120 people attended the SILT dinner this year to honor our third land donor, Steve Beaumont, who brought our total acres protected to 115 in just two years. The celebration came on the heels of a day-long planning session that welcomed 7 new board members and 40 volunteers who set SILT's goals for protecting more land to grow healthy food. People are coming together because they understand it takes a combination of time, effort and money to fulfill our ambitious mission: SILT protection translates into more fresh food, clean soil and water and affordable land for future generations of Iowans. Please help us launch [...]

Steve Beaumont receives a standing ovation from SILT supporters. Steve Beaumont became the third Iowan to permanently protect his land to grow healthy food.  "I believe SILT will help rejuvenate our small towns and rural communities through its work," Steve said. "And I'm looking forward to working with the young people on the land, to the extent they'd welcome it." 120 SILT supporters gathered this year at the Greater Des Moines Botanical Garden to honor Steve and celebrate a great second year. Steve's donation brings SILT protection to a total of 115 acres in just two years. A retired carpenter, Steve lives [...]

A new report by @Food Democracy Now! and the Detox Project exposes shocking levels of glyphosate contamination in popular American foods, including Cheerios, Doritos, Oreos, Goldfish and Stacy’s Pita Chips. What kind of food do you want to eat? SILT supports farmers using sustainable (glyphosate-free) practices, by offering long-term affordable leases. View the report here

Michael Pollan, a writer and food activist wrote a great summary of the  writes a summary of how "Big Food" lobies can fight back any attempt to regulate them. "A food system organized around subsidized monocultures of corn and soy [...] guzzled tremendous amounts of fossil fuel (for everything from the chemical fertilizer and pesticide those fields depended on to the fuel needed to ship food around the world) and in the process emitted tremendous amounts of greenhouse gas — as much as a third of all emissions, by some estimates." SILT helps farmers access land to grow food sustainably [...]

This food systems series by the New York Time Magazines is worth taking a look at... "Our industrialized food system nourishes more people, at lower cost, than any comparable system in history. It also exerts a terrifyingly massive influence on our health and our environment. Photographer George Steinmetz spent nearly a year traveling the country to capture that system, in all its scope, grandeur and dizzying scale. His photographs are all the more remarkable for the fact that so few large food producers are willing to open themselves to this sort of public view." One more reason for us to [...]

USDA's Economic Research Service (ERS) recently published a report analyzing the trends in U.S. farmland ownership and land tenure drawn from USDA’s 2014 Tenure, Ownership, and Transition of Agricultural Land (TOTAL) survey. Amongst other findings, the report shows that one in three acres in the U.S. is rented, and that most (80%) of the land rented is owned by landlords who are not actively involved in farming. We know 10% of the farmland will transition over the next five years. "However, the vast majority of these land transfers are projected to occur through gifts, trusts or wills – meaning that many young and [...]

Join SILT to discuss the future of local foods at Fairfield's Local Food Summit this weekend! Details here.