yearofplenty

World Trade Organization Tells U.S. Consumers They Aren't Allowed to Know Food's Country of Origin

A recent ruling from the World Trade Organization has got me feeling like I need to initiate an "Occupy Your Grocery Store" movement. The WTO has declared that current U.S. food country-of-origin labeling laws for meat and produce are "illegal." Bloomberg News reports:

Canada and Mexico said the provisions impose unfair costs on their exports, reducing their competitiveness. Judges agreed that the policies meant beef and pork from Canada and Mexico were treated less favorably than the same U.S. products.

The article goes on the share the perspectives of farmers and industry insiders who lament that the program is "costly and cumbersome," and that the costs "far outweigh any benefits."

This may seem like an obscure, niche debate but I think it goes to the heart of the current crisis in food systems around the world. Industrialists insist that food is nothing more than a commodity that can be reduced to a product with nutritional content, a hunk of chemicals and proteins with a profit margin. In their ideal world a food item is not connected to anything--no farmer, no land, no community, no country, no watershed, no carbon footprint, no pesticide, no herbicide, no low-wage farm worker, nothing. The industrial food system is most efficient when the journey from farm to table is an undiscernable mystery, and the champions of this industry will keep pushing for more efficiency, as if it hasn't already been pushed too far.

I'm reminded of the John Muir quote from My First Summer in the Sierra where he observes: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

The problem with the industrial vision of storyless food is that it defies the truth that it is, in fact, "hitched to everything else." It's hitched to the endangered thin-brown line of topsoil that covers the earth. It's often connected to lies and deception (See "Most honey you buy at the store isn't honey"). It's part of huge debates about water wars and environmental destruction (see California water wars). Beef often has a sordid web of connections to things like heavy metals, antibiotic residues, clandestine cloning, ammonia soaking, and even fatalities. 

Food is more "hitched" than most things which is why the move to further separate consumers from the origin of foods is so disturbing. 

Wendell Berry sums up the current conundrum of consumers when he writes about our troubling ignorance about the ways our consumer items are "hitched":

...the first thought may be a recognition of one’s ignorance and vulnerability as a consumer in the total economy. As such a consumer, one does not know the history of the products that one uses. Where, exactly, did they come from? Who produced them? What toxins were used in their production? What were the human and ecological costs of producing them and then of disposing of them? One sees that such questions cannot be answered easily, and perhaps not at all. Though one is shopping amid an astonishing variety of products, one is denied certain significant choices. In such a state of economic ignorance it is not possible to choose products that were produced locally or with reasonable kindness toward people and toward nature. Nor is it possible for such consumers to influence production for the better. Consumers who feel a prompting toward land stewardship find that in this economy they can have no stewardly practice. To be a consumer in the total economy, one must agree to be totally ignorant, totally passive, and totally dependent on distant supplies and self-interested suppliers.

Berry concludes, and I tend to agree, that the best way to respond to this situation is to nurture "prosperous local economies." According to Berry, "Without prosperous local economies, the people have no power and the land no voice." In other words, buying from local farmers and producers is the best way to know the story of the items we buy. Instead of relying on a beauracracy of labeling rules, he says we need to take things into our own hands and develop relationships with people. If enough consumers start moving in this direction, demanding meaningful knowledge about the items we buy, then maybe industry representative will take note and respond.

Supporting local farmers like Rocky Ridge Ranch that was featured in the Spokesman Review this weekend is a great way to take a step in this direction. The Spokane Public Market and the Millwood Winter Farmers' Market, 3-6pm on Wednesdays at the Crossing Youth Center are other options worth considering. Consider making local farmers and producers a part of this year' Christmas shopping plans. 

Year of Plenty Book Update: Publisher's Weekly, Humane Society, and More Cowbell/Wendell Berry

Reviews keep coming in for Year of Plenty.

I really like David Crumm's review at Read the Spirit. More than anyone else, he grasped the way our focus on local living in Spokane opened us up to our global connection in Thailand. In describing the local-global focus of the book he writes: 

These two principles in their book make the “Year of Plenty” a work of genius—perhaps genius stumbled upon out of real-life necessity, but a work of genius, nonetheless. This Norman Rockwell family sewed together a patchwork quilt of principles that real people can duplicate—and that takes the century-old adage “Think Globally, Act Locally” one step further. The Goodwins—with modest means—managed to “Think Locally, Act Globally”!

