More resources on food, for thought

My interest in "food systems" has been growing (heh, heh) for some time. Part of the motivation comes from a practice of artisan sourdough baking that's been going on approaching a decade now. In the process, I learned that I was dealing with a living, organic system, not simply a mechanical process. That built on my life-long interest in rural sustainability and maintaining thriving rural communities, which began with a New England upbringing and time spent in Vermont, Maine and on Massachusett's South Shore, Cape Cod and the Islands. New England communities surrounding a village common come close to my ideal of "rural development," accompanied by small, family farms which produce food for the community.

how is field corn grown for ethanol different than shale oil fracking?

Photo by J. Harrington

The preceding background is prelude to a couple of farming-related resources I found this morning that I think are worth sharing. One is based in Maine, the other on the "other" coast. Greenhorns is "a community powered studio dedicated to grassroots media, cultural programming and land repair for the benefit of the human and non-human worlds.... "whose "mission is to promote, support, and recruit young farmers in America." A recent Greenhorn video provides a direct link to Minnesota as it explores "the works and service of farm-based Catholic worker communities in the upper Midwest. Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic workers, was highly devout and profoundly independent: she emphasized direct action for peace and justice, and direct service for the poor." I've not yet explored all the resources on their site so there's much to look forward to.

farmer's markets offer local foods, sweet corn not field corn

Photo by J. Harrington

The other resource I found this morning includes readings of white papers by a favorite writer, systems modeler and person, Donella Meadows. Oregon State University has an online, short course, Introduction to Food Systems, in its Center for Small Farms and Community Food Systems. I've read the Meadows papers already and will review them again in the context of the videos provided as keys to the course. Each of these should complement nicely my ongoing reading of Rebuilding the Foodshed and Wendell Berry's Bringing It to the Table essays on farming and food.

[UPDATE: Unfortunately, the quality of the presentations in the Oregon short course severely detracts from the content. The Adobe Presenter movies have somehow cropped out large areas of some of the slides. I had similar problems on both my laptop screen and the 21" screen of my desktop computer.]

From what I've read so far, the web sites of neither the Land Stewardship Project nor the University of Minnesota system provide resources comparable to Greenhorns or OSUs. If any readers think I've missed something important on LSP's or UMN's web sites, please share a link in the comments. From the  reports of the past several years, food, its production, processing and consumption, plus the wastes generated in those processes, offer great opportunities for reducing our carbon footprints and eating healthier foods. In fact, I'm not sure the Green New Deal legislation focuses enough attention on our food systems, but that's for other days and other  posts.

A Poem on Hope

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, 
for hope must not depend on feeling good 
and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. 
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality 
of the future, which surely will surprise us, 
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction 
anymore than by wishing. But stop dithering. 
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? 
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.
Because we have not made our lives to fit 
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded, 
the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope 
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge 
of what it is that no other place is, and by 
your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this 
knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. 
It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask 
for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land
and your work.  Be still and listen to the voices that belong 
to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.
Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. 
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot. 
The world is no better than its places. Its places at last 
are no better than their people while their people 
continue in them. When the people make 
dark the light within them, the world darkens.

–Wendell Berry

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