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WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY: ORGANIC AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE COLLECTION Link to the Collection In 2012, with the support of the Ceres Trust, the Wisconsin Historical Society Organic and Sustainable Agriculture Collection was established to document other organic and sustainable farming pioneers, many of whom either began farming or embarked on careers supporting this approach to farming in the 1970s. Key collecting areas within organic and sustainable agriculture include leaders and pioneers in the organic and sustainable agriculture movement; pioneering national organic agriculture organizations and development of the organic agriculture infrastructure; organizations that promote and assist organic agriculture; organic certification organizations and the standards development process; input companies that develop, sell, and distribute seeds, organic fertilizer, and other requirements for organic agriculture production; organic agriculture farmers and farmer cooperatives; organic agriculture sales and marketing enterprises including restaurants using and promoting organic and locally sourced ingredients; and local and alternative agricultural distribution including direct sales, CSAs, farmers’ markets, urban farming, and food cooperatives and warehouses.
Read More...Organic and Sustainable Agriculture History Research Grants This research grant, supported by the Wisconsin Historical Society located on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, provides access to the resources of the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Archives and other UW campus libraries and supports research and writing on the history of the modern organic and sustainable agriculture movement in the United States. The Wisconsin Historical Society’s Archives has assembled a growing collection of documentation on organic and sustainable agriculture topics including significant individuals and organizations working in the area of organic and sustainable agriculture, organic certification, state and national organic standards development, marketing organic produce, and other related subjects. An updated list of the organic and sustainable agriculture collections in the Wisconsin Historical Society’s Archives may be found here: http://bit.ly/2eqeAPt. Successful applicants will receive an award of up to $2000 in support of travel, living, and/or research expenses. Awards must be used between April 1, 2017 and September 30, 2017 and recipients must reside in Madison during the period of their awards. Successful applicants are expected to present their research at an event to be held at the Wisconsin Historical Society in 2018 and will receive an additional $500 stipend for this purpose.…
Read More...Latest post on the Organic History website!
Read More...The following document lists brief descriptions of key issues flagged by participants at the National Campaign’s January meeting. The rough notes contained sixty-six numbered items (hence the sinister title) but some were redundant and others were really several issues in one. The entries here have attempted to smooth out some of these rough spots, so there is not an exact correspondence to the original list of sixty-six.
Read More...Written in 1993 by Roger Blobaum Several months ago I gave a lecture to a group of students and faculty at Cornell University on sustainable agriculture. All was well until the question and answer session when a student raised his hand and asked, “What is your vision for sustainable agriculture?” At first I was speechless. Then I tried to recover by saying that the important thing was that we are moving toward a more sustainable system and that developing a vision is something that can come later. What I was saying, in effect, was “I have no idea where we’re going but I’m going there anyway.” The look on his face told me I had to do better. I thought about this all the way home. I knew I had strong views about sustainable agriculture. And I had talked and written about it many times. But this encounter made me realize I had not thought about a vision for sustainable agriculture in a systematic way and that I should be able to answer that question. I have since discovered that this may be a problem for many of us directly involved in policy and in the debate over agriculture’s future.…
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