Along with the above article the site has also posted a interview, which was especially fun because Nancy was given a chance to share her side of the story.

Speaking of Nancy, she wrote an article that went live today at Her.meneutics: the Christianity Today blog for women.

Other notable reviews include:

Amy Frykholm at the The Christian Century:

Goodwin writes with humor and insight. In one of my favorite passages, he takes the reader step by step through the connection between American Christianity and consumer culture. His discussion is personal and unassuming but also incisively critical and deeply theological. While I've felt this connection many times, I've never seen it laid out quite so clearly.

Christine Sine at Godspace:

I thoroughly enjoyed Craig’s stories and the way that he weaves his family’s journey to learn more about the food they eat, the community they live in and the global community of which they are a part with lessons of faith, life and God....I heartily recommend Year of Plenty to anyone who is grappling with issues of sustainability, environmental stewardship and simplicity.

Publisher's Weekly:

...this little book cheerfully demonstrates to suburban Joes and Joans that sustainable consumption is doable. It also honors God's earth. 

The Publisher's Weekly review dinged me a little for including too much Wendell Berry in the book. In my defense, the reviewer couldn't help but quote Berry in explaining that I quoted Berry too much. Wendell Berry is like the cowbell in the SNL skit with Christopher Walken and Will Ferrill. In the tradition of the cowbell sketch, all I have to say is, "Guess what? I have a fever and the only prescription is more Wendell Berry."

I'm really excited about the connections I've made with the faith outreach arm of the Humane Society of the USA. Karen Louden Allanach of the Humane Society wrote a very nice review.

On that note, The Humane Society is working with others to get Initiative Measure No. 1130 on the ballot in Washington State. The new law "would prohibit, with certain exceptions, confining hens in stacked enclosures or enclosures that limit the hens' movement, and would prohibit the sale of eggs in the shell from hens so confined. I will have petitions at the Millwood Farmers' Market that you can sign to help get this measure on the ballot.

I'm hoping in the next week there will be a 6 week small-group discussion guide available as a free pdf download.

People have been asking me about sales and I think they are going OK. If you are interested in helping get the word out about Year of Plenty, the most helpful thing would be to write a review at Amazon.com and Good Reads. I would also appreciate passing on the book and my name for any speaking opportunities at conferences, gardening clubs, churches, etc. 

Did Seattle and Portland Get Their Foodie Inspiration from Eastern Washington?

At least that's what Jeffrey Sanders claims in a recent Op-Ed at the Seattle Times. 

The roots of the contemporary food movement in the Northwest run far deeper than Seattle's hastily tilled parking-strip gardens. The movement is more geographically dispersed and firmly established than most of us realize. Most surprising, despite its coastal image, its birthplace is not Seattle or Portland. This region's food movement pioneers originated in ... Eastern Washington.

He goes on to explain that the 1974 World's Fair in Spokane started a conversation that sparked the proliferation of P-Patch community gardens in Seattle, and the formation of Northwest Tilth, and Oregon Tilth, two pioneering organizations in organic agriculture and whole-earth ecology. Most significantly, Sanders points out, these conversations east of the mountains planted the seeds that eventually led to the Organic Agriculture degree program at Washington State University.

Sanders concludes:

...if we can look beyond the Interstate 5 corridor for a sense of bioregional identity, the contemporary food movement still has the potential to connect east and west, city and country, and hopefully in a way that is more equitable and, one can hope, a little less precious.

There is irony in the fact that the modern food movement tends to be culturally centered in trendy, urban neighborhoods, when it's actually farmers and universities in rural areas that are pioneering sustainable practices in agriculture. Given the urban-centrism of the conversation, it too easily reflects some of the well-worn prejudices against country folks that led to derogatory labels like "redneck." (Until I read Wendell Berry's commentary on this and other labels like it, I never made the connection that these terms originated as ways to socially alienate farmers, especially in the south. Someone has a red neck because they are out in the fields working all day.)

These prejudices play out in more sophisticated ways in today's debates, where crunchy urban centers are painted as the centers of virtue when it comes to sustinability, and rural farmers are painted with a broad brush as Round-Up loving, earth-raping, titans of agriculture. Neither caricature reflects the reality on the ground. I have yet to meet a farmer who doesn't care for the land and the food it produces and our big cities have at least as many vices as they do virtues when it comes to food consumption.

