One Last Time.

• Author: BANERJI, CHITRITA
• Position: Editorial

This is my final issue of Conservation Matters. After eight and a half years as CLF's Publications Director and the editor of this magazine, it is time to say goodbye and move on.

Looking back, I am amazed at how far we have traveled. When I came on board in January 1992, what I inherited was a 16-page, two-color newsletter with no other name but CLF. It was strictly limited to providing updates on the organization's activities to CLF members. Under the guidance of a dynamic, engaged, and thoughtful editorial committee chaired by former Boston Globe editor Tom Winship, the newsletter rapidly expanded. As the organization grew, we felt an increasing need to serve our mission of public education by presenting readers with insightful, well-informed discussions on the foremost environmental issues facing New England. The birth of Conservation Matters (CM) filled that need.

I still remember the intense excitement with which we opened the first box of magazines delivered to the office by our printer during the summer of 1994. That, too, was a two-color publication, but within a year, we decided to stop using the second color on the inside pages and use the savings to switch to a full-color cover. CM as we know it today started with the Summer 1995 issue. A framed copy of that cover--a photograph of a Maine fisherman hauling up his catch--still hangs in my office. In the last five years, I have looked at it often and always felt energized. Like that lone fisherman, New England's environment still faces many problems, despite the progress of the last 30 years. And it is more important than ever to continue the work of educating the public through what we write in a magazine like Conservation Matters.

I find it particularly apt that we planned this Summer 2000 issue to be a special one on food--the vital stuff. As the population of the world expands, as pollution of earth and water increases, and as climate change threatens to affect all previous assumptions about food production, the concept of food security is changing from simple access to issues of economic and ecological access. Science, money, and ethics will all play out in this millennium's food production.

Most of us tend to forget that of the many human aggressions on nature, agriculture has been the most significant. And yet, it is only recently that the production, transportation, distribution, and delivery of food have become prime environmental concerns. As Warren Leon's article...