by guest blogger Lisa Bunin, PhD, organic policy director, Center for Food Safety Sure, I eat organic food because I think it’s healthier for me than food grown with synthetic, toxic agrochemicals or food that’s been genetically engineered or injected with growth hormones. But equally important to me are the multiple ecosystem services and […]
Tag Archives | farming
Agricultural Nirvana
photo and text by guest blogger Matthew Benson, photographer, organic farmer, and author of Growing Beautiful Food “Out of such chaos comes the dancing star,” once said my favorite dystopian curmudgeon, Nietzsche, who may have come from farming blood, for all I know. Nietzsche’s obsessions with hardship and trial as paths to enlightenment, just like […]
36 Million Dead Chickens Can’t Be Wrong: The Bird Flu Blues
I am not a specialist; I am a generalist. But one thing we generalists have over the specialists is that we tend to see the connections between things a lot faster and more easily than specialists do. In fact, sometimes it’s so easy for us to see the connections that the specialists think we’re stupid. […]
My Dream for All Farmers
I know farmers in Brooklyn who raise bees on rooftops and kale in former junkyards. I’ve spoken at hippie organic-farming conferences in California at which I’ve met organic farmers, used to being considered outsiders, who are passionate about what they do. I’ve been in the homes of Mennonite farmers who speak Pennsylvania Dutch into their […]
Join the Farm to Cafeteria Movement
At 5 years old, Miguel Villarreal hated beets. Born into a family of migrant farmworkers, his disdain for this root vegetable stemmed from hoeing it. Today, Miguel is pro-beet, and as food service and wellness director of Novato Unified School District in California, he wants to make sure that the students he serves have the opportunity […]
Be a Farm Hero?!
The other day I was walking to work and decided to cut through Madison Square Park because there’s often something interesting going on there, like an art installation or a festival. It was a beautiful, sunny spring day. And yes, there was something going on. From across the street it looked like there was some […]
Live Baby Chick Cam: Meet Our Polar Vortex Miracle!
by Leah Zerbe, an online editor at RodaleNews.com The cyclical nature of life is perhaps nowhere more apparent than on a farm. The trusty tomato plants of summer are shriveled, brown, and barren by October; even the ragweed that plagued our fields and tested our patience all growing season have long disintegrated back into the […]
A Tribute to Lady Gaga, the World’s Bravest Rooster
by Leah Zerbe, an online editor at RodaleNews.com I’ll never forget where I was the day I heard Lady Gaga crow for the first time. Not the singer, but my chicken, a particularly beautiful little guy with flashy feathers and a gorgeous, larger-than-life swagger. To backtrack: I never asked for Lady Gaga the day we […]
Scratch
Raised on America’s first organic farm, Scratch author Maria Rodale learned how to make everyday favorites from, yes, scratch — the way you remember them; the way they turn out best.
Order NowOrganic Manifesto
Drawing on findings from leading health researchers as well as conversations with both chemical and organic farmers from coast to coast, Maria Rodale irrefutably outlines the unacceptably high cost of chemical farming on our health and our environment.
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