Sustainable agriculture resources. You may also find more information of food related topics here

Missouri Farmers Union

Financing Ozarks Rural Growth & Economy (FORGE)

Missouri Organic Association

By supporting local, small family-operated farms, you become part of the solution to global food contamination, industrial agriculture and runaway energy and transportation costs. The food doesn't take two weeks to leave the field and arrive on your table, so nutrition is preserved. Locally grown food, much of it organic or naturally grown without petrochemical pesticides, fertilizers, hormones, antibiotics or modified genes can be found in various communities in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks.

In the event you Missouri fisherpersons out there have not read the 2008 "Missouri Fishing Regulations", it might be wise to do so, in particular if you partake of any of your catch.

These regulations read, in part, "Because all fish have various levels of mercury, the Environmental Protection Agency recommends sensitive populations consume no more than one meal per week when no other advisory is present."

Sensitive populations are in essence, any female of childbearing age, whether pregnant or not, and children under age 13.

Sun drying foods is easy, especially if one waits for several consecutive sunny days--two are needed for thin-walled peppers and two or three for tomatoes, depending on the moisture content of the fruit, which does vary widely.

There are some fairly decent sketches of Ground Nut, an edible, wild food, local to much of the United States, in Jan Phillips' book WILD EDIBLES OF MISSOURI, seen in the Second Edition on pages 129 and 199.

The underground tubers are reported by some to contain 5-7 times the protein of potatoes, and they range from marble size to baseball size, possibly larger, depending on how long they have been growing. For those who might like to cultivate them, they climb well on a trellis, but will also trail and climb over weeds or other vines.

Last year, 2007, was the first time I seriously investigated eating wild mushrooms other than puffballs and morels. It was the day I was walking along a woodland trail when a bright pinkish-salmon color caught my eye. I walked over to examine what it could be and discovered an amazingly beautiful mushroom whose type I had never seen.

As fuel costs, and thus food costs, continue to rise, it may be wise for even those who have never grown one tomato plant to ponder the possibility of doing just that--and more.

Growing food sort of grows on a person, and what better time than now to start.

We grow lettuces in spring and fall (planted 2 varieties yesterday) but find that lettuce, no matter how much it is pampered, will not grow outdoors in the heat of summer in Missouri. So we eat homegrown, 100% organic, open-pollinated lettuce varieties about eight months of the year.

After much thinking about how many miles wheat travels to get to our table, and in general how many "energy servants" are needed to get those little wheat berries from the field (?Montana or ?) to the bag in Whole Foods in St. Louis, I decided to experiment with creating "flours" made from local edibles.

We already buy 100% organic chestnuts from our neighbor who has 10-20 mature chestnut trees, (and recently planted 50 more chestnut seedlings). I grind the fresh chestnuts into a flour that is then stored in the freezer till needed.

Local economies purposefully restrict the region from which we source thegoods we need. Instead of relying on cheap transportation to import theskills of others--in the form of products--we are required to cultivate andnurture the necessary skills in our neighbors. Nothing illustrates thispoint more poignantly than a local food system. The one hundred mile diet is a useful way of defining an economic region.If no one within a hundred mile radius grows cantaloupe it is likely that wewill not be eating cantaloupe this year. However, we need not accept thisabsence as a perennial condition.

Resource for producers

Farm To Family Naturally will be finalizing their deal on the purchase of Sappington Farmers Market in the next couple of weeks. This purchase has been delayed but the progress on sourcing and supplying the store with locally produced items has moved into high gear.