Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home Tribe of Heart's first film, "The Witness", was an eye opening look at how one man's whole life was changed by an encounter with a kitten. Their new film, "Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home", tells the story of a group of farmers coming to grips with the realization that they can't continue to make a living from the suffering of animals.
posted by DaddyNewt on Nov 13, 2009 - 7 comments

Family Guy Corn Maze. Walk among the rows with Brian and Stewie.
posted by jeremy b on Oct 8, 2009 - 29 comments

Critics of modern farming practice have swayed popular opinion in recent years. Now farmers are talking back. Farmer Blake Harris takes critics of farming to task for misrepresenting his trade. Another farmer says it's not so simple.
posted by chrchr on Sep 2, 2009 - 41 comments

Getting Real About The High Price of Cheap Food. Why the food we're eating is hurting us, the animals we eat, our world, and what people are trying to do about it.
posted by Askiba on Aug 27, 2009 - 205 comments

Suburban farming, an idea whose time may have come. Short and sweet SLYT from the Wall Street Journal about people growing herbs and vegetables in their own yards in American suburbia.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Aug 18, 2009 - 64 comments

In these hard economic times, everyone's feeling the pinch. Some farmers have started downsizing to miniature cows.
posted by grapefruitmoon on May 25, 2009 - 35 comments

Given recent economic woes, in conjunction with ecological, national security, and community issues regarding food production, does Japan have an interesting idea? [more inside]
posted by barrett caulk on Apr 15, 2009 - 25 comments

A Farm For The Future. Wildlife filmmaker Rebecca Hosking, previously in the public eye campaigning for the banning of plastic bags in the UK, is moving back to the family farm to take over from her father. This "deeply hopeful but realistic film" describes her investigation of the steps she could take to change it from a traditional beef pasture farm to a truly sustainable permaculture environment. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Mar 28, 2009 - 23 comments

No conflict of interest there, no sir. Organic food fans and small farmers alike are saying if HR 875 is passed, it will mean the end of organic farming in the United States. An overstatement? Perhaps, but HR 875 has serious flaws. The bill, introduced by Rosa DeLauro last month (who happens to be married to Stanley Greenburg of Monsanto, the world's largest producer of herbicides, chemical fertilizers and genetically engineered seeds), is here. [more inside]
posted by bitter-girl.com on Mar 18, 2009 - 56 comments

Vegetable farming! Boar breeding! All the maniac thrills of 17th century agriculture -- on your tabletop! Since its introduction two years ago, Agricola has grown from being a German hit to a runaway success worldwide -- at least among the niche market of serious board game fans. [more inside]
posted by Shepherd on Jan 29, 2009 - 34 comments

"Dear Mr. President-Elect, It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food." Michael Pollan advises the next president on what he can and should do to remake the way we grow and eat our food. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Oct 10, 2008 - 30 comments

The Massachusetts Historical Society has a nice collection of Thomas Jefferson's papers online. It includes two catalogs of Jefferson's books, a draft of the Declaration of Independence and his Garden Book. Architectural Drawings too! [more inside]
posted by marxchivist on Aug 22, 2008 - 6 comments

P.F.1 (Public Farm One) is a project designed by WORK Architecture Company for MoMA and P.S.1's Young Architects Program. P.F.1’s intent is to "educate thousands of visitors on sustainable urban farming through the unique medium of contemporary architecture." An artist in Providence, RI developed a similar installation called Green Zone, "an organic vegetable, herb, and flower garden planted in the detritus of wartime consumption: used tires, shopping bags, shoes, and other repurposed containers" at local venue Firehouse 13.
posted by lunit on Jul 16, 2008 - 5 comments

(Life and) Death of a Pig - farmer to butcher to curer.
posted by Wolfdog on Jul 9, 2008 - 55 comments

Farming with Dynamite Do stumps, clay or tired old soil have you down? Let "Red Cross" dynamite come to your rescue. (A blast from the past via ) [more inside]
posted by caddis on Jun 16, 2008 - 34 comments

