Lately, I've been transcribing an amazing interview with Audrey Arner of Moonstone Farm, so I thought I'd share a small bit of the inspirational insights I've been enjoying:
“I think the growing awareness of the co-ops that wasn’t just about quality of food, it wasn’t just the range of food, but where it originates. That growing awareness within the community of eaters arose at the same time and really predicated demand for the supply that could come from a greater amount of organic vegetable production in the region. And the strength of that community was also illustrated in Gardens of Eagan’s fight about the gas company wanting to put pipeline under their organic farm and completely disrupt the strata or organic soils and all that had been tended and cultivated there for so many years, and they only won that fight because of the support of the co-op community.
“As so many members who had been eating foods that originated at that farm weighed in and sent letters indicating their support for not disrupting these soils, it became a precedent for the way that utilities have to interrelate with organic farms in Minnesota. And that wouldn’t have happened without the community of eaters, the community of conscious eaters. So it has even wider ramifications, I think, than just eating well from the place that we live, but it has landscape ramifications.”