Maria Hines and Congressman Jim McDermott, April 2013, Washington D.C. What would it be like to only have $6 a day per person to feed your family? How heavy would it make our hearts feel to look into the eyes of a child who was still hungry and lacked the nutrition they needed to think [more...]

Saving the “Magic Skagit” – The Seattle Times looks at conserving the Lower Skagit Valley. Hitting foodies where it hurts: climate change is now threatening wine production. In giant monocrop news, “This year, amber waves of grain to be replaced by CORN.” The Environmental Working Group (EWG), long a source of very helpful information and [more...]

  For those of you keeping an eye on things down at PCC Farmland Trust’s newest conserved property–the Reise Farm in the Puyallup River Valley—you may have noticed a few changes occurring. Just before spring’s earliest buds began to pop, a pink blur could be spotted crisscrossing the Reise Farm landscape, feverishly setting up fencing, [more...]

Some thoughts courtesy of the U.S. Food Administration circa 1917, during World War I.  Probably a little different than current governmental administrative messaging. In honor of National Farmworker Awareness Week, Grist illustrates some data about the typical American farmworker. Across the American heartland, farmland prices are soaring: The New York Times examines the high crop [more...]

–Brenda Campbell, Stewardship & Community Education Coordinator Lois Fisher with friend on Camelot Downs Farm. Photo: Jo Arlow Photography It’s hard to believe that March has already come and gone—and with the kickoff of our new On the Farm educational series, we had a couple of opportunities to witness the beautiful emergence of spring! On [more...]

  Junk food, super weeds, and GMO A Go Go!  Oh my. Grist notes that land trusts are catching on to this whole local food and farmland preservation thing.    Carrie and Ken Little of Little Eorthe Farm talk farming in the Tacoma News Tribune. A damning indictment of corn ethanol in only half of [more...]

Jeremy Sanford.  Photo: Dennis Lussier When Jeremy and Angela Sanford first heard about the opportunity to relocate their family to a piece of land just outside of Orting, Washington, they jumped at the chance. Jeremy credits Angela’s grandmother, Marline McClane, with encouraging the couple to take the leap and start their own farm business. Serendipitously, [more...]

The battle to save the bees continues, as insecticide is further linked to colony collapse: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jan/16/insecticide-unacceptable-danger-bees?intcmp=122 North Olympic Land Trust recently preserved 24-Carrot Farm, which is immediately adjacent to 70-acre Delta Farm, conserved by PCC Farmland Trust in 2000. Through this project, the two properties will be reunited: www.sequimgazette.com/news/article.exm/2013-01-17_peninsula_group_to_preserve_24_carrot_farm HuffPost’s Alison Spiegel is one of [more...]

  –by Kelly Sanderbeck, Annual Fund Manager & Story Catcher Farmland as investment? It may be a bubble, but people are opening their pocketbooks – not to a volatile stock market or zero-rate interest, but to a speculative investment that is finite:  farmland. The Midwest looks like a feeding frenzy with farmland being bid at [more...]