people just entering the workforce to midlife career-changers. Students come from diverse backgrounds, motivated by a love of farming as well as an interest in raising a family on a farm, working with youth, or agritourism. Some plan to farm a small one-acre plot, while others hope for hundreds of acres.

Taylor, who previously worked at an incubator program that trained beginning dairy farmers in Wisconsin, would love to see more programs like the CFA spring up in other parts of California. She envisions hubs around the state that would connect beginning farmers with regional farms and resources for mentorship and support. The last farm bill allocated money for programs that train beginning farmers, and Taylor hopes the next farm bill will continue to fund these efforts. The CFA is funded by a grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Block Grant program, which is also dependent on authorization in the next farm bill.

The first session of the Farm Academy began in February and runs through August 2012. Session two will begin in late 2012 or early 2013. An application and information can be found at the Center for Land-Based Learning’s website.

Originally published by CUESA

The newly established farm on UC Berkeley-owned Gill Tract will soon be empty. At the time of this writing, it is surrounded by riot police from at least 8 different UC Campus police forces. Nine have been arrested. This is the end to a standoff that began on Friday, when the police blocked farmers from entering or leaving, forcing supporters to toss food and water over the fence. In addition, the UC has filed suit against 14 individuals and 150 additional unnamed persons.

The farm began with a celebration of life, the planet and the people’s right help determine the fate of a place owned by a state-supported institution. Three weeks ago on, Earth Day, a group of 200 volunteers occupied the Gill Tract. The multi-generational crew planted two acres of vegetables, including a children’s garden, and began to offer workshops on sustainable agriculture and food sovereignty. A small encampment sprang up, but organizers insisted it be limited only to those doing the everyday work of maintaining the farm.

The land in question is a 10-acre parcel that comprises the last remaining class 1 agricultural soil in the East Bay. Despite years of community action favoring the creation of a research site specializing in urban and organic agriculture, the land is slated to be sold for development. 

Even as the occupation phase ends, the farm represents a cross-pollination between the food movement’s embrace of sustainable and urban agriculture and the occupy movement’s emphasis on direct action and democratic control of resources.

This occupation is a direct confrontation with a university that, according to the occupiers, has long ignored its public mandate in the pursuit of profit. It is an attempt to seize a piece of land that is publicly owned in name only, and use it for the public good. It is an exercise in land reform, demanding that “farmland is for farming,” and insisting that because farming this land is the right thing to do, the occupiers have every right to do it. It remains to be seen whether some kind of agreement might allow the farming to continue once the occupation has ended. The land is currently used by UC researchers. Some explore agroecology while others conduct basic research on gene mutations that, if successful, will likely aid the development of GMO crops. But the tract is large enough that the occupy farm could remain while that research is conducted.

Occupy the farm is one of a handful of efforts that can reenergize a food movement that has become satisfied with its own success. Supporters of the food movement have become content to “vote with our dollars” in favor of local and organic alternatives, for small farms and farmers markets. But for all the good they do, these vibrant alternatives have not confronted the system head on. No farmers market places limits on the power of corporate agribusiness. No community sponsored agriculture program interferes with industrial farming’s ability to exert its influence on the way that agriculture is governed. Alternatives build power, but they cannot seize power from the systems that currently hold it.

Occupy the Farm represents a new way forward for the food movement, one that moves beyond support for alternatives to confront an important player in the industrial food system.  It’s a chance to vote, not with our dollars, but with our voices, for the kind of agriculture we want to create and the kind of society we want to be.

Here are some actions that Occupy the Farm has asked for in support:

Sign the online petition:  Show the UC Berkeley administration that you support the vision of Occupy the Farm – and call on them to stop police action so that the farmers may continue to farm!  Click here for the petition.

If you are an organization or group that wants to support: Endorse the collective letter of support, being signed by organizations, alliances and groups nation-wide. To sign on, please email occupythefarmletter@gmail.com.

Take more land, wherever you live: Wherever community needs are not being fulfilled and traditional avenues of change have failed, take space at the required scale to meet these needs. Occupy. Make Productive. Contest the Title.   

