Our system of producing food has been misdirected. The idea that big is better and that the corporations are best suited to produce our food is a myth.

The corporations sell us the idea that we would all starve if it were not for corporate productivity. This is also a myth. These myths, perpetuated by agribusiness, are dangerous.

Corporate agribusiness is dangerous. It is dangerous because it strives always for profit and control. Monsantos quest to patent all seeds, trees and plants is a prime example of unfettered corporate greed. Monsanto is not the only monster hiding in our fields, but it is one of the meanest and greediest.

Corporate farming is an extraction industry. This industry takes from the land and never gives back. In the process, it poisons the land, water and air. This gross consumption of our land resource cannot be sustained.

Corporate farming believes that nature, land, insects, disease and even the plants themselves can be manipulated and subdued. This is a myth that the corporations will never make real.

There is a place for science and discovery in our agricultural system. But science must work with nature, not against it.

Sustainable agriculture differs from corporate agriculture in that it recognizes that nature does not need to be subdued, rather, it needs to be understood.

We work with fifty acres here in Caineville. There is one heated greenhouse and one high tunnel. The garden consists of one acre. This one acre gives us fourty 350' rows in which we grow our various seasonal fruits and vegetables. There are also three acres of perennial pasture. These three acres provide high quality food for our dairy goat herd.

The goats are managed in a rotational system in which a movable electric fence confines them within an area with fresh grasses. The fence system is moved frequently. Each year the garden area is rotated onto an acre that had been goat pasture. In this way we are able to promote better health for the soil and for the goats.

The goats also have free access to fourty acres of river bottom that has been invaded by Tamarisk and Russian Olive as well as other noxious weeds.  We hope that proper management of the goat herd will help us restore native plants to the river bottom.

This pattern of grazing provides our herd with a healthy diet that we believe causes the milk to be truely natural and therefore, full of natural flavor. And believe me, it is sweet and makes for some great cheese.

We are making some wonderful farmstead tomme, feta, yogurt and chevre.

We have one acre of fruit trees. The orchard contains fifty fruit trees. Fruit is tricky around here, but if we are lucky we will get some really tasty peaches and apples by mid summer.

The chicken coop is located inside the orchard. The 50 or so chickens eat garden waste, bugs, weed seeds and fallen fruit. They provide eggs as well as nitrogen rich fertilizer. We also use the chickens for natural fly control in the goat barn.

We maintain a beehive. The bees love the fruit and vegetable blossom as well as the wild flowers and we are happy that the bees allow us to enjoy some of their honey. And the pollination factor is important.

We collect waste vegetable oil from the restaurants we serve, and we turn this oil into biodiesel. We use the biofuel to run our tractors.

We have a small solar panel that provides electricity to the milkhouse. And we are producing solar hot water for some of our domestic use.

We have a long way to go, but we are on our way toward a balanced and productive system that provides food for our farm and our community.

The huge subsidies that corporate agribusiness receives from our governmment must be reappropriated. These subsidies must be used to benefit the people, not the bank accounts of global agribusiness.

We believe that it is possible for farming to be returned to the people. We believe that urban farmers will play a vital role in tomorrows agriculture. There should be hundreds of thousands of urban farmers.  We believe that society's redemption depends on a new set of values that recognize the importance of sustainability and the family farm.