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“Hard-hitting. Powerful. A step further.” – A review of Deep Agroecology

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Midwest Book Review has published a review of my new book, Deep Agroecology:  Farms, Food, and Our Future. Here are some snippets, and a link to the full review written by senior reviewer Diane C. Donovan.

“…deep agroecology is more than the promotion of another growing system. It represents a fundamental change in the perceptions of humans about the choices they make in planting, harvesting, and eating food, incorporating an ecological perspective that has its foundations in the long history of agrarian idealism…

“Deep Agroecology goes beyond farming systems to probe the philosophical, spiritual, and moral roots of human relationships with the land.

“The result is a hard-hitting, powerful survey that takes the food system ideal a step further by interrelating it to pursuits of justice, freedom, and health for the entire planet…”

The complete review is here.

Deep Agroecology

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What’s your moral obligation in response to our climate emergency?

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Image courtesy of Extinction Rebellion

According to the Alliance of World Scientists, as professionals they have a moral obligation to warn humanity about what they see evidenced. On November 5, 2019, over 11,000 of the group’s allied scientists warned us all again, this time via a formal statement in the journal BioScience: “Planet Earth is facing a climate emergency.”

Now that the scientists have once again fulfilled their obligation to warn of danger, it’s time for each of us to meet our moral obligation. What might that be? From my perspective, each of us has a responsibility to carefully consider the scientists’ warnings, and then to respond with wise action…

  • The rest of my blog post is at
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Agroecology is a dynamic response to climate change

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Agroecology is a dynamic concept that has gained global prominence in scientific, agricultural, and political discourse. But not so much so far in the USA. More widespread knowledge is essential. Time to make that happen.

My new book — Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future — offers an introduction to the subject of agroecology, and then takes this critical subject wider and deeper.

 

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Go agroecological or go extinct

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… Based on the multitude of hard realities engendered by corporate chemical agriculture, it’s time to uproot the “get big or get out” farm slogans of Earl Butz and Sonny Perdue, and to supplant those damning words with something both wise and realistic: “Go agroecological or go extinct” …

The rest of my latest blog post is now live on

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Now complete – Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future

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After many long seasons of work, I’m pleased to announce that my new book, Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future, is now complete and on sale.

Among the many people deserving thanks and appreciation for helping to bring this book to life (in both print and ebook editions), my wife Liz Wolf stands front and center. She is the publisher, under the umbrella of Light and Sound Press, LLC. Thank you wholeheartedly, Liz, for your 1,001 deeds of support, encouragement, artistic insight, and professional advice.

For the record, here is the text of the press release we are sending out:

Nebraska Author’s New Book on Ecological Farming
Launches November 1 at The Hub Cafe in Lincoln

Deep AgroecologyLINCOLN, NEBRASKA—Inspired by a casual conversation with a UNL professor of agronomy and agroecology in 2012, independent journalist Steven McFadden penned the new title Deep Agroecology: Farms, Food, and Our Future. The book is now available on Amazon in print and ebook editions.

A launch party will be held on the book’s official publication date, Friday, November 1, 2019, at The Hub Cafe, 250 N. 21st Street, in Lincoln. The author will offer remarks on the subject of deep agroecology and read from the book. The free event will feature complimentary appetizers and a cash bar.

According to McFadden, he wrote Deep Agroecology to explain to a general audience what agroecology is and to expand the concept to include subtle, spiritual dimensions.

The Hub Cafe – community & sustainability.

“Farms are the foundation of our civilization, and that foundation is undergoing massive upheaval,” the author explains. “We must build a new agrarian foundation that can support in a healthy, spiritually intelligent way the high-tech, digital waves of technology and culture sweeping so powerfully around the world.”

Author and journalist Steven McFadden has been writing about the earth, farms, and food for decades. He blogs for Mother Earth News and at deepagroecology.net.

With Trauger Groh he is co-author of the first two books on Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): Farms of Tomorrow: Community Supported Farms, Farm Supported Communities (1990) and Farms of Tomorrow Revisited (1998). He is also the author of The Call of the Land: An Agrarian Primer for the 21st Century and Awakening Community Intelligence: CSA Farms as 21st Century Cornerstones. In 2008 McFadden authored a contemporary, epic, nonfiction saga of North America that is freely available online: Odyssey of the 8th Fire.

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Let us now praise the common sense of agroecology

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The precautionary principle is a simple, common-sense ethical guideline that is a core part of ecology and agroecology. It’s so fundamental to sustainability, and so uncommon in our government today, that it’s worth reaffirming.

