THE WORM MOON

Our weekly gleanings present the latest happenings, research and writing along the tangled banks of culture and agriculture. This week: El Sur Latino, rich farmers and mental health.

It’s typical of a cultural solar bias that all the attention goes to spring equinox and very little to the worm moon – March’s full moon – so called because the soil is beginning to be workable by worm and human alike. Following the frost heaves of a politically (and existentially) disruptive winter, a new growing season invites us to get our hands back in the earth. In some ways this invites novel practices of academics, activists and food producers alike – check out the anthropology read-in group and Carole McGranahan on going rogue. In other ways it’s familiar terrain: farmers struggling with mental health and retirement; health of migrant farm labor (also in Sicily); unrest over environmental regulations. Here in Utah the cherries are blossoming.

The earthworms awakened under the worm moon generate bioturbation – productive disruptions. What productive disruptions are in store this season? If we need some optimism about what the spring might bring, perhaps there’s no better place to look than New Zealand, where Te Awa Tupua (the Whanganui River) has been declared a legal person.

// in other news //

The United States joins International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, after a 14 year ratification process

A list of the world’s richest farmers

Southern Foodways Alliance series on El Sur Latino

The National Academies publish a response to an analysis that found conflicts of interest in the Acadamies’ Committee on Genetically Engineered Crops