By Julie Baber, Sustainable Food Trust
The dictionary definition of ‘farmer’ is simply: “someone who owns or manages a farm”. A farm is: “an area of land and its buildings used for growing crops and rearing animals”.
By Victoria Balfour, Sustainable Food Trust
“It’s what a farm should be doing, feeding local people surrounding the farm,” says Gerald, “if every farmer did that, we wouldn’t need supermarkets. It’s therapy for the farmer and for the community.”
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
A happy International Day of Peasant’s Struggle to you. Talking of which, I’m still struggling away trying to write my book about peasants while the rest of the farm crew are up in London protesting about government inaction on climate change, which means I’m having to do a bit of proper work as well for a change.
By Michael Foley, Resilience.org
We need farmer- controlled advocacy organizations that are constantly alert to our particular needs as small farmers, engaged in creative adaptation to a changing agricultural reality.
By Timothy A. Wise, Food Tank
On December 17, the United Nations General Assembly took a quiet but historic vote, approving the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other People Working in Rural Areas, by a vote of 121-8 with 52 abstentions.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
The lessons of China’s tumultuous history demand attention from those of us who advocate for more localized, land-based economies as part of the solution to global problems.
By Margot Ford McMillen, YES! magazine
We neighbors have made a commitment to support small farmers, and we’re working it out in this kitchen. We are finding new ways to pass on the old food traditions.
By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
This is where for me the ELC ticks a lot of boxes. By raising money from investors, it’s able to lease or sell leasehold smallholdings at more affordable prices, thus obviating the aforementioned need for the would-be farmer otherwise to choose the circumstances of their birth, enter a loveless marriage of convenience, or toil miserably to turn an income when they should be turning a furrow.
By Nafeez Ahmed, The Ecologist
Modern industrial agricultural methods can no longer feed the world, due to the impacts of overlapping environmental and ecological crises linked to land, water and resource availability.
By Dyan Redick, Homegrown Life
What I experienced instead was the realization that E. B. White and I had so much in common. His litany of tasks and thoughts and expressions of worry or concern were exactly the same things I experience as I wend my way through “working the farm” every day. I said out loud, to nobody but the cats and dog, who gave me a concerned look, “This is exactly how my day is!”<