The Call of the Land

The Call of the Land Named Among “Best Books of the Year”
New Book Explores America’s Surging Agrarian Movement

“Food, farms, and communities are involved in a blitzkrieg of changes,” writes veteran journalist Steven McFadden in The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century, published October, 2009 by NorLightsPress.

Food Systems Network NYC in January named The Call of the Land one of nine “Best Books of 2009,” along with Wendell Berry’s Bringing It to the Table. The 10-person panel identified the most significant films, books, and policy developments related to food, nutrition, public health, and community development in 2009.

The Call of the Land gives voice to a growing chorus of 21st-century agrarians working to create a secure, sustainable food system. This chorus includes not just sustainable farmers, gardeners, CSAs, urban farmers, and farmers markets, but also Slow Food, locavore, and food-security activists in cities, suburbs, rural areas, churches, companies, and campuses.

The new book presents basic agrarian theory and then offers readers dozens of creative responses to the challenges confronting our farms, our food, and our communities. The volume documents a wide range of working models that can be emulated.

Among the positive solutions featured:

·       Woodbury County, Iowa aims to become the organic capital of the world through the innovative Siouxland Initiative.

·       The Food Depot of Santa Fe, New Mexico, encourages home gardeners to plant a row for the hungry and donate the produce to a food pantry.

·       A Pasadena, California family's urban homestead grows 6,000 pounds of food on a mere fifth of an acre.

·       Milwaukee's Growing Power empowers inner-city youth to raise healthy foods and reduce their community's risk of obesity and diabetes.

·       LocallyGrown.net has pioneered the online farmers market, connecting a network of Georgia growers with eager consumers.

Steven McFadden is co-author of Farms of Tomorrow (1991), America’s first book on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). He also co-authored Farms of Tomorrow Revisited (1998). A journalism graduate of Boston University, McFadden has authored eight other non-fiction books.

Author’s blog: http://www.thecalloftheland.com