Stay updated:
–Twitter: @OccupyFarm
–Facebook: Occupy the Farm –Sign up for text message alerts if you’re local: Text “gilltractfarm” to 41411.
–Email list: send a message to GillTractFarm@riseup.net with “listserve” in the subject line to be added to the email list.

Donate to the Farm: Click here to find a link to their online donations page, as well as a current list of needed materials.

Learn more: www.OccupyTheFarm.org

But now I am wondering if I should put the cider press back up for sale. You see, my apple trees were in full bloom before the end of March when temperatures hit 90 degrees.

Then it dipped to 27 degrees earlier this week. A handy chart I found warns that fruit loss begins at 28 degrees, and if it hits 25 degrees, a near total loss occurs.

A lot of people are talking about the strange weather this spring. Come to think of it, a lot of people were talking about the weather last spring too.

That is when unexpected rain flooded thousands of acres of farmland along the Missouri river, and forced the closure of a key bridge between Nebraska and Iowa just 10 miles from my office at the Center for Rural Affairs in Lyons, Nebraska. The cropland stayed under water all summer. The bridge stayed closed too, forcing many residents of the the small river town to add 60 miles to their daily commute.

To be sure, a mix of factors contributes to every weather event, and early research indicates that climate change was only one factor contributing to the warm temperatures this spring.

Taken together, though, these experiences are painting a picture of the sort of challenges we can expect to face as climate change intensifies.

The risks to our communities, and to agriculture in particular, are significant. Last year some corn and bean farmers in our county lost their entire crop to flooding. The two farm families who operate our local wineries were probably up late worrying about their fruit trees and grape vines as the temperatures fell on Tuesday.

When farmers we know suffer a crop loss from extreme weather, the political objection to acting on climate change seems dimmer in comparison.

There is a great moral risk in continuing to treat climate change as a political issue. Our communities and our farms are on the line. Out of respect for future generations, it is far past time to set politics aside and take reasonable action.

That is why it is time for farmers and rural people of conscious to step forward and lead. We know some farmers are already concerned. And a recent poll of farmers in Iowa found that 68 percent believe climate change is real and 45 percent believe human activity is a contributing factor.

We are stepping up our efforts too. In CFRA’s newsletter in June, we will run a feature on climate change, the challenges facing our communities and actions we can take. In early summer, we will issue a major new report on carbon, climate and agriculture.

We know that it will not always be easy. But the issue demands our leadership. For we must not allow political division to stand in the way of protecting our children and grandchildren from the risk of a changing climate.

Will you join us? To get involved as a leader on climate issues in your community, please get in touch. Shoot me an email at briand@cfra.org.

Originally published by the Center for Rural Affairs

Women have proven to be a powerful force in the fight against global hunger and poverty, especially in agriculture. Worldwide roughly 1.6 billion women rely on farming for their livelihoods, and female farmers produce more than half of the world’s food. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, women account for 75 percent of all the agricultural producers. Today we observe International Women’s Day, a global celebration and recognition of women’s achievements. 

Women farmers face a variety of obstacles, including a lack of access to information technology, agricultural training, financial services, and support networks like co-operatives or trade unions. Without these services, women cannot develop resilience to political, economic, social, or environmental upheaval, and they remain dependent on their male family members.

The good news is that women worldwide are developing and utilizing agricultural innovations to sustainably nourish their families and communities. Today we celebrate 12 innovations that are helping women get access to credit, improve their incomes, feed their families, introduce sustainable crops to markets, and reduce rural poverty:

• Co-ops. Co-operatives, or co-ops, are a type of business characterized by democratic ownership and governance. In the war-torn country of Côte d’Ivoire, Marium Gnire partnered with Slow Foods International to organize a women’s farming cooperative that would provide quality local food for school meals in her village of N’Ganon, increasing both the women’s income and the health of the community.

• Creating Links Between Women Producers and Markets. In Africa’s Western Sahel, the production of shea butter is boosting women’s entry into global markets. Women-run cooperatives across the region are tapping into the global demand for fair trade and organic beauty products by selling the skin-care cream they produce from the shea nut crop to cosmetics firms such as Origins and L’Oréal. These companies in turn pay a fair price for the products and invest in the women’s communities.

