Loud-mouthed liberal feminist. Anarchist knitter. Tequila-drinking artsy-smartsy fat chick. Bluesy folk-rock singer-songwriter. Rebel with too many causes. Quirky eclectic pagan poet. Paradoxical intuitive smartass. Sarcastic brainiac insomniac. You know, for starters.

3.04.2008

Quick locavore news roundup.

First, Jack Hedin (a Minnesota organic farmer) talks about the federal government's roadblocks to building local food systems - in the NY Times, of all places! (via Common Dreams) My takeaway from this article: commercial fruit and veggie growers in Cali, Florida, and Tejas and their lobbyists need to be punched. All the more reason to learn about canning and other natural (and old-fashioned!) preservative methods, so I can stop giving those bastards my produce money in the off seasons.

I really enjoyed this piece from the Boston Globe, looking at the connections between spirituality and environmentalism. My personal tradition was born from the intersection of religion and politics (see here if you're curious about specifics), and so I'm always intrigued by the way activism and faith connect - especially as in this context, the faith in question is Christian in nature, with the token exception of a few lines from the Harvard UU Minister. (I do find this line hilarious: "Early environmentalists evoked a spirituality about the earth, but some religious people interpreted this spirituality as pagan, one that viewed the earth itself as a deity." Since my personal tradition came from those early environmentalists, and is in fact pagan in nature....uh, yeah. I guess those "religious people" would be right, then.)

I also found this article from the Baltimore Sun, talking about some of the reasons local agriculture is so important, and some of the obstacles to joining the locavore movement in a region with little agriculture and even less sustainable local food infrastructure. Some of this is specific to Baltimore itself, but the general principles I think can be applied to any urban environment, especially economically disadvantaged ones. (With, of course, the exception of the too-often-hyped "obesity epidemic" argument for the locavore movement...which it DOES NOT NEED. UGH.)

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