How to Butcher a Chicken. From killing to plucking to gutting and freezing, Herrick Kimball takes the budding poultry farmer step by step through the process.
posted by Chrischris on Jun 10, 2008 - 34 comments

"As a great architect once said, 'Buildings should look like what they are'." John Jessop became so frustrated with the red tape required for his company to get permission to build a farm shed, he submitted a sarcastic application . Read his full "Planning Application for Erection of Agricultural Implement Shed" here [pdf, 3 pages]. No word yet on whether the shed was approved. Via.
posted by amyms on Apr 24, 2008 - 27 comments

The new face of hunger -- “World agriculture has entered a new, unsustainable and politically risky period” says the International Food Policy Research Institute. Food riots have erupted in countries all along the equator because of soaring food commodity prices. So, where does the world get more food? If the extra supplies are to come mainly from large farmers in America and Europe, then they may be trapped in a farm subsidy Catch-22. Increase production per acre? We just learned about the myth of GM crops (previously of MeFi). All of this is why some are just sitting out Earth Day.
posted by netbros on Apr 22, 2008 - 114 comments

Wendell Berry is an agrarian writer, poet, and Mad Farmer. Perhaps most famous for his decision not to buy a computer, which stirred some controversy, Berry is an anti-war, anti-state, anti-capitalist, conservationist conservative. [more inside]
posted by anotherpanacea on Apr 10, 2008 - 34 comments

Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear. "Monsanto already dominates America’s food chain with its genetically modified seeds. Now it has targeted milk production. Just as frightening as the corporation’s tactics–ruthless legal battles against small farmers–is its decades-long history of toxic contamination."
posted by homunculus on Apr 3, 2008 - 77 comments

In 1910 African-Americans owned 16-19 million acres of land in the United States, much of it rural farmland. Today, that figure has dropped to less than 8 million acres overall, and less than 2 million farm acres. What happened? In some cases, violence— whites would forcibly take farmland, a homestead, or a home from the black residents, who were often powerless to fight back in the face of systemic racism, threats of retaliation, and the 'enforcement' of the thefts by the Ku Klux Klan. More perniciously, many of these losses were the result of forced partition land sales. Many legal scholars and activists today are working to reverse the trend. [some pdfs]
posted by miss tea on Dec 16, 2007 - 41 comments

The Cooperative Extension Service, founded in 1914 in the US by the Smith-Lever Act, was established in concert with the land-grant universities to develop practical applications of agricultural research, and spread them to farmers and others throughout the country. As part of this education program, the extension programs have produced and collected an extraordinary amount of practical advice, easily accessible to the layman... [more inside]
posted by Upton O'Good on Sep 18, 2007 - 12 comments

"My general feeling about farmers is that they can go fuck themselves." The most recent essay published in the new online magazine 'The Smart Set', is a rather contrarian view of rural life, and poses an interesting question: just why does our society have a general consensus that rural=good and urban=bad?

"What do the farmers really believe, anyway? ... Don't they know that the mute indifference of nature is as terrifying and empty as the noisy scrambling of the metropolis?"
posted by woodblock100 on Sep 4, 2007 - 153 comments

Horse Power: A practical suggestion that would transform the way we live.
posted by homunculus on Sep 3, 2007 - 58 comments

Killered Bees. The NYTimes covers the mysterious collapse of commercial honeybee colonies over the last 5-months, covering dozens of states. The disease, Colony Collapse Disorder, does not have a determined cause. The Canary Database indicates that bees can serve as "canaries in a coalmine" for human diseases, as many other animals do. Some of the suspected causative agents (as reported [pdf] by Penn State) include a immunodeficiency, the hive consumption of high-fructose corn syrup, nutritional stress, parasites, infectious diseases, stress due to colony splitting and relocation, insecticides, and antibiotic use. The die-offs are likely to adversely impact both prices and crop yields.
posted by rzklkng on Feb 28, 2007 - 45 comments

