Good Food is Everybody's Business
We’ve got young people who want to farm, but they can’t. When the New York Times recognizes that an industry is in trouble, it is time to correct the problem – fast! We’ve got a cadre of tough, energetic, smart and dedicated young people who want to farm. They’re ready! All we need to do now is give them the financial support they need to do the job.
In the Andes, there have been fundamental changes in production patterns as a result of the different processes of land reform in the region and “agricultural modernization.” Today, the environmental context and local culture are no longer the main determinants of production systems, but rather the habits of unknown consumers and their food demands are determining what farmers grow and when and how they grow it.
When you were 5, what did you want to be when you grew up? A fireman, a ballet dancer, a doctor? Maybe even a farmer? Over the last several generations, somewhere between the ages 5 and 15, farmer fell off the list of careers for most Americans.
Wendell Berry is emerging as a figure who is much-saluted but little-heeded by those in power. Yet his critique is as relevant today as it was when this book was first published in 1977.
Hombres de maíz. Men of corn. More than just a description, it’s the basis of the Mayan belief system. Popol Vuh, the Mayan’s eight hundred year-old narrative of creation, teaches just that: humankind is created from corn.
Globalization has fundamentally changed agriculture across Europe. The idyllic image of small farms with sustainable agriculture has been replaced with agricultural cogs producing food-ingredient inputs for international industrial agri-businesses. In every link of the new global food chain, agriculture has become more intensive, larger in scale, and more environmentally and socially unsustainable.
