Sustainable Agriculture in an Obama Administration

With the selection of Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture, I expect Monsanto to be well represented in the highest echelons of Obama's administration. But there are a lot of positions left to fill at the USDA, and we can help make sure that at least a few of them are filled by champions of the sustainable food movement.

At Food Democracy Now, you can make a stink by signing their petition to:

...get serious about sustainable change at the USDA. As a result, here at Food Democracy Now! we’ve come up with a list of twelve candidates for Under Secretary positions at the USDA. And we’re calling them the Sustainable Dozen.

Then you can tell your friends through an easy interface with chat, blogs, email, social networking, and bookmarking sites.

As someone who now has been eating from a zone 5 victory garden since August (now cold framed and more of a life support system for suspended animation), my dedication to sustainable food is a matter of record. I've had an organic gardening site at supak.com since 1996. Many of my clients have been, or are, into sustainable agriculture, including a sustainable organic Kona coffee farm on the big island of Hawaii. I've spent my life studying how important this topic is.

If we don't start making our food more sustainable, we will pay a huge price. From crop failures due to monoculture to seed diversity to erosion, pollution, loss of soil tilth, and greenhouse gases due to lack of composting and dependence on fossil fuels, sustainable food is a serious topic that is often denied or short-changed in a very bi-partisan fashion in this country. Industrial agriculture interests are well represented by high paid lobbyists to both political parties, and only a movement like the one that swept Obama into power will make them pay attention to the seriousness of this subject at this time.

So, please, sign the petition, and then tell your friends and readers. If you love to eat as much as I do, you'll do it now!

Organic Coffee from Kona Hawaii

Back in 1998, when we were living on the Hawaiian Island of Maui, I was contacted by an organic Kona coffee farmer about helping him sell his coffee beans. I helped him with his web sites (he also sells organic fertilizer) and sold his coffee for years, until he sold the farm and retired to Oregon a few years ago.

Last month, I got an email from Mike, who bought Dr. Faust's farm and rehabilitated it into a sustainable and USDA certified organic Kona coffee farm. One of the things I did to help Mike get higher search engine rankings for his sites was encourage him to publish his journal from the two year ordeal of rejuvenating an organic Hawaiian coffee farm, which he has done at his Organic Kona Coffee Farming Blog. Going back through the posts, it was fun and exhausting to see how much work it was to restore the coffee trees, establish organic weed controls, install all the processing, drying, sorting, and roasting equipment for the coffee beans. Anyone interested in sustainable and organic agriculture should check it out.

And don't forget to purchase organic Kona coffee beans. Mark Twain said it was the best coffee on earth, and it's hard to disagree with him! I'm just finishing a cup now! It's the only coffee I don't have to put sugar in!

Oh, and be sure to Digg the site, and Digg the Blog too!