My food writing course is called Eat Your Words, and it's a one-day, all-out, everything you want to know about getting into food writing, or building an exisiting career as a food writer. All levels of writers are welcome. There's a lot of work out there, so we'll talk about how to find it, and what to do once you've got an editor's attention.

Here are the details:

To register, either call Continuing Studies at  250.807.9289 (easiest) or register on-line by following the various links to Writing...Personal and Creative...then scroll down to Eat Your Words, etc.

It's not a complicated equation that losing farmers and losing farmland will affect us. But rather than a complicated geo-political argument, Albertan farmer / writer Margo Staniforth found an elegant, relatable -- and terrifying (and I'm not being sarcastic, for once) -- way to express this in a very few words that have a near universal impact. Do you like beer? Well then, you like farms. Read her article in the Edmonton Journal.

...but will leave a legacy of GMO crops in its wake.

The pros and cons of GMO crops is an on-going discussion in our house. So, I hear both sides of the argument. Science and technology-minded people see the incredible potential of plant breeding and even GMO crops; I worry about the ethical issues of seed ownership and control, as well as the poor track record of GMO crops to actually elevate small scale farmers out of a cycle of poverty. (Take small-scale farmers in India who are now committing suicide in record numbers because of crushing debts, worsened with the introduction of GM cotton crops.)

I have also been researching land ownership issues around farming, both in the developing world and closer to home. Serendipidously, I was sent a link to this blog post annoucing the fact that the Gates Foundation is about to invest rather heavily in African agricultural issues, in effect a secondary Green Revolution. It's a very good explaination of the issues facing some of the most vulnerable nations. Many African countries are under tremendous pressure to sell off their farmland simply to have one-time access to cash. If biotech crops are introduced, the process of re-colonization of African soil might just be on a faster track than it already is. Thanks to Wendy Holm, P. Ag, and prolific writer on agricultural issues in Canada, Cuba and elsewhere for forwarding this article to me.

It took me a while to see Food Inc., the documentary.  Having read Eric Scholosser's Fast Food Nation when it first came out in 2001, and then Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma when it came out, as well as most of the other important "food" books, not to mention the various listservs, websites, and food journalists I follow, I figured that I probably knew almost everything that would be in this documentary. In truth, there really wasn't any new information, but what I underestimated was the powerful effect that the retelling -- in visual form -- that this documentary could have.

It's one thing to read Eric Schlosser's accounts of watching a downer cow being forklifted into the slaughterhouse, where economic refugees are forced to work under inhumane working conditions in our modern food system's dirty little secret of the modern slaughterhouse. But it's another thing to watch video taken by hidden camera of the conditions for both beast and man on the killing floor.

It's one thing to read the Vanity Fair article about the bully tactics of Big Soy Bean towards the midwestern and Canadian prairie farmers who are hanging onto their farming businesses by a thread...it's another thing to watch a grey-haired man weep on camera under interrogation as he's asked to give up the names of life-long neighbours and friends who have used his seed-cleaning services.

And, it's one thing to read Michael Pollan's accounts of meeting the poet-farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm. It's another to hear and watch Salatin make sense of the world without a computer, biohazard suit or profit maximizing flowchart in sight.

I could go on, but really, just see the documentary.

In case you're not in the know, there's a raging debate going on in Canada right now over milk. Raw milk drinkers have been growing in numbers in the past few years, and so have the government-lead efforts to shut down this trend. Personally, I'm not a milk-drinker, so I've just been watching from the sidelines on this issue. But I have friends who go to great lengths to get raw milk, which they prefer to pasteurized, because they feel that raw milk is infinitely healthier. They alerted me to the fact that tomorrow is d-day for what will likely be a precedent-setting decision of whether farmer-activist Michael Schmidt is guilty on 20 counts of ... selling raw milk?! Here's a little backgrounder on the situation via the Globe and Mail. It's a little like the pro- and against-vaccination lobbies. I'm a big fan of vaccination, not wanting to die or have anyone I know die needlessly for what is now a preventable illness, but I think I fall on the side of Caveat Eater (that's my Latinglish) because I've been known to enjoy raw milk cheeses immensely.

Update on Friday, January 22, 2010 at 11:26AM by Jennifer CK

Farmer Michael Schmidt wins his three-year legal battle over running a raw milk cowshare program in Ontario. Here's the newsclip from the G & M.