"One Thing to Do About Food". Short essays on what to do about the nations food supply by Michael Pollan (Omnivore's Dilemma), Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) and others.
posted by stbalbach on Sep 7, 2006 - 28 comments

Save the South Central Farm! (video) Sure, Daryl Hannah is a little nutty, but she got behind a good cause here, helping urban farmers in LA.
posted by usedwigs on May 25, 2006 - 14 comments

When artist Matthew Moore found out part of the family farm was to become a suburban subdivision, he did what any farmer/artist would do, and recreated the subdivision in crops to show what it would look like in the surrounding landscape.
posted by mathowie on Apr 24, 2006 - 55 comments

L.A. South Central Farm Receives Eviction Notice 350 families have been growing organic produce on 14 acres in inner-city LA for over a decade. Now the owner wants them out -- so a warehouse for Wal-Mart can be built on the site. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa says he wants to see the farm saved, but the city can't afford to buy the land.
posted by Artifice_Eternity on Mar 4, 2006 - 53 comments

Slow Life is a Japanese movement that eschews the fast-paced consumption of modern urban life for the slower pace of farming and small villages. It emphasizes self-reliance, sustainability, and the appreciation of leisure. From some perspectives, it can be seen as a reaction to hazards in the modern world or as a peer to Shinto and modern schools of thought.
posted by mikeh on Feb 27, 2006 - 21 comments

The Story of Wheat
posted by Gyan on Dec 27, 2005 - 24 comments

Who will speak for the chickens?
posted by mullingitover on Sep 13, 2005 - 34 comments

By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth’s population will reside in urban centers. An estimated 10⁹ hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. A Potential Solution: farm vertically.
posted by signal on Jun 22, 2005 - 36 comments

Bright Coop are an industrial farm supplies hardware manufacturer whose latest product, the "e-z catch" is essentially a giant street sweeper used for rounding up loose chickens in a coop. For a fascinating & kind of horrifying quicktime video of the device in action, click here.
posted by jonson on Mar 7, 2005 - 27 comments

The USDA On Line Photography Center mingles what you might expect with what you might not.
posted by breezeway on Feb 25, 2005 - 7 comments

Farmer Homer McFarland is being sued for hundreds of thousands of dollars by the Monsanto corporation. His crime? Replanting his crops' own seed, as farmers have done for millennia, which violates the biotech giant's intellectual property rights, the company claims. Quietly, Monsanto's aggressive "seed police" have been suing farmers in 25 states for years, often settling out of court for huge sums, according to the Center for Food Safety's new report, Monsanto vs. US farmers [PDF link]. For more information, also see a new documentary called The Future of Food.
posted by digaman on Jan 15, 2005 - 55 comments

Got hay? The USDA helps you sell hay in Tennessee and buy hay in Minnesota.
posted by NickDouglas on Jan 13, 2005 - 22 comments

B'gawk! It may sound a bit like a joke, but forget about merely watching webcams, or playing with subservient facsimilies. Join the urban farming movement and do it for real. Martha Stewart does it, Hollywood producers make movies about it, and now even hipsters are doing it too: they're raising chickens in urban and suburban backyards. Coops range from the eggs-spensive but low-maintenance "HenSpa" to tricked-out Home Depot sheds to faux-gingerbread cottages to the very cool iMac-style "eglu". Surprisingly, it's usually legal to keep chickens in most areas as long as you only keep hens and no rooster (too noisy), but even in anti-chicken cities like NYC, it goes on in secret and remains legal on public property. And you can always buy your neighbors' silence with fresh eggs. Poultry Power to the People!
posted by Asparagirl on Sep 18, 2004 - 27 comments

Hundreds of kinds of mixed seeds, soil humus, and dry powdered red brown clay, form the solid components of seed balls.
posted by sudama on Jul 15, 2004 - 6 comments