• Educating Girls on Family Planning. The United Nations Foundation sponsors Girl Up, an organization that encourages a world where young girls can avoid the pitfalls of too-early marriage and childbearing and can instead go to school, enjoy health and safety, and grow into the next generation of leaders. In the Amhara region of Ethiopia, where half of adolescent girls are married, Girl Up is helping to promote education for young girls. The project offers basic literacy classes, family-planning information, and agricultural training. In delaying motherhood, even for a few years, girls can gain critical years of education, where they often gain knowledge about successful agricultural practices.

• Empowering Young Girls Through Agriculture. When young girls learn valuable agricultural skills, they gain the power to avoid dependence on men for food and financial security. In Rwanda, the Farmers of the Future Initiative helps to empower young girls and other students by integrating school gardens and agricultural training into primary school curriculums. Over 60 percent of students in Rwanda will return to rural areas to farm for a living after graduating instead of going on to secondary school or university. As young girls learn these skills, they become self-sufficient and empowered.

• Extension Services. Extension services are an important way of disseminating agricultural knowledge to farmers, but unfortunately, women have been excluded from many extension programs, whether as service providers or recipients. When women are included in extension programs, they receive an education, raise their agricultural yields, increase their incomes, raise the nutritional status of their household, and contribute to the improvement of their communities. To improve female inclusion in extension programs, the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture’s Sustainable Tree Crops Program created videos that women could watch in their homes or in groups, without disrupting their childcare or fuel-gathering obligations. Since 2006, nearly 1,600 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have received cocoa-production training directly through Video Viewing Clubs.

• Female Trade Unions. In developing countries, women are commonly disenfranchised and not offered the same opportunities and rights as men, such as access to credit and land ownership. The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), a female trade union in India that began in 1992, works with poor, self-employed women by helping them achieve full employment and self reliance. SEWA is a network of cooperatives, self-help groups, and programs that empower women. Small-scale women farmers in India have particularly benefited from this network that links farmers to inputs and markets.

• Increasing Access to Water. In sub-Saharan Africa, improved access to water means the difference between barely scraping by and eating balanced meals, affording education, and owning a home. In Zambia, Veronica Sianchenga, a farmer living in Kabuyu Village, saw improvements in her family’s quality of life when she began irrigating her farm with the “Mosi-o-Tunya” (Pump that Thunders), a pressure pump that she purchased from International Development Enterprises. In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, the task of gathering water can take up to eight hours of labor per day and usually falls to women. Because of the pump, her children are eating healthier and she is enjoying increased independence.

• Microfinance Credit. Globally, women fall well short of receiving the same financial benefits and opportunities as men. Only 10 percent of the credit services available in sub-Saharan Africa, including small “microfinance” loans, are extended to women. The New York-based nonprofit Women’s World Banking is the only microfinance network focused explicitly on women, providing loans of as little as US$100 to help women start businesses. Microfinance institutions from 27 countries provide the loans to women who in many cases have no other way to access credit.

• Vertical Farming. Over 800 million people globally depend on food grown in cities for their main food source. Considering that women in Africa own only 1 percent of the land, a practice called vertical farming gives these women the opportunity to raise vegetables without having to own land. Female farmers in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, have been practicing vertical farming using seeds provided by the French NGOSolidarites. This innovative technique involves growing crops in dirt sacks, allowing women farmers to grow vegetables in otherwise unproductive urban spaces. More than 1,000 women are growing food in this way, effectively allowing them to be self-sufficient in food production and to increase their household income. Following the launch of this initiative, each household has increased its weekly income by 380 shillings (equivalent to US$4.33).

• Urban Farming. In Kenya, about 20 urban farmers grow fruits and vegetables on a small strip of land in Kibera, an urban slum in Nairobi with nearly 1 million people. These farmers do not formally own this land and farm through an informal arrangement. More than once, they have been forced to stop farming, and they often see their water supply cut. However, the farmers are continuing to come up with innovative ways of raising food-and incomes-on the farm. With the help of the farmers’ advocacy group Urban Harvest, the farmers are not only growing food to eat and sell, but, perhaps surprisingly, becoming a source of seed for rural farmers.

