Two summers ago I was learning how to grow 30 vegetables, wrestling with a rototiller, and trying to get rid of an amazing amount of comfrey. Last summer I backpacked through Europe visiting every farm, farmers’ market, and local cheese shop I could. And this summer? This summer I’m behind a computer. And I love it.

I’m working as a policy intern for a sustainable agriculture organization, which means I’ve been getting an inside look at the policy work around organic and sustainable agriculture. It’s been totally reaffirming: for every idle conversation I’ve had about losing family farmers, there’s a group out there asking what policy could turn that around. For every time I’ve ranted about attacks on the organic label, there are people organizing to protect it. For every time I’ve given up on the possibility of anything being done about changing our commodity subsidies, there’s someone in the movement thinking creatively about new approaches to changing them. (more…)

What illusions do we have about the food system? What are factory farms like on the inside? What can we do to reform the factory farm system? All of these questions are answered in “The Meatrix 2: Revolting.” An entertaining and informative parody of the “Matrix” movies, this video distinguishes the meatrix - the lies saying that modern farming involves families and animals living happily and symbiotically - from the realities of farming - in which cows live in small cages, get their tails cut off, receive growth hormones, and create real health risks for humans.

“The Meatrix II: Revolting” is just that - revolting. It uses some powerful and disturbing images to describe factory farms and it might just be enough to make you stop eating meat from factory farms - or even throw back up the meat that you just ate. In “The Meatrix,” a cow named Moopheus helps a pig named Leo “look through the illusion of the Meatrix” to see the true reality of factory farming. He is not impressed, to say the least. In fact, Leo is the one that will lead the fight to defeat the agents of factory farming and improve the future of farming.

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At reap/sow, we’re all about pushing the boundaries. In this section, we bring you news of advancements weird enough to have been cooked in the lab. In fact, one of them was! Can you distinguish imposter from innovation? One is fake…two are real examples of imagination on the move.

Farmer on Farmer

Jerry Miller saw a problem and set out to fix it. That problem: farmers’ love lives. With schedules that few people outside the farm community understood, or could accommodate, farmers he talked to were finding it hard to find a mate. So Jerry decided that farmers should get with times, and get online. With the slogan “You don’t have to be lonely, Now there’s farmers-only,” farmers have joined the online dating generation. (more…)