I attended a truly inspiring meeting last night and met three women who are changing our world! The title of the meeting says it all: Key Ingredients for Health: How Women Ecopreneurs Can Transform our Soil, Food System and Communities.
Lisa Kivirist is a national advocate for women farmers and coined the term “ecopreneur.” She is co-author of the award-winning books ECOpreneuring, Rural Renaissance and the Edible Earth cookbook. She and her family run Inn Serendipity Farm and B&B outside Monroe, WI, completely powered by renewable energy. They serve delicious vegetarian breakfasts from food grown on the farm. You can learn more about her and her farm at www.innserendipity.com and her ideas about women and farming at www.ecopreneuring.biz
Angie Tagtow, a fellow registered dietitian who lives in Iowa, champions an ecological approach to food and health and works with a variety of groups to collaboratively promote the public health benefits of sustainable food systems. She is the managing editor of the Journal of Hunger and Environmental Nutrition (JHEN), a publication she helped launch in order to coalesce local, national and international hunger and environmental nutrition issues. She is spearheading a statewide collaborative that focuses on building community-based food systems as a solution to improving food security and the health of Iowans. See the following for more information:
http://www.environmentalnutritionsolutions.com/
Xe Susane Moua, orginally from Laos, lived in southern CA for many years where her family farmed. She moved to Minnesota and fell in love with the 4 seasons! Susane applied for a $6000 USDA SARE grant (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) to develop a St. Paul–based organic farm, providing community supported agriculture (CSA) shares at affordable prices using excess city land. She is now farming right in her neighborhood in back, front and side yards and selling the produce to her neighbors. See the following for more information:
www.citybackyardfarming.com
The take home message for the night was go out and make a difference in your community: plant a garden, buy locally grown and seasonal food, support a farmer by purchasing a share from a CSA, start a compost bin, stop using pesticides on your lawns and gardens, shop local farmer’s markets, start cooking at home again!
The health of our planet and our bodies depends on healthy soil which provides us with the food we consume…let’s be wise stewards of the land.
