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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Rodale Institute web update newsletter
  • Date: Mon, 26 Jan 2009 18:26:55 -0700


Welcome to the Rodale Institute web update newsletter.
http://www.rodaleinstitute.org/Newsletter for our latest edition.

Hello Paul: We’re starting 2009 with a quick look back at 2008,
reviewing all the ways the Rodale Institute has been able to raise the
profile of organic agriculture as an answer to global problems such as
climate change, worldwide famine and declining nutrition. Read more >>

See more photos of the Institute on our Flickr page here >>

We’ll continue to make the case that organics deserves to be at the
center of the discussions about sustainability, institutional green
assessment, watershed management, rural renewal, youth empowerment, food
sovereignty and food nutritional quality labeling.

Our staff is involved in outreach and conferences from Pennsylvania to
California to Wisconsin, talking about our Organic Transition Course and
the no-till roller-crimper with farmer audiences. These are two great
resources that help the women and men engaged in making decisions about
working their land to see how soil-building practices—such as cover crops
and complex crop rotations—will fit into their 2009 plans to cut input
costs and increase their sustainability quotient.
Making practice-by-practice advances is the way whole farm systems develop
to take advantage of the biological diversity that organic practices bring.
The principles are global, but the application is always informed by
regional, community and farm-based realities. (Such as the crop contouring
and rotation on the Rodale Institute farm, pictured here.)

The persistence of farmers to apply these changes and their quest to find
extra value for them in the marketplace have been the twin story lines of
organics in the United States for the last 20 years. Consumer demand for
organic food and products is rapidly morphing into political demand for
sustainable organic solutions. We’re now at a new threshold where the
rest of the world—beyond farmers and the consumers who love them—is
beginning to see organic farming as a bridge to the future.

There’s no use dedicating billions of dollars to stimulate failed
chemical-based farming schemes or to prop up industrial livestock systems
that pollute air and water, excessively concentrate animals and animal
waste, and require massive transport of crops that are never recycled back
to their fields of origin. It’s time to close the loops that depend on
fossil fuels, and invest in systems where natural cycles create sustainable
outcomes.

You can help us make sure policymakers know about the positive
environmental impact organic agriculture can have. Check out our new donate
button on our homepage. It’s quick and easy, so you can invest in your
organic future and forward this newsletter on to your friends who need some
good news for a change.

Greg Bowman from the Rodale Institute





  • [Livingontheland] Rodale Institute web update newsletter, Tradingpost, 01/26/2009

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