Did the City Build the Farm?
A blogger from zompist.com looks into the legacy and teaching of Jane Jacobs: Not enough people have read Jane Jacobs. Many have; her The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), a celebration of city neighborhoods and a warning that they were being destroyed by the czars of urban renewal, has gone in forty years from […]
The Land of Many Palaces
A documentary by Adam James Smith and Song Ting shows Ordos, China, where thousands of farmers are being relocated into a new city under a government plan to modernize the region. “The Land of Many Palaces” （《宫殿之城》）follows a government official whose job is to convince these farmers that their lives will be better off in the […]
New Case Studies from CA FarmLink
This just out from CA FarmLink!
The Great American Land Heist
This land is our land? By Christopher Ketcham from an article published in Harpers: Cliven Bundy, the notorious scofflaw cattle rancher from Bunkerville, Nevada, was taking his midday nap when I arrived at his spread. One of his daughters — he has fourteen grown children, and they all seemed to have mustered at the ranch — told me […]
Succession Plan has the Community in Mind
A 153 year-old family farm in Saratoga Springs, NY gets a plan for the future that could include education, a farm incubator and more. From an article Dennis Yusko in The Times Union: One of the city’s last and best-known farms would be preserved as a community resource under a partnership planned between its owners, […]
Farming Under Police Surveillance
Michael Segalov uncovers the story of Yorkley Court Community Farm: (from Munchies) “The pattern of land ownership is complex, but in the UK today, it’s all owned by someone. It’s enclosed,” Frank White tells me as I’m helped over a series of fences and chains, past a 25-foot watchtower that wouldn’t look out of place on […]
Women Farmers Need More Rights
An article by Eleanor Goldberg in the Huffington Post addresses the rights of women farmers across the globe. Across the globe, 805 million people are struggling with hunger. But that figure could be significantly reduced if female farmers just had the same rights as their male counterparts. Now that more men in rural areas are taking jobs […]
February Numbers Show Drop in US Farm Value
Reuters News Service Reports: The average price of quality U.S. farmland fell 3 percent in 2014, marking the first annual decline in almost 30 years, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago said in its quarterly survey of district bankers on Thursday. “The District’s annual decrease of 3 percent in good farmland values for 2014 was […]
20 Best College Farms
Best College Reviews highlights the top 20 College Farms! Here are the top 5. 1. Warren Wilson College Warren Wilson College is a national liberal arts college structured around values perfectly manifested in the soil. To graduate, students must work through “the Triad” of Warren Wilson experience, including work, service, and academics. Warren Wilson is […]
Farm Worker Rights Battle in the Strawberry Fields
From Civil Eats by Steve Holt For many, a red, ripe strawberry elicits sweet memories of sunshine, summer, and childhood. Glorietta, a strawberry picker in California, has quite a different relationship with the fruit. Hunched over picking for up to 10 hours a day for a mid-sized commercial grower, Glorietta—who asked that we not use […]