for low-income and small-scale growers are Alabama, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. • California is evaluating the research priorities and budget allocations of its Land Grant College. The state's new Office of Appropriate Technology gives information to farmers and gardeners about environmentally sound farm techniques such as methane production and biological pest control. In addition, California's Small Farm Viability Project has recommended that the state establish a non-profit rural development corporation to assist family farmers and rural communities. • Pennsylvania and West Virginia have established Direct Marketing Programs. They provide new markets for farmers while reducing consumers' food costs. California, Hawaii, and New York have also helped link food producers and consumers more closely through direct marketing and by promoting locally produced farm products. Going one step farther, New York is considering two bills that would encourage state institutions to buy locally grown produce. • California, Hawaii, and Pennsylvania have initiated programs to assist consumer food-buying co-ops. • State Food and Agriculture Plans of Massachusetts and Vermont have recommended construction of state and regional processing and storage facilities, and increasing soil conservation programs. • California and Massachusetts have turned over idle state- ?wned land to local communities for farming and gardenmg. • Many communities are experimenting with fertilizer made from waste. For example, Boston converts 80,000 tons of sewage into marketable fertilizer .annually; and Massachusetts State Representative Mel King has introduced a bill that would establish a State Compost Authority. • Finally, Iowa's State Energy Research Fund finances windmill and solar-pond demonstration projects. Past agricultural, land, and food policies have encouraged agribusiness at the expense of family-sized farms, the environment, and consumers. America needs policies that will encourage ecologically sound farming methods; preserve threatened agricultural land; stimulate rural and small-town economic development; ensure sound nutrition; and keep food prices low. The farmer, consumer, and public-interest groups who focus on state and local policy have been criticized by those who think they should mobilize to change federal policy. But innovative alternatives and strong initiatives at the state and local level will create political pressure that could help force the necessary changes in America's national agricultural, land, and food policies in the coming years. HADDTO EAT UE News/cpf Dear Tom and all, Was just reading the new RAIN and was pleased to see your blurb on Suburban Renewal. That "saving prime agricultural land" can be a real bandwagon slogan used to beat a lot of people over the head. It's characterized by a lot of fuzzy thinking so common these days in us all. Here in Idaho, especially around Moscow, where we all just moved from, that argument is used consciously or unto keep available land prices sky high, to exclude "hippies" from their country spreads (1 to 10 acres), to keep people in the town renting at horrible prices, and to keep the land in the hands of a small number of big farmers. I had a roaring argument just before we left at a neighborhood coffee for city council elections. The youngJiberals were promoting the saving agricultural land stuff and talking about the "waste" of land sitting in 5-acre or 3-acre plots where the owners let it "just go up in weeds." Grrr. I growled and leaped. "Do you really believe if you are interested in saving land that the land is better off being farmed, i.e. ruined with crop after crop of wheat, fertilized, pesticided, herbicided to death, and finally allowed to sit naked all winter and blow away, then wash away in the spring? It's a thousand times better off with a nice cover crop of weeds." Agriculture in America is a killer. And of course if those acres were put in an organic garden, all the better. Water is the big factor in these small acreages or suburban settings. Like you said, conservation methods can make all the differenceI suggested suburban developments with laws about all systems being as waterless as possible-dry toilets. They have developments around here now, with laws that none of the buildings can be metal-why not something more crucial? OK. I live now in a ghost town with a bunch of other families and one big rancher. Most people have about 10 acres, are Catholic-hardworking, lots of kids. Shit, I like it. Don't mind neighbors. We're so dumb we need lots of help. Really, it's the first community (even if accidental) I've really lived in. Communes don't count 'cause we were all too much alike. What I'd like to know-if you have time-is, well, I'd like to have a little teach-in on nuclear power and beyond into alternatives here in the near town of about 1,500 people on a teeny-weeny budget. Is this nuts? Do you know sources I can get materials from-nearby "experts," movie rentors that have reasonable films I could rent? Anything like that. It's just for fun. Yes, yes. If you have any ideas and have the time, drop me a line. We need information too back here in the boonies. OK. Thariks a lot for everything. Best of luck for a good spring. Dear Rain, Judy Gordon Box 65 Mesa, ID 83643 A day after I'd read John Coffin's letter on folding bikes (April RAIN), I chanced upon a white-haired couple outside the Grants Pass Library. I told them of Coffin 's·letter and asked them whether their bikes-Columbia brand-were collapsible. No, they replied, but they came apart: the front wheels and seats came off, leaving the frames small enough to fit in the back seat of a car with ease. They said that Grants Pass has changed a lot since Coffin visited it in 1936, but "it's a good bicycle town. Come on out!" Sincerely, Richard Conviser P.S. I think you'd enjoy Wolf Storl's new book, Culture and Horticulture: A Philosophy of Gardening, $1.75 from the author at 2508 Jerome Prairie Rd., Grants Pass, OR 97526. Check with Wolf as to how he prefers to sell the book.
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