Because we need local communities and economic practices to steer the state away from the interests of concentrated wealth and power, and because we must re-involve the economy in civil society and insure that the values of self-giving, mutuality and solidarity are embedded in all aspects of our economic life, therefore we must re-focus ourselves on local change, on local repair. And perhaps no aspect of local change, of needed repair, is greater than that of the local food system, the local food economy. Food is foundation.

This is the rationale behind New Hampshire’s new state statute, Granite State Farm to Plate (RSA 425:2-a), a state law which places agriculture and all aspects of local food and farming in a unique position in New Hampshire, requiring by law that all entities of state government, that all municipalities state-wide, that all courts statewide, encourage and support all aspects of local agriculture, of local food production (including processing, preparation and value-added), in whatever form and wherever they may occur in the state.

This is the underlying rationale for four of my books written for and published by the University of New Hampshire, books I am pleased to provide to you at no cost via electronic copies, using the link of this website:

THE WISDOM OF SMALL FARMS AND LOCAL FOOD: ALDO LEOPOLD’S LAND ETHIC AND SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE (UNH Agricultural  Experiment Station Publication  #2260, 2005) (Introduction by Ronald Jager)

PASTURES OF PLENTY: THE FUTURE OF FOOD, AGRICULTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION IN NEW ENGLAND (UNH Agricultural Experiment Station Publication #2340, 2008) (Foreword by former NH Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Taylor)

THE REAL DIRT: TOWARD FOOD SUFFICIENCY AND FARM SUSTAINABILITY IN NEW ENGLAND (2010) (Forewords by Mark B. Lapping and Matthew R. Simmons)

LIVE FREE AND FARM: FOOD AND INDEPENDENCE IN THE GRANITE STATE (2014) (Foreword by former NH Commissioner of Agriculture Steve Taylor)

For those interested in the broader questions of agricultural ethics, I am pleased to provide my article for the Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics, “Pope Francis’ Encyclical, Food and Agriculture” (Springer Publishers, 2017).