Diane Litwin knew how to grow food. But she wanted to understand the science behind farming.
This post was first published on the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition blog on Sept. 4, 2018.
Editor’s Note: The 2014 Farm Bill expires on September 30th. If the next farm bill is not finalized before that date, numerous “tiny but mighty” farm bill programs that support family farmers and food-producing communities will effectively shut down in terms of new funding and grant opportunities for fiscal year 2019. These workhorse programs, which have small price tags but big impacts, touchnearly every part of the American food and farm sectors. The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s “What’s at Stake?” series will highlight soon-to-expire farm bill programs and detail what their absence could mean for farmers and for the nation. Posts in this series cover: Local/Regional Food Systems; Beginning and Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers; Rural Development; and Organic Agriculture.
On October 1, 2012, nearly a dozen sustainable agriculture farm bill programs came to a screeching halt. These programs, many of which the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) helped to develop and champion, were among several dozen programs that ran out of funding upon the expiration of the 2008 Farm Bill. Funding for these programs was allowed to expire – leaving countless family farmers, researchers, and healthy food consumers stranded without support – because what should have been the 2012 Farm Bill took two years longer than expected to reach a conclusion. As a direct result, grant programs for beginning farmers, agricultural research, rural development, organic agriculture, and local and regional food systems were effectively frozen from October 2012 until February 2014 (when the next farm bill was passed). Each of these programs also lost a full year of funding during the hiatus.
Farmers market in Rutland/Rooted in Vermont
By Sarah L. Tichonuk
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think (Flatiron Books, April 2018) is an extraordinary book. Written by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Rönnlund, the founders of The Gapminder Project, the book is the modern thinking person’s antidote to despair. It has profound (and therapeutic) ramifications for systems thinkers, including those studying the food system.
By Basil Waugh
Crop losses for critical food grains will increase substantially with global warming, as rising temperatures boost the metabolism and population growth of insect pests, new research says.
“Climate change will have a negative impact on crops,” said Scott Merrill of the University of Vermont, a co-author of the study published in Science. “We are going to see increased pest pressure from climate change.”
Vermont Folklife Center researchers Greg Sharrow and Andy Kolovos set out four years ago to explore the grass-roots food movement in Vermont. They interviewed farmers, distributors, agricultural support organizations and institutional buyers to better understand the contemporary cultures of farming in Vermont and the economic models that make agriculture viable today.
Greg Sharrow, right, interviews Greg Cox at Boardman Hill Farm.