• Women’s Collectives. In many countries, women’s subordinate position in society makes them easy targets for domestic and sexual violence when working in the agricultural sector, which greatly inhibits their ability to work to their full potential. In India, the Tamil Nadu Women’s Collective focuses on advocating for women’s rights and improving food and water security. The collective reaches over 1,500 villages spread across 18 districts in India’s Tamil Nadu state and has helped many women see an increase in crop yields. The collective provides counseling and support for female victims of domestic violence, promotes women’s participation in local government, and helps women strengthen local food systems, through education on natural farming techniques.

• Women-Run Community Seed Banks. Studies have shown that women farmers typically have lower crop yields than their male counterparts. Rural women farmers’ lower productivity compared to male farmers may be due to women lacking access to high-quality seeds and agricultural inputs. The GREEN Foundation has partnered with NGOs including Seed Savers Network and The Development Fund to create community seed banks in India’s Karnataka state. Women run these seed banks, gaining leadership skills and acquiring quality organic seeds that yield profitable crops and their food security and incomes.

Although these innovations inevitably help men as well as women, it is important that policymakers, scientists, farmers’ groups, and the funding and donor communities focus on ensuring that these women harness the power of these innovations so we can create a more equitable and nourished planet.

Worldwatch’s Nourishing the Planet project recently traveled to 25 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, unearthing innovations in agriculture that can help alleviate hunger and poverty while also protecting the environment. These innovations are elaborated in the recently released report State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet.

Photo: Bernard Pollack

There’s nothing like sitting in an audience and getting goose bumps listening to a great visionary tell it the way it is. They say lightening doesn’t strike twice, but when I heard Prince Charles’s speech that day, I felt the same kind of jolt I got the first time I saw Al Gore’s slide show on global warming. Gore’s power point stood out because it was the clearest, most concise explanation of our climate crisis I had ever heard.

Now, another elder statesman, Prince Charles, is boldly speaking out about another crisis that we urgently need to address. With eloquent words, clarity and heartfelt passion, the prince explained, what’s gone so terribly wrong with our food chain–and what we can do to make it right.

The prince’s speech was both terrifying and uplifting. Terrifying, because we really have screwed up our food system and our food system is, as a result, screwing us up our health, our environment, our climate.

But the speech was ultimately uplifting because, as the prince noted, “There are alternative ways to grow our food … which would go a very long way to resolving some of the problems we face.”

It was truly impressive to see Prince Charles use his considerable clout to promote a vision for a more ecologically enlightened food system. He has been living and breathing these issues for decades, a brave public voice against massive, aggressive interests. I was so inspired that I wanted to help the prince’s speech find a wider audience. Happily, the folks at Rodale Books, assisted by the Grace Foundation and Patrick Holden, shared my enthusiasm and helped publish it.

The Prince’s Speech is actually more of a booklet–just 48 pages, even counting the moving forward from Wendell Berry and an equally inspiring afterward from Will Allen and Eric Schlosser.

It’s a lovely paperback with a cover that manages to evoke both Michael Pollan and Peter Rabbit (thank you, Kelly Doe). You could breeze through it on your lunch break or read it in an evening, and you’d be up to speed on all the ways you can support a saner, less fossil-fueled food chain and as Prince Charles declares, “put Nature back at the heart of the equation.”

It won’t be easy. But, as The Prince’s Speech emphasizes, we can still do this, we do not have to continue to do things the same old way, especially since we can clearly see it is unsustainable. This booklet is truly a labor of love, so I think it’s only fitting that its official publication date is Valentine’s Day. As a friend said to me recently, “I like that it’s being released on February 14, because it’s like a love poem to the future.”

Please read this booklet, share it with friends and family, tweet, talk, and blog about it, buy copies and hand them out, do whatever you can to help spread the word. Because the future of food is the future of us all. Learn more at OnTheFutureofFood.org.

Originally published on Huffington Post

Perhaps no one represented the American work ethic more than the dairy farmer. Early morning hours and hard physical labor, often conducted in solitude while ankle deep in muck. Families working together to get the job done. They have long proudly supplied a demand for their community, and like most farmers, are clearly not in it for the money.

