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It was a hot and hazy August day when we drove 15 miles due west of Augusta, Montana, into the rolling hills where we glimpsed the foothills of the East Front of the Rocky Mountains and the edge of the Bob Marshall Wilderness. 
Regenerative Organic Certification adds criteria and builds off the USDA NOP standards and other standards in the areas of soil health and land management, animal welfare, and farmer and worker fairness. Beyond organic as it stands today. 
Montana is rightfully called Big Sky Country, and it’s not unusual to drive 3 or 4 hours to attend a meeting, visit friends, or join a field day to learn about ranching or farming. On a hot and smoky day in August, Anderson Ranch in the Tom Miner Basin, near Yellowstone National Park, hosted several dozen folks who came to learn more about resilient ranching. 
Enclosed by surrounding mountain ranges, where black cattle and white sheep graze in sunshine filtered through a slight haze of wildfire smoke, a community comes together to concentrate on healthy animals, healthy soil, and healthy families. 
When one of the world’s experts on soil health and land resilience (from Auckland, NZ, a 9,500 mile trek) is scheduled to lead a day-long workshop just 170 miles away, you do everything you can to be there! 
Our “National Hymn,” America the Beautiful, opens with the image of endless skies over fields of ripe golden grain that reach to purple mountains on the horizon. Poet Katharine Lee Bates would probably be appalled to realize that she was eulogizing one of the worst examples of mono-cropping in existence – second only to the carpeting of Iowa with corn. 
The conquistadores virtually erased chia from Mayan cultural awareness as part of their campaign to subjugate the Mesoamerican peoples to Church and King. But today, even as ordinary Guatemalans are engaged in a massive ongoing popular campaign to throw off the rule of a corrupt and brutal elite, chia may be ripe for rediscovery. 
Most of the Ethiopian farmers in the Lelistu Ogda farmer cooperative struggle with soil fertility. That’s why Ayelech Bekele and 19 other women now embrace beekeeping as an alternative method for increasing their incomes. 
Gardens of Eagan, Northfield MN, 2010 As we face climate change and continuing issues of food security, how will natural food markets and co-ops source healthy local food and provide a living wage to farm and retail workers? In 2007, the Wedge Co-op, Minneapolis MN, believed the simple answer was to buy the Gardens |
 
Book of the MonthStand Together or Starve Alone: Unity and Chaos in the U.S. Food Movement
 “The Food Movement” is a pretty big concept – it can incorporate anything and everything from farming and food production to distribution, marketing, and retail sales. Then toss in farmers markets, food co-ops, and CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and it’s a topic that is hard to get your mind around.
In Stand Together or Starve Alone, Mark Winne uses the term “food movement” as an over-arching concept, however he rounds it up into a more straightforward description: “Food Security.” Read on... A Video You Don't Want to Miss!As a member of the Blackfeet Nation, Mariah Gladstone, IndigiKitchen, shares the importance of an Indigenous-based diet. 
Gladstone poses the question of whether a nation can truly be soverign if they are unable to provide for themselves. Something we should all ask ourselves as we move farther from being able to do so. LEARN MORE ABOUT HOW YOUR FOOD GETS TO YOUR PLATE
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