The Humble Condom's News Page

The below is from today's Sky News.  After listening to a BBC news report about this incident, an interview with a Muslim "representative," it really made my blood boil...he did everything but threaten the British public with this kind of reprisal - repeated over and again - if this book makes it to the book stores.  Although this kind of ignorant reaction to books is nothing new - let's see, Hitler, local government watchdogs, Christian fundamentalists (did you hear the one about Kansas and Darwinism??), the list is a long one.  BUT, the thing that really seems like the bottom line here is that this book is NOT IN PRINT yet!! how can anyone castigate something they have not read???  If that isn't THEE definition of ignorance, I don't know what is!!

By Sky News SkyNews - Monday, September 29 09:34 amAn academic who called a novel about the Prophet Mohammed pornographic has been criticised after a publisher was targeted in a suspected bomb attack.

Martin Rynja, whose publishing house will release controversial historical novel The Jewel of the Medina in the UK next month, escaped unharmed when accelerant was lit in the doorway of his home.

The 44-year-old remains under police protection following the incident in north London on Saturday.

Neighbours described seeing smoke and flames in the doorway of the house.

The Jewel of the Medina, written by American author Sherry Jones, focuses on Mohammed's relationship with his young bride Aisha.

Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Texas, was quoted in the US media as saying the book took "sacred history" and turned it into "softcore pornography".

However, the author's agent Natasha Kern said the novel was not offensive, and having the public read it was the only way to counter the "distortions and outright lies that the book either insults Mohammed or contains salacious or suggestive material".

The novel is "peace-building and bridge-building", Ms Kern added, and would encourage dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Two men were arrested outside the Lonsdale Square property on terror charges in the early hours of Saturday, while a third was detained outside a nearby Underground station.

Officers also searched four addresses around north-east London - two in Walthamstow, one in Ilford and one in Forest Gate.

Mr Rynja himself was unavailable for comment but, announcing the book's publication earlier this month, he said: "In an open society, there has to be open access to literary works, regardless of fear.

"As an independent publishing company, we feel strongly that we should not be afraid of the consequences of debate.

"The Jewel of the Medina has become an important barometer of our time."

Just as it happened during the Great Depression, condom sales are booming during this credit crunch - people in the UK don't have enough spare change to go on holiday or to the pub, so sex is on the up! But so is the desire to limit pregnancies - hence a real rush on condom sales.  But this time around, the stresses involved in London's financial world - The Credit Crunch - also means that young bankers and other high rollers are experiencing some hard times, sexually speaking.  Viagra sales, in other words, are also doing nicely. Especially in the area around London where those stressed out wheeler dealers work.  Chemist deliveries are at an all time high to some of the most important - and threatened - offices in London.

It used to be lipstick on the collar, a stray blond hair, and perfume...now it's electronic trails...why don't these people just get lives??
Sky News, September 1

Cheating husbands are now more likely to be caught out by a flirty text message than the tell-tale smudge of lipstick on a collar, a divorce lawyer claims.

And women are better than men at following their partner's electronic trail of adultery, said Vanessa Lloyd Platt, of Lloyd Platt and Co.

The firm conducted a survey of 100 couples found that men used passwords on their Blackberries and laptops that were easy for their suspecting partner to break.

The survey found 25% of men used the password "God" or "Sex" and around 15% used 1966, England's World Cup winning year.

Another 22% used their mum's name and 2% even used "password."

Ms Lloyd Platt said: "The biggest mistake men make is leaving text messages from their lovers undeleted and forgetting that emails arrive on Blackberries, not just their work computers.

"One Spurs fan who was having an affair with his secretary used the password 'Berbatov' because he kept going on about his favourite player.

But she said that women used passwords that were harder for men to break including the characters of their favourite TV shows like Sex and the City and Desperate Housewives.

The survey found that women also checked online bank accounts, identifying presents bought for mistresses and not them.

At least 4% of men who appeared on Facebook looking for sex claimed it was "only a joke".

"Around three in every five women who come to see me because they believe their husbands are cheating now come armed with evidence," said Ms Lloyd Platt.

