Civil Eats

“What is wrong with us? Why do we seem to care so little about our own safety, our own health, and the future of our children?” asks Maria Rodale, farmer, author and CEO of Rodale Inc. “Why are we willing to pay thousands of dollars for vitro fertility treatments when we can’t conceive, but not a few extra dollars for the organic food that might help to preserve the reproductive health of our own and future generations?”

In her powerful and informative new book, Organic Manifesto: How Organic Farming Can Heal Our Planet, Feed the World, and Keep Us Safe, Maria Rodale has done all of the thinking and the research about organic farming for us. Yay, we don’t have to think! Following in the path of her grandfather, JI Rodale, who launched Organic Gardening and Farming magazine in 1942 and her father Robert Rodale, who devoted his life to educating others on health and environmental issues, Maria Rodale explains why and how we must immediately begin to undo the damage we have done to the environment and to ourselves. Read More

All human life — all terrestrial life, in fact — relies on that thin, fragile layer of topsoil that covers much of the non-oceanic earth. In a large sense, human societies rise and fall, thrive and decline, based on how well they nourish their topsoil. I’m not a huge fan of Jared Diamond, but his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed teases out an important lesson: burning through your share of topsoil leads to catastrophe. Read More