Today however, the American dairy farmer also represents the frustration and economic hardship evident across our nation. Increasing volatility in the price of milk paid to farmers, higher feed costs, corporate consolidation in the supply chain, organic milk farms scaling up, and questionable government policies all have farmers shedding a few tears. The life is so unappealing that the number of American families remaining in milk farming has plummeted from roughly 165,000 20 years ago, to less than 50,000 today.

Behind the innocent glass of milk lies an intriguing story that’s not so black and white: Many farmers are losing money, organic milk is in short supply,  anti-trust lawsuits have been filed, and legislative reform is on the agenda. Farmers, processors, distributors, and retailers are engaged in conversations like never before. And cows. Don’t forget about the cows.

Please join us for the next Kitchen Table Talks in San Francisco on Tuesday, February 21 from 6:30 – 8:30 pm at 18 Reasons, as we discuss the current state of the organic dairy industry.

When: Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Time: Food and drink at 6:30. Discussion from 7 – 8:30 pm
Where: 18 Reasons (3674 18th St., San Francisco, 94110)
Tickets: $10 Brown Paper Tickets. NOTE: A limited number of sliding scale tickets will be available on a first come, first serve basis at 7 pm on the night of the event.

Joining us in conversation will be:

Leslie Butler, Department of Agricultural Economics at U.C. Davis. Leslie holds a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from Michigan State University. He regularly testifies at state and national hearings regarding dairy policy, and has published numerous articles on dairy production and economics marketing and policy.

Mike Griffin, West Region Pool Manager, Organic Valley. Mike was born and raised in Petaluma, CA. After his first year of college, he began his journey into farming, and never looked back. His vast  experience over 30 years at Clover Stornetta as a truck driver, distribution foreman, plant manager and in public relations, ultimately led him to Organic Valley in 2011, the nation’s largest cooperative of organic farmers.

Richard Hughes, owner Westfield Jersey’s in Bodega, CA. Richard was a self-proclaimed “city boy,” until he turned 15 and a 4-H project began his life long journey and commitment to dairy farming.  In 1976, Richard and his wife purchased a 182-acre ranch just outside of Bodega. They currently have around 100 Jersey cows, have completed the transition to organic farming, and provide milk to Straus Family Creamery.

Bob McGee, CFO/COO Straus Family Creamery, Marshall, CA.

Kitchen Table Talks is a joint venture of Civil Eats and 18 Reasons, a non-profit that promotes conversation between its San Francisco Mission neighborhood and the people who feed them. Space is limited, so please RSVP. Seasonal snacks and refreshments generously provided by Bi-Rite Market and Shoe Shine Wine.

“Although few Americans outside of the livestock industry have ever heard of ractopamine, the drug is controversial,” Bottemiller writes. “Fed to an estimated 60 to 80 percent of pigs in the United States, it has sickened or killed more of them than any other livestock drug on the market, Food and Drug Administration records show. Cattle and turkeys have also suffered high numbers of illnesses from the drug.”

According to the story, USDA meat inspectors have reported an increase in “downer pigs”–livestock that is unable to walk–who have been fed ractopamine. On Monday, the Supreme Court unanimously voted down a California ban on “downer” livestock being used in the food supply, on the basis of a federal preemption.

Bottemiller explains that ractopomine acts like a stress hormone, increasing heart rate and relaxing blood vessels. Its use in livestock agriculture produces up to 10 percent more meat, raising profits $2 per head. Though the drug has not been considered for human use, it is administered up until slaughter, and minute traces have been found in meat.

While these amounts have not exceeded the threshold the FDA has deemed safe, there is no allowance for the drug in the E.U. and China, where 70 percent of the world’s pork is consumed, and where the drug is currently banned. Acceptance of meat from animals raised on ractopamine in world markets has become a focus for U.S. trade officials. Bottemiller writes: “Resolving the impasse is now a top agricultural trade priority for the Obama administration, which is trying to boost exports and help revive the economy.”

At the heart of the trade dispute lies questions about the safety of the drug. Elanco, the maker of ractopamine, sold under the name Paylean, conducted the studies considered before approval of the drug in 2000, and has reported “no averse effects were observed for any treatments.” However, within a few years of the drug’s approval, the FDA received hundreds of reports from farmers, veterinarians, and USDA inspectors of sickened pigs.