As someone who lives on the east side of the mountains, and writes about food and culture, I share Sanders' sentiments.  There is a need for a more dynamic east-west interchange along I-90 that is at least as vital as the Seattle-Portland alliance that runs north-south along I-5. As he points out, this connection has been a key to past innovations in the Pacific Northwest food landscape, and holds potential to do the same in the future.

h/t Bike to Work Barb

28 Books in 28 Days - Christian Voices on Environment, Food, and Simple Living

Starting tomorrow, February 1, I will be reviewing 28 books in 28 days leading up to the release of my book, Year of Plenty, on March 1. Year of Plenty tells the story of our family's experience in 2008 consuming only what was local, used, homegrown, or homemade. Our four rules, scribbled on a Starbucks brochure in a fit of consumer fatigue, led us into wonderful conversations about locavores (people who eat local food), going green, farmers' markets, downshifters (people who intentionally seek to consume less), simple living, food not lawns, backyard chickens, and more. 

There are already some great books on these topics. The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan is a wonderful expose of how our far-flung food system has gone awry, and Alisa Smith and J.B. McKinnon pioneered the year-long-food-experiment genre with their book The 100 Mile Diet. (If I use the Canadian title to the book, it will be less obvious that I borrowed a little inspiration from their American released book, Plenty: Eating Locally on the 100 Mile Diet, for the title to my blog and now book. I wanted to call the blog Consuming Passions, but Nancy thought it sounded too much like a cheap romance novel or daytime soap opera. Of course, she is almost always right.) Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle took it a step further by telling the tale of her family's year of eating local, and the beauty of her story is more than matched by the beauty of her prose. Colin Beavan firmly established the "bumbling eco-experimenter" genre with his book and movie, No-Impact Man, that tells the tale of seeking to live for a year with zero environmental impact in the middle of Manhattan. While Year of Plenty shares a literary eco-system with these books, it seeks to break new ground by offering a Christian reflection on these issues.

While Year of Plenty is based on a premise that there is a need for more Christian engagement with these important issues of the day, there certainly are other books that have already, in their own unique way, sought to flesh out an authentic Christian response. That's where the 28 books in 28 days project comes in. Earlier in the week I consulted the wisdom of my Tweeps and Facebook friends, and based on their counsel, I came up with a list of some of the most important contributions to date. I chose books that were overtly Christian in their perspective, with the exception of books by Wendell Berry and Bill McKibben. Their writings draw from the deep well of faith and their works are highly influential, so I thought it was important to include them. I tried to have a good representation of books in the areas of environmentalism, food, simple living, and redemptive consumption practices, which are the main themes covered in Year of Plenty. Most are more recently published but there are some classics in the mix. I picked one obscure book, titled MISSIONARY EARTHKEEPING (Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992: An Appraisal), that I found too intriguing to leave off. Some of the authors have more than one book on the topic so, in that case, I picked the one I thought to be the most important contribution.

Go here to see the full list on Springpad. The titles and authors are as follows in nor particular order:

1. Simpler Living, Compassionate Life: A Christian Perspective, Michael Schut, Editor
2. Farming As a Spiritual Discipline, Ragan Sutterfield
3. The Amish Way: Patient Faith in a Perilous World, Donald B. Kraybill
4. Living More with Less, Doris Janzen Longacre
5. Global Warming and the Risen LORD: Christian Discipleship and Climate Change, Jim Ball
6. Planetwise: Dare to Care for God's World, Dave Bookless
7. Earth-Wise: A Biblical Response to Environmental Issues [EARTH WISE 2/E], Calvin B. DeWitt
8. Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship, Fred H. Van Dyke
9. MISSIONARY EARTHKEEPING (Modern Mission Era, 1792-1992: An Appraisal), Calvin Dewitt
10. For the Beauty of the Earth: A Christian Vision for Creation Care (Engaging Culture), Steven Bouma-Prediger
11. Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben
12. The Paradise of God: Renewing Religion in an Ecological Age, Norman Wirzba
13. The Unsettling of America: Culture & Agriculture, Wendell Berry
14. Food & Faith: Justice, Joy, and Daily Bread, Michael Schut, Editor
15. Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, Ellen F. Davis
16. Bread for the World, Arthur Simon
17. Natural Saints: How People of Faith are Working to Save God's Earth, Mallory McDuff
18. Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire with God, Not Food [Paperback], Lysa TerKeurst 
19. Enough: Contentment in an Age of Excess, Will Samson
20. Everyday Justice: The Global Impact of Our Daily Choices, Julie Clawson
21. A Climate for Change: Global Warming Facts for Faith-Based Decisions, Katharine Hayhoe
22. Serve God, Save the Planet: A Christian Call to Action, Matthew Sleeth M.D.
23. Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: Moving from Affluence to Generosity, Ronald J. Sider
24. Green Like God: Unlocking the Divine Plan for Our Planet, Jonathan Merritt
25. The Consuming Passion: Christianity & the Consumer Culture, Rodney Clapp, Editor
26. Saving God's Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church's Responsibility to Environmental Stewardship, Tri Robinson
27. Tending to Eden: Environmental Stewardship for God's People, Scott C. Sabin
28. The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting toward God, Leslie Leyland Fields, Editor

