Anna Lappe speaking on sustainable agriculture

New Orleans Jazz Band

It was well worth the price of admission (free) to not only hear Anna Lappé speak on promoting sustainable agricultural practices, but also to be entertained by the Bill Evans New Orleans Jazz Band at yesterday's Westminster Town Hall Forum.

Heading up the Real Food Media Project, Ms.  Lappé  stressed that sustainable farming is not only more environmentally friendly, but also even more productive than current industrial agricultural practices.

Anna Lappe

One of the amazing statistics that Anna shared was that the world's current agricultural practices are either directly or indirectly responsible for a third of our human induced carbon footprint.  The greatest contributors to this are the places we are farming (including rain forests), what we are farming (large monoculture crops), and how we are farming (many vast caged animal farms).

Book signing of Diet for a Hot Planet
photo c/o DougKnutson.com

What are some things  you can do to be a part of the new paradigm shift toward sustainable farming?  Buying locally from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA's) can help.  But even more important is to work at the local, state and national levels to implement farm policies that will benefit sustainable practices, rather than subsidize huge monocultures that rely heavily on fertilizers and pesticides, and are more vulnerable to droughts/floods, etc.  We can also relearn cooking to minimize our use of processed foods.

It is also vital to model healthy food purchasing and preparation for our children and youth.  Here in the USA they are annually bombarded by $2 billion dollars worth of marketing in food products.

Anna's talk was also broadcast live on Minnesota Public Radio and is available for listening from their website.