What do you get when you cross a grassroots movement with a food industry fearful of losing its influence? Bogus studies, campaigns of misinformation and opinion pieces filled with myth and vitriol.

You may have noticed an uptick this year in news reporting that organic food isn’t really better for you, opinion pieces by conventional farmers saying that they are tired of being demonized by “agri-intellectuals”, and guilt-inducing ads by Monsanto in highbrow publications like the New Yorker touting the company’s ability to feed the …

Tags: battle of ideas , consumer power , conventional farming , corporate power , organic food , sustainable agriculture

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Growing food closer to where we live, both in urban centers and suburban tracts, is going to become more important as oil prices rise. Right now, it’s an important step to providing access to healthy food for more people, making agriculture more sustainable and providing more opportunities for a younger crop of farmers. But it’s going to require a reversal in development patterns.

For generations, the pattern has been to pave over farmland with housing and shopping center developments. In California, particularly, this is a problem because California is …

Tags: suburban farms , sustainable agriculture

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One of a pair of food documentaries making the rounds this summer, Fresh, The Movie, in contrast to Food Inc. (reviewed here last week) presents a vision of the possible by profiling heroes all over the country who are changing the way we eat. If Food Inc. was your wake up call, Fresh, The Movie is your call to action.

Fresh’s strength is that it shows the incredible creativity of individuals who are devoting their lives to producing food differently. The success of …

Tags: film , food heroes , movie , review , sustainable agriculture

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Some people say knowledge is power. I say access to affordable, healthy food to grow your body and your brain is power.

There’s been a lot of talk about the sustainable food movement being elitist when so many people don’t have enough to eat.

Whether or not you believe that to be true, you should know there are organizations working to make sure that people in lower socio-economic classes, and those who live in neighborhoods without access to healthy, fresh foods aren’t left behind in the movement. One …

Tags: food justice , social justice , sustainable agriculture , urban agriculture

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