"The electronic clues are making it much easier to discover people who are unfaithful. It used to be only rich wives who could afford private detectives, but now anyone can turn sleuth."

Anger as stamp honours 'racist' Marie Stopes


A new stamp has prompted criticism by including family planning pioneer Marie Stopes in a set of stamps marking women's achievements.
The feminist is best remembered for opening the first birth control clinic in Britain in 1921.
But she is also a controversial figure who was accused of being racist and anti-Semitic.
She advocated eugenics - 'perfection of the race' through selective breeding - and disapproved of her own son's choice of wife because she was short-sighted and wore glasses.
She also sent a loving letter and book of her poems to Adolf Hitler.
From next month her face will appear on the 50p stamp in a commemorative set which additionally features suffragette Millicent Garrett Fawcett and politician Barbara Castle.
One commentator condemned the Royal Mail for honouring Stopes and others vowed to return their mail if it bears her portrait. Chaplain to the Stock Exchange Peter Mullen, who is Rector of St. Michael's in the City of London, branded Stopes a 'Nazi sympathiser'.
He said: 'She campaigned to have the poor, the sick and people of mixed race sterilised.
'Stopes extended her vile doctrines even to her own family. She cut her son Harry out of her will after he married a near-sighted woman - actually the daughter of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb deployed by the Dambusters.
'She planned to adopt a child herself but stipulated that "the boy must be completely healthy, intelligent and uncircumcised".
'The managers of the Royal Mail deserve to be condemned for their honouring Marie Stopes.' Father Ray Blake, pastor of St. Mary Magdalen parish in Brighton, said on his internet blog: 'Any items of post arriving here with this stamp on it will be returned to the sender.
I hope other bloggers take this up, especially amongst the Jewish community.' Anthony Ozimic of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children said: 'Praising Marie Stopes as a woman of distinction should be as unacceptable as praising Adolf Hitler as a great leader.
Both promoted compulsory sterilisation and thereby the eventual elimination of society's most vulnerable members to achieve what they called racial progress.' A Royal Mail
spokesman said a group of female academics and historians had compiled the names to be included on the stamps.
'They were asked for their views of the women they believed had a big impact on other womens' lives over the past 100 years,' he said.
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I for one, think that her achievements on the part of other women far outway her freaky foibles!!

Many Europeans, at least those who have not just shrugged their shoulders and wondered at the lunacy that often appears to be American politics, think Palin is a flash in the pan.  Who  knows, but surely a pregnant 17 year old - aren't we talking about the Safe Sex Right here? - and her fuzzy approach to her own record and "beliefs" should give one pause??
From the Los Angeles Times:

September 6, 2008 Saturday

GOP ticket split over condom use!
While running for state office, Palin said their use ought to be discussed in schools. McCain disagrees.


