by Mark Kastel | Mar 31, 2022 | News Posts
The Organic Trade Association (OTA) announced the appointment, on March 29, 2022, of Tom Chapman as the new Chief Executive Officer of the trade-lobby group based in Washington DC. Mr. Chapman was appointed by USDA Secretary Thomas Vilsack to serve a five-year term on... 
by Mark Kastel | Mar 22, 2022 | News Posts
To the editor (of the New York Times): Kim Severson’s excellent article on lab cultured “meat” leaves a few questions unanswered. With an investment juggernaut of billions of dollars’ worth of private capital pouring into this nascent “food” category, why should USDA... 
by Mark Kastel | Feb 27, 2022 | News Posts
I’m really blessed to be able to live and work in an agrarian community in Southwest Wisconsin. By one estimate, it is thought that Vernon County has more organic farmers than any other county in the country. I’m a member of Vernon Electric Co-op and my telephone... by Mark Kastel | Nov 11, 2021 | News Posts
Hello Supporters of Food Justice, We commercialized the organic farming movement in the 1980s in order to provide an alternative to consumers who were hungry for food produced to a different standard and as an economic-justice vehicle to empower family-scale farmers... 
by Mark Kastel | Nov 3, 2021 | News Posts
COMMENTARY BY ELIOT COLEMAN The interest in using soil-less hydroponic systems to grow food is an example of what Teddy Goldsmith decried in his book The Way (1992) as “the methodical substitution of the technosphere or surrogate world for the ecosphere or real... 
by Mark Kastel | Aug 3, 2021 | News Posts
COMMENTARY Article originally published by John Roulac at Medium Two hundred years ago, before the Industrial Revolution, the rivers across North America ran clear and blue. Rivers from the mighty Mississippi to the Columbia flowed wild and clean into the sea. In the...