By Rhonda Winter •
April 13, 2009
A new documentary film, “Food Inc.” exposes a frightening portrait of how dysfunctional and destructive our food system has become, and how dishonest corporations repeatedly compromise safety for profit. The movie illustrates how our nation is almost totally divorced from seasonal food, biodiversity and local production. We have entrusted the safety of our food system to a small handful of huge greedy corporations that are destroying us and the planet with massive monoculture factory farms and poisonous chemicals.
By Lisa Kivirist •
August 13, 2008
Confess: You’re a closet cookbook junkie, too. I admit, my foodie reading gut tends to lean toward literature that involved ingredient lists, serving sizes and centerfolds of juicy eggplants. But I’m on a mission to diversify my diet, still under the umbrella of my passion for food – but stirring things up with perspectives on the bigger picture of our food system and the role we as individual eaters can play in advocates for change.
Warning: Reading such literature can prompt you to quit your day job, follow new dreams and move to a farm in southwestern Wisconsin – or other paths of change that may not currently be in your big picture life plan. That’s exactly what happened to my fellow farmer friend, Kriss Marion, who traded the Chicago scene in 2005 to launch Circle M Farm in Blanchardville, Wisconsin, running a CSA (community supported agriculture) and a fiber business. “People often ask me how it happened that we uprooted our city family and came to be market farming in southwest Wisconsin,” explains Marion. “The answer, plain and simple, is books.”
