The term “cover crop” is everywhere today. It’s in the farming magazines and the ag news, and is the hot topic at many agricultural conferences, workshops and field days.

Once in every few generations someone comes along who defies all conventions and turns things on their ear. To do this, it takes a truly unique person who does not care what their neighbors think or what the world thinks. Instead, they doggedly pursue what they believe to be right. Such a person passed away from this world just a few weeks ago. That person was Neil Dennis from Saskatchewan, Canada.

As a health care practitioner, I have had the privilege to work with many people over the past 15 years. Let me let you in a little secret I have discovered from years of talking to people about health: We are all worried about our food. Really, all of us: rich people, poor people, Libertarians, Democrats, Republicans, people who drive trucks for a living and eat at places called “Little America”, people who do yoga and only buy organic, people who are skinny, or obese, or anything in between. The concern that something is out of whack with the industrial food system turns otherwise opposing groups of people into quick agreement. We suddenly look surprisingly like a shelf full of Bobbleheads during an earthquake.