Welcome to Our Food Watch Issue
With school out for the summer and the hot sun beating down, many Tucsonians will be vacationing this month, near and far, to visit relatives, discover new places or just get a change of scenery. I invite you all to keep an eye out wherever you go for recent developments in some of the areas we cover in our magazine. How is the organic movement progressing? Is destructive fracking taking a toll on local farmland? What new kinds of alternative transportation do you see in the cities?
If you think that a vacation is no time to be doing all that research, never fear, because the chances are good that you can pick up a copy of Natural Awakenings at all the usual places just about anywhere you go. You might not know it, but we belong to a network of 95 local franchises that publish all over the U.S. Our crack national editorial team in Naples, Florida, has been creating top-quality editorial copy for 20 years now and local publishers (like me) add hyperlocal, grassroots developments like no one else can. Overall, our network of publications reaches more than 4 million readers each month with the good news about happy, healthy, sustainable living. And it’s free!
Welcome to our Food Watch issue, where you will find some good news about the progress being made by organic farmers nationwide in our feature story, “Stewards of the Earth’s Bounty,” by Melinda Hemmelgarn. On the flip side, we take a look at the negative impact that natural gas exploration has on all kinds of agriculture in “Fracking Versus Food,” by Harriet Shugarman.
We also occasionally like to address what we call our “natural medicine cabinet” and this month, local acupuncturist Jamie Szybala tells us all about traditional oriental herbal aids in “Don’t Accept Menstrual Blues as Normal,” in our Masters of Bodywork and Healing Arts section. Plus, in our Health Brief department, there is good information that we can use every day about ginger, turmeric and plums to promote wellness. Hmmm, did I mention the awesome smoothie recipes?
Okay, everybody in the car… we’re going to Wally World!
Holly Baker, Publisher