Mark Ritchie, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Mark Ritchie is president of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, based in Minneapolis, Minn., which works to keep family farmers on the land. He also serves as national co-chair of Sustainable America and director of the International Forum on Food and Agriculture, and is on the boards of Mothers and Others, Libraries for the Future, Organic Growers and Buyers Association, and the Minnesota Institute for Sustainable Agriculture.

I have been planning today for quite some time. I will be flying down very early to Cincinnati, Ohio, and then driving up toward Columbus to meet with a group of Riverkeepers who are working to protect their river. They are aware of the many problems facing family farmers on the economic front and want to see if there are better ways to combine strong protection of the environment with help for family farmers during their economic crisis. I met these folks last spring at a training session for Riverkeepers from all over the U.S. and Latin America. I served on the faculty for the session, covering some of the key agriculture, trade, and conservation economics issues.

Later today I will drive a little further east, into the Darby River Watershed, to have dinner with the leaders of a grassroots group that has sprung up recently in opposition to an attempt by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take over about 50,000 acres of land in the watershed -- roughly half the land. There is strong opposition among landowners to this proposal, prompting a huge public outcry. At the same time, this has served as a wake-up call for some of the local leaders who know they need to go on the offensive by developing their own plans for promoting greater conservation and habitat protection. Several of these leaders attended a conference that IATP organized last summer, in conjunction with the American Water Works Association, on ways that water utilities have provided financial support to farmers working to transition toward more sustainable and safe production practices.

One of the key speakers at that conference was a farmer from the Catskills region of New York who told the very moving story of how their land was about to be seized by the New York City water agency and how they fought to keep it. In the end, this battle eventually led to a cooperative agreement between the city and the farm organization to both keep the families on the land and improve the ecological performance of the farming practices. It is a very inspiring story and had a big impact on some of the farmers from Ohio attending the conference.

We are meeting tonight to see if there is a way to turn this huge fight in Ohio into some kind of a "win-win" agreement like in the Catskills. It is a long shot, given the current level of anger and mistrust, but that is exactly how it started in the Catskills and eventually there was a positive outcome.

Before I fly out today, I am in my office taking care of one piece of work that I have to do almost every day -- the email. I get way too many messages, around 200 per day, but I get so much information and perspective from this flood that I try to keep up as best I can. I manage a few of IATP's couple dozen list servs on various environmental, food, trade, and biotech issues, including one on the upcoming World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle and one for biotech activists. It can be overwhelming, but the Internet has proven to be a powerful tool for organizing and action. I just hope we can perfect the social skills it will take to make certain that these tools serve us, not enslave us. IATP has a division that provides computer and Internet services to other nonprofits, which has some of the most talented and committed technology people I have ever met. Each day they provide me with the gift of these tools and new ways to use them. I just hope that I can stay young enough in my attitude to really make use of them.

I will fly back late tonight instead of staying over because I have to put up the storm windows tomorrow. In Minnesota we get a couple of warnings about the coming winter, and now I am on borrowed time. If I don't want to be climbing a 24-foot ladder in the snow, I need to get this job done this weekend. Signing off -- thanks for listening!