Grace Gershuny, Keynote: Organic Revolutionary: the Movement for Real Food, Planetary Healing, and Human Liberation

A true elder of the organic farming movement, this author/ farmer shares tales from early days, discusses the future of the clean food movement and reflect on its past. Having served in the USDA when the organic rules were written, Grace Gershuny has a unique vantage point of the “sausage factory” and the resultant product, the rules organic farmers are living under.

Co-author of the seminal book The Soul of Soil, Grace Gershuny has made contributions to the organic community as a farmer, activist, instructor, rulemaker and inspector. Throughout her career she has recognized soil is the basis not only for all gardening and farming, but for all terrestrial life. She brings this sensibility into her perspectives and visions for an organic future. Grace Gershuny is widely known as an author, educator and organic consultant. A back-to-the-land Vermonter since 1973, she began her longtime involvement with the organic grassroots movement by organizing regional conferences and developing an early certification program for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA).

In 1994, USDA recruited Gershuny to serve as its lead organic standards specialist where over the following five years she helped lay the foundations of the National Organic Program. Her new book is titled Organic Revolutionary: A Memoir of the Movement for Real Food, Planetary Healing and Human Liberation. Still raising her own vegetables and chickens, Gershuny currently teaches the Green Mountain College online masters in sustainable food systems program and serves on the board of the Institute for Social Ecology.

(1 hour, 10 minutes, 43 seconds) Recorded at the 2016 Acres U.S.A. Conference, Omaha, Nebraska, Friday, December 2, 2016.