By Robert Jensen, Wes Jackson, Podcast from the Prairie
Welcome to “Podcast from the Prairie.” Wes Jackson, one of the founders of the sustainable agriculture movement, tells stories that take us from lessons learned growing up on a Kansas farm to the front lines of crucial debates about ecological crises and social struggles
By Gracy Olmstead, The American Conservative
Cassie Chambers’s Hill Women: Finding Family and a Way Forward in the Appalachian Mountains, like Smarsh’s Heartland, considers the dignity and resiliency of poor working-class families in this region of America.
By Brian Miller, South Roane Agrarian
Planting spring gardens, harvesting late winter greens, grazing the flocks, working the bees — from time to time, when the light hit just right, I caught the merest glimmer of what a saner world could be.
By Natalia Mamonova, Transnational Institute
Thus, what has to be done? Since the cause of right-wing populism is the failure of neoliberalism, cosmetic changes will not have a long-lasting effect, we need to rethink the entire system. We need to put food producers – not multinational corporations and supermarket chains – at the centre of the European food system and decision making.
By Charles D. Thompson, Resilience.org
Are there rural Americans who will embrace neighbors who do not look like them, go beyond tribalism and fear, and welcome diverse allies in the struggle for common goals? Will rural whites come to see that their future is tied to racial, environmental, and economic justice for all? I believe the answers to these questions will determine whether our national drive to form a “more perfect union” can survive. Everything America stands for is riding on this.
By Catherine Broomfield, Sustainable Food Trust
What we must not forget amid the reams of policy briefings and papers, is that rural economies are not an abstract concept, but a mosaic of real people, places and passions that drive creativity and entrepreneurship. Here are two such stories of the many remarkable everyday tales of rural economy folk.
By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry
If you ever wanted to see what the world might look like after the Tribulation, you could do worse than visit the Burren land on the Atlantic coast of Ireland. ... the Burren has only rock, with thin soil in the cracks –a rippling moonscape of pale hills that stretches to the sea, with few trees to slow the screaming Atlantic winds. It’s lovely to visit, but living here would seem to us like being marooned on an alien planet, and raising children unthinkable.
By Joel Stronberg, Civil Notion
Trump’s crowing about his having launched an unprecedented economic miracle rarely seen before belies the harms his economic and environmental policies are causing farmers, ranchers, and agro-businesses in America’s heartlands.
By Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
Something new will arise, and in the evolution of what comes next, many may find what is often lacking in life today—the excitement of a profound challenge, meaning beyond the self, a deep sense of purpose, and commitment to place.
By Neal Gorenflo, Shareable
While this new rural economy is coming to life, its success is uncertain. It will likely be an uneven, difficult, and slow transition if there's a transition at all. It will take people of uncommon vision, commitment and patience to make it happen.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
I don’t think I’m being too Spenglerian to express the fear that in present troubled times, when the modernist state-industry-warfare nexus is manifestly unraveling, something similar could easily take hold again and do the same. And that, I submit, is a thoughtstarter, not a thoughtstopper.
By Russell Arben Fox, In media res
The Art of Loading Brush: New Agrarian Writings, the latest collection of writings by Wendell Berry, isn't a perfect book, nor the perfect expression of his powerful vision of what constitutes a good life or a good community.