By Chris Smaje, Small Farm Future
What’s now needed to create an electable left populism is longer-term community-building of another kind, promoting locally shared spaces and resources, environmental care and economic autonomy that tries to build bridges among whoever’s locally in place. That strategy is also the one that’s needed to build a sustainable small farm future. So for me it’s clear at least where to focus political energy.
By Brian Miller, South Roane Agrarian
The small farm that grows and provides quality products needs more than simply market access. It also needs a base of buyers who truly value its existence. Who see the small farmer as more than just a commodity choice or an archetype (Let’s buy from the hip chick, support the old man in overalls, go multicultural this week). Who instead see the small farmer as an essential part of the community.
By Timothy A. Wise, Resilience.org
That is why I decided to write this book. I needed to understand why our leaders, after the wake-up call of a global food crisis, remained so blindly committed to business-as-usual policies that ignored the affordable solutions all around them. These solutions could help hungry farmers eat today while giving them the natural and financial resources that could allow them—and all of us—to eat tomorrow.
By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth
The key message is that the potential of small farms for global food production is determined by economic conditions rather than biological, ecological or agronomic limitations.
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.