Went to the arboretum and saw this pretty tree. Wish you could smell the lilacs.

During my first visit to San Francisco, I went to hear an author talk about his new book exploring small family farms. Part way through, he started talking about a new, revolutionary, amazing method of farming that dramatically reduces the carbon footprint. I scooched forward on my seat. He went on to say how revolutionary it was. It would change the face of farming. So close to falling off my chair I had to hang on, I stretched my neck and strained my ears to hear it was…”dry farming”. Still excited to figure out what dry farming was I soon realized it means farming without irrigation, otherwise known in the Midwest as, well, “farming”.
This brings me to the question: why does actively doing something to your crops get to be called “farming” while farming the way your ancestors did is given the burden of an adverb? Shouldn’t “dry farming” be called “farming” and irrigation is called “wet farming”? “Organic farming” should be “farming” and giving a dose of chemicals should be “chem farming”. Instead of saying “family farms” we call the large agribusiness “corporate farming”, instead of “rBGH free” we call the altered milk “hormone injected”, instead of “local food” we call imports “international food”, and so on and so forth.
Turning things around like this would lead us to truth in advertising. Instead of punishing those who continue to farm in the purist form, we ask others to tell us what they are doing differently.
The words we use speak volumes about how we actually feel. Instead of treating local, organic farmers as the outsiders, they could be our norm.

Local Dirt’s Heather Hilleren & Kassie Rizzo took a road trip yesterday to the Grown Locally in Iowa Conference — it was a blast you’ll be able to see.  We’ll be adding videos to the blog — hopefully adding a bit more color to our discussions.  Iowa was quite pretty, the people were really great, and we had a blast on the road.

Local Dirt was written up in Inc. Magazine’s advice column — the writer did a great job of interviewing different experts about strategies to market Local Dirt to the masses.  If you missed it you can catch it here.  Any great ideas to market our product let us know — we’re always open to new ideas.