Now the issue remains at an impasse at the U.N.’s Codex Alimentarius Commission, which sets global food-safety guidelines. The commission has sought to set a standard for residue levels of ractopamine in meat. With such standards in place, Washington would be in a position to challenge countries with bans on ractopamine at the World Trade Organization. China and the E.U. are the main countries blocking the residue limit at Codex. In China, organ meats, which contain the highest traces of the drug, are popular fare, and in the E.U. officials do not want to risk public outcry by importing meat raised with growth-promoting drugs, which are illegal there.

Bottemiller reported this story in conjunction with the Food & Environment Reporting Network, the first and only independent, non-profit news organization that produces investigative journalism in the critically underreported areas of food, agriculture, and environmental health. This is the second story of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, previous stories can be found here. [Full disclosure: I am the Managing Editor of that venture.]

You can read the full report here at MSNBC.com. You can also find additional reporting here on testing of ractopamine as well as more details about the process underway at Codex here on the Food & Environment Reporting Network’s Web site.

Scores of books depict farms as little slices of heaven on earth, where venison is smoked and butter is churned, and things seem perfect. But today’s farmers are far from unrealistic dreamers, longing for a Little House on the Prairie-esque pastoral ideal. They’re socially conscious doers. And when asked about books that inspire them, they cite writings that are practical, at times poetic, and that beckon them to rescue the land.

Here are some of the books that farmers are reading and getting inspiration from today.

The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry. “I had spent  seven or so years of my life as a ‘punk’ growing up in the the central NJ suburbs of NYC, disgruntled and disillusioned and looking for real meaning and ways to be in the world, and [Berry] was someone seemingly so disgruntled and disillusioned, yet incredibly intelligent and coherent, with a posited solution of sorts…. Challenges [were] laid forth to take full responsibility for our lives and to truly push against what our culture is feeding us, to move towards a society built around community, equality, a new free culture, and a cooperative economy in which we all work satisfying jobs in support of each other; ideals I cannot imagine any human being would deface. Farming could embrace these challenges and reconnect us with the land and each other like no other, I was convinced.” — Anthony Mecca, Great Song Farm

The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck. “I read The Good Earth when I was a child, I think I was ten or eleven. I read it again in my 20s, and again in my 30s…. It’s an inspiring novel about building a dream, perseverance. I think the best line is at the end of the novel when it says, ‘without land, you’re nothing.’ It’s a quote my father and mother used to repeat to us kids all the time. So that book always meant something for many reasons.” — Alexis Koefoed, Soul Food Farm

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. “I read it as a freshman in college. This was kind of a critical treatise in the ecological movement. It was not only a cry of protest, but a teaching document about the basic principles of ecology. [Carson] was drawing connections between the different layers that make up the environment… how the chemical sprays in the ground migrated into the trees. The book had layers—one layer was science, one was critique, and one was art—the art of protest. It was also very poetic—what do we cherish more than the sound of birds in the spring?And I thought the fusion of those things really appealed to me as a young woman, and guided what kinds of actions I would take in my life. “ — Severine von Tscharner-Fleming, farmer and founder of The Greenhorns.

How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons. “My copy of this one is missing its cover and several of the front pages and the binding has been chewed up by a dog. I like that John explains a complete farming system that minimizes the use of commercial and outside inputs that will work nearly worldwide.  He even looks at the calories produced, and includes fruit trees, and compost growing areas as part of the garden design and process… I wanted to farm because it is good honest work and it provides something that people truly need.  John Jeavons is telling people all over the world how they can farm and produce the food they need with very few tools, little money and fertilizer, and using open-pollinated seeds.” — Brenton Johnson, Johnson’s Backyard Garden

The Contrary Farmer by Gene Lodgson. “I read The Contrary Farmer about eight years ago.  I think this book really helped me formulate the idea about what it meant to be a farmer.  Lodgson painted a beautiful, yet realistic picture of the farming lifestyle and the sacrifices a farmer must make.  It brought me to the conclusion that I could achieve this lifestyle for myself and my family.” — Jacqueline Smith, Green Dirt Farm.

Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon by Pablo Neruda. “Judith [Winfrey] and I really did not come to farming in a direct fashion. Early on in our relationship we fell in love with food, travel, revolutionaries, ecology, and community.  The decision to farm seemed like a natural way to wed most of these fascinations… Neruda is amazing in all of his words, but his Odes really resonate with people who love food and its power to create interaction.  We still read “Ode to the Onion” once a year.” — Joe Reynolds, Gaia Gardens/Love is Love Farm.

Alternative Urban Futures: Planning for Sustainable Development in Cities throughout the World by Raquel Pinderhughs. “What motivated me most was that Raquel conveys a vision using practical models from around the world. She was my inspiration to take what would have been just a house and a garden and work to transform it into a living renewing system.” — Esperanza Pollana, Pluck and Feather Farm.

It’s a Long Road to a Tomato: Tales of an Organic Farmer Who Quit the Big City for the (Not So) Simple Life by Keith Stewart. “This book provided a lot of inspiration while I was starting to farm … Not because it’s a perfect book, or because I agree with everything the author did or believes, but because it provides a very interesting story of becoming an organic farmer (with warts and all). The guy hadn’t farmed before and showed what he went through in setting up a farm and carving out a niche.” — Fred Hempel, Baia Nicchia

We Didn’t Have Much but We Sure Had Plenty: Rural Women in Their Own Words by Sherry Thomas. “I was originally inspired to farm because of the farms I grew up around in Skippack, PA.  But as farms left my community, I was left thinking it wasn’t a good career to get into.  Many things re-inspired me to start growing my own food in my early 20s, but [this] book stands out. it was a bunch of stories of women who worked their land as a job and for personal consumption. Most were very poor, but were able to tend to their nutritional needs because of farming/food preservation. It reminded me of the importance of simplifying life and just how vital feeding yourself from your own garden can be.” — Barbara Finnin, City Slicker Farm

The New Organic Grower: a Master’s Manual of Tools and Techniques for the Home and Market Gardener, by Eliot Coleman. “I got my first farming book back when I was 25 yrs. old in 1988, and [Coleman] continues to revise the book to stay current.  This is a basic how-to organic farm book, but it’s very inspiring and gives great information for the modern day gardener.  Elliot himself is an amazing grower, who invents unique farming tools and is always looking for new/better ways to grow vegetables.  This book is still my “go to” reference book and I use it to turn people on to growing food. Since I’m a New Englander and he is part of the Maine growing community he’s always appealed to me.” — Simon Richard,  Sonoma Farms (Bi-Rite Farms)

“Heirloom” is an interesting term, and like the word “sustainability,” it means different things to different people. Recently, I read The Heirloom Life Gardener, a book written by Jere and Emilee Gettle. The Gettles are the co-founders of the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company, which publishes a lush and incredibly informative seed catalog and has spun off a variety of gardening-related enterprises across the nation.

The Gettles define heirloom seeds as being “nonhybrid and open-pollinated” and as usually having been in circulation for more than 50 years. Some heirloom seed types currently in use could have been found in Thomas Jefferson garden at Monticello. Some appear more recently, during the Great Depression, including the Mortgage Lifter tomato (who couldn’t use one of these in today’s economy?).

While reading the Gettles’ book, I began thinking once again about the relationship between land and the American character. I was inspired to pull some of my favorite books off the shelf and revisit them, to consider the notion of “civic agriculture.”

The term “civic agriculture”–coined by the former Thomas Lyson of Cornell–is used by some to refer to the movement towards locally based agricultural models that tightly link community, social and economic development. Models of civic agriculture include CSAs, farmer’s markets, roadside stands, urban agriculture, community gardens, and farm-to-school/farm-to-institution programs. I also argue that civic agriculture includes school and home gardens . . . any place where people seek to connect land to the development of community or as an expression of engagement or citizenship.

The civic aspect of agriculture is much older than the current local food movement; it hearkens back to the nations founding. The connection between land and democracy has always held real meaning in American culture. Jeffersonian ideals about the civic virtues and value of gardening and agriculture were prevalent and shaped American cultural and political life; the U.S. Department of Agriculture, created in 1862, was called “The People’s Department” by President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln once told a group of Wisconsin farmers that as long as Americans knew how to cultivate even the smallest plot of land, that the nation’s citizens would be free from kings and moneylenders, free from oppression of all sorts.

