Who grows your food?(And why it matters)

Who grows your food?(And why it matters) - November/December 2004 - Sierra Magazine - Sierra Club: "What urbanites-especially urban environmentalists-do understand about farming is that it can damage the environment. We criticize farmers for the use of polluting pesticides and fertilizers; for robbing wildlife of water by pulling it from rivers and aquifers for irrigation; for damaging streams and causing erosion through bad grazing practices; and for erasing wildlife habitat. We condemn agriculture for poisoning wells in the Midwest and California's Central Valley, and blame it for the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, where the Mississippi dumps toxic runoff from a third of the U.S. landmass.


Such criticism usually doesn't sit too well with the farmers themselves. After all, they are feeding us, and doing it as efficiently as they know how. It often sounds as if we're yelling at them across a cultural gap.


Fortunately, some farmers are now bridging this gap, with help from those environmentalists who support sustainable agriculture. "