Slow food: Have we lost our appetite? (Carolo Pertini interview)
Leo Hickman, Guardian
With purse strings tightening and sales of organic food falling, can the world afford the luxury of ‘slow food’? Leo Hickman meets its founder, Carlo Petrini, who believes that his vision of farmers’ markets in every neighbourhood, community vegetable allotments and network of small local producers could help to shape a global re-evaluation of food and farming
(4 February 2009)
Our love-hate relationship with the Red Cedar tree
Gene Logsdon, OrganicToBe.org
As with the New York Yankees, country people either love red cedars or hate them. One side says that red cedar is a fast-spreading weed tree and is a host for a disease harmful to apple trees. The other side maintains that red cedar is an attractive windbreak tree with useful, beautiful wood and berries beloved by many birds.
(3 February 2009)
Courtesy Dave Smith of OrganicToBe.org.
Program helps future farmers find land
Rob Chaney, The Missoulian
Think of it as an agricultural dating service.
Still productive, older farm acreage seeks young, vigorous farmer for long- or short-term relationship. Must enjoy outdoors, dirty fingernails and fresh food.
That’s the hope for Land Link Montana, a new service connecting landowners seeking land workers and vice versa. Founder Paul Hubbard said the seven-county program may preserve western Montana’s agricultural heritage while boosting its local food production.
“We have a broken food system,” Hubbard said. “Farmers and ranchers are struggling to make money, and consumers aren’t eating great food. That’s a symptom of a bigger problem.”
The problem is land, and what it’s used for. As landowners approach retirement age, it gets harder to summon the energy to keep farming and easier to heed the cash offers of home developers. At the same time, new farmers and ranchers face huge start-up costs to get the land they need – and want – to work.
The Land Link Montana idea grew out of Hubbard’s experience working on Missoula’s Garden City Harvest community farms and his research on similar programs in other states.
(4 February 2009)
Looks like the article was removed. -BA
Here is a related article that gives more information on this hopeful initiative (sometimes you just think duh!, why didn’t anyone think of this before now?). The article also contains the links to the Lank Link Montana website. Similar ideas on a much smaller scale are going on here in the UK with the gardenshare programs that match up people who can’t take care of a garden with avid would-be gardeners who don’t have one. KS
