Links to related sites

Low-Impact Living Initiative (LILI)
Based at Redfield Community (a WWOOF host). LILI is dedicated to helping protect the global environment by promoting sustainable alternatives to various aspects of everyday life. Contact us to find out more about our installations, workshops, presentations and manuals.
Our web address is www.lowimpact.org
Contact : Dave Darby.

Book : Scenes from a Smallholding
The book we're offering is called 'Scenes from a Smallholding', and is the story of an English suburban family's first three years' experience of setting up from scratch an organic smallholding in West Wales then trying to run it.
Website : www.thirdleafbooks.co.uk

Country Garden & Smallholding magazine
The UK's small farming publication and the oldest organic magazine in Britain. www.countrysmallholding.com

Save Organic Standards
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is attempting to redefine organic foods to include foods that are genetically engineered, irradiated, factory-farmed, and grown on top of toxic sewage sludge. This represents an "unfriendly take-over" of the organic foods industry by agribusiness, chemical-biotech corporations, and giant supermarket chains.

On Dec. 16, the USDA announced their proposed national organic standards. These standards define what can be legally certified and labelled as organic.

Currently, when we shop for foods labelled "organic," we can be reasonably certain of what we're getting. But under the proposed USDA laws, there are no explicit prohibitions against:

Genetic Engineering - Using genetic engineering to produce foods.
Factory Farming - Using inhumane, intensive confinement, factory farm style production methods on farm animals.
Toxic Sludge - Spreading toxic sewage sludge and industrial wastes, so-called "biosolids," on pastures and farmlands where animals graze and food is grown.
Animal Cannibalism - Feeding back diseased animals, waste animal body parts and blood to farm animals.
Food Irradiation - Using nuclear wastes, so-called "ionising radiation," to "kill bacteria" and extend the shelf life of foods.

The full text of USDA's proposed rules are available at www.ams.usda.gov/nop

STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS! HERE'S WHAT YOU CAN DO TODAY TO SAVE ORGANIC STANDARDS!

Join the SOS Action Network in your local area.
Send a letter, fax, or email to the USDA (to the address and docket number listed below) demanding that they respect consumers' right-to-choose and maintain strict organic standards by explicitly prohibiting the unacceptable practices listed here.
Demand also that the USDA reaffirm the national Organic Standards Board's statutory power to decide what is synthetic and what is natural, what is permitted and what is prohibited under the organic label. Tell the USDA to withdraw its proposed rules and resubmit new standards which adopt the NOSB's recommendations.
Make copies of your comment letter to the USDA and send them to your federal and state legislators. Follow up your letter with a telephone call. Tell you legislators that, as a constituent, you want them to tell the USDA to withdraw their proposed rules on organic standards.
Contact natural food stores, farmers markets, holistic health practitioners, co-ops, and community restaurants and get them to distribute SOS campaign literature and set up in-store displays.

Letters to the USDA should be sent to:
USDA-National Organic Standards
Docket # TMD - 94 - 00 - 2
Address: USDA, AMS, Room 4007 - S
AgStop 0275, P.O. Box 96456 Washington, D.C. 20090-6456
Fax : Include Docket Number (202) 690-4632
Email: see www.ams.usda.gov/nop

To help organise an SOS Campaign in your local area contact:
Pure Food Campaign/Save Organic Standards
860 Hwy 61 Little Marais, Mn. 55614
Tel. 1-800-253-0681 or (218) 226-4164 Fax (218) 226-4157
Email alliance(@mrnet
Web site : www.purefood.org

Kibbutz Lotan
Kibbutz Lotan is a young, sixteen-year-old intentional community in Israel's southern Arava desert, part of the beautiful Syrian-African Rift. We came together in the desire to create a community based on a modern spiritual approach to Judaism and fulfilling the values of equality between the sexes, equality in work, to actively work in improving our society, to be stewards of the earth and seek genuine communication between people. www.kibbutzlotan.com

Vacation Work Publications
Established in 1967, Vacation Work Publications specialise in producing books on working travel for young people: titles include ‘Taking a Gap Year’ , ‘Green Volunteers’, ‘Kibbutz Volunteer’, ‘The International Directory of Voluntary Work’, ‘Work Your Way Around the World’, ‘Summer Jobs U.S.A.’, ‘Summer Jobs Abroad', ‘Summer Jobs in Britain’, ‘Teaching English Abroad’, etc. For full catalogue details see their Website www.vacationwork.co.uk

Opportunities in Southern Spain
Sunseed Desert Technology is a low tech research and experimentation centre based in Southern Spain, where research, education and ecological living are uniquely combined. Our work is focused around desertification and it's effects on society and the environment. We offer:- Green Working Holidays Student/Research Placements - 5 weeks to 1 year Job Vacancies - currently available Our project incorporates a number of departments:- appropriate technology, dryland regeneration, tree planting and nursery work and organic gardening. So, if you are interested in working and living in a sustainable community, and taking part in our project, visit our website at www.sunseed.org.uk or telephone 01926 421380 to find out more.

SCI.s North South Exchanges Guide
Service Civil International recently published an extensive «North South Exchanges Guide».
The guide is meant to support the preparation of volunteers of the North who will take part in a project in the South as well as vice versa. As such, this guide offers a helping hand for the volunteer who might be immersed for the very first time in an entirely different culture and in a society in which the economic and social environment is totally alien to what s/he has been used to. Secondly this guide is meant to help volunteer exchange organisations and other NGO's to support the volunteers who will travel to another region/continent and in organising North South exchange programmes. Web : www.sciint.org