LEDE: “Organic,” “Locally-grown,” “Certified Humane,” “GMO-Free." We've all seen the labels stamped on packages of chicken breast at the grocery store or chalked onto signs at the farmers market, but are they worth paying attention to? We all want to eat healthy, nutritious food raised by good farmers. But do labels really give us an accurate picture? When these labels can just as easily be used to describe a large-scale farm that raises its food thousands of miles away with little oversight or the small farm just outside of town, do they retain any meaning? Is the certified organic beef from the supermarket a better choice than the not-certified beef sold by a local farmer at the farmers’ market? Intuition seems to tell us no but Shizue RocheAdachi (SHE-zoo-eh r-OH-ch a-da-chee) decided to put a story to the question and headed out to Morris, Connecticut to talk to a farmer who’s forgoing the labels in hopes of educating his community on what it actually means to produce local food.

At a place like Yale, where a career in agriculture seems like something utterly divorced from the “traditional” ivy-league trajectory, the unique voices of the Yale Farm's student farm interns are important in offering insights into a re-imagined food culture.  You could call them part of a burgeoning youth-driven food movement that's here to stay or you could disregard them as part of a trend, but you cannot deny the fact that these students provide a narrative that has not yet been heard.  These student farmers are the maybe, someday farmers of the future and the food literate thinkers of today.

Paul Buhr farms the way everyone used to farm in Wisconsin. With a small herd of dairy cattle and a single hired hand, his small family dairy farm is fast becoming a relic of a bygone era. Surrounded by ever expanding corn and soy farms and thousand-cow dairies, what was once a life lived in the community of a shared labor is now a life lived in conflict. Fighting for his farm and the way of life that gives him hope, Paul gives voice to the impersonal shifts we see in the agricultural landscape of the Midwest.