I picked up a carton of Organic Valley soymilk at Whole Foods the other day; it was new and I’m a sucker for their products, since I know it’s at least local to the Upper Midwest (and their cultured butter is so darn good). The side panel invited me to enter details about my carton into their web site, which promised details about the farmers who grew the beans which made my soymilk. Of course, I can’t resist wanting to know more about my farmers, especially if it proves that we’re only a few hundred miles apart, and especially if they’re organically farming soy (which my family knows a bit about).

Sure enough, there they were: three sturdy Iowans. Farmer Erwin Henderson’s bio mentions that he’s doing what his grandfather did by farming the family land organically. It’s odd to think that in one generation, the business of farming (as with everything else, really) has been turned upside down by the “green revolution” or by the Oil Age in some other manifestation, and that we’re just now trying to turn it all back.