Teen pregnancy and sex education were thrust into the spotlight this week when Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin revealed that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant.  Palin's running mate, John McCain, Enhanced Coverage Linking
and the GOP platform say children should be taught that abstinence until marriage is the only safe way to avoid pregnancy and disease. Palin's position is less clear.
In a widely quoted 2006 survey she answered during her gubernatorial campaign, Palin said she supported abstinence-until-marriage programs. But weeks later, she proclaimed herself "pro-contraception" and said condoms ought to be discussed in schools alongside abstinence.
"I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues," she said during a debate in Juneau.
Such statements could raise concerns among social conservatives who have been some of Palin's most enthusiastic supporters since she was tapped for the No. 2 spot on the GOP ticket last week.
Leslee Unruh, president of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse and campaign manager of the Vote Yes for Life effort, said children must be given a "clear and concise" message on the benefits of abstinence.
Asked about Palin's statement, Unruh said, "I don't think it's clear. It seems disjointed to me."
Two days later, Unruh dismissed the comments as "old."
"I support her in every way," she said.
Other conservatives who have backed Palin, including James Dobson of Focus on the Family, declined to weigh in.
Palin spokeswoman Maria Comella said the governor stands by her 2006 statement, supporting sex education that covers both abstinence and contraception.
McCain's campaign did not respond to questions about whether Palin's position is inconsistent with his. But earlier, a campaign spokesperson said McCain believes abstinence is "the only safe and responsible alternative."
"To do otherwise is to send a mixed signal to children that, on the one hand they should not be sexually active, but on the other, here is the way to go about it," according to a statement provided by the campaign. "As any parent knows, ambiguity and equivocation leads to problems when it comes to teaching children right from wrong."
Even before Palin released a statement about her daughter Bristol, teen pregnancy had been in the spotlight frequently this year. The teen birth rate, which had been declining for 15 years, showed an increase in new data released in July. One month earlier, 17-year-old actress Jamie Lynn Spears gave birth to a daughter, distressing parents who worried about the message it would send to young fans. And early in the year, the film "Juno" won an Oscar, prompting critics to accuse Hollywood of glamorizing teen pregnancy.
Sex education varies widely across the nation's school districts.
In California, the state Education Code does not allow abstinence-only programs in public schools, so if a school offers sex education, it must include discussion of contraception as well as abstinence. About 96% of the state's schools offer sex education. All schools are required to educate older children about HIV/AIDS, and those discussions must cite both abstinence and condoms as methods of preventing infection.
The federal government has spent more than $1 billion on the abstinence-only message since 1996 under a program created by Congress as part of welfare reform. California is the only state to have declined to take part in the program since its inception. In recent years, states that had taken part in the program have decided to forgo the funding and the restrictions that come with it.
Palin's statements date to her 2006 gubernatorial run. In July of that year, she completed a candidate questionnaire that asked, would she support funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs instead of "explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?"
Palin wrote, "Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."
But in August of that year, Palin was asked during a KTOO radio debate if "explicit" programs include those that discuss condoms. Palin said no and called discussions of condoms "relatively benign."
"Explicit means explicit," she said. "No, I'm pro-contraception, and I think kids who may not hear about it at home should hear about it in other avenues. So I am not anti-contraception. But, yeah, abstinence is another alternative that should be discussed with kids. I don't have a problem with that. That doesn't scare me, so it's something I would support also."
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http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Mundo/0,,MUL756095-5602,00-CAMISINHAS+ANTIGAS+ERAM+FEITAS+DE+CRINA+DE+MULA+PAPEL+E+ATE+CASCO+DE+TARTAR.html

MS Magazine printed this in 2004, but it is surely just as relative to as it was the day it was written!  The connection with all things sex?  Men's and women's ongoing war - one of my favourite quotes: the war between the sexes will never be won, as long as both sides keep fraternizing! - shows up in the weirdest places, not the least of which is in how we deal with food: ritual, symbolism, courtship, etc., all have deep roots

Food, Farming ... Feminism?
Why Going Organic Makes Good Sense

Getty Images

by Elaine Lipson

“What’s for dinner?” is just too simple a question for anyone to ask these days.

How about, “What’s for dinner, where did it come from, who grew it, and did they use toxic and persistent pesticides or genetic modification?”

No matter how we rebalance gender roles, women’s lives and health — and those of their families — are intricately connected to how food is produced. But putting food and feminism in the same sentence can make one wary. Wasn’t that part of the whole liberation plan — to make women less responsible for food? And what’s gender got to do with food choices and food production methods?

In answer to the first question, women worldwide are still primarily responsible for feeding families. They need to be aware of what they’re serving and what they are eating.

To the second question, I’d say, “Plenty.” Every feminist, woman or man, who embraces equality and diversity and opposes violence and domination, should recognize that the foods we eat, and how they’re grown, matter to our environment and to our lives.

What Does Organic Mean, Anyway?

It’s an old cliché by now that organic just means expensive, less-than-perfect-looking fruits and vegetables that haven’t been sprayed with pesticides. But there’s much more to organic foods today.

Organic standards don’t just prohibit the use of toxic and persistent chemicals; they also forbid irradiation, genetic modification — the insertion of a foreign gene into the molecular structure of an organism — and the use of sewage sludge as fertilizer, a common practice in conventional agriculture. The organic label covers virtually all agricultural products, not just produce: There are organic dairy products, cereals, soy products, wine, chocolate, oil and vinegar, meat and poultry, baby foods, frozen foods, pasta and canned foods.

