« Babylon Revisited | Main | Curious coincidence »

March 26, 2005

Welcome a new green to the table.

I
had to go to Texas to find it, but there's a great new blog up on the Blue Ridge: the Bitter Greens Journal. The author is a sustainability-promoting farmer and a former financial writer--quite a deadly combination for taking on the international agricultural-industrial complex.

Here, taste a sample:


Strains within the system are starting to show. Simply put, industrial food is making the people who rely on it sick and fat, to the point that U.S. life expectancy looks set to decline for the first time in two centuries.

In a nation whose biggest employer (and grocer)--Wal-Mart--hangs its business model on its ability to low-ball workers, it's difficult to see how people are going to start, en masse, paying top dollar to niche farmers at farmers' markets.

Evidence of class-based distribution of diet-related maladies abounds. This recent AP article shows that in rural areas the child-obesity rate is even higher than the brisk national average. The evidence dispels "a long-held belief that in farm communities and other rural towns, heavy chores, wide expanses of land and fresh air make leaner, stronger bodies," the article says. . . .

And for those who still wonder, as we do at our house, what's happened to the honey bee, bittersweet news.

You're off to a great start, Tom Philpott. Keep on dishin' it out.

Posted by Eric at March 26, 2005 10:50 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.isthatlegal.org/cgi-bin/mt33/mt-tb.cgi/50.

Comments

FYI: I'm one of the many who volunteered through NC State's program to start a honeybee colony in my backyard.

They must be desperate if they think I can help them.

Posted by: JOHN A at March 26, 2005 6:05 PM