Cultivating a Movement: An Oral History of Organic Farming and Sustainable Agriculture on California's Central Coast
By Irene Reti
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About this ebook
A synergistic web of visionary farmers, activists, educators, and researchers is transforming the food system in Central California and beyond. This sampling of narratives drawn from the first oral history of organic and sustainable farming documents a multifaceted and interdependent community of change-makers who speak for themselves, offering a window into the dynamic history of a movement.
"Personal stories are always a wonderful way to learn about past events. The personal narratives of farmers, educators, researchers, artists and conservationists who were part of the evolution of sustainable agriculture and organic food and farming systems in California's Central Coast—and reaching out to the rest of the country--are truly inspiring. Cultivating a Movement is a book everyone interested in the history of sustainable agriculture will want to read."
---Frederick Kirschenmann, author of Cultivating an Ecological Conscience: Essays From a Farmer-Philosopher.
"Reading Cultivating a Movement is like sitting and listening to a bunch of Old Time Pioneers reconstruct the origins of the organics and sustainability movement. While lots of blind alleys were gone down and plenty of mistakes were made and are openly acknowledged, what characterizes the pioneers was their willingness to try different approaches, to experiment, and their ability to become part of a wide-ranging community while pursuing their individual goals. This book also demonstrates how a new food system requires pioneers in a host of fields: agriculture, distribution and marketing, scientific development and application, learning about consumers and the character of consumption, and how individual actors found their own roads in an emergent complex agrifood system. And it’s pleasurably good reading."
—Bill Friedland, Professor Emeritus of Community Studies and Sociology, UC Santa Cruz
"If you find yourself depressed about the possibilities for positive change, pick up Cultivating a Movement and read a few stories told by people who have been devoting their lives to creating a sustainable food system in the heartland of agribusiness. As one of them says, to be a successful farmer “you have to have a need, a desire, perseverance, strength and insanity.” That goes for the whole lot of them. These are inspiring people."
Joan Dye Gussow, author This Organic Life and Growing, Older.
Irene Reti
The Regional History Project has been documenting the history of the Central Coast of California and the institutional history of UC Santa Cruz since 1963, through oral history. This web site includes the complete catalog of our collection, oral history resources, and links to other oral history sites on the Internet. All of the oral histories are available in full text (PDF). Copies of our oral histories are also available for the cost of photocopying, which varies according to the length of the document. Please contact Irene Reti at ihreti@.ucsc.edu for ordering information on the particular oral history in which you are interested. All of our oral histories are available to the public at the Special Collections and Archives of McHenry Library. Call 831-459-2547 for their hours. Selected oral histories are available in the circulating stacks of the library. You may search the library's Cruzcat catalog to find the call number for the oral history you are looking for. Oral history is a method of conducting historical research through recorded interviews between a narrator with personal experience of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of adding to the historical record. Because it is a primary source, an oral history is not intended to present a final, verified, or "objective" narrative of events, or a comprehensive history of a place, such as the UCSC campus. It is a spoken account, reflects personal opinion offered by the narrator, and as such it is subjective. Oral histories may be used together with other primary sources as well as secondary sources to gain understanding and insight into history.
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