Organic standards for meat and poultry prohibit growth hormones and antibiotics; instead, sick animals are removed from the herd and treated. Additionally, organic animal husbandry requires humane treatment of animals and their access to the outdoors. The supply of certified organic meat is limited, but increasing with demand and awareness; more widely available “natural” meats vary in production practices, often eschewing antibiotics and hormones but not using organically grown feed.

Understanding what organic does not mean is also important The certified organic label won’t tell us if a product comes from a small family farm or a larger company that might be a subsidiary of a huge conglomerate. And these days, organic foods have gone big-time. Their success in the North American marketplace, where sales are projected to reach $18 billion or more by 2007, has resulted in consolidation and mainstreaming, with many once-small brands now owned by food giants such as General Mills and Kraft. This trend has sparked a new consciousness among some consumers, who now seek out local foods with regional characteristics as well as organic foods.

How do you know if you’re getting the real organic deal? The U.S. Department of Agriculture implemented national standards for the organic food label in 2002, and organic producers must employ a farm plan and audit trail to ensure compliance. In addition, a USDA-accredited, independent third-party agent must certify all foods bearing the organic label (except for those by very small producers) and all organic processing facilities.

Darina Allen on her organic farm / photo by Bill Lambrecht Ireland’s Darina Allen Keeps It Real Darina Allen could easily have rested on her laurels as Ireland’s most famous cook — and stayed noncontroversial — but she couldn’t stay quiet about genetically modified foods. Beginning in 1998, she has used her renown as a TV star chef and founder of the Ballymaloe Cookery School in County Cork to speak out against “fiddling around with genes” in crops — a technology that claims it will reduce plant diseases and increase crop sizes but carries still-unknown consequences. What first drew Allen’s attention was the Monsanto corporation’s Irish experiment with genetically engineered sugar beets, especially when Monsanto picked a plot for its field tests in close proximity to her school and organic farm. She pointed out that, among other concerns, genetic modification can lessen plant diversity in a country that all-too well knows how a single crop die-off can disrupt an entire economy. “At our peril, we’ve narrowed the number of crops and varieties we’re growing,” Allen says. “The Irish potato famine [of the 1840s] is the simplest illustration of what can happen.” Allen’s message resounded in Ireland and the United Kingdom, but in the United States one-third of corn and almost all soy crops have already been genetically modified with little notice. Allen fears that even European consumer opposition may not prevent introduction of GM crops on her continent. “Once the genie gets out of the bottle, there’s no getting back, no product recall if something goes wrong,” she says. “There are risks of cross-contamination, instances already of cross-pollination. The reality is there is absolutely no way we can know the long-term effects [of genetically modified foods] on plant or animal.” Fears about GM provide yet another compelling argument for going organic, as federal standards for certified organic foods prohibit genetic modification. That’s one of the reasons Allen supports organic crops, along with local and regional foods. “The more you know about how food is produced,” she says, “the more you realize that organic is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.” — Michele Kort

Toxic Trespass

Although organic foods still carry a New Age connotation, the reasons women should consider eating organics aren’t touchy-feely at all. Instead, they have everything to do with our health and that of our children.

To start with, women take the brunt of the many toxic chemicals used in conventional agriculture. We have greater fat stores than men, and that’s where fat-soluble chemicals finally reside after they move up the food chain. While proponents of pesticides say that their use is safe and government-approved, “safe” is a relative term meaning that the government has determined that the risk is “acceptable.” In fact, scientists don’t know much about the long-term effects of many chemicals, so what has been deemed acceptable risk is often based on limited studies.

Furthermore, chemicals used on crops don’t just stay on the lettuce or tomatoes — they can reach everything and everyone in the environment. In farm states, for example, tap water has been shown to contain unsafe seasonal levels of the weed killer atrazine. The insecticide DDT remains in soil and water — and thus plants and fish — 30 years after it was banned for use in this country. Other practices of intensive agribusiness have an impact too: The overuse of antibiotics in livestock has caused antibiotic-resistant bacteria problems for humans, for example.

