Protecting agricultural land is pretty high on any worldchanging to-do list, as are finding new models for making agriculture both more sustainable and mroe competitive.

Ally Jon Stahl notes a cool model I meant to post earlier: the FARM (Farm Acquisition, Research & Management) LLC. FARM is "protecting farmland, supporting farmers and promoting small-scale, organic farming" by buying and running small farms in the Seattle suburbs.

There's lots more in Rebekkah Denn's profile:

"In the years since the self-taught group bought the South 47 Farm near Redmond, along with two nearby properties, FARM LLC has become a microlaboratory for almost every way modern farmers are experimenting to survive. Its 70.1 acres form a quilted, pesticide-free oasis of fruits, vegetables, flowers, herbs and animals, all in a suburban valley where it is more common to find strip-mall developments and traffic jams."

It's a cool (if not yet financially successful) model, one which, it seems, might be exportable elsewhere. It's no comprehensive fix, no "topsoil Kyoto," but it just might have legs.