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Farms Without Toads:
The Canary Banished from the Mine
Regulators and agro-industrialists have decreed
that the toads and frogs, snakes and lizards, small mammals and other
newly-designated interlopers are unacceptable vectors of disease and must be
kept out of the vegetable patch by any means necessary. . . .
Organic Agriculture,
World Hunger and Global Warming
(report from the IFOAM Organic World Congress and General Assembly)
From June 17 through 24, 2008, I had the
honor and pleasure of representing NOFA at "Cultivate the Future," the 16th
Organic World Congress and General Assembly of the International Federation of
Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) in Modena and Vignola, Italy. The
organizers of the conference did not shy away from the big issues. . . .
Keynote Address: Northeast Organic
Farming Association, Massachusetts Chapter, January 2008
I am very excited to be here today to
celebrate the 25th anniversary of NOFA-MA. The year 2008 is a year of many
celebrations — the 20th anniversary of GVOCSA, the 10th anniversary of
Peacework Farm, and my 65th birthday. . . .
Teikei and the Japanese Organic
Agriculture Association
Much
to my surprise, one late August afternoon at the IFOAM conference, in
Victoria, I found myself surrounded by a group from the Japanese
Organic Agriculture Association. . . .
"Spirit of Organic"
Award to Elizabeth Henderson
This year, for the annual organic dinner at the Natural Foods Expo
sponsored by New Hope Natural Media and the Organic Trade Association,
the theme was "Spirit of Organic: Honoring Women in Organics. . . ."
Keynote
Address: Michigan CSA Conference, October 2004
Elizabeth Henderson's Presentation to the
Michigan CSA Conference.
Keynote Address: Upper Midwest
Organic Farming Conference, February 2004
Elizabeth Henderson's Presentation to the Upper Midwest Organic Farming Conference
with the following reply to Samuel
Fromartz:
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In his recent book, Organic, Inc.: Natural
Foods and How They Grew,
Samuel Fromartz uses passages of my 2004 keynote at the Upper Midwest
Organic Farming Conference to characterize the "backlash" against
industrial organic. Although he took the time to interview many of the
people in organic agriculture whose stories he tells in this book, he
did not check in with me. I would have pointed out that he misnamed my
keynote as "Who SHOULD own Organic?" when I called it "Growing Our
Roots." While I am happy to be associated with Wendell Berry, Fromartz
refers to me as an "agrarian," who would prefer that organic remain a
"kind of agrarian niche in the food system. . . ."
I have never upheld
the notion of organic as "niche" food. I
believe that in a sustainable system, smaller, family-scale farms will
once again replace industrialized agriculture. Food staples will come
from local and regional networks of small and middle-sized farms,
farming cooperatives and urban gardens, and only treats, such as coffee
and chocolate, will come from more distant regions. For this to occur,
we will have to dismantle the mega-multinational corporations and
return power to ordinary working people, organized, as Wendell Berry
suggests, in the party of the local economy. We will have to
redistribute farm land and decentralize political control. -- Elizabeth
Henderson
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The Robyn Van En
Center
The GVOCSA Core has made a contribution of $300 from membership fees to
support the work of the Robyn Van En Center for Community Supported
Agriculture Resources. . . ."
Elizabeth Henderson's
Cornell Speech (2002)
Ever
since I returned to New York in 1988, NOFA has been asking Cornell to
allocate some of its farmland to research in organic agriculture that
would benefit organic farmers and other farmers as well. . . ."
A Well
Oiled Machine (interview with Elizabeth Henderson)
If
current trends hold for the next few decades, community-supported
agriculture will make steady inroads against the domination of
corporation-supported monoculture. . . ."
Social
Stewardship Standards
The movement for organic and sustainable agriculture has done a
tremendous amount of work over the past two decades creating production
standards for organic farming and processing. . . ."
Hybrids
Socially
conscious gardeners these days consider using hybrid seed politically
questionable. For a home garden, the open pollinated varieties are, for
the most part, satisfactory. On the scale at which we are producing
some vegetables at Peacework, however, we need some hybrids.
Why?"
The Safety of Organic
Food
If
we limit the concept of food safety to freedom from contamination by
pathogenic microbes, the three main potential sources of contamination
of fresh produce are water, manure, animal or human, and worker
hygiene. . . .
Food and Agriculture in the
United States
by Elizabeth Henderson
"You
Are What You Eat" and "Know Your Farmer" are the slogans of the New
York Sustainable Agriculture Working Group (NYSAWG), a coalition of
farming, environmental, farmworker, and faith groups of which I chair
the board.. . .
"Too deeply flawed to fix"
by Jon Greenbaum
The
Consensus within the Organics industry appears to be that we should
reject the proposed USDA standards which allow sewage sludge, food
irradiation, genetic engineering, factory farming (the use of intensive
confinement feedlots and factory production methods practiced on farm
animals), and animal cannibalism (the practice of including diseased
rendered cows in cow feed). . . .
Update on Sewer Sludge by Suzanne Wheatcraft
On
Sunday, Feb. 15th, at 2 PM at the Monroe Ave. Genesee Coop, Jack
Ossont, Vice Chair of the Yates Co. Soil and Water District Board, gave
a free talk and presentation on "Irradiated Sewer Sludge is Good for
You". . . .
Vermicomposting at home by Colleen Fogarty
When
I moved last August, I wondered what I was going to do with my organic
waste now that I no longer had a suitable place for a compost pile. As
I was lamenting the possibility of landfilling all the wonderful fruit
and vegetable scraps, my partner Jeff suggested the idea of setting up
a worm bin. . . .
Keynote Address: Upper Midwest
Organic Farming Conference, 1999
Elizabeth Henderson's Presentation to the Upper Midwest Organic Farming
Conference, 1999.
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