Federal legislation such as the Morrill Act (The sesquicentennial is in 2012) created America’s land-grant institutions, which still have as a primary purpose research and education in support of the nation’s agricultural producers. (Land-grant institutions through their Master Gardener programs also support home and community gardeners). The Homestead Act, also passed in 1862, and linked the cultivation of land to the protection of the Union and the expansion of democracy during the nation’s Civil War. We were a nation of farmers at origin; we are still a nation of farmers at heart.

You farm, and we garden. Gardening links the myth and the practice of agriculture to one another. In practice, gardening is agriculture on a personal scale; it represents an individual’s relationship to a specific piece of land. This is a kind of relationship worth investing in.

As you formulate your goals and hopes for the New Year, I hope that you’ll consider adding another resolution to your list: to embark upon a gardening activity, no matter how small, in 2012. Occupy the possibilities that gardens create at our homes, and in our communities.

Originally published on Farm Progress

For years, agriculture and the food system have been critically under-reported subjects in the media. Take for example earlier this year, when Gannett (the parent company of USA Today) laid off Phillip Brasher, one of the last reporters covering agriculture issues in Washington, D.C. Thanks to a public outcry (and in part to reporting here on Civil Eats and elsewhere) he was rehired. However, this made clear that the desire for food reporting is not being sufficiently met by the current media structure.

The Food & Environment Reporting Network, a journalism non-profit for investigative reporting in the area of food, agriculture, and environmental health, which launches operations today, is seeking to reverse this trend. (Full disclosure: I am the Managing Editor and a Founding Director of the project).

“Over the past four decades, coverage of food and agriculture has waned in the mainstream press at the same time as the impact of a more industrialized food system on public health has become increasingly severe,” said Ruth Reichl, editorial board member of the Food & Environment Reporting Network, Editorial Advisor to Gilt Taste, Editor-at-Large at Random House, and former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet magazine. “Without detailed investigations into food and agriculture, our understanding of humanity’s impacts on the environment is incomplete and related policy changes ineffective.”

In its first report, out today in the western magazine High Country News, reporter Stephanie Paige Ogburn investigates a successful citizen movement to halt pollution by New Mexico’s powerful mega-dairy operations. Future reporting will appear in newsmagazines, including The American Prospect and The Nation, as well as major daily newspapers. You can read the current piece here on the Food & Environment Reporting Networks’s Web site, where future reporting will also be archived.

“Our stories will fall under the classic mandate of investigative reporting–to reveal corruption, abuse of power, and exploitation wherever it happens; to expose activities that the powerful work to keep hidden or to explore subjects that are just too complex for the breaking news cycle,” said the Food & Environment Reporting Network’s Editor-in-Chief Samuel Fromartz. “We’ve chosen to focus on food, agriculture, and environmental health specifically because we feel these are under-reported subjects that touch people’s lives every day.”

The Food & Environment Reporting Network’s Board of Directors includes Editor-in-Chief Samuel Fromartz, author, freelance journalist and a former Reuters business editor; Allison Arieff, a contributing columnist for The New York Times, contributing columnist for The Atlantic Cities, and editor of the Urbanist magazine for SPUR (San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association); and Ralph Loglisci, a leading food policy media strategist. Naomi Starkman is the strategic communications adviser to the project. Tom Laskawy is the Executive Director and manages the organization. Former board members Katrina Heron and Naomi Starkman were involved in the organization’s founding and development.

The Food & Environment Reporting Network’s editorial board includes Brian Halweil, editor of Edible East End and co-publisher of Edible Brooklyn and Edible Manhattan magazines; Katrina Heron, Editor-at-Large at Newsweek/The Daily Beast and previously Editor-in-Chief of WIRED and a senior editor at The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and The New York Times magazines; Ruth Reichl Editorial Advisor to Gilt Taste, Editor-at-Large at Random House, and former Editor-in-Chief of Gourmet magazine; Elizabeth Royte, author of the critically acclaimed Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash; Bottlemania: How Water Went On Sale and Why We Bought It; and Charles Wilson, the co-author with Eric Schlosser of the number one New York Times children’s bestseller Chew On This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food.

You can stay informed about the Food & Environment Reporting Network’s work via Twitter and Facebook.