Civil Eats is at a critical junction, as we have to raise $55,000 in the next 7 days to meet our Kickstarter goal of $100,000 by Friday, October 18. If we don’t raise the remaining funds, we won’t be able to keep any of the money we’ve raised to date, as per Kickstarter rules. If you care about the future of the good food movement, please consider donating today.

The future of the site–which Paula Crossfield and I have been running for the last four and a half years as a labor of love–is in question. If we don’t raise the money, we won’t be operational in 2014 and will be forced to shutter our doors.

Civil Eats is totally unique in the food movement and there’s a reason why Michael Pollan has called us “the best online food politics magazine” and has urged people to support our Kickstarter as “one of the most important thing you can do” to support the food movement.

Since 2009, we’ve provided a space for a huge range of contributors to write about the very issues people care most about. From sustainable agricultural practices, food justice, and nutrition, to state and federal policy, we’ve followed some of the most important food and ag stories of our time.

We’ve provided a steady stream of reporting and analysis, including interviews with seasoned voices like Mark Bittman, Joan Gussow, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Raj Patel, Anna Lappé, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and Patrick Holden and many other, lesser-known, but equally important actors in the movement.

We’ve also profiled hundreds of innovative food and ag nonprofits. Around 40 percent of our stories feature those on the ground who are working to change our food system in some way. We’ve also helped spread the word and raise funds via Kickstarter and other means for these groups.

I have personally worked with hundreds of writers and edited hundreds of stories for free, on my own time for the past years. The money we’re seeking to raise now is not to even pay me. It’s to hire a managing editor, pay our writers, and enable us to seek out foundation funding so that we can do even more, including hiring a corespondent in Washington, D.C.

Currently, we’re one of the only outlets covering how the shutdown is affecting our food system, as well as reports on the science of agriculture, such as one on toxic algae from farm runoff polluting our waterways, and this one from the UN in support of agroecological farming practices.

We were one of the first sites to make the connection between swine flu and our industrial agriculture system, have had a continuing focus on the plight of young farmers and on the issue of antibiotic resistance, and other food safety issues such as Bisphenol A (BPA) in food packaging.

Civil Eats receives about 100,000 pageviews per month, about 35 percent of which are returning readers. We’ve been quoted and linked to by The New York Times (here, here, here and here), Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Mother Jones, NPR, Slate, Huffington Post, SlashFood, Culinate, Treehugger, SF Weekly, Eater, Food News Journal, Utne Reader, and many more outlets that look to us as experts in this burgeoning field. We also know that we are read by  policymakers in Washington on a regular basis through our Google Analytics.

And we’ve done all this without funding. Can you imagine how much more we can do when we reach our goal?

We believe that Civil Eats has played a pivotal role in helping many in the sustainable food movement feel like they’re part of something important that’s building over time as more people begin to care about where our food is coming form and just how it’s produced. We are a source, a platform, and a hub, for the faces and visions of the future of good food.

These next seven days are critical. Please join us in keeping independent food news and commentary alive.