Food and Farming

Can traditional water-harvesting systems teach us how to solve contemporary water problems? Michael Kenneth Cowan says we have a lot to learn from the ancient and troubled ecology of the Middle East

The Seeds of Change trademark was created in the 1980s by a small organic seed cooperative from Santa Fe, New Mexico, which set out ‘to help people and future generations improve their lives and enjoy wholesome, natural, chemical-free foods’. Seeds of Change expanded its enterprise in 1996 to include a range of organic soups, cereal bars, pastas and sauces. A year later it was bought by Mars and launched in the UK in 1999.

In 1952, Rachel Rowlands’ mother Dinah established the UK’s first organic dairy farm near Aberystwyth with a small herd of Guernsey cows, working ‘in harmony with nature, the elements, the seasons and wildlife’. In 1966, Rachel took over the farm and founded the Rachel’s Organic Dairy brand, which was sold to Horizon, a subsidiary of Dean Foods, in 1999.

Founded in 1991 by Craig Sams and his wife Josephine Fairley, Green & Black’s brand was conceived to represent the ‘green’ concerns of its founders and the ‘black’ of the cocoa bean.

Can big ever be beautiful where organic foods are concerned? Ed Hamer gets to grips with one of the environmental consumer’s greatest dilemmas

It usually takes a major public health crisis to remove profitable toxins completely from marketplace. In the meantime most of us continue to be exposed to a variety of profitable poisons, including:

Farmer John Peterson is an eccentric organic farmer from the American Midwest and the star of this strangely compelling documentary.

Growing your own would be vital if the shops shut for good. Steve Solomon has the key to a persistent vegetable state

Chemicals, pesticides, GM and agrofuels – when it comes to food production it seems the lunatics are running the asylum. But there is hope in some new approaches

Battling a fractured back and the vagaries of the weather high in the Pyrenees, is the biodynamic dream of wine writer turned grower Monty Waldin about to turn sour?

From its flowers and berries to the fungi littering its branches, the elder is a one-tree feast, says Fergus Drennan

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization made a u-turn against organic agriculture after lobbying by the biotechnology industry, according to documents seen by the Ecologist.

Making the transition from wine writer to viticulturist was a leap of faith for Monty Waldin. What could he expect from his new hilltop vineyard in the Pyrenees?

The World Bank’s 2008 World Development Report makes a grim prediction of what is to come:

Is it possible to live off foraged food alone? Fergus Drennan thinks so and aims to prove it. In the first of his monthly columns he explains why, from April 1 st, he will be eating nothing but wild food – for an entire year...