Friday Linkorama
A veggie garden in front of New York's City Hall?
It's not just farmers and consumers who are in a tizzy over Michael Pollan;
But there is another cultural divide coming to the fore in our society, this one between farmer and farmer. The best current example of this phenomenon is the flare up of opposition to Michael Pollan’s books criticizing industrial grain farms and animal factories. Agribusiness has suddenly realized it can no longer just ignore the opposition. A large scale corn and soybean farmer, Blake Hurst, went online with something he called the “Omnivore’s Delusion” to blast Pollan’s “Ominivore’s Dillema.” The crap really hit the fan. Industrial farm supporters and pastoral farm supporters went at each other on the Internet like a couple of tomcats, the former labeled sneeringly as factory food producers and the latter called, even more sneeringly, “agri-intellectuals.” Fast farming vs. fake farming.
Are Spokane's locavores Spokavores or Spocavores? At least I haven't heard anyone say Spocalvore...yet.
Atkinson elementary in Portland is feeding their kids locally grown Rutabagas. It's been awhile since I reminded the readers of the blog that our family had a Grand Champion Rutabaga at the Spokane County Fair a couple years back. It's kind of the Oscar or Grammy of root crops.
If you don't have enough anxiety in your life and want to get freaked out about farm raised salmon go here.
A friend of a friend has a new book out on the intersections of environment and faith. Tending to Eden by Scott Sabin. Scott is the Exec. Director of Plant With Purpose, a Christian mission agency that focuses on enviormental/land issues for impoverished people in small villages. They're doing amazing stuff in Haiti. Our church has been planting trees with this organization instead of buying Poinsettias for Christmas and Easter Lilies for Easter. Go here to plant a tree in Haiti.
Speaking of books, there may be a Year of Plenty book in the not too distant future. More on that later.
Have a great weekend.