A Visit to Old Los Angeles "A pictorial survey of downtown Los Angeles, and certain other areas, focusing on the years 1900 to 1915, though occasionally making use of images from other times. This series will follow, primarily by means of actual postcards of the era, the travels of a farming family from the great plains as they visit Los Angeles and its environs in the early years of the Twentieth Century." In 29 episodes, and with lots of postcards.
posted by carter on May 21, 2004 - 5 comments

VerticalFarm. Highrise Urban Farm (conceptual).
posted by stbalbach on May 12, 2004 - 10 comments

Should dairy farmers be forced to contribute to the "Got Milk?" campaign? At this point, all dairy farmers contribute a per-unit fee to help fund the dairy marketing campaign. Is this just? A recent court decision does not think so. What do you think?
posted by SandeepKrishnamurthy on Feb 25, 2004 - 29 comments

After reading that beef has been recalled from my local grocery store, I spent some time reading Mad Cow USA a book written back in 1997 but not widely published because of fears of repercussions under the Texas food disparagement act. AlterNet has an article written by one of the book's authors summarizing some of the key points of the book. Some claim that only ground beef is infected, while others claim that's bull. mad-cow.org has a lot of good information on the topic, and it seems the powers that be are going to blame Canada.
posted by woil on Dec 30, 2003 - 14 comments

IN AFGHAN PROVINCE, POPPY PLANTING HAS STRONG APPEAL It isa good to be freed from the constraits of the Taliban and to engage in capitalism at the global level. Chhers for the family farmers.
posted by Postroad on Nov 10, 2003 - 14 comments

You are fat because there is too much corn. [NYT, forfeit of first-born son required] I love good old-fashioned materialism, and Michael Pollan (author of The Botany of Desire) scores one for the team with this article on the economics of corn production. Are we fat because New Deal agricultural policy was overturned in the 70s by Rusty Butz? Now there's a trailing question we can all enjoy.
posted by condour75 on Oct 11, 2003 - 31 comments

The Museum of English Rural Life which includes the INTERnet Farm And Countryside Explorer (INTERFACE).
posted by i_cola on Oct 6, 2003 - 2 comments

'Superweeds' signal setback for genetically modified crops.
posted by thedailygrowl on Jun 25, 2003 - 22 comments

Man drives tractor into a ditch on the Mall. And the tractor stand off continues...

I find it amusing how most DCers are concerned more about the ensuing traffic havoc rather than the startling fact that there's a man with (possibly) explosives camped out on the Mall.
posted by gwong on Mar 18, 2003 - 41 comments

Listen to a true ready made Halloween horror story about a David vs Goliath type struggle. On her October 24th show Caroline Casey creator of the VisionaryActivism Radio show interviewed Percy Schmeiser a canola farmer from Saskatchewan Canada whose organic Canola fields were genetically contaminated with Monsanto's Round-Up Ready Canola. Schmeiser a 40 year organic canola seed saver is in the fight of his life against the powerful Monsanto corporation. This powerful interview should make you cry and provoke you to clean your pantry and refrigerator and rethink food choices like I did.
posted by thedailygrowl on Oct 31, 2002 - 17 comments

Zimbabwe dictator Robert Mugabe reiterates his threat to re-distribute land. "One farmer, one farm policy." What this fool doesn't realize (or perhaps more terribly, really does), is that this policy will cause a devastating famine, and bring about economic chaos: "Commercial agriculture is Zimbabwe’s biggest private employer, providing work — and, almost invariably, accommodation — for about 350,000 people. If Mr Mugabe carries out his threat to evict 2,900 white farmers, the workers and their families — a total of 1.2 million people — will join the ranks of the dispossessed..." Not only that, but his government has been terrorizing black farm hands and others thought to have opposed him in the recent "election." What can be done about Zimbabwe? The EU seems willing to help in case of famine, but there is no guarantee their money will get past Mugabe's pockets.
posted by insomnyuk on Aug 12, 2002 - 30 comments