Food Justice

I’ve decided to start a blog. It’s called Food Justice. I was married to a farmer for twenty years, and for nearly all of my adult life I’ve raised most of what I eat. I witnessed firsthand the evolution of no-till farming with chemical weed control and organic farming, parallel developments on a timeline but with methods and goals racing in opposite directions. It seems like I’m always talking about growing things, the complex mechanics of getting food from the farm to the table, and why so many Americans are malnourished. People kept telling me I should write a blog. So I decided to do it—memories, insight, and hard facts on a topic I’ve come to think of as Food Justice, hence the name.

My first full post is titled: “Why are people starving and malnourished in the United States when over 300 million acres of crops were harvested last year?” An excerpt follows.

“U.S. farmers harvested crops from more than 307 million acres last year. Add to that, another 62 million acres of pasture land. There are 318 million people living here. I grow most of what I eat on a quarter acre with ample left over to sell at local farmers’ markets most years. With 307 million acres of cropland in the U.S., farmers should be growing more than enough to feed all of us. That amounts to nearly an acre of land for each man, woman, and child in the country. But 49 million Americans are food insecure, nearly one third of them children.” You can read more at http://www.leslielytle.net/#!blog/c7bm If you’re so inclined, please pass the link along.

Good luck on your blog. It's a great idea if you can educate the public.
Did you know that new building permits in France require that half the roof be either vegetation or solar panels?
The reality of growing food should be taught in school and every child should have to nourish a potted vegetable for a season. That might make more farmers out of us, lol.

I hadn't heard about the French requiring sustainable use of roof space. What a great idea. I so agree with you about educating folks about growing things. For one, it ,makes you very sustainability aware when you see what it takes to put a serving of green beans on your plate. And, equally important, sustainably producing enough food to feed everyone in this country is a big challenge, one that would get alot smaller if everyone grew a little bit!