The precautionary principle holds that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment that sustains our life, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those promoting the product or the action…

…We’d be wise to bypass government failure to act, and do the uncommon thing, as the late humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935) put it: act with common sense. Act personally, swiftly, and strategically. There are a 1,001 things individuals, families, neighborhoods, and communities can do. Get your search engine going, and then act. The vast archives of Mother Earth News, and the Pathways resource page open up some of the possibilities…

The rest of my blog post is available on

Note: My new book is set for publication November 1, 2019

Farms, Food and Our Future

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Solve the mystery. Enlighten your self.

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It’s up to you. It’s up to me. It’s up to everyone who has a stake in a stable climate, ample food and fiber, and shelter from the storms — the increasingly savage storms that are Earth’s new normal. We’ve got some mysteries to unravel.

If you are depending on the life-support basics listed above, then answer this: Why did the US Agriculture Department (USDA) attempt to bury America’s action plan for conducting science into climate change so that farmers could be empowered with facts to respond wisely to what’s happening in the world?

The critical 33-page USDA action plan, paid for with our tax dollars, was stuffed somewhere in a bureaucratic closet never to be allowed into public light of day. But thanks to a courageous whistleblower and reporter, the plan was leaked to Politico. As plainly stated, the plan outlines how scientific research can help farmers to understand, to adapt to, and to minimize the increasingly disruptive impact of climate change.

I must concede that “why did the USDA bury the report?” is a dull question to frame as a mystery. At least part of the answer is as plain and pitiful as a flooded farm field…

Read the rest of my blog post on .

 

 

 

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Sleepwalking into Catastrophe, or Awakening via Agroecology

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In early July, just as the United Nations (UN) was releasing stun-level, scientific reports about climate changes, food disruptions, and accelerated extinctions, meteorologists reported that the preceding month, June 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth. They also reported that for the first time ever in recorded history temperatures in Anchorage, Alaska soared into the 90s, while rising up to 115 degrees F in Paris, France.

As baldly stated in one of the UN reports from the Human Rights Office, if we maintain our economic and agricultural course we are headed for deeper disaster. Going forward on a status quo pathway will have a mighty impact not just on some remote places featured on TV news, but on our backyards, pantries, refrigerators, supermarkets, and our overall way of life. We are, as the report put it, “sleepwalking into catastrophe.”

Note well these parts of the report: Climate change also threatens basic human rights, and democracy itself. Within the next 10 years or so, the report states, climate change will cast tens of millions more human beings into poverty, hunger, and displacement from their homelands…

…Agroecology: A Righteous Response

Although mass media paid minimal attention, on July 5, 2019 The UN’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS) released a notable report, Agroecological and other innovative approaches for sustainable agriculture and food systems that enhance food security and nutrition.

The CFS report offers detail on the global food system, which they regard as perched precariously at a crossroads. The report concludes that the food system needs a profound transformation at all levels, including the local level. We face complex, “multidimensional challenges…

…In a paper published in the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community, Professor William E. Rees writes: “Based on current trends, the most food-secure populations by the second half of the 21st century will be those populations that have deliberately chosen and planned to re-localize as much of their own food systems as possible.”

My complete blog post is on

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A Broken Twig and Our Broken World

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One sultry September about four decades ago, after having been prepared for the quest by true and knowledgeable friends, I sat on a New Hampshire mountaintop for four days and four nights.

Setting out on this first, formal quest, I held wild hopes for metaphysical marvels: clouds parting, maybe, angel voices, maybe, messengers arriving from celestial realms to deliver golden scrolls of wisdom, maybe. Make it so! Something spectacular!

But nothing mysterious or majestic happened at all. As far as I could tell, over those four sunsets and sunrises there was not as much as a quirk in the quantum field. Not that first year.

But that first time something key did unfold…

The rest of my blog post is live now at

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Farms, Food, Climate, and Our Will to Change

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The way we tend the land that produces our food, and the way we eat, are the key factors in our physical, moral, and spiritual survival and evolution.

My recognition of this fundamental fact is, of course, shared by many people. Among those who see this reality, and who can give the situation eloquent expression, is Jean-Paul Courtens of Roxbury Farm in Kinderhook, NY.

As it happens, CSA and biodynamic farmer Courtens has recently become a grandfather. He mentioned that happy fact publicly in March when he spoke at Dartmouth College as part of the Real Organic Project’s symposium. And then he dug deep into the subject.

A video of his 15-minute talk is available through my full blog on this topic at Mother Earth News. I recommend watching and learning…

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