So what do you think? Does the list cover the most significant contributions or are there some that I've left off? You can lobby me to add books to the list but I'll only add them if you provide the blog post review along with the reason it is important to the conversation. I've read many of these books already, but there are many I haven't, so we'll see how it goes. I'll offer my perspectives on each book but will also reference The Englewood Review of Books for some of these titles. They are currently the go-to source for book reviews of books on these topics. If you're not following them already on Twitter or Facebook, you should be. 

Wendell Berry: Don't Wait for the Government to Fix the Food System

This morning President Obama signed into law the new Food Safety Bill that has been all the talk of the online food community. Go here for more background on how the much anticipated bill actually got to this point. But just as this milestone is achieved there is word that legislators may try to undercut the bill by choking off funding. According to the Hill this issue will be front and center with the new Congress:

Among the first controversies will be how to pay the legislation’s projected $1.4 billion cost over the first five years. Republicans taking over the House have warned they will not fund the bill. 

In following this story I feel a bit like I've been on a roller-coaster ride. Frankly, I'm weary of it and feeling a bit cynical about the government's ability to help fix what ailes our current food system. I'm reminded of a quote from Wendell Berry regarding our undue reliance on institutions to fix what is broken in society. Berry say:

We are going to have to rebuild the substance and the integrity of private life in this country. We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibility that we have parceled out to the bureaus and the corporations and the specialists, and put those fragments back together in our own minds and in our families and households and neighborhoods. We need better government, no doubt about it. But we also need better minds, better friendships, better marriages, better communities. We need persons and households that do not have to wait upon organizations, but can make necessary changes in themselves, on their own...

A man (or woman) who is willing to undertake the discipline and the difficulty of mending his (or her) own ways is worth more to the conservation movement than a hundred who are insisting merely that the government and the industries mend their ways.

If you are concerned about the proliferation of trash, then by all means start an organization in your community to do something about it. But before - and while - you organize, pick up some cans and bottles yourself...

If you talk a good line without being changed by what you say, then you are not just hypocritical and doomed; you have become an agent of the disease.

So let's not wait for the government to fix what is broken in our communities. It is ultimately the responsibility of those of us that live in these neighborhoods and regions to innovate change. This is true with many things, but maybe especially with food. The food system follows where we spend our money on food. It's as simple and complicated as that.

Top Ten Posts of 2010 at Year of Plenty

According to Google Analytics these were the most popular blog posts on Year of Plenty in 2010.

1. Newsflash: Dairy Industry Wants You to Eat More Dairy - What's So Controversial About That?

This post created quite a stir. It got picked up by the president of Dairy Management Corp. and was emailed to all of his contacts. The folks at Domino's Pizza linked it all over the internet. James McWilliams at the Atlantic Monthly credited Bill Bishop at the Daily Yonder with being the first to grasp the way this story was being misreported, but I think I was the first one on the story. My first official big scoop.

2. World Comparison: Fresh vs. Processed Food Consumption

Google placed this high on their search criteria, so it has received a steady flow of clickers all year and also got picked up in some online communities.

3. How My Little Blog Out-Reported the New York Times

This was my follow up to the Newflash post about Dairy Management.

4. Roast House Coffee Newest Roaster on the Spokane Scene

This year I actually started doing some in-the-field reporting, visiting local businesses and writing up short narratives. Roast House was one of the first.

5. What Would You Do If You Had One Year to Live?

This was my first and only blog post to get "Dished," meaning Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish linked to it as one of his "Quotes of the Day". 

