Tag: Rodale Institute

Environment, Organic Policy and Regulations, What is Organic

Who Am I to Tell You About Organic Farming?

Melody Meyer
Dont know much about farming
Photo by Uta Scholl on Unsplash

When I tell people I make my career in organic agriculture, they assume I am a farmer. They ask me what I grow with a curious tilt of the head. Since I am in my sixth decade, they cannot imagine me tilling, hoeing, or harvesting anything but sweet peas.The truth is I know next to nothing about farming except that it takes a multitude of diverse skills, a strong constitution, and an affinity for working alone with the soil. At heart, you must be a gambler, tending the earth with no financial guarantees. The crop is either good or bad, and the market strikes just right or not.   

I have spent many a dusty hour bumping along fields and orchards with organic farmers across the rural globe. So, I do possess a few insights.

Continue reading “Who Am I to Tell You About Organic Farming?” →
Organic Policy and Regulations, Social Implications in Agriculture, What is Organic

Can Organic Soil Trump Climate Change?

Melody Meyer

The names bluster through in a destructive alphabetical roll call, Harvey, Irma, Jose and Maria. Like apocalyptic horsemen, the storms sweeping through the Atlantic all reached category four and higher. Fueled by super-warm ocean currents, this unusually active hurricane season provides devastating evidence that our planet is warming. Our climate is changing.

Agriculture is one of the greatest contributors to greenhouse emissions, but we all gotta eat – right?  Now a trailblazing study, partially funded by the UNFI Foundation proves that organic agriculture is a way to feed the planet while reducing our contribution to climate change. Continue reading “Can Organic Soil Trump Climate Change?” →

Environment, Social Implications in Agriculture, What is Organic

El Niño Brings Short-Term Relief to California’s Farmers

Melody Meyer

California DroughtThe forecasters predicted it, the young and wild boy-child, El Niño would come. A warm pacific current that often wreaks havoc promised torrential rains for the west coast of the North America continent. We believed in him like the god of water who would bestow wet blessings upon the land. California, my home for the past 39 years, has always been wet and green in the winter with golden dry hills casting the summer. These past few years, the boy went dry, and the rains ceased. 2016 was to be the year of relief, of promise, that El Niño would bring us water. If ever he forsakes us, much of California’s agriculture will be under duress.   Continue reading “El Niño Brings Short-Term Relief to California’s Farmers” →

Organic Policy and Regulations, What is Organic

Great Expectations—A Story of Organic Odyssey and Ecstasy

Melody Meyer

  Organic Fruit It’s been nearly 37 years since I was first introduced to organic foods at a co-op in Iowa. Up until then, I’d lived almost exclusively on packaged foods and sodas. This was something new, something meaningful and something I wanted to be a part of.

Back then, the burgeoning years of the organic movement held great promise and excitement. We were creating a movement, possibly changing the world. I became a passionate advocate for eating organic food and easing the chemical burden our soils and streams were enduring from conventional agriculture. Continue reading “Great Expectations—A Story of Organic Odyssey and Ecstasy” →