Family farmers and local food producers, like Cowgirl Creamery and local bakeries. Our community is also environmentalists who are working together with ranchers to preserve our area, keep it as agrarian as possible and a local food source. My mother helped start MALT (the Marin Agricultural Land Trust), which was the first agricultural land trust in the country.

What are your commitments?

I’m committed to organic, sustainable family farming, and to keeping family farms economically viable.

What are your goals?

To produce food and be part of a community that looks at everything we do through a sustainable lens. To work with our land, treat our community and our employees well, and be profitable at the same time. And, to provide a source of food that is healthy and comes from a sustainably produced farming community.

What does change look like to you?

A positive change would be getting away from the conventional methods used since World War II, like pesticides, commercial fertilizers, and GMOs.

Regarding the practicalities of enacting change, what planning is involved? What kind of outreach?

We’re reaching out to consumers and students with information about the connection between what you eat and how it’s produced. We’re all very involved in the labeling of GMOs in foods movement. We are the first dairy to be verified by the Non-GMO Project.

What projects are affiliated with yours?

The Non-GMO Project and the Just Label It campaign; MALT and Marin Organic; Slow Food, Slow Money and Vandana Shiva’s organizations.

What projects and/or people are you inspired by?

I’ve been inspired by Dr. Vandana Shiva, who came by our farm and creamery. I’m inspired by what a great spokesperson and advocate she is for farmers, especially in India. She’s asked me to help produce an organic dairy there. She has a great heart and great vision. For me, it feels like a genuine opportunity and I hope to collaborate. It’s for a vision of sustaining land and people and making organic available and to make a difference in India. The motivations are right and are likely to succeed. Even though there are huge challenges.

What does the food movement need to do, be or have to be more effective?

It needs to have the foresight to be proactive to protect organic integrity and to develop the local food movement as well. As far as being more effective, I think we need to test and verify our products for GMOs so consumers don’t have to question whether products are tainted. We also need to work together more as a community to protect our food systems.

Where do you see the state of agriculture/food policy in the next 5-10 years? Is real policy change a real possibility?

I think consumers and the public can demand that we have labeling of GMOs and that would be essential to protecting what organic is about. We need to enact laws to prohibit companies from patenting life forms. And, get rid of a lot of the subsidy programs that allow a third of the corn grown in America to be put into ethanol and biodiesel and taken out of the food system.

Consumers have the power to make change in this country. A real possibility? I think that anything is possible. Since people are pretty fed up with what’s happening in this country, I think change is coming. When things get really extreme people react and make change. I think we’re about there. And, then it’s just educating the public so they know what the issues are and it’s not all hidden.

What would you want to be your last meal on earth?

Of course it’d have to be a bowl of ice cream. My latest favorite is our brown sugar banana with chocolate chips.