The epidemic spread of these chemicals has led to the notion of “toxic trespass,” says ecologist Sandra Steingraber, author of Living Downstream: An Ecologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment (Perseus, 1997) and Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood (Perseus, 2001). “The idea of toxic chemicals as a human-rights violation is growing,” she says. “Pesticides will drift, being carried by air, fog, rain, quite apart from the food that we buy. [In one study], women within a mile of agricultural farms were at greater risk for birth defects. We are being asked to assume health risks for these exposures without having agreed to that.”

One of the most troubling aspects of chemicals in the environment is that women pass fat-soluble chemicals to their infants through breast-feeding. The notion of breast-milk contamination is a highly charged issue, Steingraber says, because discussing it could discourage women from breast-feeding. There are many compelling reasons to breast-feed — and to simultaneously insist on better environmental practices. Whether they are breastfed or not, in fact, children continue to be at risk from pesticide residues in foods: Studies of residue data have shown that young children may ingest unsafe levels of pesticide residues even when those residues are within legal limits. In the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996, the Environmental Protection Agency was mandated to revise pesticide limits by taking into account children’s exposure, but that process is not yet complete or satisfactory to many environmental advocates.

Studies also confirm that eating organic foods does help children ingest fewer pesticides, since those foods have significantly fewer pesticide residues than nonorganics. (Background contamination makes “pesticide-free” an almost impossible claim to make.)

Where the Money Is

When it comes to supporting organic foods, women have already made their voices heard in the marketplace. While studies show that interest in organic foods cuts across many demographic categories, it’s still predominantly women who buy organic foods, says Katherine DiMatteo, executive director of the Organic Trade Association.

Women gravitated to organics as a direct outgrowth of other social-change movements of the 1960s and 1970s. “The food co-op movement was all women around the table, looking for ways to find out more about the food they were purchasing and how they could have more control over the amount of money they were spending on their food and influencing the types of products they were able to purchase in bulk,” says DiMatteo. As food co-ops expanded or became private stores and other natural foods stores came into being, the women who had been sitting around the co-op table responded.

“The concept of voting with your dollars was very easy for women to understand,” DiMatteo says. Today, polls consistently show that more women than men say they have concerns about food-related issues such as genetic modification.

Think Globally, Eat Locally (and Slo-o-o-w) For highly conscious food consumers, even eating organic isn’t good enough. As many organic foods companies have become subsidiaries of large corporations, these consumers have looked to reclaim the small-is-beautiful connection they once felt with gutsy little organic entrepreneurs. They’re now finding that healthy intimacy in what’s been called the “beyond organic” movement. The next best thing to growing organic food in your own backyard garden, the trend supports local farmers, regional production and seasonal crops. That means buying fresh foods directly from a farmer, at a farmer’s market or through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. CSA farms allow consumers to buy a pre-season “share” in the farm, which entitles them to share in the risks and rewards of farming as well as receive a box of freshly harvested fruits, vegetables, and perhaps flowers and herbs at regular intervals through the growing seasons. Enthusiasm for local and seasonal food is as much about philosophy and community as it is about flavor and freshness. The philosophy is further supported by Slow Food, an international organization with more than 60,000 members working to preserve regional tastes, flavors and biodiversity. Founded in Italy in 1986, Slow Food publishes its own gorgeous periodical Slow, which honors tastes and cultures from around the world. Chefs are often the best proponents of local foods, working creatively with farms or farmer’s markets to find the freshest ingredients for seasonal dishes. Ann Cooper, executive chef at the Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., and author of Bitter Harvest: A Chef’s Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It and “A Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen”: The Evolution of Women Chefs, believes women both motivate and benefit from the interest in local and seasonal foods. “I think the localization of food and the value we’re starting to place on artisan and local products will open up [business] doors for women that are very positive,” she says. For Cooper, local and seasonal eating also adds a critical element to the notion of organic foods. “The national organic standards say nothing about community,” she says. “I think there’s a heart and soul that the national program doesn’t address.” — E.L. For more on the Slow Food movement, visit Slow Food.com. You can also find a CSA farm in your area, as well as the nearest farmer’s market.

