Food producers, eaters, environmentalists talking 'food democracy,' local food, related issues

The latest issue of The Nation draws focus to an emerging grassroots movement to establish "food democracy," an issue rural journalists can follow in their own communities. The editors of the unabashedly liberal magazine quote the Small Planet Institutes's definition of food democracy: "the right of all to an essential of life: safe, nutritious food. It also suggests fair access to land to grow food and a fair return for those who labor to produce it." In the issue labeled "Food for All" writers remind Americans that even if you don't farm, you eat, and therefore you have a stake in agriculture. (Cover illustration by Tim Robinson)

"Americans today are having a national conversation about food and agriculture that would have been impossible to imagine even a few short years ago," Michael Pollan writes, giving credit for that conversation to Kentucky author-farmer Wendell Berry. Environmentalism has too long focused on leaving nature alone rather than using it well, Pollan writes, adding Berry's work has started a "more neighborly conversation between American environmentalists and American farmers, not to mention between urban eaters and rural food producers." (Read more)

"A new breed of eater is awakening to the fact that food is not just something of convenience," writes Dave Murphy, founder of Food Democracy Now! He advocates Americans banding together to ensure that basic rights of the Constitution extend to something as fundamental as food. Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Foundation, argues for reconnecting our children with an "edible education" centered on local food, and food advocate LaDonna Redmond writes that "fertile soil is the cornerstone of a vibrant community, urban or rural." (Read the entire issue)

Mileston, Miss., in the poorest county in the country's poorest state, has become home to a growing farmers' market, Habiba Alcindor reports in the magazine. The West Holmes Community Development Organization developed the market to enlist high school students to grow crops on donated land. (Photo by Alcindor) Students earn as much as $700 a month, but Alcindor writes they are learning a more valuable lesson, one rural journalists could follow: "Wherever their efforts eventually take them, the struggle must begin in their own backyard." (Read more)