Margaret Krome
Margaret Krome is policy program director for the Michael Fields Agricultural Institute in East Troy, Wis. She coordinates the annual national grass-roots campaign to fund federal programs supported by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and helps develop federal, state and local programs and policies supporting environmentally sound, profitable and socially responsible agriculture. Margaret writes a semimonthly column for The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, October 20, 2015 Consumers Deserve Information About Food They Eat Last week I spooned into a babbling baby’s mouth food her mother had sent along, both for my convenience and because she is particular that her baby eats food that’s organic and grown without genetically modified seed. This mother, my friend, opposes legislation to undercut labeling of genetically... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, December 18, 2013 Our Hubris in Trampling Species Breathtaking I snowshoed into our cabin at last light on Friday and started a fire in the stove. I slept in my sleeping bag downstairs near the wood stove, getting up once to put more wood in the stove and admire the gleam of ambient light on the snow outside. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, April 10, 2012 On Keeping Government Out of Our Pregnancies It used to embarrass my children and now merely amuses them that as their birthdays approach, I find myself reviewing their births in remarkable detail through small hour-by-hour glimpses. I relive my apprehensions as birth approached, the intense hours of labor, the superb nursing staff, my brilliant husband and advocate, and the joy at holding our babies. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 22, 2011 It Sure Looks Like Rural Wisconsin’s for Recall I wasn’t expecting the reception I got on Saturday in the small southwest Wisconsin town near our family’s cabin. I walked both sides of a long residential street, taking petitions door-to-door for people to sign in support of recalling Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch. In my first three houses, eight people signed. A wife apologized for making me wait, but took the petitions into another room because her husband wanted to sign. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 15, 2011 Egypt Can Learn From Pitfalls in U.S. Process Like most Americans, I have followed the protests in Egypt, which have been fueled by the economic crisis, high unemployment, pent-up anger at decades of government repression, and the peaceful revolution in Tunisia just weeks before. I celebrated when former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak resigned. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 01, 2009 For Farmers, Climate Change More Than Theoretical A recent day was supposed to be cloudy all day, but the sun came out, so I hurried a load of laundry out to the clothesline to avoid using the electric dryer. Weather predictions are famously unreliable. Is that one reason so many people remain unconvinced of the sober truths about global warming? Of Americans surveyed last year by Gallup, 97 percent were familiar with the problems of global warming, but of that number, only 49 percent believed that rising temperatures resulted from human activities. Read more |
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Views Thursday, May 28, 2009 Children Plant Carrots and Democracy As important as Michelle Obama's arms are to news reporters, the children helping plant and maintain the White House vegetable garden have an even more compelling story. They may be planting democracy along with carrots and lettuce. At the Northeast Farm-to-School conference last week, children, teachers, farmers and school food administrators described every kind of project imaginable linking children directly with food production. Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 07, 2009 Innovations in Mexico Lift Up Country's Poor I sat with my family under a shady ficus tree last week in Melaque, Mexico. Filled with contentment from a good seafood lunch, we fell into the dangerous activity of drawing broad observations about our single week in the country. Nary a donkey or sombrero was among our impressions of Mexico, however, which were not of sleepy agrarian poverty. Rather, we were impressed with the can-do pragmatism, good-humored community and holiday celebrations, effective public services, and healthy-seeming families we met and saw. Read more |
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Views Thursday, February 21, 2008 Politicians Must Change Tone of Immigration Debate As we sat on my cousin's screen porch at night and listened to frogs and night birds, our conversation wasn't so terribly different from wintry conversations over coffee with some of Wisconsin's larger dairy farmers. Inevitably, it turned to immigration and agriculture's conflicted history... Read more |