Sustaining rural living |
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Sustaining rural living |
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by Anna Anderson Edition: Paperback This book looks deeply into the American food system and closely examines the need for change in the way food is grown and distributed in the United States. It is composed of twelve interviews with dynamic women who work on issues surrounding modern agriculture. These women are producers, academicians, advocates and activists. Some work in agricultural law and policy. All are devoted to changing the current system. Within a framework that offers brief overviews of the development of U.S. agriculture, the interviews allow the reader to hear firsthand what has gone wrong and what we can do about it. Part One focuses on concepts of traditional agriculture, organic growing and market viability. Part Two discusses pioneering agriculture and the process of restoring our farms to thriving habitats of biodiversity with clean water and healthy soil. Part Three considers the issues of industrial agriculture, exploring the controversy of genetically modified foods, farm foreclosures, and the 2002 Farm Bill. Part Four returns us to sustainable agriculture and how we can make sustainability work for us. It includes discussions of farmers’ markets, co-ops, and local food systems.
While the government worries about terrorists in spray planes, are you just worried about the chemicals they're spraying on the cornfield that surrounds your house? Are you having trouble finding time to grow healthy food now that you had to go to town and get a job, or wondering how to use alternative energy when you live alone and there's no one home during the day to stoke the fire? Did you lose your old alternative energy and home schooling friends to the Rapture Watch? That's okay - after they leave, we get their stuff! I've got dibs on everything in the Main Street Home Furnishings and Natural Foods store. Are you wondering whether to keep supporting the system by having to continue buying appliances and insurance for your house, or to sell the house and join an intentional community, but you're a pretty used to being independent? Are you thinking that it's time to actualize the old joke from 20 years ago about building the Old Feminist Home -- but you want to be able to have a few cows and chickens, too? In town, are there still no women on your city council? Can you tell there is no vision about community when the planning commission members think it's a good idea to put the new library in a metal building on the outskirts of town? After you found the local library bought all those Left Behind stories by Time LaHaye, have you been avoiding going to the cafe because you can't look anyone in the eye without wondering who is planning on being gone and who they think is going to be left to drink coffee with you? Well, whoooooo----eee! That sounds familiar! We must be on the same track! - Arnica Montana
Solar Greenhouse with ferris wheel flats Greenhouse built by 2 women in 10 hours Mobile
processing trailer demonstration project
Selling the family dairy cows No cows to worry about Harvest time on the plains Laying hens Real rural women's stories
A Pattern
Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction (Center for Environmental
Structure Series)
ONLINE
American
Farmland Trust
ATTRA Appropriate Technology Transfer for Rural Areas. ATTRA provides technical assistance to farmers, Extension agents, market gardeners, agricultural researchers, and other ag professionals in all 50 states. Center for Applied Rural Innovation (CARI) - University of Nebraska Center
for Rural Affairs
FoodMAP
Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture North Central Initiative for Small Farm Profitability Sustainable Agriculture Network Tilling the Soil of Opportunity United States Department of Agriculture Village
Earth
Women's
Caucus
Another list
of
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To promote sustainable agricultural and community systems; To insist on social justice and intergenerational equity; To provide opportunities for education on economic and environmental literacy that articulate a holistic view of agriculture, instill a sense of place, and draw forward useful experiences form the past; To create networks that: support communities of growers, consumers, workers and others who strive for sustainability, engage participants in experiential learning, provide safe places for self-expression, acknowledge the spirituality in internal and external landscapes; To advocate change by challenging the globalization of economies, cultures of domination, the disintegration of landscapes and oppressive conceptual frameworks.....while exploring alternatives Membership
includes quarterly newsletter and other opportunities.