6. Wendell Berry: Gardening as Health Regimen and Holy Sacrament

This post got picked up a couple different places on the web.

7. American Farm Bureau President Declares War on "self-appointed and self promoting food experts" 

Unlike the post on Dairy Management where large ag interests were eager to see my blog as an asset, this post led to quite a push back from folks at the AFB and the conventional farming community. The AFB PR took issue with my characterization that the AFB president had declared war on consumers concerned with large ag. practices. 

8. Why You Shouldn't Rototill Your Garden

I did a whole series of gardening posts last Spring and this was the most popular of the bunch. Other popular gardening posts include; How to Turn Your Lawn Into a Vegetable Garden, Planning Your Garden Plot (Companion Planning, Rotation, and Location), How to Make Your Own Professional Seed Starting Soil Mix, Tips for Planting the Garden, 

9. How to Get Started Raising Chickens in Your Backyard: Choosing You Chickens

This was part of a series of posts on raising backyard chickens. The other posts included one on building and designing a chicken coop and another on convincing your spouse it's a good idea.

10. Year of Plenty | The Book

I'm told the book goes to print on January 15 and will be released on March 1, 2011.

Thanks for everyone who has contributed and commented on the blog in the last year. If you want to follow along in 2011 you can sign up for the RSS Feed here, you can follow the blog on Twitter here, or click the Like button below to follow on Facebook.

Wendell Berry | Christmas presents are no basis for relationship, love is a practice

I'm recovering from completing my Doctoral dissertation earlier in the week, so I don't have a lot of inspiration for the blog at the moment. Between the book and the dissertation I've pumpled out 350 pages in the last 6 months. My internal inkwell of inspiration is running on empty, so I'm looking forward to switching it up and doing some reading in front of the fireplace.

Here's a re-post of Wendell Berry on Christmas presents:

Just in case you're wondering today if you need to buy one more present for the one's you love in your household, here's a good word from Wendell Berry from the book, "Conversations With Wendell Berry."

People who love each other need to have something they can do for each other, and it will need to be something necessary, not something frivolous. You can't carry out a relationship on the basis of Christmas and anniversary and birthday presents. It won't work.

You have to be doing something that you need help with, and your wife needs to be doing something that she needs help with. You do needful, useful things for each other, and that seems to me to be the way that a union is made...You're being made a partner by your partner's needs and the things that you're required to do to help...Love is not just a feeling; it's a practice, something you practice whether you feel like it or not. If you have a relationship with anybody - a friend, a family member, a spouse - you have to understand the terms of that relationship to do things for those people, and you do them whether you feel like it or not. If you don't it's useless...

This is what you learn as soon as you become a farmer, for instance. Once you get into a relationship with even so much as a vegetable garden, you realize that you have to do the work whether you want to or not. You may have got into it because of love, but there are going to be days when you are sick and you're going to have to do your work anyway. With animals, the work is even more inescapable. There's no way out if you have a milk cow, no reprieve...She makes the milk and you've got to go get it.

Wendell Berry, Thanksgiving, and the Pleasures of Eating

Some helpful words for a Thanksgiving feast from Wendell Berry:

People who know the garden in which their vegetables have grown and know the garden is healthy will remember the beauty of the growing plants, perhaps in the dewy first light of morning when gardens are at their best. Such a memory involves itself with the food and is one of the pleasures of eating....The thought of the good pasture and of the calf contentedly grazing flavors the steak....A significant part of the pleasure of eating is in one's accurate consciousness of the lives and the world from which food comes.

Eating with the fullest pleasure - pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance - is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.

When we gather around the table tomorrow I'll take great pleasure in the thought of our turkey frolicking at Rocky Ridge Ranch and in the mystery of our multi-hued potatoes that were miraculously birthed from the soil in our backyard.

(Note: One of the hopes for my upcoming book is that it will introduce the writing and thought of Wendell Berry to a new audience. If there were a sub-subtitle for the book it would be, "What Happens When Wendell Berry Meets the Suburbs")

From Black Friday to Buy Nothing Day - Subverting the Consumer Culture

Friday, November 26 will be celebrated by most as a way to get the Christmas shopping season kicked-off. A lesser known way to celebrate the day after Thanksgiving is to pay homage to Buy Nothing Day. It's not that complicated. It just means buying nothing as a way to say "No" to our crazy consumer culture. There is a Christian movement that has some affinity with BND called the Advent Consipiracy where the invitation is to give "presence" instead of presents.

