Organic Farming Opens a Way for Farmers to Return to Their Proper Role as Innovators and Stewards of the Land

Common Dreams - "There seems to be three ways for a nation to acquire wealth: the first is by war...this is robbery; the second by commerce, which is generally cheating; the third by agriculture, the only honest way." Benjamin Franklin

The twenty-first century's uncertainty about the future abounds with predicaments like climate change, depletion of our water resources, and the end of cheap energy. And farmers are being called upon to assume a new role as innovators and stewards of the land because they know how to produce food.

"Farmers were the true founders of the United States," said Lisa Hamilton, author of Deeply Rooted: Unconventional Farmers in the Age of Agribusiness, "because they went out into the wild and built the first structures and communities that eventually became our cities and the nation." In 1800, 90 percent of Americans were farmers. Read more.