Native Shop is a project of the Native American Women's Health Education Resource Center. They market products as an economic development project to raise funds for the resource center's programs. More about Native American Women's Health Education Resources Center
Rural Women's Product Development and Marketing Venture Support women-owned businesses, which contribute to social justice by providing economic alternatives in historically oppressed areas." Through the
Rural Women's Product Development and Marketing Venture, RDLN will help
develop and market a line of rural women's products, especially crafts
and items made from locally grown food. Four collaborating groups:
Vermont Farm Women
Land Tenure Center (global interest) Sustainable Agriculture Newsletter - University of California Sustainable Agriculture Newsletter - University of New Mexico Sustainable
Architecture, Building & Culture - Lots of links, and a free newsletter
This is a corn crib built in a straw bale workshop. It is located in Milan Michigan. The cover is a mix of sand, clay and lime that hardens like a stucco. Natural
Building Resources
More information on straw bale construction: Strawbale Construction Comes of Age - U.S. Department of Energy Sustainable Architecture, Building & Culture - Lots of links, and a free newsletter The
Last Straw
International
Straw Bale Building Registry
This website features thousands of annotated links and text resources for students and teachers with interests in Ecofeminism, Gender Studies and Environmental philosophy. Reweaving
the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism
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Support fair trade and small farmers. "The Rural Coalition's SuperMarket Project is an ambitious, collaborative effort of rural, community-based agricultural cooperatives to employ technology in the preservation of their communities, cultures and farming professions. The project currently focuses on three exciting opportunities for opening new markets and increasing the competitive advantage of small farmers; an on-line retail storefront, a subscription-based food of the month program and an online product availability database." ___________
This article was found in Otras Palavras - Planeto Porto Alegre Not all that shines is gold
Here Cowgirl Creamery Dairy sells Mount Tamalpais cheese, over there Kevin Lunny of Inverness sells grass fed beef while Warren Weber’s Star Route Farms of Bolinas sells edible flowers and Margie McDonald’s Wild Blue Farm sells pumpkins. The shoppers will tell you they prefer organic foods for both health and environmental reasons. The absence of pesticides is generally equally important as the guarantee that food will not contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), whose health effects are still largely unknown. Meanwhile at the other end of the North American continent, Whole Foods, a Texas-based natural food chain, recently opened New York’s biggest grocery store in at Time Warner Center's new shopping mall, touting it as 59,000 square feet of the “Ultimate Grocery and Lifestyle Shopping Experience." The company promises to turn "a seemingly mundane chore into one of New York's favorite new pastimes." Customers are offered Jamba Juice fruit smoothies, Genji Express Sushi wrapped in organic seaweed; more than 700 varieties of wine; and a Chocolate Enrobing Station "where customers can request just about anything covered in chocolate." Rest of story
Landless Workers Movement
The Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (official English web site) is the largest social movement in Latin America and one of the most successful grassroots movements in the world. Hundreds of thousands of landless peasants have taken onto themselves the task of carrying out a long-overdue land reform in a country mired by an overly skewed land distribution pattern. Less than 3% of the population owns two-thirds of Brazil's arable land. While 60% of Brasil's farmland lies idle, 25 million peasants struggle to survive by working in temporary agricultural jobs. The Landless Workers' Movement (MST) is a response to these inequalities. In 1985, with the support of the Catholic Church, hundreds of landless rural Brasilians took over an unused plantation in the south of the country and successfully established a cooperative there. They gained title to the land in 1987. Today more than 250,000 families have won land titles to over 15 million acres after MST land takeovers. In 1999 alone, 25,099 families occupied unproductive land. There are currently 71,472 families in encampments throughout Brazil awaiting government recognition. The success of the MST lies in its ability to organize. Its members have not only managed to secure land, thereby guaranteeing food security for their families, but have come up with an alternative socio-economic development model that puts people before profits. This is transforming the face of Brasil's countryside and Brasilian politics at large. These gains have not come without a cost, however. Violent clashes between the MST and police, as well as landowners, have become commonplace, claiming the lives of many peasants and their leaders. In the past 10 years, more than 1000 people have been killed as a result of land conflicts in Brasil. Prior to August 1999, only 53 of the suspected murders have been brought to trial. The MST has resisted this repression and has been able to gather support from a broad international network of human rights groups, religious organizations, and labor unions. It has received a number of international awards, including The Right Livelihood Award and an education award from UNICEF. In order to maximize production, the MST has created 60 food cooperatives as well as a small agricultural industries. Their literacy program involves 600 educators who presently work with adults and adolescents. The movement also monitors 1,000 primary schools in their settlements, in which 2,000 teachers work with about 50,000 kids.
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