Posts Tagged: farm

Sonoma County opens vacant land to ag production

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors voted yesterday to open county land — including parts of parks, open space parcels and vacant lots in residential areas — to community gardeners and small commercial farmers, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

The initiative is designed to make land available for agricultural production in an area where high land values make it nearly impossible to farm.

UC Cooperative Extension in Sonoma County will conduct an inventory to identify suitable land for the project. The researchers will consider property owned by the county water agency and land controlled by the general services department, the article said. The study and plans for application and training will be be completed in June.

“We've got this land. How do we go about giving people access to it?” the article quoted Stephanie Larson, director of UCCE in Sonoma County.

The program was praised by health advocates — who believe more local farming and gardening could ease the county's obesity rate — and small-scale farmers.

“There are a lot of young farmers who want to get into business,” Santa Rosa small farmer Wayne James told reporter Brett Wilkison. “(The county) should really be doing more of this.”

Small farms and gardens to spring up in Sonoma County.

Beef business writer blasts new food movement

A commentary that appeared on the Web site Drovers.com, an information source for beef industry insiders, said the dialog at the Farm, Food & Health Conference held March 2 and 3 in Kansas City was "unbalanced and unrealistic."

"Much of the conversation at the . . . conference," Drovers editor Greg Henderson wrote, "centered around the idea that a 'movement' is taking shape in America to change our food system."

In the article, Henderson quoted conference speaker Larry Yee, director emeritus of UC Cooperative Extension in Ventura County and co-founder of the Association of Family Farms.

"Our current system is fundamentally unsustainable," Yee told attendees. "I believe the antidote is a 21st Century recreation of the food system."

Yee said there are deep flaws in the global economic paradigm and criticized modern industrial agriculture as a system that has been developed only to seek efficiency and profits. He said the current system is designed to produce cheap and abundant food and calories.

These examples were presented by Henderson as evidence of the "tone" of the conference, which he said inferred that local, natural and organic foods are "good," and that food produced with the assistance of modern technology - such as antibiotics, hormones, fertilizers and pesticides - are "bad."

"The first Farm, Food & Health Conference produced an unflattering and unbalanced view of American agriculture - and provided unrealistic expectations for a 21st Century food system," Henderson wrote.