It was almost three years ago at the end of 2007 that we devised our own little conspiracy to subvert the status quo and explore more life-giving patterns of consumption. That plan turned into a year of consuming everything local, used, homegrown, or homemade. At the time we felt so stuck that it was hard to see that there are different ways of going at these rhythms of life. But after only a couple of months we realized that what we had thought was our fated destiny was actually a choice, and that our consumer ways need not be inevitable. At the time I said:

One lesson we're learning is that our previous patterns of consumption seemed so unchangeable. It was just the way the world was. Everybody did it that way. It was hard to imagine that there were other ways of doing things. We're learning as a family that all habits, patterns, and practices of consumption are changeable. It might take 5 months to feel comfortable with them, but nothing need be inevitable or set in stone.

Here's and excerpt from one of my favorite Wendell Berry poems to give inspiration for your own experiments and ways of living that don't compute with the status quo.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Libertation Front

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns....

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

How Would Jesus Farm? Industrial and Sustainable Ag. Advocates Both Claim God is on Their Side

I follow various conversations in the agricultural world and I was intrigued to come across this post about the need to use Christian faith perspectives on feeding the hungry to support "modern" agricultural methods. Sarah Bedgar Wilson explains;

There are two main reasons why I feel Christians in agriculture are obligated to share the truths of why and how we farm/ranch within the context of faith:

1. Those whom oppose modern agriculture already have a presence in Christian circles.  For example, The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) has strategically begun a “Faith Outreach” program. My own church is struggling with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s (ELCA’s) draft social statement on “genetics” that discusses the use of genetics in agriculture. I could list many more examples, amongst all the major denominations.
2. If we are faithful farmers and ranchers, following the command from the Lord to feed His people, then I believe He expects that we honor Him by sharing our testimonies on stewardship.  We also owe it to our fellow Christians who are not farmers/ranchers.  They are three to four generations removed from witnessing God’s miracles of growth and life in agriculture.

It is relevant, appropriate, and necessary that we in agriculture speak in terms of our faith about what we do.  Our consumers and our fellow Christians are demanding it.

Sarah is a Dairy Farmer in North Dakota and has a blog called Farmer on a Mission.

I have written from a Christian faith perspective on this blog generally in favor of sustainable agriculture. While the blog fades in and out of this focus on faith, my upcoming book fully expresses the way my Christian faith has informed my support, as a consumer, of local/sustainable agriculture and in some cases, my opposition to industrial ag. practices. There are certainly other more prominent voices whose faith informs their opposition to industrial agriculture. Wendell Berry and Joel Salatin are good examples of this.

The fact that people in the church, both consumers and farmers, are recognizing that faith should inform agricultural practices is very promising. It may actually be one of the most hopeful developments for sorting through the perplexing ethics of modern food.

Of course, there is always a danger that Jesus will simply be commandeered to support already established opinions and perspectives. This is the classic "Jesus is on my side!" debate that doesn't lead to any kind of helpful dialogue. (I'm as vulnerable to this possibility as anyone.)

It's also possible that Christian perspectives will simply be conflated with powerful secular voices. For example, the mission to "feed the world" tends to be the ethical catch-all for big agricultural interests like profit-seeking Monsanto. In response to questions of their practices they generally say, "Get off our back, can't you see we're trying to feed the world here." The danger is that the Biblical command to "feed the hungry" will be equated with Monsanto's mission to "feed the hungry." They are not saying the same thing even if they are using the same words.

I just spent a week with a friend who works with a Christian mission agency that works with impoverished villages around the world to develop sustainable agricultural practices toward the end of feeding the hungry. They have found in places like Haiti that you can't address the issue of hunger without addressing issues of deforestation and soil depletion. Maximum output at all costs is not the solution to world hunger.

I also recently spoke with Rev. David Beckmann who heads the Christian organization "Bread for the World." They focus their resources on lobbying Washington D.C. for policies and programs that help feed the hungry. He talked about the Farm Bill and how large agricultural interests have such a dominant voice in the process of forming the legislation that it's a challenge for other voices to be heard.

There is a great conversation to be had among people of faith around the issues of food and agriculture and I'm looking forward to seeing how the conversation develops and matures over the coming years.

Thanks Sarah for sharing your story and perspectives on faith and agriculture.