Evanston market shoppers have come to expect the beautiful and healthy bounty of food for sale each Saturday at the market, but we wonder if they (and we!) know the full story behind the piles of carrots, Oxheart cabbage, heirloom tomatoes etc. What we read in a Mother Jones article by Tom Philpott (Sept 9, 2013) explains the behind-the-scene struggles of our stalwart heroes.
We learned that it takes between 700 and 1500 years to generate an inch of topsoil. Cornell agricultural scientist David Pimentel warns that “90 percent of US cropland now is losing soil faster than its sustainable replacement rate”. But this story isn’t a sky-is-falling tale. Quite the contrary as we visit Ohio farmer, David Brandt, who is practicing the old and new techniques to change these dire soil conditions.
And we strongly suspect that many of his state-of-the-art farming practices are also used by Evanston market farmers. (Sounds like a future story!) We hold this hope even though this article tells us that only 1% of US farmers employ these practices.
For sure, now as we shop at the Evanston Farmers Market for the best food possible, we have a better understanding and appreciation for the important work of our superhero farmers! And we can’t wait to talk with our farmers about their own practices!
Read this whole fascinating profile on the Mother Jones website. Just click here.
And let us know in the comments section if you’d like to find out more about what our “own” farmers’ do to create the best conditions possible for growing the produce we depend on every week.
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