Atina Diffley: Turn Here, Sweet Corn

Turn Here Sweet Corn: Organic Farming Works – 978-0816677719 – University of Minnesota Press – Hardcover – $24.95 (ebook versions available)

As I write this, it’s August, 2012, and sweet corn is beginning to be abundant here in Connecticut, where I live.  This is my favorite season, and my favorite summer vegetable too.  When I discovered this wonderful book, I picked it up immediately, and began to read it voraciously.  I really like this book, and corn is, of course, an evocation of much more for the author and her readers.  Atina Diffley has a great story to tell, and she tells it well in this lovely, powerful, evocative book.

Atina’s story is literally grounded by her connection to the earth and to living in community.  As she tells us, she has always wanted to farm.  As she has worked with the land to grow food, she has learned how farming is a synthesis of land and people.  Wherever she is, along with her farmer husband, Martin, she is a sensitized and active member of her the ecosystem, paying close attention to the living world around her.  It’s a great lesson for a world that seems alienated from the natural world.  Atina tells us about how she came to being a local organic farmer, a story of farming within close range of the Minneapolis/St. Paul urb for more than thirty years.  It’s been an incredible struggle, but also, an incredible success, as she shows how a conscious connection between farm and city, between farmer and the food system can create healthy systems that last.  There are many practical lessons as well as inspiration, beauty, and sustenance here for anyone interested in building a new food system in America.

And in addition to a brilliant and beautiful story of land and living, Atina also tells the incredible story of the battle she and Martin led against the Koch brothers pipeline across Minnesota.  It’s more or less mind boggling to imagine what they went through, and inspiring to see that it is possible for intelligent and organized opposition to powerful corporate forces can in fact be victorious – right over might.

This is a great book and one I am very happy to recommend to friends, family and colleagues.  Talking to Atina about her book was a great pleasure for me, and I hope our conversation will be illustrative of how wonderful this book is.  And thanks to the courageous and intelligent University of Minnesota Press for publishing this terrific memoir (a terrific publisher!).  Having sold the farm to the food cooperatives that supported it for so many years, Atina is now an organic consultant and public speaker on farming and food issues.  Her website is here. We had a great interview in which we covered a wide range of subjects related to her book and to the important issues she raises about our connection to the land, to food, to the reason why organic farming is so important, and to the meaning of food to our lives.

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