But there’s a long way to go: Even as the organic movement has grown, organic foods remain a small percentage of the enormous food industry and organic agriculture a small percentage of farm acreage in this country. Women could dramatically change this ratio, however, since they’re responsible for an estimated 80 percent of their families’ food-purchasing decisions and meal-preparation duties. That may not read as progress in terms of tasksharing, but it gives women power in the marketplace.

Middle-aged women, in particular, are a significant economic force, says Martha Barletta, president of the Illinois-based TrendSight Group and author of Marketing to Women: How to Understand, Reach and Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market Segment (Dearborn, 2002).

“Boomer women are where the money is,” Barletta says. “It’s the most ridiculously overlooked segment in the world.”

That's Mr. Farmer to You

So women have a good reason to eat organic and the buying power to make organic food a family staple. Now, more and more, they’re the ones actually growing organic food as well.

Take Vanessa Bogenholm. As an agricultural biology student in the late 1980s at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona, Bogenholm was one of only three women in a class of 37 students. Trained as a conventional farmer to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides, she ended up converting her 50-acre farm to organic methods when she realized she wouldn’t let her dog out of the truck when pesticides were being sprayed.

Today Bogenholm owns and operates VB Farms in California’s Central Coast region, selling her naturally sweet strawberries in 19 farmer’s markets. She also chairs the board of directors for California Certified Organic Farmers and is an inspector and consultant for other organic farmers.

She’s certainly not alone as a female farming entrepreneur. In preliminary results from the 2002 Census of Agriculture, the number of women who were principal operators on farms increased to 236,269, up 12.62 percent from 1997 figures. For the first time, the Census also identified women who were second and third operators on farms: They were 62.7 percent of the total in that category. In all, about 11 percent of principal operators and 27 percent of farm operators are female.

Not surprisingly, the number of female farmers receiving higher education has also grown. In the 1970-71 school year, women were awarded a meager 4.2 percent of undergraduate degrees in agriculture and natural resources, 5.9 percent of master’s degrees and 2.9 percent of doctoral degrees, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. But in 2000-01, women earned, respectively, 45.1, 47.3nd 34.2 percent of those same degrees.

Nonetheless, it’s still a fairly common complaint among women in agriculture — even those working in alternative systems — that they still aren’t seen as The Farmer. Bogenholm, for example, points out that when male fertilizer salesmen come to the farm, they invariably ask, “Where’s your dad?” And in January, hundreds of women farmers filed a motion to bring a class action suit against the USDA — similar to what African American farmers before them have done — saying they were denied farm loans, or even the opportunity to apply for farm loans, based on gender.

“Women have always been part of the family farm, critical pieces of the managing partnership,” says Mary Peabody, director of the Women’s Agricultural Network in Berlin, Vt. “Until fairly recently they were okay with being the silent partner. Now, within the family dynamic, women want to be acknowledged as decision makers.”

The Organic Opportunity

In organic farming, they may be more likely to get that acknowledgement — and have more of a chance to start their own farms.

Although research on women on organic farms is limited, some data indicates that there’s a greater percentage of women among organic farmers than among farmers as a whole. The biannual survey of organic farmers by the Organic Farming Research Foundation in Santa Cruz, Calif., for one, has shown for the past decade that about 22 percent of its respondents are women. And a 2001 study by the Women on U.S. Farms Research Initiative at Pennsylvania State University concluded that when women are the main farmers, they’re far more likely than men to eschew chemical-intensive production and use “sustainable” agriculture practices — those that are ecologically and socially responsible as well as profitable. Those include, but not exclusively, certified organic methods.

Yet organic advocates are cautious about saying that women have an essential instinct for, or a natural gravitation to, organic farming over conventional production.

“Clearly there’s something that differentiates conventional and organic and sustainable agriculture in terms of women in leadership roles that’s worth thinking about,” says Kathleen Merrigan, director of the Agriculture, Food and Environment Program at Tufts University in Boston, who helped shape the legislation that led to the USDA National Organic Program. “If you’re interested in agriculture and working on the land, traditional doors are kind of closed to you. The alternative was organic. [The presence of more women] may not all be from some deepseated views on ecology and nutrition, but from ‘I wanted to get into this field and this was open to me.’”

