Earth-friendly living starts at home.

My family's attempts to lessen our impact on the earth remind me of driving a car with a manual transmission for the first time: When you finally take your foot off the clutch, the car lurches forward with a screech, then stalls. Eventually you get the hang of that third pedal and start to enjoy the ride. We, too, have alternately leaped forward (often with a screech) and stalled as we make our way toward a more harmonious, environmentally conscious way of life.

Food is a basic part of everyone's lives and yet the issues surrounding it are extremely complex. The following resources provide more information on our personal diets, national politics, global economics, and how they all relate:

Political Food Fight

Months after the deadline for the 2002 Farm Bill passed, the House of Representatives and the Senate are still trying to create a compromise between their two versions of the bill and the Bush administration is still threatening to veto the whole thing.

How family farmers are planting for a sustainable future

Russ Kremer had a near-death experience in 1989. On his central Missouri farm, he was bitten by a hog and contracted a form of strep resistant to at least five antibiotics. His hogs' feed included antibiotics to protect them—but not humans—from disease.

Doctors cured him, but Kremer decided to start his farm operation anew, raising hogs naturally. "I quit cold turkey," he says. "I've basically been a crusader or an evangelist for raising hogs this way. I did it because it was the right thing to do."