True to Its Roots The food supply link from farm to table has traditionally been a man’s world, but don’t tell that to the women at Veritable Vegetable. The nation’s oldest distributor of certified organic produce is women-owned and -managed, and as committed to a progressive workplace as it is to supporting organic food and farmers. Founded in 1974 as a worker collective, VV (as it’s known) now rings up $22 million in annual sales. When it began, though, it supplied organic food within a small closed system of neighborhood co-ops and food clubs. Over time, as organic food moved out of an activist community and into mainstream society, the company decided to distribute to for-profit retail outlets as well. VV also opened its staff to men as well as women. “The people we want to do business with are those who embrace the feminine part of themselves, for want of a better word,” says purchasing manager Bu Nygrens, who has been with the company more than two decades. “Those people are cooperative, creative, nurturing and not dominating. If a man comes to work here, he has to either want that kind of environment or give it a try, and we’ve been blessed with incredible men in our lives, on our staffs, and as farmers.” Nygrens sees a parallel between VV’s cooperative business model and the principles of organic agriculture itself. “It’s an acceptance of the wildness and the mystery of life,” she says. “Women have had projected on them that they’re wild, uncontrollable, and therefore to be feared. In organic farming, nature can’t really be controlled, so you work with it instead of dominating it.” — E.L.

“It’s fairly hard for women as farm operators to get involved in conventional farming,” says Carolyn Sachs, director of the women’s studies program and a professor of rural sociology at Penn State. “Conventional farming is so capital-intensive and women [are less likely to] own land, so it’s harder for them to get credit, machinery. But they can enter [organic] farming on a smaller scale, and it doesn’t require that they use chemicals, herbicides or other production practices that are more environmentally damaging.”

Women are also more likely to engage in marketing strategies that build relationships with consumers, such as community-supported agriculture and farmer’s markets. “Women are buying smaller farms closer to urban areas so they can market their produce to an urban environment,” says Amy Trauger, a doctoral student at Penn State and part of the Women on U.S. Farms Research Initiative. “So they’re adapting in clever ways to their own marginalization from mainstream economics.” Trauger further suggests that sustainable agriculture “offers a public space of recognition for women as farmers, not only through providing remuneration for their work, but also affirming and legitimating their identity as farmers.”

Feminists on the Farm

These researchers reject the notion that it is an essential tendency to nurture or harmonize with nature that makes women opt for organic or sustainable farming. Yet the drive toward community — women’s skill in building relationships and the idea that “women make the connections” between food, land, health and future generations — comes up frequently. At the Women, Food & Agriculture Network (WFAN), a nonprofit project of the Tides Center and Iowa State University Extension in Ames, Iowa, building an intergenerational network and a sense of community among rural women is paramount to the organization’s goals.

“In Iowa, we don’t have much diversity of color, but we do [have diversity] of age,” says director and co-founder Denise O’Brien. “It’s the passing of knowledge that women gain, the bonding that happens. What better thing than to pass on philosophy and knowledge and sharing, when you’re out in the garden weeding and you get to talk. Young women learn so much experientially. Our greatest success is mentoring younger women.”

O’Brien works with women coming to farming through environmental studies as well as with traditional farm families. A new graduate program in sustainable agriculture at Iowa State University, she says, has more women students than men. “So many of them aren’t coming out of a traditional rural culture. They’re bringing a feminist culture to food production.”

The average age of farmers in the United States is over 50 years old, and going up, so the interest of young farmers must be encouraged if healthy farms are of value to our communities. The next generation is likely to include many women whose inclinations and beliefs will alter the face of farming and food production. The data suggests that many of these women will opt for organic farming, working to decrease our dependence on environmental toxins and on a food system that dominates nature rather than working in tandem with it.

“It’s not just about the apple you eat,” Tufts University professor Merrigan says. “It’s about all the factors leading up to that moment.”